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Disagree. If you as a Muslim live as a Muslim surrounded by Muslims, you're eventually going to otherize the Christians living across the border. If OTOH your n

by mkaziz 10y ago

Disagree. If you as a Muslim live as a Muslim surrounded by Muslims, you're eventually going to otherize the Christians living across the border. If OTOH your neighbour is a Christian and your cousin is married to a Christian, you're going to feel a whole lot more charitable towards Christians when push comes to shove. Fact of the matter is, we're prone to split into groups. If you homogenize, then before long, you'll be a Catholic othering the Protestant, or if you homogenize those even, you'll be a Lutheran othering some other denomination. Your best bet is to use diversity and multiculturalism to teach tolerance to the point that tolerance is institutionalized in your society.

guard-of-terra 10y ago
> Your best bet is to use diversity and multiculturalism to teach tolerance to the point that tolerance is institutionalized in your society. How well did it work for Jugoslavia, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Syria? It is not a "best bet". It is a long shot and it misses most of the time. The best bet is to stay homogenous. "otherizing Christians living across the border" might sound bad, but it won't lead to genocide because they have their own country with their military and police and you can't just walk in and kill them (they can neither). You can have wars but those rarely result in genocide. Civil wars had much worse outlook on that. However when there are Christians (or Muslim) in your country, it's pretty real that suddently the regime wants to kill them with their military and police and they have no force to stand up for them.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  You really need to read more history. a lot more history. Maybe try some scholarly works on a culture you are not familiar with so that you're less inclined to rely on your default assumptions. I put it to you that many conflicts are not so much the result of inevitable animus between diverse social groups, but the willingness of some people to opportunistically exploit a power vacuum for their own advantage by convincing members of one population to scapegoat another one. Rene girard has written extensively on this topic and argues that it may be a fundamental tendency. You keep appealing to homogeneity, but show me a homogenous group and I'll find some fault-lines in it. If that proves difficult, I'll just create some. Once I have two groups who believe their interests to be divergent I can set them against each other and exploit the resulting instability for my own ends. It's really easy to play people off against each other if that's your overarching objective.
- mkaziz 10y ago
  > You can have wars but those rarely result in genocide. Civil wars had much worse outlook on that. WWII and Nazi Germany > However when there are Christians (or Muslim) in your country, it's pretty real that suddently the regime wants to kill them with their military and police and they have no force to stand up for them. Yes, that's why you need strong institutions. The US has admirable (though not perfect) institutions that incorporate these concepts. In the examples you're citing, the institutions were fundamentally weak. As I mentioned earlier, humans will _always_ find reasons to fight. You can get as white and Christian as you want, but soon some types of white Christians will start fighting other types of white Christians. Medieval Europe and its interminable wars was a great example of this.
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    > that's why you need strong institutions I do but I understand clearly that I'm not getting them where I live, any time soon. What's my backup plan? "Fighting other types" is one thing, genocide is another thing. Two different words for a reason.
    - mkaziz 10y ago
      With enough power and political will, fighting other types leads to genocide. I am truly sorry you live in a difficult place. Your best bets would be to immigrate to a place that does have institutions (US, Germany), or to work hard to build them in your country. You can be the place where change starts. I wish you the best.
jbmorgado 10y ago
Sorry but even recent history just proves you totally wrong. You only have to go back less than 20 years and look at the Yugoslavian wars. Specially in Bosnia Herzegovina. In Bosnia neighbours were killing neighbours, friends were killing friends and cousins were killing cousins just because of their religion.
- tobltobs 10y ago
  Ever heard something about statistical significance?
int_19h 10y ago
> If OTOH your neighbour is a Christian and your cousin is married to a Christian, you're going to feel a whole lot more charitable towards Christians when push comes to shove. FWIW, don't rely too much on it, at least as far as neighbors go. There are numerous examples to the contrary during Balkan wars, and various ethnic conflicts that happened when the USSR was collapsing. For example, during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which involved numerous ethnic cleanings by both sides, one thing that stood out from the surviving victims' reports was that it was often their neighbors, with whom they were on good terms, that led the marauding parties to their house to ransack it and drive them out or kill them. Similar reports have been heard from Kurds and Yazidi in areas of Iraq and Syria captured by ISIS.
livinginturkey 10y ago
But can we always have enough tolerance ? If in your country you had a community of people performing human sacrifices on unwilling victims, would you be able to tolerate it ? When something goes against our morality it may be very difficult to accept. The "usual" problem is religious belief, but it is necessarily the only one. (If you think that the above example is a bit far fetched, consider that it is not much different from what some persons think about other people eating meat).
- mkaziz 10y ago
  Obviously a line needs to be drawn, the question is where it is drawn. A good rule of thumb is that if it doesn't hurt anyone else and is between consenting people (adults?), you should be able to tolerate it. But you are right of course, some communities feel as strongly about killing animals for food as they do about killing humans. There are all sorts of edge cases involved in these situations. So I can't give you an ultimate answer to that - scholars have been trying to answer it for ages, and the only way to find out is to keep going with this muddled experiment that is modern civilization. :)
- EdHominem 10y ago
  If that country kills people or keeps slaves then surely I'm not being intolerant by fighting and enslaving them, I'm adopting their views. /s Also, if you're sacrificing someone and I tolerate it, there's no reason I can't listen to the victim and take you out as a favor. Tolerating doesn't mean blindly accepting.

