Thread: Anti-Arab/Muslim sentiment in the United States

Originally Posted by Syme

Right, that's exactly what I was saying when I said that Muslims have less theological squirming to go through when they decide to justify violence in religious terms. So, you have just restated what I already said.

My point isn't that Qu'ranic verse can't be used to justify violence (some of it can), but that this verse isn't what CAUSES the violence. And even if Qu'ranic verse didn't sometimes endorse violence, that wouldn't inhibit people who are inclined towards violence from using it's passages to justify their violence. Because Christian history very clearly demonstrates that even a 100% peaceful religion is readily seized upon by those who want a justification for violence. Yes, if Qu'ranic content was totally non-violent, violent Muslims would have to "creatively" interpret instead of simply selectively quoting it; so what? That doesn't make it harder for them.

The common misunderstanding I referred to was the idea that Christian religious violence has been motivated by non-religious causes but committed in the name of religion to justify it, whereas Islamic religious violence is actually religious in it's root causes (i.e. performed out of obedience to Qu'ranic scripture). That seemed to be what you were saying in your "far cry" post. If that's not the idea you were defending, then you're not guilty of this misunderstanding.

Uh are you kidding? Are you meaning to say that no Islamic religious violence is actually religious? Are you under some sort of impression that no one reads scripture, takes it at face value, and becomes a warrior of the jihad? Because if there is even one such individual, then Islam as a belief as well as a practice causes more violence than Christianity... as though comparisons to Christianity were relevant at all.

Originally Posted by Syme

I'm not sure what you're getting at. I wasn't trying to provide a "counterexample" to anything, I was stating that history makes it abundantly clear that religions with uniformly non-violent scriptural content are just as prone to violence as religions with mixed scriptural content. So your earlier argument--that Christian religious violence violates Christian scripture whereas Muslim religious violence doesn't violate (some) Muslim scripture--may be correct but it isn't meaningful.

Then you are making a blanket generalization based on a single, questionable example. Again, if you look at population-wide (and historical) examples, you'll find far more violence present in religions that promote religious violence than those that don't. Even the most refined societies of antiquity were predicated on religious-sanctioned violence (Rome, Greece, all of major South Americans.)

Originally Posted by Syme

If I was unclear, I'm sorry: I'm not necessarily saying that religious teachings have no impact on human behavior, I'm saying that the root causes of Islamic violence/terrorism aren't in the Qu'ran even though Qu'ranic content is sometimes used to justify them.

If you accept that religions were created by men in order to create mutually beneficial rules for society, explain the natural world, and define man's place in the natural world, then your argument is meaningless. Humans are violent and created a religion to justify the violence; does it matter a thousand years later?

Originally Posted by Syme

I don't have data supporting the conclusion that religious teachings have no impact on the behavior of human groups or individuals, but we do have a huge amount of evidence that religions with non-violent scripture are as prone, or more prone, to religious violence than religions with partially violent scripture. So while the contents and teachings of religious scripture certainly have an impact (many impacts, actually) on human behavior, one impact they clearly DON'T have is to make religious violence more difficult or less common by virtue of being pacifistic.

Do you? Do you really? You're already on thin logical ice using "Christianity" as a blanket term, so I would love to see this data. I think if you looked at actual data, you would find that religious traditions (including certain Christian sects) that condone violence are prone to widespread violence, either within members of the tradition or toward outsiders. Likewise, I think you would find that religious traditions that advocate pacifist and/or peaceful conduct are prone only to relatively isolated violence. Historically speaking, I think you would find that violence in the name of Islam is relatively rare when compared to other violent religions (probably in part because it's watered down and because, frankly, the world is smaller.)

Of course, I'm not the one who made the suggestion, so I'm not really inclined to find real numbers... but rest assured, you would have been looking for the wrong ones anyways.