People are fearful of muslims because there's a whole shitload of them that like to <kill people>.

(Replacement in line with your correction above)
And most, the majority you might say, of those 'shit loads' are doing so far far away from US shores.

Meanwhile people in the USA continue to kill each other with guns to the point where, personally, when I see a news report of yet another shooting I now nod and move to the next bit of news because *yawn*, yet the USA continues to embrace people being armed and hasn't developed Gunphobia...
(Edit: And the USA delivers... 'at least 7' shot in Ohio today...)

Instead people are told to FEAR THE MUSLIM! regardless of the stats... and that is just, frankly, fucking stupid as fuck.

Literally every single ideological group (religious or otherwise) has fucking terrible elements. News at 11.

I'm sure that one day the Pastafarian extremists will have the streets run red.

People are fearful of muslims because there's a whole shitload of them that like to <kill people>.

(Replacement in line with your correction above)
And most, the majority you might say, of those 'shit loads' are doing so far far away from US shores.

Meanwhile people in the USA continue to kill each other with guns to the point where, personally, when I see a news report of yet another shooting I now nod and move to the next bit of news because *yawn*, yet the USA continues to embrace people being armed and hasn't developed Gunphobia...

Instead people are told to FEAR THE MUSLIM! regardless of the stats... and that is just, frankly, fucking stupid as fuck.

In case you weren't aware, you will be taken off your flight for trying to carry a gun, and most likely you'll be promptly arrested without so much as an argument. If someone sees you pull out a gun in an urban area, and you're not a police officer, they most likely will call the police. There are also far more people calling for the complete outlawing of personal firearms in the United States than there are calling for the complete outlawing of the practice of Islam. So, by any definition at least I can think of, there's definitely "gunphobia" if there's "Islamaphobia".

Blowing yourself up in the name of God to be martyr is a Middle Eastern thing, we (Turks) are being exposed to that tradition rather recently ("thanks" to ISIS and PKK) . Like one Egyptian atheist woman once asked at an Egyptian TV "Have you ever seen a Jewish blowing himself up in Germany?" , same applies to Christians as well. Simply, it is very Middle Eastern.

And people's concerns are understandable but it won't help to treat people "guilty until proven innocent" especially if based of proud tradition of ignorance.

Replace "blowing people up" with "killing people". The point is that there's a lot of Muslims killing people right now, and profiling is a natural, healthy human defense mechanism. There's no "tradition of ignorance" at play here. Most people are fully aware that the probability of one random Muslim being a terrorist is vanishingly small.

Regarding the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, here in the United States it's a concept for criminal proceedings, not "pulling some guy off a plane".

When you replace with "killing people", you start to imply that "a lot of Muslims killing people right now" just for (fun/Allah/whatever) which is a claim makes zero sense to me as there is no common low level threat against Western countries as you pictured. Simply it's not the way "they" (not Muslims but they) work in West

And "innocent until proven guilty" is a universal concept of law dating back to Roman times (so not an American miracle or gift to the world) , "pulling some guy off a plane" is procedure supposed to be based on reasonable doubt rather than stupid baseless reaction (if that was the case)

When you replace with "killing people", you start to imply that "a lot of Muslims killing people right now" just for (fun/Allah/whatever) which is a claim makes zero sense to me as there is no common low level threat against Western countries as you pictured. Simply it's not the way "they" (not Muslims but they) work in West

Changing "blowing people up" to "killing people" doesn't add any implications whatsoever. And the existence/nonexistence of a common thread of belief or justification is pretty much irrelevant; see my dentist analogy above. People aren't nervous around Muslims because they've had fireside readings of the Quran and believe that adherence to the text causes dangerous behavior (even if that's what they might claim); by and large, people are nervous around Muslims because lots of people that happen to call themselves Muslims happen to frequently behead American reporters, happen to have rammed a densely-populated American building with a Boeing 767 and caused a smattering of other terrorist incidents.

And "innocent until proven guilty" is a universal concept of law dating back to Roman times (so not an American miracle or gift to the world) , "pulling some guy off a plane" is procedure supposed to be based on reasonable doubt rather than stupid baseless reaction (if that was the case)

Please leave your sarcastic anti-American sentiments out of this. I'm framing it in terms of the United States because the topic is about "Islamaphobia" in the United States.

There's a huge difference between "innocent until proven guilty" (a term you used) and "reasonable doubt". If you're a TSA agent and someone says "hey, I think this guy might be a terrorist", then congratulations, you now have reasonable doubt. "Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean a damn thing in the United States until trial proceedings start. "Reasonable doubt" on the other hand is a very weak requirement that exists to facilitate criminal investigation and prevention And I'm pretty sure TSA doesn't even need that seeing as how an airport is literally a manned screening checkpoint.

