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With anti-Jewish sentiment, from Mein Kampf and other sources I see, is mainly about some shadowy conspiracy. Anti-Islam sentiment seems to be based on concrete

With anti-Jewish sentiment, from Mein Kampf and other sources I see, is mainly about some shadowy conspiracy. Anti-Islam sentiment seems to be based on concrete actions (though with fearful, only somewhat-justified extrapolation perhaps) by people identifying with Islam, as well as Islam-majority countries' actions. EU and US leaders seem to keep on stating there's nothing wrong with Islam, while e.g. Islamic countries still have the death penalty for non-straight or non-cis people. It seems like doublespeak to say it's great, yet not admit the obvious problems. Anyone speaking up and pointing this "emperor's clothing" situation out is going to resonate well with people. I've considered myself very left and liberal for most of my life, yet I'm now viewing these right-wing parties favorably. Maybe I'm getting older (34) and losing my grip, or maybe there's some serious issues. If I'm getting this wrong, please tell me. I have a hard time seeing how rational people can come to a different result on this matter. Note I'm not saying anything about individual Muslims, just that no one seems to want to recognize the obvious problems that many people's beliefs seem to have. No offense intended; please let me know what I'm missing. (FWIW I'm against all religion.)

sawthat 10y ago
"The reason this bath water is so dirty is that there is a baby in it" Policy matters. The right wing proposal is religious discrimination. In the US we don't make exceptions for religions we don't like. You don't have to like Islam. You can believe that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with western pluralism. If you are American the moment you decide that's a good reason to start getting ok with religious discrimination is when you've given up on the very ideals this country was founded on.
- kiba 10y ago
  It is indeed precisely the wrong response. By reinforcing the idea that Islam is a threat to the pluralism of Western society, we're also reinforcing extremists' narrative about a clash of civilization. Really, the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > By reinforcing the idea that Islam is a threat to the pluralism of Western society, we're also reinforcing extremists' narrative about a clash of civilization. > the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it. Generally I agree, but I think it needs to be portrayed as peace-loving people of all religions against homicidal maniacs of all religions.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      >peace-loving people of all religions against homicidal maniacs of all religions I completely agree! But it's not as if every religion is equal. It'd be strange to say that, for instance, Jainism, has (or had) anywhere near the violence (even proportionally) that, say, Christianity or Judaism has (or had). It reminds me of programming or tooling debates, where someone jumps in with "well pick the right tool for the right job" or "all software has bugs". It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views like what's described here[1]. Reading those numbers, am I wrong to think it's a clash of civilization? 1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Again, I'm asking in all honesty, no intention to offend, troll or provoke. I thank you all for your responses.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        > it's not as if every religion is equal. It'd be strange to say that, for instance, Jainism, has (or had) anywhere near the violence (even proportionally) that, say, Christianity or Judaism has (or had). Lacking data, I'd guess that violence is proportional to power and not to the religious teachings. Janists don't control any large armies (yet). But if a Janist PM of India nuked Pakistan, would you be shocked? > It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views ... It's impossible that every group has equal problems, of course, but many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc. Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush. And regardless, I think it's unjust to judge any individual based on anything but their own actions. It's not right to guess what they might do and condemn them for it.
- daxorid 10y ago
  It's not religious discrimination. It's ethnic discrimination couched as religious because it's a little more socially palatable.
- drewrv 10y ago
  > If you are American the moment you decide that's a good reason to start getting ok with religious discrimination is when you've given up on the very ideals this country was founded on. I hadn't really thought about it until you said this now, but freedom of religion in this country predates gender equality, racial equality, and even slavery. There were founders of this country who were ok with slavery but drew the line at religious discrimination!
- hiram112 10y ago
  1st Amendment of US Constitution regarding religion: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; This has nothing to do with restricting immigration of certain groups for WHATEVER reason. That is the prerogative of a sovereign nation. In fact, it was only since the 60's that the US allowed mass immigration from non European nations. If you are referring to Muslims whom are also US citizens, I agree with you. We need to very careful that Muslims in the US are treated with the same rights as anyone else.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
The problem I see is that pretty much everybody is unwilling to see religions other than their own (or religions in general) as anything less than uniform monoliths, when in fact they are a bunch of vastly different denominations under one very vague umbrella. Just from my own perspective, I'm an Episcopalian; we were the first major Christian denomination to appoint an openly gay bishop, and our official policy is pro-LGBT and pro-same sex marriage. There are approximately two million of us, 1.8 million in the USA; we're not huge, but we're hardly a splinter group. Yet I've known both left-wing atheists and right-wing Baptists who first refuse to believe that I'm pro-LGBT, and then tell me that I'm not a "real" Christian, I'm a lone outlier with delusions of belonging. This despite the fact that more than 50% of all American Christians, of any denomination, describe themselves as pro-LGBT! I feel like the same thing applies to Muslims. There are groups, sects, denominations whose official policy is horrible, violent bigotry, and that should be resisted. But just knowing that a person is a Muslim doesn't tell you anything important about them.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  You're sort of right, in the way that by the time you know an individual, you have lots of more information about that person and it should give you a better prediction of their behaviour than broad categories. But to suggest it provides zero info is wrong. By knowing someone lives in San Francisco, you can adjust your probability that someone votes Democrat, for instance. But with Islam, I see articles like this[1], which say "88% of Muslims in Egypt and 62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion". So it seems fair to say if you know someone is from there, and they are Muslim, then there's a high probability they have those kinds of views. At least, as far as we can go off this survey. Am I misinterpreting this incorrectly? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...
