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I think few would disagree that religious scriptures can be used as a pretense or "justification" for violence, but I believe your comment cited the content of
by rtl49 11y ago
I think few would disagree that religious scriptures can be used as a pretense or "justification" for violence, but I believe your comment cited the content of the Quran as the "root cause" of Muslim violence.
Given that people are always motivated by their beliefs, isn't the reason that Muslims hold their beliefs the "root cause" of Muslim violence? You seem to argue that the reason is simply that violence is promoted by the Quran. But this begs the question of why they believe the violent parts of the Quran, while other religious groups ignore similar passages in their own holy texts.
I think those who disagree with you would claim that many Muslims hold to a fundamentalist interpretation of their scriptures for historical reasons unrelated to the text itself, Western misadventures in the Near East among them.
- theheck 11y agoYou make a really good point and have caused me to think about this more deeply! I think to answer the question I need to start by researching why Christians stopped being animated by the violent passages of the Bible, and only subscribe to the (relatively) more benign ones (generally). I think the point I was actually making (albeit inadvertently) is that as long as Muslims believe the full text of the Quran is actually true, they will be motivated to violence (yes it may require some charismatic person to push them, or some sort of social encouragement, but that person or group also generally believes in the text of the Quran). In contrast, someone who subscribes to Jainism could never be animated to commit a violent act rationalized by their religious text, because Jainism is against all forms of violence. TL;DR - The content of the religious text matters, even if other factors are also at play.