Now whether random passerbys *should* freak out over Arabic is another matter entirely, and the one aspect I'm not really interested in going over. I'm much more interested in the "why".

Ok, so there's way too much to quote here, so I'm not going to quote.

@conquestor3: You stated that Christianity is better than Muslim in just about every social tenet. We could probably argue about this for ages, but ultimately, I'm going to simply boil it down to one fact: any religion can be twisted by anyone. The simplest way to stop any religious extremism is to ban religion altogether, which imo might not be a horrible idea considering how many people seem to love arguing about it all the time and pushing it onto other people, by one mean or the other. From personal experience, I've seen this stuff way too often.

You also stated "Christianity is preferable to many of the possible religions". What do you mean by this? I don't want to respond to this before I'm exactly sure of what you are saying.

@Servant of the Lord: We have gone way of topic here, but I'm going to respond as best as possible. The entire issue with all of the things the pro-life movement, the LGBT thing, etc. has nothing to do with you are bad people, etc. The problem is simply that there are people who are trying to push their beliefs onto others. Whoever wants to can go ahead and believe that abortion is wrong (which I believe is a belief rooted in religion) for whatever reason but do not force others ?to believe that abortion that abortion is wrong. This can become a separate thread frankly, and it probably should be My point is not everyone agrees on these notions, so that's where my major issue is. Believe what you want to believe, but do not force me to believe that by trying to make it a law.

Okay back on topic

(This is directed at no one in particular)

Trying to prove that Islam has some sort of inherent flaw in it makes me very uneasy. This is an attitude that goes back very far. We've seen it before, during the Colonial era. It lead to a lot of seriously nasty things, because some people believed that this other set of people are inherently backwards. The sort of scrutiny being applied to the Quran/Islam in this thread could be applied to Hinduism, Buddhism, Shinto, Judaism, etc. and before anyone says that those people are relatively peaceful, I can definitively state that there are plenty of whack jobs in Hinduism, it's just that most of them are confined to India and haven't been given too much ear. Also, this religion is one that has been partially distorted to justify some things. Take the Swastika. It's a Hindu symbol which is now associated with Nazis. Just look at some of the Nazis. Heinrich Himmler was known to quote the Bhaghavad Gita to justify what they were doing. There were known instances of Himmler/Nazis using Hinduism, the Mahabharata, etc to justify genocide. The point being that any religion can be twisted to serve a purpose of destruction.

But what if there is something inherently wrong with Islam, some people say? Well, then why is it that Muslims hadn't been blowing people up before? Why is it that this problem is so recent?

This topic is starting to get nasty, but I'd just like to point out that public perception is drawn not out of what religious groups believe, but what people that identify as members do. People that bomb abortion clinics may not be "true Christians", but when the only admissible filter for "true Christian" is "have you bombed an abortion clinic before", that's a wee bit too little too late. Likewise, if one out of every ten dentists was a deranged mass murderer, you'd probably leery of your teeth cleanings.

People are fearful of muslims because there's a whole shitload of them that like to blow people up. Yes, they may be in the minority. The Quran may damn the behavior, or it may not. They may not even be "real muslims". All of that is frankly irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that there's a lot of people who call themselves Muslims and like to blow people up, and that scares the crap out of us, so we're cautious and sometimes even reactive about other people that call themselves Muslims. Comparisons to Christianity are silly because today there are far fewer Christians that like blowing people up, and protesting/lobbying is seen as generally more acceptable than blowing people up.

As phantom stated, most of the people dying from radical jihad are Muslims actually. Again, any whack job/radical, if given ear, will almost certainly eventually go into the direction that radical Islam is in today. Being a good Christian or Muslim does not necessarily make you a radical, and again, if you want to believe in your religion, then by all means, that's fine by me, but if you start pushing that religion on me, then I have a problem. Most people aren't actively pushing their religion on to others, but there are subsets in every religion that try to, and it's those people who cause the problems, not any text, nor any ideology.

When you replace with "killing people", you start to imply that "a lot of Muslims killing people right now" just for (fun/Allah/whatever) which is a claim makes zero sense to me as there is no common low level threat against Western countries as you pictured. Simply it's not the way "they" (not Muslims but they) work in West

Changing "blowing people up" to "killing people" doesn't add any implications whatsoever. And the existence/nonexistence of a common thread of belief or justification is pretty much irrelevant; see my dentist analogy above. People aren't nervous around Muslims because they've had fireside readings of the Quran and believe that adherence to the text causes dangerous behavior (even if that's what they might claim); by and large, people are nervous around Muslims because lots of people that happen to call themselves Muslims happen to frequently behead American reporters, happen to have rammed a densely-populated American building with a Boeing 767 and caused a smattering of other terrorist incidents.