kspaans 10y ago
death penalty for non-straight or non-cis people Consider Iran, it's not so black and white. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690 Instead of immediately penalizing gay people, they offer them sex reassignment surgery. It's just as bad, but in a different direction. It works out better for trans people, but not at all for gay people.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  It's still quite black and white: it's simply wrong. Just because it might be slightly less bad than others isn't a defence anymore than someone not hitting their SO until they've given them a verbal warning.
hackuser 10y ago
First, many countries, with many different prominent religions, have those penalties and do horrible things. It's very dangerous to assign group guilt: Because the government of the Philippines does something bad, does that reflect on each Catholic you meet? Does it give you a way to judge them? Can you judge Chinese individuals based on the government of China's behavior? What about the government of Taiwan's? It's the same propaganda the Nazis used, with similar results. Read some old Nazi propaganda; it was "based on concrete actions", group guilt, etc. > Note I'm not saying anything about individual Muslims I'm not sure what else you could be saying? Could you explain?
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Thank you for your response. You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. When I meet Catholics, sometimes I do quiz them on the huge amount of damage the Catholic Church has done to people by fighting birth control (and a good chunk of my family is Catholic). I've been tangentially involved with a medical clinic in Guatemala for years, and have seen how damaging this is to people, firsthand. (And I hear STDs in other countries have done even more damage.) If a country was designing a health system and was facing a bunch of Catholics trying to join the decision board, they'd be perfectly justified in saying "hey, the Catholic church has some harmful views on this health issue; we're not saying you do, but we'd like to make sure we're on the same page before you come onboard". Is this unreasonable?
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > Is this unreasonable? I don't like hypotheticals because we can always construct one to justify anything. Want to justify torture? Invent a hypothetical 'ticking time bomb scenario'. It depends on people's individual beliefs; if you want to restrict the board to certain beliefs, you'd better ask everyone. > You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. I don't understand how a group can hold beliefs. The mechanism doesn't exist; humans are not hive minds. More importantly, you can't accuse the group without accusing all its individual members. Unless you want to unjustly penalize the >1 billion individuals and apply group guilt, there's no application for this 'group belief'. The Catholic Church as an institution, is different from the group of all Catholics.
ScottBurson 10y ago
I do think it's fair to criticize a religion's teachings based on the behavior those teachings encourage. That said, I think the difference is one of degree, not of kind. There are violent Christians, too, after all -- and violent Jews (ask the Palestinians about these) -- and violent atheists. There are many places in the world where the Western concept of human rights has not caught on, and you don't have to be a right-winger to suggest that we who believe in such rights should continue to press the concept on others (even as we continue to clean our own houses). You don't really say exactly what it is that you're agreeing with the right-wing parties about. If you're suggesting that Muslim immigrants should be excluded from the US, for example, that would seem to contradict your claim that you're not saying anything about individual Muslims. So what is it, exactly, that you think "rational people" couldn't disagree with?
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Perhaps I'm just ill informed or not getting a fair spread of viewpoints. When I saw I'm not saying or against individual Muslims, I mean to say I don't have something against them personally, just their views. I'm not saying they're bad people. Just that overall, at least from what I've read, the views the group appears to hold are not acceptable to me, nor should they be to anyone in favour of humanity. But I'm basing my understanding of the group numbers off of Pew Research, so perhaps they are incorrect? As far as liking the right, only the right wing parties seem to be willing to openly say there may be an issue with the group beliefs. Your comment, which is sensible and accurate, does not seem to be what I've seen most left-leaning people saying. I've not heard EU/US leaders say anything like "X religion has some serious issues, but we need to work to fix those issues". But again, perhaps I've got sampling bias.
  - ScottBurson 10y ago
    > I've not heard EU/US leaders say anything like "X religion has some serious issues, but we need to work to fix those issues". Here in California, in 2008, we had Proposition 8, which rescinded the right of marriage which the state Supreme Court had declared less than a year earlier was available to same-sex couples. After that, it was noted that violence against gays increased. The vote was taken, by some, as an official statement that discriminating against gays was okay. What do you think would happen if Obama said "Islam has some issues"? Don't you think there would be plenty of people who would take this as an excuse to start beating up Muslims? The fact that he didn't even mean his comment to be taken that way would be no defense against this very predictable consequence of his saying it. I think he has to stick to the line that "Islam is a religion of peace". The vast majority of Muslims, after all, are peaceful. I've even read about mosques working with the FBI to help identify potentially violent people. We need that kind of partnership to continue and expand, and to make that happen, it's important to express that side of the truth, if you will. Saying "Islam is a religion of peace" says "if you're a Muslim who abhors violence, the US is on your side". That's a good message! I don't think anyone on the left is unaware of the risks posed by violent extremism, Islamist or otherwise. It's more a question of what is the best response. As tempting as it is to say, Let's just keep out the people who seem most inclined to do such things -- if that means all Muslims, I think that would be a terrible mistake, as it would keep out large numbers of desirable citizens in order to stop a few violent crazies. (Of course I have no objection to deporting individual immigrants who have committed crimes or otherwise demonstrated a predisposition to violence.)
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965486 and marked it off-topic.

