There are many ideologies, religious and secular, which merit criticism -- including very harsh criticism. However, it's rare that this also automatically justifies treating any adherent of any form of such an ideology as an "enemy," unworthy of civil treatment and consideration. There are a few extreme cases where this can be justified, but a lot of Christians act like Islam belongs to this category.
Mari writes:
Theres a difference between criticism of a religion, like you said, and to single out a particular "group" of people as enemies. I think that elements of Islam is totally outdated and incompatible with modern thinking, but Im not gonna start generalizing about Muslims, cause that would be stupid.
We, who grew up with Muslims, understands that the Muslims portrayed in the media is not always the Muslim you meet out in the street. Fact is, I think islam can be interpreted differently, depending on what Muslim you ask, and wherever in "the Muslim world" you'd go.
And when it comes to it, it seems as though many of these bloggers in the likes of Pam Geller holds just as extreme views as conservative Muslims.
Sure, I cant help but being angry at Muslims that favour stoning as a punishment for adultery, and blowing up civilians.
But I've come to the realization that Pam and the likes are nothing of what they claim to be
[original post]
What's ironic about this is how similar Christianity is Islam. Christianity also has its extremist adherents. Christianity has also been used to inspire, justify, and support violence. Christianity can also be interpreted in different ways, allowing different people to be pacifist or violent yet still make a legitimate claim to being "Christian." So why don't Christians allow the same for Muslims?
One clue may be the identity of the Christians who are generalizing about all Muslims. Notice that they aren't liberal or moderate Christians. Instead, they are almost universally conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist Christians. This means that they are closest in sentiment, attitude, and ideology to the extremists of their own religion, even if they aren't extremists themselves.
So why do they get so worked up about Muslim extremists and use that as a justification for attacking all Muslims? I wonder if it's because the religious extremism hits a little too close to home for them. People have a tendency to hate most strongly that which is most similar to themselves -- something so similar that they have to hate it in order to deny that it has any connection to them at all.
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