Criticizing Islam is racist?

[Lemonvariable72]

Christian, or I should more specifically is western culture has been effected very deeply by enlightenment teachings such as equality and individualism. These ideals are only now beginning to take

Little of what you observe to be muslim culture is actually influenced by religion. It's their regional culture they lived even before Islam came to be. That's why I said to look at the countries we're talking about. They're still deeply tribal in nature and the countries we now see on the map are mostly artificial constructs with next to no natural glue of people wanting to form a nation. That's especially true for Iraq, Lybia and Syria and to a lesser degree for Jordan.

Add to this that the Turks became the dominant people around the 14th century, adding most of the above regions to their realm and keeping them on a tight leash for about 500 years and you have one of the reasons why they didn't see any independent development. Add to this the fact that Lawrence of Arabia promised them independence if they fought the Osmanic empire. Add to this that this promise was entirely void at the end of WWI and they only exchanged Osmanic domination against british and French domination. All of this are ingredients to the cocktail of making them suspicious of everyone trying to change their ways. But you're only scratching the surface with all of this.

Iran, just to take one example, was on a good way to become an entirely secular nation. The only mistake they made was to nationalise oil production and leaning to socialism. That, the West couldn't tolerate. They were losing their profits and they feared of losing out on the Soviets. So the helped overthrow Mohammad Mossadegh and installed their puppet. And the rest is history, since the Shah's rule fertilized the soil for the backclash.

Still, much of what we tend to perceive as religious nuttery, has entirely political origins. Overthrowing Saddam and laying off all Ba'athists in the army led to them joining insurgent groups. They lost their jobs and their livelyhood and wanted to get back at the invaders. So high ranking Ba'athist officers ultimately ended up training and commanding ISIS. Not because they like them that much, since the Ba'athist movement was entirely secular and rather left leaning in principle. But because they hated the same persons, they hated.

The list could be continued for pages. It's only, like most things in the world, things aren't as simple as making blanket statements. There are reasons for people being motivated to act in a certain fashion. Even if it looks like religion motivating them, religion may actually be only the pretext for something entirely different. That's why I said in a previous post, to look at their history and try to walk in their shoes for a spell. Not to excuse what their radicals do, but to understand why the people are angry.

Of course. And all of those actions by the west has screwed them and driven more into the hands of fundamentalism then otherwise would have been. People when pushed often turn to religion for some form of relief. So yes there are many factors in the current situation the west created. Also you are right in saying that a large part of culture is regional, but I think where your a little off is that culture and religion influence each other, and often religion maintains practices that culturally out dated, like religious prohibitions against pork. I'd also like to elaborate that even deeply religion influenced nations under Islam draw very different influences ex. Iran and Saudi Arabia.