The "not all Muslims are terrorists" fallacy

[KUSA]

[Napoléon]

[Napoléon]

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Both great videos. Was always amazed at Hitch's ability to get right to the heart of a point.

[Napoléon]

[Catholic_Lady]

I agree, there is something seriously wrong with Islam, and it just seems like the good, decent Muslim people are more worried about defending themselves against the media/etc than addressing the problem within their faith. As much as I love my Muslims friends, I shouldn't sugar coat the truth when there are soooo many innocent people being tortured, murdered, raped, etc.

[Catholic_Lady]

[Napoléon]

I shouldn't sugar coat the truth when there are soooo many innocent people being tortured, murdered, raped, etc.

If only you could do this with your own religion eh?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Saw something today I thought I'd share:

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I honestly think it's deluded to say to me that people in these Islamic communities, in these same schools, in these same mosques, are not responsible for what goes on in such communities, or at least held to some accountability. In these same places terrorist plots are being uncovered left right and center*, the education system is being outright abused and people are being influenced by the supposed senior members of these communities. These same members who are suspiciously quiet and reluctant to condemn extremism. Maybe, just maybe, it's these same fucking people who act as enablers for the ones we deem extremists.

Like I said, extremism in Islam isn't some fringe group of people who are radicals. It's something that is at the very heart of this vile religion and it's a problem that muslims need to fucking deal with. The crux of the issue is this is a stone age religion with stone age followers and the above is evidence (as if we needed any more) that muslims are living in a different century. Unlike the Catholic church, or even most Christians, they aren't even making any discernible attempt to change these horrible things that happen or prevent them. Instead all we do get from the majority is "they don't represent me". I'm sorry, but it's a bullshit cop-out to not deal with something that is absolutely their problem.

I think you're 100% right. I also think that the governments who don't come down on such people like a ton of bricks, "in the name of religious tolerance", are doing a disservice to the moderates. It's hard to speak out against people who have used religion to build such power for themselves in your communities if you know that there's no one in power who will truly help you. Leaving these groups "on their own" hampers the religious freedom of the moderate by allowing the zealots to bully the rest of the community.

While no one knows where the proper line is between "hands off" government that leaves religious behavior entirely alone and the risk that by enforcing certain laws it will have a "chilling effect" on the free exercise of religion, I'd venture to say that from all I've seen, the Europeans in general are getting it wrong, allowing the worst elements of the Muslim communities to prosper and to keep their moderates "in line" through social pressure and fear. Likely, the Europeans take note of some of the problems the French have had in Marseilles in their attempts to crack down, the Russian-Chechnya conflicts, and the Serbian wars, and are afraid to cause more problems than they solve. I think this is short-sighted.

The moderate Muslim should be encouraged to assimilate into the liberal European culture and respect their own rights as well as others, instead of the taint of Iron Age medievalism that lingers in Islamic social structure, a heritage they unfortunately bring with them when coming to new nations. Until the moderates and others who stay silent in the face of their culture's bullies see that the bullies are not powerful, I don't think we'll see real changes. The whole community feels repressed from both sides, and isolated, and nothing good will come of that sort of treatment. Here in America, we see a similar effect in our ghettoes, where the worst elements suppress the majority of normal, decent African-Americans just trying to get by, and white people say "why don't they police their own thugs?" But as long as our solutions were either to ignore them (allowing ghettoization to happen) or repress en masse to the point that the communities felt isolated from the "American Dream" and attacked from both ends, they'll never be able to do much. It also means they're less cooperative with police investigators trying to track down the really-dangerous guys, since the police are enemies of their community while the badguys are nevertheless "community members". We keep with the brutality-and-isolation approach, and it is making things worse. But then, how do we solve the issue without being harsh, in an attempt to go after the truly dangerous, territorial leaders among the neighborhood drug gangs? Our prisons are stuffed full of our attempt to solve the issue by violence. But how do we solve it without violence? No one knows. At the very least, we cannot begin to solve the issue as long as we refuse to understand the different culture in our ghettoes, and truly try to empathize with those who live there (to grasp why they do not feel they can stand up and "stop this problem" that their communities create), but those who try to express such empathy are shouted down by the white majority as though we are supporting the criminals/thugs! Just look at any online exchange between the "Black Lives Matter" camp and the "All Lives Matter" responses.

America doesn't have the "large-numbers-of-religious-fanatics-recently-imported" issue that places like Birmingham does (we do have Flint, Michigan and St.Paul, Minnesota), so most of the Muslims I know personally are from families who have been here for generations, and they're actually pretty awesome people-- at least, I find their faith-views no worse than the average Southern Baptists, in terms of repressive medievalism--who love this country and respect my rights and freedoms. And they invite me over for Eid feasts, after Ramadan, which I enjoy at least as much as the Christians' Thanksgiving meal.

[Catholic_Lady]

I shouldn't sugar coat the truth when there are soooo many innocent people being tortured, murdered, raped, etc.

If only you could do this with your own religion eh?

20% of Catholics aren't out there murdering, torturing, and raping people (or supporting these behaviors) on the grounds that it's what Jesus wants them to do. You alluded to this yourself, but I still knew a comment like this was coming.