Quote:
Originally posted by jubilance1922
You can come back with whatever snappy comebacks you want, but at the end of the day, you haven't focused on my main point: ITS NOT RIGHT TO STEREOTYPE ALL BASED UPON THE ACTIONS OF A MINORITY!
You just pointed out that 1/4 of the world's population is Muslim;therefore, we can't ALL be terrorists. So stop insinuating that we are!
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Having read through all the posts quite a few times, I don't think that has been insinuated.
Quote:
Originally posted by RACooper
In this case you are judging the Islamic faith, based upon the actions of those who who by their actions violate the tennets of the faith, whether through violence or political exploitation... a comparative would be judging the Christian faith and those thast practice it based on the actions and beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church - or judging the Jewish faith and those who practice it based in the actions and beliefs of Kahane Chai (Kach) or the JDL.
None of the above mentioned groups should be taken as a reflection upon the whole of the faith that spawned them - nor should any of us be surprised that any faith can be manipulated by those that wish to pervert it for their own ideological/political agenda.
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Quite so. But I think that the perception that many people have -- rightly or wrongly -- is that when the radical idealogical minority engage in killing innocent people, there doesn't seem to be much outrage from the larger community. The perception -- again rightly or wrongly -- is that reflected by the Thomas Friedman NYT op-ed piece quoted earlier in this thread:
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.
I recognize that there is no central Islamic authority. Nevertheless, I think part of the issue reflected here is the seeming, relative lack of public denunciation of terrorist acts.
And for the record, I would express the same concern in a Christian context. I have long been concerned about how the Christian community -- particularly the Catholics, Presbyterians and Anglicans -- have or have not publically condemned the actions of some in (and out of) Northern Ireland. I was glad when the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, of which the the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa was a member, denounced the teaching of apartheid as heretical and essentially withdrew communion from the South African church until it repudiated that teaching.
While I mean in no way to impute guilt to anyone but the guilty, the fact is that there is a real perception -- one more time, whether that perception is accurate or inaccurate -- that the larger Islamic community's denunciation of and actions to counter those groups that pervert Islamic teaching is tepid at best.