by mkaziz 10y ago

guard-of-terra 10y ago

> Your best bet is to use diversity and multiculturalism to teach tolerance to the point that tolerance is institutionalized in your society. How well did it work for Jugoslavia, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Syria? It is not a "best bet". It is a long shot and it misses most of the time. The best bet is to stay homogenous. "otherizing Christians living across the border" might sound bad, but it won't lead to genocide because they have their own country with their military and police and you can't just walk in and kill them (they can neither). You can have wars but those rarely result in genocide. Civil wars had much worse outlook on that. However when there are Christians (or Muslim) in your country, it's pretty real that suddently the regime wants to kill them with their military and police and they have no force to stand up for them.

anigbrowl 10y ago
You really need to read more history. a lot more history. Maybe try some scholarly works on a culture you are not familiar with so that you're less inclined to rely on your default assumptions. I put it to you that many conflicts are not so much the result of inevitable animus between diverse social groups, but the willingness of some people to opportunistically exploit a power vacuum for their own advantage by convincing members of one population to scapegoat another one. Rene girard has written extensively on this topic and argues that it may be a fundamental tendency. You keep appealing to homogeneity, but show me a homogenous group and I'll find some fault-lines in it. If that proves difficult, I'll just create some. Once I have two groups who believe their interests to be divergent I can set them against each other and exploit the resulting instability for my own ends. It's really easy to play people off against each other if that's your overarching objective.
mkaziz 10y ago
> You can have wars but those rarely result in genocide. Civil wars had much worse outlook on that. WWII and Nazi Germany > However when there are Christians (or Muslim) in your country, it's pretty real that suddently the regime wants to kill them with their military and police and they have no force to stand up for them. Yes, that's why you need strong institutions. The US has admirable (though not perfect) institutions that incorporate these concepts. In the examples you're citing, the institutions were fundamentally weak. As I mentioned earlier, humans will _always_ find reasons to fight. You can get as white and Christian as you want, but soon some types of white Christians will start fighting other types of white Christians. Medieval Europe and its interminable wars was a great example of this.
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  > that's why you need strong institutions I do but I understand clearly that I'm not getting them where I live, any time soon. What's my backup plan? "Fighting other types" is one thing, genocide is another thing. Two different words for a reason.
  - mkaziz 10y ago
    With enough power and political will, fighting other types leads to genocide. I am truly sorry you live in a difficult place. Your best bets would be to immigrate to a place that does have institutions (US, Germany), or to work hard to build them in your country. You can be the place where change starts. I wish you the best.

jbmorgado 10y ago

Sorry but even recent history just proves you totally wrong. You only have to go back less than 20 years and look at the Yugoslavian wars. Specially in Bosnia Herzegovina. In Bosnia neighbours were killing neighbours, friends were killing friends and cousins were killing cousins just because of their religion.

tobltobs 10y ago
Ever heard something about statistical significance?

int_19h 10y ago

> If OTOH your neighbour is a Christian and your cousin is married to a Christian, you're going to feel a whole lot more charitable towards Christians when push comes to shove. FWIW, don't rely too much on it, at least as far as neighbors go. There are numerous examples to the contrary during Balkan wars, and various ethnic conflicts that happened when the USSR was collapsing. For example, during the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which involved numerous ethnic cleanings by both sides, one thing that stood out from the surviving victims' reports was that it was often their neighbors, with whom they were on good terms, that led the marauding parties to their house to ransack it and drive them out or kill them. Similar reports have been heard from Kurds and Yazidi in areas of Iraq and Syria captured by ISIS.

livinginturkey 10y ago

But can we always have enough tolerance ? If in your country you had a community of people performing human sacrifices on unwilling victims, would you be able to tolerate it ? When something goes against our morality it may be very difficult to accept. The "usual" problem is religious belief, but it is necessarily the only one. (If you think that the above example is a bit far fetched, consider that it is not much different from what some persons think about other people eating meat).

mkaziz 10y ago
Obviously a line needs to be drawn, the question is where it is drawn. A good rule of thumb is that if it doesn't hurt anyone else and is between consenting people (adults?), you should be able to tolerate it. But you are right of course, some communities feel as strongly about killing animals for food as they do about killing humans. There are all sorts of edge cases involved in these situations. So I can't give you an ultimate answer to that - scholars have been trying to answer it for ages, and the only way to find out is to keep going with this muddled experiment that is modern civilization. :)
EdHominem 10y ago
If that country kills people or keeps slaves then surely I'm not being intolerant by fighting and enslaving them, I'm adopting their views. /s Also, if you're sacrificing someone and I tolerate it, there's no reason I can't listen to the victim and take you out as a favor. Tolerating doesn't mean blindly accepting.