Monte wrote:
I'm sorry, it's just infuriating. Islam is the one religion on this board that can be lambasted freely. If you dare say something about Christianity, or the concept of religion in general, people can't climb over themselves fast enough to get all indignant. But if the subject of conversation is Islam? Nothing but snide comments about "religion of peace". To hear people on this board talk, you'd think that every Islamic person in the world is a fully trained violent terrorist hell bent on destroying America.
It's intellectually lazy, it's bigoted, and it's sad. People here should know better. Or perhaps they shouldn't be so shocked when the same line of thinking is applied to their own faith identity.
This is possibly the biggest load of horseshit ever posted on any incarnation of the Glade. Any time anything remotely negative about muslims gets posted it's like a race to see who can be the first person to post "But Christianity <insert cricticism here>". The reason people defend Christianity here is because so many of the cricitcisms that get people "indignant" haven't even the most remote basis in fact, and because so many of them are simply potshots from the "hey, look at me, I can make smart remarks about Christianity" crowd.
Never mind the fact that the post isn't about Islam, it's about Muslims, a certain type of muslim in particular.
In fact, this post is a perfect example. Cricticism of muslims? No problem, here's a quick post complaining that Islam is being cricticized, and trying to shift the topic to Christianity. After all, it's far more important to keep all the negativity focused on a religion that's right close to home and annoys us by having the gall to have people continue to believe in it, as opposed to one that isn't as prevelant where most of us live.
I have news for you Monty. Just because a cricticism is valid for Muslims does not make it valid for Christians. Just because one is valid for Christians does not make it valid for Hindus, which in turn cricticisms of are not necessarily valid for <so on and so forth>. All religions are not the same, and they do not lead people down the same lines of thinking. Islam and Chrisitanity have fundamentally different ideas about the nature of God and what He wants, and they lead to different doctrines and behaviors. Obviously they have areas of similarity, since they share a common ancestry, but the fact of the matter is that they are only "the same" to people who don't believe in either and think that's a reason to get all up in arms at the idea that one or the other might be approached differently in different contexts.
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I don't think Monte considers it a rational response to the offense. He also doesn't consider the murder of doctors who perform abortion a rational response to that offense. He is comparing the two as irrational responses. He is offended that when he criticizes fundamental conservative Christians who applaud the murder of such a doctor, he feels he gets attacked for 'attacking Christianity'.
He objects to people attacking all Islamics for the crimes of its insane members just as we would object to an attack on all Christians for the crmes of one crackpot Christian.
He actually has a fairly decent point, he just has problems controlling his rage well enough to make it.
The problem being that when he does try to cricticize such a person, he does then end up trying to extend that cricticism to all of Christianity, or all Republicans or conservatives or whatever.
Furthermore, we have frequently heard from him that whenever we do something to respond to the violent or insane muslims, we end up creating more terrorists. Where does he think they come from? They don't spring fully formed from the ground; no, they come from the rest of Islam. We also know that these violent members continue to arrive in numbers and condct attacks heavily in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that they must come from somewhere, and be housed, fed, clothed, and hidden by people, and that someone must continue to indoctrinate them.
This is not the same as taking one solitary individual or even one small group that has no meaningful material or even moral support for their methods and tarring entire groups on it. While it may be unfair to say "every muslims is a terrorist because there are many muslim terrorists and because many more mulsims support them", it is also even more unfair to A) treat it as some outrage that muslims are being cricticized just because those doing it are not meeting his personal standards for adequate cricticism of Christians B) shift the topic to Christianity as a result fo that outrage and C) pretend that any cricticism of any religious group other than Christians requires an equal amount of crictisim of Christians in order to avoid hypocrisy absed on his own invented standard that all religions are alike.