Dear Liberals: Being Critical of Islam Is Not Racism

[mhatrw]

216. Again, the problem is not the religion itself but the segment of leadership

who uses the religion to promote violence, genocide, misogyny, and homophobia.

The Judeo-Christian Bible historically has been and today still is used by fundamentalist extremists in the USA and around the globe to promote violence, genocide, misogyny, and homophobia. Can you deny this?

So, to me, the popular idea among most US citizens that Islam is somehow a uniquely evil religion feeds right into promoting unhelpful divisions and justifying homicidal warfare and genocide on both sides. All fundamentalist religious extremists who try to use religion to promote violence, genocide, misogyny, and homophobia need to come to terms with the fact that the basic humanistic morality of treating others as you would want to be treated overrides the supposed tribal divisions that you, Bill Maher, and so many others on this thread and in our greater society are so desperate to promote.

Have most Christians in developed nations developed a more humanistic and less tribalistic morality over time? Of course. And that's exactly what you are attacking when you demand that we all recognize the uniquely evil nature of all the human beings who belong to a tribe other than our own.

More than 80% of Americans just supported needlessly murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis based on BushCo's lies. Why do you think that so many Americans gleefully supported all of these unjustifiable murders?

Could it be that most of them already think that all Muslims are evil, as you demand all of us to think? Could it be that such bigotry is unhelpful?

Yes, Islamic bigotry toward women and homosexuals is obviously terrible. And asymmetrical warfare of terror is obviously terrible. But you cannot fight bigotry, intolerance, and murder with bigotry, intolerance, and murder. Less developed peoples often have less developed viewpoints. To help to change this, we need to promote the more developed viewpoint of our common humanity rather than the less developed viewpoints of fear, bigotry, hatred, violence, and division.