And "innocent until proven guilty" is a universal concept of law dating back to Roman times (so not an American miracle or gift to the world) , "pulling some guy off a plane" is procedure supposed to be based on reasonable doubt rather than stupid baseless reaction (if that was the case)

Please leave your sarcastic anti-American sentiments out of this. I'm framing it in terms of the United States because the topic is about "Islamaphobia" in the United States.

There's a huge difference between "innocent until proven guilty" (a term you used) and "reasonable doubt". If you're a TSA agent and someone says "hey, I think this guy might be a terrorist", then congratulations, you now have reasonable doubt. "Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't mean a damn thing in the United States until trial proceedings start. "Reasonable doubt" on the other hand is a very weak requirement that exists to facilitate criminal investigation and prevention And I'm pretty sure TSA doesn't even need that seeing as how an airport is literally a manned screening checkpoint.

Now whether random passerbys *should* freak out over Arabic is another matter entirely, and the one aspect I'm not really interested in going over. I'm much more interested in the "why".

Well Phantom does have one valid point: you are much more likely to die of general gun violence than because of a radical Muslim whack job. It's a natural reaction, I agree, but it's not 100% rational. And again, Muslim isn't written on your face. You could be more Arab looking, and if that's what makes people nervous, then that is a form of racism/prejudice. That sort of fear ultimately leads to committing to solutions that look like great ideas (like banning Muslims) but in reality are horrible ideas because of their implications.

You stated that Christianity is better than Muslim in just about every social tenet. We could probably argue about this for ages, but ultimately, I'm going to simply boil it down to one fact: any religion can be twisted by anyone.

There are precisely 3 large religions that as of now are executing people for disagreeing with them. Islam, Voodoo, and Juche. Those 3 also almost always come with horrible social consequences when they're the dominant religion, and there's no twisting that. The empirical evidence points to all 3 being terrible for a nation, and I think the burden would be on anyone disagreeing with that to find relevant examples of success.

You also stated "Christianity is preferable to many of the possible religions". What do you mean by this? I don't want to respond to this before I'm exactly sure of what you are saying.

I'm saying as far as conforming to the Western values our country cherishes (Things like freedom of information/religion/sciences/personal lives/women's rights), Christianity is one of the most compatible of the Western dominant religions. When compared to Islam, it's by far the better fit for our country.

Trying to prove that Islam has some sort of inherent flaw in it makes me very uneasy. This is an attitude that goes back very far. We've seen it before, during the Colonial era. It lead to a lot of seriously nasty things, because some people believed that this other set of people are inherently backwards

But what if that situation is true? Colonialism definitely improved the lives of African countries. This was brought up earlier in the thread actually, but go check out the documentary "empire of dust" and see what happened to African countries after colonialism ended. Those states simple don't function well without outside authority directing their economies.

before anyone says that those people are relatively peaceful, I can definitively state that there are plenty of whack jobs in Hinduism, it's just that most of them are confined to India and haven't been given too much ear.

Oh yeah, absolutely. This thread's particularly about Islam though. India's situation is really messed up with Hindus fighting Muslims and caste warfare.

The point being that any religion can be twisted to serve a purpose of destruction.

The problem isn't that the religion's being twisted, it's that suicide bombers/terrorists have double digit support from Muslims communities even here in the USA, who feel like suicide bombings against civilians are justifiable and have support as high as 50%+ in places like Pakistan.

But what if there is something inherently wrong with Islam, some people say? Well, then why is it that Muslims hadn't been blowing people up before? Why is it that this problem is so recent?

Because access to explosives is easier, and Sunni governments are willing to fund it now. But Islam's doctrines of killing for basically anything that disagrees with them (Including disagreeing with them) isn't exactly new. It's just a threat to people outside of Muslim dominated regions now.

As phantom stated, most of the people dying from radical jihad are Muslims actually. Again, any whack job/radical, if given ear, will almost certainly eventually go into the direction that radical Islam is in today. Being a good Christian or Muslim does not necessarily make you a radical, and again, if you want to believe in your religion, then by all means, that's fine by me, but if you start pushing that religion on me, then I have a problem. Most people aren't actively pushing their religion on to others, but there are subsets in every religion that try to, and it's those people who cause the problems, not any text, nor any ideology.

I've gone to lengths to distance myself from the "my religion is better than yours" demagoguery. I'm not an expert on Islam or the Quran, and I don't think either really matter to explain the reason people are terrified of Muslims. By and large, fear of Islam isn't really a religious thing, but a "there's a bunch of people in <Group X> that are really nasty so now people are highly alert around anyone in <Group X>" thing. The fact that <Group Y> happens to not have quite as many nasties right now doesn't really say anything about what X and Y represent, nor any historical information, nor anything else for that matter.

Oooooo excellent; good twisting of words there, I like your word play *claps*

Sorry if I twisted your words, it wasn't intentional - what words did I twist? I don't think I did any word-play.

