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> George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade," perhaps ironically for your argument, he's also the guy who started the 'religion of peace' com

> George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade," perhaps ironically for your argument, he's also the guy who started the 'religion of peace' comedy (iirc anyways). > How does it legitimize religiosity and violence to point out that both Christianity and Islam have a violent fringe it's not about 'have a violent fringe'. your words convey 'there are no functional differences'. islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures. when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything. this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners. this dialetic is further endorsed and mirrored by islamists (and other religionists) who fold this into a dialectic where religion is good by definitional fiat. their religion doesn't influence violence because religion is good by definition. any suggestion otherwise becomes a category error. but hey. maybe you're right. perhaps western civilization is functionally the same as isis, and we shouldn't judge misunderstood islamists. their violence has no religious basis (religion is good!), it's just them defending themselves from our evil ways by decapitating children while screaming (purely coincidentally, no correlation) 'allahu akhbar'.

krapp 9y ago
> islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures. Well, no, Islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way Germans had a violent fringe. Are you claiming that every Muslim is the equivalent of a Nazi brownshirt, when not even every Nazi was a brownshirt, and not every German was a Nazi? It seems like you're making my point more than refuting it. >when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything. I do recognize them, I'm just refusing to recognize that they only exist in Islam. I'm attempting to draw an equivalency between radical Islam and radical Christianity, and trying to point out that while similar claims about the violent ideals and tactics can be made about both, particularly when taking a literal interpretation of the canon of each religion, neither represents the mainstream view of that religion. You're kind of proving my point, here. The problem with radical Islam isn't Islam, it's the politics of the radicals and the states that support them. >this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners But, that's not a claim I'm actually making, so no it kind of doesn't. It seems like we're typing past one another.

krapp 9y ago

> islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures. Well, no, Islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way Germans had a violent fringe. Are you claiming that every Muslim is the equivalent of a Nazi brownshirt, when not even every Nazi was a brownshirt, and not every German was a Nazi? It seems like you're making my point more than refuting it. >when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything. I do recognize them, I'm just refusing to recognize that they only exist in Islam. I'm attempting to draw an equivalency between radical Islam and radical Christianity, and trying to point out that while similar claims about the violent ideals and tactics can be made about both, particularly when taking a literal interpretation of the canon of each religion, neither represents the mainstream view of that religion. You're kind of proving my point, here. The problem with radical Islam isn't Islam, it's the politics of the radicals and the states that support them. >this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners But, that's not a claim I'm actually making, so no it kind of doesn't. It seems like we're typing past one another.