sawthat 10y ago

"The reason this bath water is so dirty is that there is a baby in it" Policy matters. The right wing proposal is religious discrimination. In the US we don't make exceptions for religions we don't like. You don't have to like Islam. You can believe that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with western pluralism. If you are American the moment you decide that's a good reason to start getting ok with religious discrimination is when you've given up on the very ideals this country was founded on.

kiba 10y ago
It is indeed precisely the wrong response. By reinforcing the idea that Islam is a threat to the pluralism of Western society, we're also reinforcing extremists' narrative about a clash of civilization. Really, the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > By reinforcing the idea that Islam is a threat to the pluralism of Western society, we're also reinforcing extremists' narrative about a clash of civilization. > the only winning move is not to play. That is, treat terrorist attacks as normal crimes and let the police handle it. Generally I agree, but I think it needs to be portrayed as peace-loving people of all religions against homicidal maniacs of all religions.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    >peace-loving people of all religions against homicidal maniacs of all religions I completely agree! But it's not as if every religion is equal. It'd be strange to say that, for instance, Jainism, has (or had) anywhere near the violence (even proportionally) that, say, Christianity or Judaism has (or had). It reminds me of programming or tooling debates, where someone jumps in with "well pick the right tool for the right job" or "all software has bugs". It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views like what's described here[1]. Reading those numbers, am I wrong to think it's a clash of civilization? 1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Again, I'm asking in all honesty, no intention to offend, troll or provoke. I thank you all for your responses.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > it's not as if every religion is equal. It'd be strange to say that, for instance, Jainism, has (or had) anywhere near the violence (even proportionally) that, say, Christianity or Judaism has (or had). Lacking data, I'd guess that violence is proportional to power and not to the religious teachings. Janists don't control any large armies (yet). But if a Janist PM of India nuked Pakistan, would you be shocked? > It feels somewhat dishonest to imply that no group has a larger problem. And I don't mean terrorism -- that's small enough in raw numbers to not matter -- I mean overall social views ... It's impossible that every group has equal problems, of course, but many other factors may determine the social views, as an example: Is the group concentrated in a certain region? I'll bet Mormons have a stronger belief in democracy and civil rights than (pick some religion concentrated in a non-democratic country). Is the group disproportionately poor or rich? Old or young? Well or poorly educated? Does it have a political structure that lends itself to certain types of behavior (for example, I don't know about religions, but for nations democratic structures generally yield more peaceful behavior)? etc. Think of it from a scientific basis: Can we control for other factors and isolate behavior down to religion? It seems almost impossible. And what is religion? Scripture? Teachings? The local clergy? Family? Personal beliefs - even those change. Within religions, there is enormous variety in observance and belief; very few if any blindly accept all their religion's teachings. It seems impossible to paint the individuals with a broad brush. And regardless, I think it's unjust to judge any individual based on anything but their own actions. It's not right to guess what they might do and condemn them for it.
daxorid 10y ago
It's not religious discrimination. It's ethnic discrimination couched as religious because it's a little more socially palatable.
drewrv 10y ago
> If you are American the moment you decide that's a good reason to start getting ok with religious discrimination is when you've given up on the very ideals this country was founded on. I hadn't really thought about it until you said this now, but freedom of religion in this country predates gender equality, racial equality, and even slavery. There were founders of this country who were ok with slavery but drew the line at religious discrimination!
hiram112 10y ago
1st Amendment of US Constitution regarding religion: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; This has nothing to do with restricting immigration of certain groups for WHATEVER reason. That is the prerogative of a sovereign nation. In fact, it was only since the 60's that the US allowed mass immigration from non European nations. If you are referring to Muslims whom are also US citizens, I agree with you. We need to very careful that Muslims in the US are treated with the same rights as anyone else.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

