no shit.
but somehow Islam seems to make more people do more awful things more of the time in recent history.
What we have are people who are bigots against Muslim who make attacks on them that are not very reasonable by using violent incidents.
First, there's the issue of what the religion is about. The Koran, like other religions, has teachings that are strongly peaceful and others that are not.
On the whole, though, if the religion is so violent, where is all the violence from the millions of Muslims in the US?
In fact, I'm shocked there's so little - even as a very peaceful religion, it's likely there would be some violence. It's surprisingly absent.
The attacks don't hold up well on that basis.
Then there's the issue of 'violent conflicts involving people who happen to be Muslim'. That involves things like 'there's oil in some countries where the most powerful nations oppress people to have better access, and those people use violence against the oppression, and they happen to be Muslim'. So the Indian resistance to British colonialism - if it had been more violent, and whatever violence there was - would prove their religion wasn't 'peaceful'?
Catholics and Protestants warred brutally for centuries in Europe, was that directed by their religions - or by the power struggles that happened to group by religion?
The Pope was in a powerful political position, legitimizing kings while fighting for the church's power - was that the religion?
A lot of the attacks ignore this issue and blame all violence on 'the religion'.
Basically, the people spouting this stuff are just spreading hate against Muslims - the usual bigotry, the kind that often is just afraid of what they don't know well.
It's spurred hate - and violence and repression - against gays, blacks, immigrants, 'leftists', and countless other groups at times.
There are ALWAYS incidents to point at and use for supporting the bigotry. When they do it, it proves the attacks, when your side does it, well, those are 'bad apples'.
One clue when it's bigotry, ignorant attacks, emotional, is the sarcasm - 'religion of peace' is a phrase the bigots LOVE to use sarcastically, as if it proves them right.
Instead of actually asking good questions - is the violence comparable to other groups, or exaggerated? What are the reasons? Are there apples and oranges differences between the groups that fuel the anger over those attacks? Is the criticism increased by dehumanization of the group? And others - it just cherry picks each example that reinforces the attack and lazily says 'religion of peace, ya right!'.
That's sort of how ignorant bigotry works - it's easy to reinforce, but can be corrected as well.
Consider gays - they were at times seen as monsters and a great danger to society if 'allowed to publicly be seen as gay'; now, not so much. You can look now in Uganda as to how that works. When the leaders fighting for discrimination give a speech, the content is to discuss in graphic detail gay sex, to show photos, to stir fear and hate and disgust among the audience to fuel the bigotry. On the other hand, look at our modern views - it's a lot more about understanding and respect for rights.
Anyone who posts the 'religion of peace' sarcasm with some bit of examples to reinforce the hate, is just a hate spreading bigot pretty much IMO.
That's not to say there aren't all kinds of issues with many Muslims - there are. And some are our wrongs. But they should be discussed fairly, not with bigotry.
We should be tolerant of their freedoms, and stick to the legitimate issues.
I'm reminded of how we sent Custer's army to slaughter natives, and when they killed the army instead, the natives were the bad guys in the story for a century.
Every incident of natives killing a settler was further reinforcement of what 'savages' they were - ignoring what we were doing.
With natives, the 'horrible' act to demonize them was THEY *SCALP*! With Muslims, it's THEY BEHEAD! Each serves to demonize and fuel hate.
That sort of thing led us to feel entitled to put a dictator in charge of Iran - pretty unfair to the people there, who cared? It's just those Iranians.
When their rage after 25 years of that led them to take our embassy hostage - it just proved they were out of control horrible violent criminals. Like Custer's killers.
We can use better efforts at peace. There are some really 'bad guys' on their side, and a lot of 'good people', and we have a mix as well.
Those bigoted attacks of sarcastic hate are not helping peace.
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