Comment by chr15p | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chr15p | Hacker News Reader

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> The elephant in the room that many refuse to address is that terrorism exists anywhere Islam does, there are insurgencies in nearly every country where Muslims are a sizeable minority.

I think there's a significant danger of seeing correlation and assuming causation, groups like FARC, the IRA, or the Tamil Tigers (inventors of the suicide bomber vest) are terrorist groups that existed in places that Islam didn't.

If we take the longer view many (most?) terrorist organizations have been based around nationalism often coupled with anti-colonialism, or on a marginalised group taking up arms against their (perceived) oppressors often coupled with some strain of communist ideology. Its only recently terrorism based on Islam has become a thing.

I agree that its not poverty which leads people to commit terrorism though. At least not just poverty. Its a complicated mixture of feeling marginalised from a society (which can be poverty or can be a bunch of other things), believing they have a grievance against it, plus an ideology that focuses that into violence.

The causation argument is much more complicated, but still quite reasonable. The Atlantic [1] has the best one I've seen so far. The TL;DR of it is that Islam was born out of a time of war and the literal reading of its teachings advocates violence against non-Muslims who do not submit. If we continue with the narrative that the violent Muslims are a radical faction that's perverting the true nature of Islam, we're denying the true nature of Islam. It's more accurate to say that the non-violent Muslims are the ones that have perverted their religion into one that can live in peacefully with non-Muslims.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

The truth is that 99.99% of the billion plus Muslims in the world go for the non-violent path, and 0.01% go for violence so you implication that Islam is a religion of violence so your interpretation of the "true nature" of Islam is kind of irrelevant, except that your (and Mikeb85's) implication that Islam==Violence makes about as much sense as saying christianity==violence because of the crusades 800 years ago. Its pretty much crossed the line from reality into prejudice.

If the Bible were to tell a Christian that it is his or her duty to kill someone in a certain situation, then you could say that Christianity is, by nature, violent. It would be up to Christians to deny that part of the Bible and have it formally removed before you could refute that claim.

> implication that Islam==Violence makes about as much sense as saying christianity==violence because of the crusades 800 years ago

No, it doesn't. Islam is the religion, Muslims are the proponents. The religion is made up of texts and teachings that form its basis. The implementation of the religion is an entirely separate thing. The Crusades came out of what can be argued to be a flawed interpretation of the text in the Bible. The current violence we're seeing cannot be argued to be a flawed interpretation...it's an extremely literal interpretation.

This is not the same thing as arguing that Muslims are inherently violent...that's demonstrably false given how many peaceful Muslims there are. I've traveled extensively through the Middle East and I find the average Muslim to be friendlier and more generous than the Christians I know in the US. But you can't understand the current violence without admitting where it's coming from. And that's the 1400-year-old book that forms the basis for Islam.

To speak of the true nature of Islam is really to slur an entire religion and over a billion individuals. Such things are just ignorance and hate. You can't possibly describe the "true nature" of anything in such terms, an absurd concept on its face; what does it even mean? What would be the 'true nature' of Christianity - I can't even imagine.

I'm sorry to see this on Hacker News.

> To speak of the true nature of Islam is really to slur an entire religion and over a billion individuals.

No, it has nothing to do with the people who practice Islam and everything to do with the texts that they consider holy. We don't claim that the founding fathers of the United States weren't racist just because we've abolished slavery, removed the 3/5 compromise and allowed all races the right to vote. We similarly can't claim that Islam does not advocate violence just because the (vast) majority of the people who practice it are not violent. The text is preserved in it's initial form and there's no denying the violence that it advocates.

I just don't see how people can be so blinded by political correctness to not realize that so much of the violence that we're seeing comes from a strict adherence to those religious texts.

> What would be the 'true nature' of Christianity - I can't even imagine.

It would include things like not eating pork. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of Christians eat pork. But that's what's written in the book that Christians pay blind allegiance to, so it's part of Christianity's true nature.

> it has nothing to do with the people who practice Islam

Good to hear, and I'm sorry if I misunderstood, but please make that clear. There are a lot of people who would smear others based on their religion; it's a serious issue and people will come to harm. Many want to Muslims' rights and even lives taken from them.

> everything to do with the texts that they consider holy

If you aren't talking about Muslims, than why is it relevant what the Islamic scriptures say?

> We don't claim that the founding fathers of the United States weren't racist just because we've abolished slavery, removed the 3/5 compromise and allowed all races the right to vote. We similarly can't claim that Islam does not advocate violence ...

The analogy with the Founding Fathers would be Mohammed. We similarly can't claim that Mohammed does not advocate violence*; it says nothing about a billion Muslims (Though we might: I don't know in non-sectarian historical terms who wrote the Quran. Muslims believe it is the exact words dictated by Allah - it's not Mohammed's words but Allah's. I know nothing about this question myself; I do know that historians believe the Jewish and Christian scriptures were written by many parties and not by the authors the believers claim.)

> blinded by political correctness

Please don't start name-calling or attributing beliefs to people you don't know. It's not productive and raises doubt about the good faith of everything else you say.

> that's what's written in the book that Christians pay blind allegiance to, so it's part of Christianity's true nature.

But Christians, like Muslims and everyone else, do not actually pay blind allegience to their scriptures. Some claim to and I would be surprised if more than a handful actually follows it in practice. Your definition of "true nature" is hard to support - what is "true"? What people do or what a book they mostly ignore says? And there are many, many widely differing interpretations about the truth of even that one book.

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