Re: Power of the SCOTUS IX: The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the SCOTUS nine that day
Re: Power of the SCOTUS IX: The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the SCOTUS nine that day
when given the chance they abandon ISIL like a fundamentalist Christian fleeing a natural history museum
The Muslim ban is a cynical appeal to fear to win votes. My position is close to Maher's. The evergreen problem is
violent fanaticism. Religious fanaticism has ranked among the most destructive rallying cries in human history. Although Islam is no more inherently violent than Christianity, it is foolish to deny that right now the worst violent ideological troublemaker in the world is violent Islamic fanaticism. They are going through a cuckoo fundamentalist shake out century, and we ought not to pretend that they are quiescent. In comparison, violent Christian fanaticism is currently relatively dormant. It could of course break out as an epidemic or even a pandemic if conditions are right. We need to keep an eye on that. But right now it is false equivalency to stress the potentiality of violence is equal while ignoring actual events. The earnest point is the booms are coming from inside the ummah.
But. By far the most numerous victims of violent Muslim fanaticism are Muslims, and we should be welcoming them as refugees the way we have been a beacon to the world throughout our history. We should remember that all the pseudo-sociological bigotry now being applied to Muslims as a whole by reactionaries has been trotted out to smear every immigrant group in our history: Germans, Irish, Italians, Asians, Jews, Central Europeans, West Indians, now Muslims. We can acknowledge that large groups of refugees fleeing trouble can be easily broadbrushed as the source of danger by Fortress America ideologues, when in reality they are innocent victims running in fear. To us. We have a general moral duty to help them as humans, and we have a particular historical duty to help them as Americans. That is the real American exceptionalism.
But, again. If a Muslim commits a terrorist action because of violent Muslim fanatical motivations we should call it violent Muslim extremism, just as if a Christian commits a terrorist action because of ideological motivations we should call it violent Christian extremism. The key word is
violent, but adding the religion is not in itself smearing all believers, it's stating a useful fact -- contextualizing the act. It adds useful information. After all, many of the pet causes of violent Muslim extremism are shared by violent Christian extremism. If somebody shoots up Planned Parenthood or breaks the windows in a synagogue, it could just as easily be either. It is valid to identify which nutbar ideology is involved in the particular event.
We should not refrain from speaking truth simply because idiots will misapply those facts. That allows the idiots to control the dialog, and when we do that we wind up with disasters like the current ruling junta.
