Quote:But I think that your suggestion of a Church near the OKC bombing isn't any better of an analogy.Well, it is, if you define Christianity by a close reading of its scriptures and history, and then use its craziest and most extreme membership as the model by which you characterize the entire religion. Basically, the way you're viewing Islam is exactly the same as taking the Westboro Baptist Church or those extreme antigovernment "white power"/surivivalist cults (I hesitate to even call them "sects") that are scattered throughout the midwest and northwest as defining examples of all Christians. I certainly wouldn't like the idea of one of those groups setting up a sanctuary across the street from the OC Federal Building; I would see that as a deliberate taunt. But a Unitarian or Catholic church on the same site? Not so much.
Look, if you characterize a religion by its worst excesses, then Christianity is arguably as bad and possibly worse than Islam. (Just off the top of my head: Crusades, Inquisition, anti-semitism, conversion by the sword, justification for the American slave trade, religious/sectarian violence, Catholic sex abuse -- hell, there's still a big chunk of the Southern Baptist Convention that whines that they're being oppressed because they're not allowed to run everything and forceably convert anyone they want, just like Gawd told them to. I'm sure Rev Dark has far more examples and relevant data at his fingertips, while I'd have to go look up stuff to get more than that. Oh, and before you bring Islamic fatalism and all that up, let me just point you at Calvinism and ask you to consider just how different its predestination is from its Islamic equivalents -- and how less poisonous.)
My point is that, from what I can tell, you are pointing at the Islamic equivalent of Lutherans and screaming that they're violent radicals whose only excuse for building their sanctuary is so they can loom over Ground Zero and cackle maniacally while rubbing their hands together in a properly villainous fashion. But you're embracing a fallacy -- that Islam is a monolithic single religion whose every follower believes exactly the same thing and has exactly the same attitudes/goals/methods as every other member.
This is not true. The Shiite/Sunni split alone puts the lie to the idea of the single monolithic Islam.
It is not Islam that we must fear and defend against. It is Islamic Fundamentalism and Islamic Extremism. And they are not the same thing as Islam, any more than the Westboro Baptist Church is the same thing as Christianity.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.