You also managed to respond to points I never made, brought up a whole subject I never mentioned, twisted it to include sexism,

Sexism is the argument that is almost always used when discussing Christian opposition to abortion and contraceptives, so me discussing sexism is a reasonable jump to make in response to your accusation that "all Christianity has done recently is had a hand in suppressing good conversation about sexual health".

And just so others don't get the wrong impression, I never accused you of sexism, I was pre-emptively defending myself from the stereotypical claims of sexism that usually arises in these discussions. i.e. that if I'm against abortion I must also be sexist and against women rights, despite women leading and being the majority of the anti-abortion movement, according to non-Christian statistics.

I also used the dialog with to as a jumping off point to add additional discussion to the thread as a whole, so alot of it wasn't directly aimed at you as an individual, but a "you" in the general audience of the discussion. Sorry if I didn't make that clear, I kinda got carried away pontificating on multiple subjects that weren't necessarily targeted at you, but at the thread as a whole.

made me a 'you'

It's a weird word in English, because it's used to address both groups, individuals, and entire audiences (i.e. not just 'you phantom', but also 'you the reader').

I was addressing people in general, not trying to address you specifically. I failed to make the delineation clear between where I was responding to you, and where I was addressing everyone.

and generally did a good job of playing the 'poor old persecuted Christian' card...

In what way did I play the persecuted Christian card? If anything, I played the "I'm tired of the same old regurgitated one-liner attacks" card, and pre-emptively tried to respond to the accusations that almost always come in groups. So yes, since those attacks almost always come up, I jumped the gun and assumed you held those beliefs, since your words seemed to imply that. But I guess I accidentally inferred it instead - I do maintain it wasn't an unreasonable inference.

The only time I mentioned Christian persecution was... literal examples of persecution, since someone made false historic claims about Christianity under the Roman Empire, and I explained that no, the Roman Emperors didn't welcome and create Christianity.

(I mean, seriously, "Or do you still believe the lie that Christians are just a bunch of idiots in the backwoods?" - excellent word play, implying that I thought this and still do asking me to defend a point I never made, nice trolling!

Yes, that was very presumptuous of me. Sorry. It was directed at liberals in general, who often seem to claim or imply that Christians are uneducated despite the evidence otherwise. You are correct I shouldn't have targeted it at you specifically, since you didn't make that claim yourself.

Do you want some polish for your cross?)

Since I hadn't brought up anything about Christian persecution (I don't think? Maybe I did...), except valid historical claims about a valid historical event in the Roman Empire, I don't think your claim that I'm playing the "persecuted Christian card" is valid.

What cross am I polishing?

Edit: Ah, you probably mean the San Fransisco mob example. That's discussion, not pity-seeking. I'm pointing out there is irrational and illogical hatred and anger on both sides.

You, and the posters before you, took a great deal of time to point out why things said where wrong, how they don't apply to all Christians and did all you can to minimise the numbers involved...

That's because the numbers are small, relative to the Christian population.

but in others proceed to dump all followers of Islam in to one group and say 'be afraid!'.

That's because the numbers are large, relative to the Muslim population.

And we repeatedly mentioned that not all Muslims are like that... but that a huge percentage (depending on the country) support the killing of any Muslim who turn to Christianity or who turn to atheism.

I mean, lets ignore that in many Western countries there are plenty of Muslims living lives which are near indisguisable from the Christians around them,

As has already been accurately pointed out, not in Christianity's favor, people of a group act entirely differently when their group is the majority and in-power than when their group is the minority.

However, bearing that in mind, Christianity is in the majority in Europe and the USA, and you have the freedom to convert to atheism and even speak against Christianity.

In the USA, for example, the TV show South Park has made many derogatory and inflammatory (and sometimes funny) episodes insulting and mocking the Christian faith and Jesus. South Park is created and broadcast in a Christian-dominated country.

They made a single episode mocking Islam's Mohammed, and received death threats scary enough that Comedy Central replaced the second half of their two-part episode with Santa Claus instead... They don't fear the >200 million Christians in this country, they fear the <2 million Muslims enough to silence criticism and censor freedom of speech.

no.. they want to all to a man do all the bad things!

Except I said exactly the opposite multiple times.

I'm worried about the hundreds of millions (not all 1.6 billion) who approve of the actions of tens of millions who do terrible things, and I believe it is the religion's teaching itself that leads to that approval and action. I have no such fears of the 1 billion Hindus or 0.5 billion Buddhists, despite India having nuclear bombs and rising in military and economic strength.

For the record, I have no problems with the ethnicity of people from the Middle East either, having personally know several, including an Iranian/Persian, who was a great guy (about 20 years older than me at the time, probably in his 40s) who I got along great with.

It's not Muslims as individuals I fear, it's their ideology I'm worried about.