I think it's more that the Left in America won't criticize Islam.
All: please keep this poison away from here. If this is the kind of argument you need to have, this is not the website you're looking for.
Seems like people love to argue pointless negativity even if the "argument" it makes has zero roots in reality. That's extremely sad. :(
It seems that the idea of "don't make stupid people famous" will never work. Shame.
i believe in evolution, but you need to get over the idea there is some kind of innate golden age waiting to happen if only those annoying chiristains would believe in evolution.
unless you are a biologist, believing in creationism has no impact on your life or how you do your job. i dont care if my brain surgeon believes in creationism. you know what i care about? how well they do brain surgery.
How many bombs have been dropped on other countries because of the choices of those millions of uneducated voters?
Could you elaborate? You state this like it's obvious, but it isn't (at least to me).
Disbelief in science in general has a massive impact - causing deaths.
Even disbelief in evolution causes deaths, e.g. if we don't do enough to deal with antibiotic resistance.
I wonder if this is true? What is correlation of Americans who "don't believe in evolution" who would reject the notion of antibiotic resistance in infectious diseases if you explained it to them? I wonder how many would reject the notions of husbandry, e.g. if you continually breed for a certain trait, like agreeableness, that the offspring will be on average more agreeable than the previous generation.
There is the religion of Christian Science, which rejects taking all medicine, but even there, that would only seem to be beneficial in antibiotic preservation practices.
If you look hard enough you can certainly find christian evangelical leaders who will call for the destruction of people who attack their faith. It's simply not normal and doesn't represent the vast majority of believers.
You don't have to live in a country under Sharia laws to get a fatwa against you. I mean, check this short list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatwas#Fatwas_promotin...
For the rest of your post, I'm not sure to see how it's a response to my comment.
edit: I will clarify. I was reacting to "Actively campaigning against the rights of gay individuals to marry or raise children". I'm for gay marriage. I'm also for allowing other people to campaign against my opinions.
We have, for at least the past few decades, opted to largely ignore certain types of civil liberties, and just about every American is willing to infringe someone else's liberties to get something out of the democratic process that they care more about. I agree that gay marriage is good, and doesn't hurt anyone, and that so long as marriage is an institution, every American who wants to partake in it should be allowed to, whether gay, straight, trans or whatever -- but let's not pretend that the infringement of civil liberties at the ballot box is a trait unique or peculiar to those voting against gay marriage.
If banning an AR-15 doesn't infringe my right to gun ownership, then in the same way, a ban on gay marriage doesn't infringe my right to marriage. I can still marry anyone (of the opposite sex) that I choose.
Like I said, I'm not arguing on behalf of those who would ban gay marriage -- I think it's a very wrong-headed position to take, but that dosen't invalidate that it's quite a common position to take, and that the infringement of rights we don't like is a ritual practiced by left and right alike, and that the exploitation of the democratic process to effect those goals is not only common, but _routine_.
The point is that despite democracy, the constitution and its provisions against being able to impose unconstitutional whimsies on populaces we don't like are supposed to encourage a tolerant society. The tolerance to let another person live their life in a way that you don't approve of is a pre-requisite to America functioning correctly. I'm not a historian, so I can't say if we've forgotten it, or we never really knew it, but it's definitely a lesson we need to learn or re-learn as appropriate.
Tying back to OP, at least one manifestation of that ideal is perhaps not in routinely making fun of the whole rest of America to which you don't belong. Of course, it is your right to do so, but disparaging ideas with which you don't agree (as opposed to making substantive arguments through engaged civil discourse) is perhaps not the best strategy to prevent against the continuation of those routine infringements.
I am Jack's stunning lack of perspective.
People have a right to religious beliefs. They do not - must not - have the right to turn that into a legal enforcement of those beliefs on people who do not share them.
I would add "... at the moment".
Like Christianity, or any other major religion, adherents of Islam vary massively in how they choose to practice (if at all).
Please, hang out with some Muslims. They're just regular folks like anyone else. If more people in the US understood this it would help a lot. It might also show the problems with targeting "Radical Islamic Terrorism" when it could also be "Radical Crime Committed by People With Various Motivations and Worldviews Many of Whom Hail From a Region With a Troubled Past, the Causes of Which are Myriad and Require Some Study of Post WWI Imperial Policy Among Other Things"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/terrorism-...
Just saying "horrible jerks who do really rotten things for a variety of motivations" might be more effective in helping people ascertain risk. After all, Volkswagen put a dangerous agent in the atmosphere that will kill thousands of people - are they "terrorists"? Exxon-Mobil knew their business was likely to result in the displacement and deaths of anywhere from thousands to millions of people, are they terrorists? Millions of voters have installed a leader in the US who advocates bombing innocent families, many of them guided by their religious beliefs. Are those voters "terrorists"?
YES.
(OT, this was one of the things I most appreciated about Star Trek: Into Darkness — Cumberbatch's character sets off a large and destructive bomb in a government building, with much loss of life, and is then pointedly referred to throughout simply as a criminal. A heinous criminal, certainly, who must be dealt with — but a simple criminal nonetheless).
(This is a rhetorical question. It's not fair to blame clearly unhinged extremists on a religion at-large when billions of devotees do no harm.)
Because that doesn't actually exist and it's just a faux and very poor argument.
If you are intellectually honest you would understand there is a big diference between someone from a certain group (may it be christian, muslim, etc) just committing a crime as an individual and someone from a certain group committing a crime invoking principles that derive from belonging to that group (like their religious supremacy for instance).
In that regard, yes, there are a lot more islamic attacks than there are christian attacks. We had one single attack in Europe that could (emphasis on could since the guy was by foremost an extreme right winger and not some christian fanatic) be connected to christian ideologies in the past decades (by Anders Behring Breivik, which did in fact kill a lot of innocent people)... but now go and check how many terrorist attacks you have connected to islamic ideologies.
Besides, religious courts already exist in the US. For example, Halakha are religious courts run for Orthodox Jews, they exist in America and make many decisions on family law and civil disputes. But even among bigger groups, lots of disputes are dealt with within the religious community, Catholics have 200 diocesan tribunals, if you want to end your marriage and stay in communion, you pretty much have to ask for an annulment at a diocesan tribunal.
Lots more examples:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/08/applying-gods-law-religio...