The problem I see is that pretty much everybody is unwilling to see religions other than their own (or religions in general) as anything less than uniform monoliths, when in fact they are a bunch of vastly different denominations under one very vague umbrella. Just from my own perspective, I'm an Episcopalian; we were the first major Christian denomination to appoint an openly gay bishop, and our official policy is pro-LGBT and pro-same sex marriage. There are approximately two million of us, 1.8 million in the USA; we're not huge, but we're hardly a splinter group. Yet I've known both left-wing atheists and right-wing Baptists who first refuse to believe that I'm pro-LGBT, and then tell me that I'm not a "real" Christian, I'm a lone outlier with delusions of belonging. This despite the fact that more than 50% of all American Christians, of any denomination, describe themselves as pro-LGBT! I feel like the same thing applies to Muslims. There are groups, sects, denominations whose official policy is horrible, violent bigotry, and that should be resisted. But just knowing that a person is a Muslim doesn't tell you anything important about them.

MichaelGG 10y ago
You're sort of right, in the way that by the time you know an individual, you have lots of more information about that person and it should give you a better prediction of their behaviour than broad categories. But to suggest it provides zero info is wrong. By knowing someone lives in San Francisco, you can adjust your probability that someone votes Democrat, for instance. But with Islam, I see articles like this[1], which say "88% of Muslims in Egypt and 62% of Muslims in Pakistan favor the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion". So it seems fair to say if you know someone is from there, and they are Muslim, then there's a high probability they have those kinds of views. At least, as far as we can go off this survey. Am I misinterpreting this incorrectly? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01/64-percent-of-muslims-in-egypt-and-pakistan-support-the-death-penalty-for-leaving-islam/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/01...

kspaans 10y ago

death penalty for non-straight or non-cis people Consider Iran, it's not so black and white. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29832690 Instead of immediately penalizing gay people, they offer them sex reassignment surgery. It's just as bad, but in a different direction. It works out better for trans people, but not at all for gay people.

MichaelGG 10y ago
It's still quite black and white: it's simply wrong. Just because it might be slightly less bad than others isn't a defence anymore than someone not hitting their SO until they've given them a verbal warning.

hackuser 10y ago

First, many countries, with many different prominent religions, have those penalties and do horrible things. It's very dangerous to assign group guilt: Because the government of the Philippines does something bad, does that reflect on each Catholic you meet? Does it give you a way to judge them? Can you judge Chinese individuals based on the government of China's behavior? What about the government of Taiwan's? It's the same propaganda the Nazis used, with similar results. Read some old Nazi propaganda; it was "based on concrete actions", group guilt, etc. > Note I'm not saying anything about individual Muslims I'm not sure what else you could be saying? Could you explain?

