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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think it's OK to shun Nazis, but not OK to shun Muslims? Both are opinions/belief systems, hence a choice, and both are, in their extreme versions, quite brutal.

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Is this a serious question? It should be evident why it's okay to ostracize an ideology founded on the belief in genocide of "lesser" people. While some interpretations of Islam lead to violence, the same can be said about probably any religion, and Islam is not foundationally rooted in violence.

If you legitimately can't tell the difference between a genocidal ideology and a religion then I cannot continue this conversation.

Islam (like any religion) is based on the idea that this religion is better than any other religion (or belief system, like atheism). Nazism is based on the idea that being white/Aryan is better than others.

You could argue that Islam was foundationally rooted in violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests

If this is true for any religion, as you claim, then why the inordinate focus on Islam? It seems like bigotry against Muslims is the most likely explanation.

Also claims of being the "one true religion" no not inherently incite genocide, whereas Nazism does.

In principle, it's the same for any religion - I don't think that discrimination on the basis of religion is any different from discrimination on the basis of any opinion (not that Jewish can be an ethnicity as well as religion). However, religions such as Judaism and Christianity don't punish heretism with death, and in general their proponents seem to be much less radicalized than many of the proponents of Islam (there are exceptions, of course - e.g. Mormons or Hasidic Jews). I'd guess Christianity was also similar before enlightenment, and sometimes even after it!

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