The funny thing is: you're right. But the entire religion is not being criticized. The violent content of their writings, and the masses that condone and spread those messages are the problem. Do you see buddhists commiting suicide attacks in Tibet? Whilst they too have been opressed, and suffered under military occupation and many other terrible things.
Every religion has issues with violent extremists. Every single one. As do secular societies -- see Anders Breivik, or random school shooters. For Buddhism, see the ongoing Thai civil war -- a bloody conflict where some Buddhists have called for brutal violence against the Muslim minority. Or tibet, where violent uprisings have happened, and self-immolation is a common protest. Or look to Japan, where Buddhism was often married to Shintoism and used to justify its militarism. For Judaism, see Israels's extreme right. For Christianity, see the IRA, or Joseph Kony's army, or the role some churches played in the Rwandan genocide, or the murder of Bosnian Muslims by largely Christian Bosnian Serbs. For Hinduism, see the India-Pakistan conflict and fairly common instances of violence against Muslims in India.
Muslims as a whole are not really any more violent than any other religious group -- like any other group, they are simply people, with all the good and bad that applies. The reason Europe is focused on Islam is not that it represents some special evil or a specific threat to Western society. It is that there's a significant Muslim minority that has come to the West relatively recently, and people see them as foreign, as strange, and hence as dangerous.
All this rhetoric about inherently violent people who are loyal to their religion and not the state, who will dominate the local populace by having more kids, who will overthrow the local government to instate their own religious rules if given half the chance? You can find exact replicas of it used against Catholics in the second half of the nineteenth century in protestant European countries (including the Netherlands), in the UK, and in the USA. You can find exactly the same rhetoric about Jews in the early twentieth century (with the exception of the being outbred thing). Islam's just the latest religious minority to be feared, and unfortunately a few extremist actions have reinforced that 'danger' in people's minds, and have created an atmosphere of Islamophobia that has allowed truly scary political parties like UKIP, PVV, FN and others to accumulate popularity. And yes, those parties are genuinely scary -- the rhetoric about a war on European culture, the fear-mongering about Islam, the posturing about immigration and deporting Muslims, about the inherent violence and criminality of entire groups of people -- that sort of thing leads to mass violence.
Despite the fact that the deadliest terrorist attack in the past ten years was carried out by Anders Breivik. The Netherlands is filled with Islamophobic assholes, and we've had all of one death due to Muslim terrorism since, well, ever for as far as I know. Meanwhile, some dumbass killed seven people by driving his car into a royal parade, a left extremist assassinated a politician, and a psychopath killed seven in a mass shooting in a shopping mall, all in the past fifteen years. But Muslims are the real threat, right?
If you want to know what this Islamophobic rhetoric leads to, start reading comments on news articles about anything remotely related to Islam -- I'd suggest sites using Facebook as a commenting system, so you can see ordinary people with their entire lives in the open spout the most hateful rhetoric imaginable, all under their own names. Burn mosques! Kick every Muslim out of the country! The level of anti-Islamic sentiment is genuinely dangerous.
Akratus said:
Another thing: Where do you think the repression of non-believers and women in a great amount of muslim countries originates from?
Your phrasing is hilariously leading -- plenty of Muslim countries are not especially repressive. Regardless, oppression of women and non-believers is pretty much a constant in most (religious) societies. This oppressive culture that is not inherent to the religion, as is demonstrated by the hundreds of millions of Muslims who do just fine whilst not being especially oppressive of women. It is a function of culture, which can change without the religion changing. Women's rights are an issue everywhere in the world, but, say, Indonesia (the largest Muslim country in the world) is not particularly worse than, say, Russia, or Japan, or many majority Christian countries.
TheWesDude said:
and from what i understand the order for those sweedish things
unknown people firebombed empty mosques
unknown people firebombed christian churches and jewish synogouges when people were present
Did not happen. I'd suggest finding a new source of news, you keep coming up with bullshit on every single topic.
Nas92 said:
The IRA is a bad example, because the Irish were actually persecuted in their own country for being Catholic. The problem with the terrorist that killed these journalists is that they're the ones doing the invading, they fight against the rights of people that call that country their homeland.
I'm fairly sure the dead people are not any less dead because their murderers happened to be local. Also calling Muslims "invaders" is generally nonsense. Also they're probably justifying it as terrorist attacks to defend their own religion from oppression, too.
Nas92 said:
Today's tolerant view does not allow room for assimilation, which I find extremely strange. How the hell are you gonna live next to people who are so blind that they think their way of life must apply everywhere they go and everyone should play by their rules? These people need to get a good hard wake up call, but then you'd have a few well-intentioned fools crying about how they're people too.
This is not a muslim problem, this is about every single problematic minority group. They don't even have to be immigrants, gypsies are rarely immigrants and they are one of the biggest, most problematic people ever. But that's another topic entirely.
You shame your The Wire avatar. Jesus fuck what a bunch of racist horseshit. You're actually arguing that "these people" do not deserve to be treated as people.
