That cartoon is very misleading but does serve to illustrate my point.
How many Christian abortion Clinic bombers are there/have there been in 10 years?
2? 3? 5?
After all, this IS in good part a Quantitative debate.
And then I ask... How many people died in the name Islam just TODAY. Probably 20/30 or so.
300 a day during the 20 year Sudan/NIF genocide.. a lesser number during the Slaughter in East Timor. (in 'moderate' Indonesia)
I think it's a problem of how we classify people -....
But not all scales are made equal. People who act illegally because of political views are often not considered to be in that political category - they're just considered to be random nutters, whereas at the moment those people who act illegally because of Islam are considered to be part of the spectrum;
I haven't included random Muslim crime nor Saddam Hussein's politics. (yet)
Muslims, like everyone else, have street crime and politics beyond religion.
thanks in part to people like RoP, insisting that the bombers are the 'True' Muslims. Because the suicide bombers are occupying the 'extremist' category on the Islam scale, that pushes the intolerant-but-peaceful Muslims into the 'moderate' area. At the same time, partisan hackery causes political 'moderates' to be described by the opposite side as 'radicals', which pushes them towards the outer end of the scale (not in actions, just in name).
So I'd like your opinion on .. let's call it the 'Falwell proposition.'
What do we call Muslims with his same degree of Piety/Intolerance are.... 'Moderate', 'liberal'!, 'normal' muslims?
I think they ARE 'normal Muslims', but this is Terrible news (tho not really news any more) for the planet, and Demonstrably bad news for the EU and Scandinavia who are SUFFERING an influx of intolerant (but er.. normal) Muslims.
As an atheist I can see this double standard from afar quite clearly.
These are normal Muslims too. Not "terrorists" or 'Radicals'. (?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgG3qvcUX8
Yes, the above is Saudi Arabia.. but one can watch Antisemitic TV/read antisemitic articles DAILY in the Arab world even/no-especially in 'moderate' Egypt.
Many Muslim Arabs, perhaps HALF of them, even in the West, are conspiracists re 9/11 and otherwise.
Witness the recent Shark attack in Egypt blamed on Mossad.
BUT.. we must not call them 'extremists', fundamentalist, etc, lest they get even worse?
Comparing political scales with religious scales will then result in the disparity you've pointed out - it's not a 'liberal' thing, just a consequence of how we classify people. The two solutions to this problem are to stop the two main causes - stop the partisan hackery that distorts politicians positions to the point of absurdity ('Obama is a marxist! Obama is a Marxist!) and recognise that/agree with the many Muslims who don't consider suicide bombers to belong to the 'Muslim' scale. I found it particularly interesting in the article linked to in the OP that one Muslim said "I feel great sympathy for her family’s loss, yet I don’t feel that as a Muslim I should apologize on the behalf of murderers." - she doesn't feel that the bomber has anything in common with her such that she (or any Muslim) should apologise on his behalf. He's not on her scale.
Thanks.
Let's be clear there IS a disparity though and I reject this hypocritical dualism.
And that I have a right to call Most Muslims on what many here call Falwell/Robtsn on. Intolerant, Fundamentalist, etc without being called the absurd word 'Islamophobe.'
Especially the Many in the West who are second-generation/home-grown bigots.
On that note.
RoP has a better understanding than you think.. and certainly better than all his daily opponents in the section.
Ibn Warraq. Formerly posted on his website ISIS (Institute for Secular Islam)... now author of "why I am not a Muslim'.. alas.
http://iranscope.ghandchi.com/Anthology/Islam/IbnWarraqWTC.htm
Excerpt:
“Ah, but you are confusing Islam with Islamic fundamentalism. The Real Islam has nothing to do with violence,” Apologists of Islam argue.
There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate. There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism: at most there is a difference of degree but not of kind. All the tenets of Islamic fundamentalism are derived from the Qur’an, the Sunna, and the Hadith – Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and defining texts of Islam. The fundamentalists, with greater logic and coherence than so-called moderate or liberal Muslims, have made Islam the basis of a radical utopian ideology that aims to replace capitalism and democracy as the reigning world system. Islamism accounts for the anti-American hatred to be found in places far from the Arab-Israeli conflict, like Nigeria and Afghanistan, demonstrating that the Middle East conflict cannot legitimately be used to explain this phenomenon called Islamism. A Palestinian involved in the WTC bombings would be seen as a martyr to the Palestinian cause, but even more as a martyr to Islam.
“Ah, but Islamic fundamentalism is like any other kind of fundamentalism, one must not demonise it. It is the result of political, social grievances. It must be explained in terms of economics and not religion,” continue the apologists of Islam.
There are enormous differences between Islamic fundamentalism and any other kind of modern fundamentalism. It is true that Hindu, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalists have been responsible for acts of violence, but these have been confined to particular countries and regions. Islamic fundamentalism has global aspirations: the submission of the entire world to the all-embracing Shari’a, Islamic Law, a fascist system of dictates designed to control every single act of all individuals. Nor do Hindus or Jews seek to convert the world to their religion. Christians do indulge in proselytism but no longer use acts of violence or international terrorism to achieve their aims.
Only Islam treats non-believers as inferior beings who are expendable in the drive to world hegemony. Islam justifies any means to achieve the end of establishing an Islamic world.
Islamic fundamentalists recruit among Muslim populations, they appeal to Islamic religious symbols, and they motivate their recruits with Islamic doctrine derived from the Qur’an. Economic poverty alone cannot explain the phenomenon of Islamism. Poverty in Brazil or Mexico has not resulted in Christian fundamentalist acts of international terror. Islamists are against what they see as western materialism itself. Their choice is clear: Islam or jahiliyya. The latter term is redefined to mean modern-style jahiliyya of modern, democratic, industrialised societies of Europe and America, where man is under the dominion of man rather than Allah. They totally reject the values of the West, which they feel are poisoning Islamic culture. So, it is not just a question of economics, but of an entirely different worldview, which they wish to impose on the whole world. Sayyid Qutb, the very influential Egyptian Muslim thinker, said that “dominion should be reverted to Allah alone, namely to Islam, that holistic system He conferred upon men. An all-out offensive, a jihad, should be waged against modernity so that this moral rearmament could take place. The ultimate objective is to re-establish the Kingdom of Allah upon earth...”
And of course one can observe Islam in action in the aforementioned places from the Algerian Civil War to Abu Sayef in the Philppines.
It's really too long to elaborate now.
Which is another point of the oft dismissed RoP which you kind of coincidentally/accidentally touch on.
Islam is Not just a religion, it is a complete life system and I would say Religio-Political philosophy.
People say to him, islam is protected as a religion, but Islam is also a political view and may not deserve the same protections as other [mere] religions whose main differentiation point is which building you go to on Sunday.
I'm wandering a bit now, but don't want to lose the thematic violence of Islam.. and in this case the copts.
One of the two Middle Eastern Arab countries remaining that have any Christians left.
The other being Lebanon which is Dar al harb and from which More maronites have fled than remain.