MichaelGG 10y ago
Thank you for your response. You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. When I meet Catholics, sometimes I do quiz them on the huge amount of damage the Catholic Church has done to people by fighting birth control (and a good chunk of my family is Catholic). I've been tangentially involved with a medical clinic in Guatemala for years, and have seen how damaging this is to people, firsthand. (And I hear STDs in other countries have done even more damage.) If a country was designing a health system and was facing a bunch of Catholics trying to join the decision board, they'd be perfectly justified in saying "hey, the Catholic church has some harmful views on this health issue; we're not saying you do, but we'd like to make sure we're on the same page before you come onboard". Is this unreasonable?
- hackuser 10y ago
  > Is this unreasonable? I don't like hypotheticals because we can always construct one to justify anything. Want to justify torture? Invent a hypothetical 'ticking time bomb scenario'. It depends on people's individual beliefs; if you want to restrict the board to certain beliefs, you'd better ask everyone. > You explain why I don't want to accuse any individuals of guilt. Just that it seems that overall, as a group, there seem to be unacceptable beliefs held. I don't understand how a group can hold beliefs. The mechanism doesn't exist; humans are not hive minds. More importantly, you can't accuse the group without accusing all its individual members. Unless you want to unjustly penalize the >1 billion individuals and apply group guilt, there's no application for this 'group belief'. The Catholic Church as an institution, is different from the group of all Catholics.

ScottBurson 10y ago

I do think it's fair to criticize a religion's teachings based on the behavior those teachings encourage. That said, I think the difference is one of degree, not of kind. There are violent Christians, too, after all -- and violent Jews (ask the Palestinians about these) -- and violent atheists. There are many places in the world where the Western concept of human rights has not caught on, and you don't have to be a right-winger to suggest that we who believe in such rights should continue to press the concept on others (even as we continue to clean our own houses). You don't really say exactly what it is that you're agreeing with the right-wing parties about. If you're suggesting that Muslim immigrants should be excluded from the US, for example, that would seem to contradict your claim that you're not saying anything about individual Muslims. So what is it, exactly, that you think "rational people" couldn't disagree with?

MichaelGG 10y ago
Perhaps I'm just ill informed or not getting a fair spread of viewpoints. When I saw I'm not saying or against individual Muslims, I mean to say I don't have something against them personally, just their views. I'm not saying they're bad people. Just that overall, at least from what I've read, the views the group appears to hold are not acceptable to me, nor should they be to anyone in favour of humanity. But I'm basing my understanding of the group numbers off of Pew Research, so perhaps they are incorrect? As far as liking the right, only the right wing parties seem to be willing to openly say there may be an issue with the group beliefs. Your comment, which is sensible and accurate, does not seem to be what I've seen most left-leaning people saying. I've not heard EU/US leaders say anything like "X religion has some serious issues, but we need to work to fix those issues". But again, perhaps I've got sampling bias.
- ScottBurson 10y ago
  > I've not heard EU/US leaders say anything like "X religion has some serious issues, but we need to work to fix those issues". Here in California, in 2008, we had Proposition 8, which rescinded the right of marriage which the state Supreme Court had declared less than a year earlier was available to same-sex couples. After that, it was noted that violence against gays increased. The vote was taken, by some, as an official statement that discriminating against gays was okay. What do you think would happen if Obama said "Islam has some issues"? Don't you think there would be plenty of people who would take this as an excuse to start beating up Muslims? The fact that he didn't even mean his comment to be taken that way would be no defense against this very predictable consequence of his saying it. I think he has to stick to the line that "Islam is a religion of peace". The vast majority of Muslims, after all, are peaceful. I've even read about mosques working with the FBI to help identify potentially violent people. We need that kind of partnership to continue and expand, and to make that happen, it's important to express that side of the truth, if you will. Saying "Islam is a religion of peace" says "if you're a Muslim who abhors violence, the US is on your side". That's a good message! I don't think anyone on the left is unaware of the risks posed by violent extremism, Islamist or otherwise. It's more a question of what is the best response. As tempting as it is to say, Let's just keep out the people who seem most inclined to do such things -- if that means all Muslims, I think that would be a terrible mistake, as it would keep out large numbers of desirable citizens in order to stop a few violent crazies. (Of course I have no objection to deporting individual immigrants who have committed crimes or otherwise demonstrated a predisposition to violence.)

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11965486 and marked it off-topic.