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Comment by wtbob | Hacker News Reader

He was a refugee from Communist and Nazi oppression; he was neither a Communist nor a Nazi. That's a big difference from a typical Syrian refugee, who is fleeing Islamic violence but still believes in Islam (and thus its exhortations to violence).

I'm only posting this to note that the situations aren't as parallel as you posit; this posting about the death of Andy Grove is not the right place to discuss the refugee crisis.

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> believes in Islam (and thus its exhortations to violence).

Religious flamewars are not welcome on Hacker News. Please don't comment like this again.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11335414 and marked it off-topic.

> Religious flamewars are not welcome on Hacker News.

I respectfully disagree that my response was in any way a 'religious flamewar,' or an invitation to one, but I won't say any more out of respect for the Mr. Grove's passing.

I would normally be one of the least likely persons to point this out but: "believing in Islam" (i.e. identifying as Muslim) is not the same as believing that violence in the name of Islam is justified or justifiable.

There are myriads of sects of Islam (just like Christianity) and the particular group everyone is talking about these days (i.e. ISIS) actually most closely resembles a modern revisionist unorthodox theology that has little to do with garden variety fundamentalist Islam.

In a nutshell: most Islamic sects build upon centuries of theological texts and interpretations of the original scripture. This can still yield dangerous conclusions (cf. the various fatwas inciting violence against individuals or groups) but ISIS throws this body of opinion out and substitutes a radical "unfiltered" return to the original scripture itself.

While there are Syrian refugees who hold dehumanizing religious opinions combing them all over the same brush is akin to saying all Christians support the bombings of abortion clinics because there are interpretations of Christian scripture which would find it justified.

The situation is incredibly messy and this is indeed not the best place to discuss it in detail but overgeneralizations like "Muslim == supports Islamist violence" help no-one and only serve to incite tensions (which is exactly what attacks like those in Paris and Brussels are intended to do).

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