<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>
Yeah its not a black and white thing, but overall islam hasnt been beaten into tame submission by liberal western values like christianity has for the last 100 or so years. So even in its non extremist form, its still pretty shitty. Plus they don't have a new testament to backdoor all of their crappy verses.
I actually read the Quran and the Bible before. As far as their value systems go, they aren't as far away as popular media would have you believe. The way the Quran is written is that it is Muhammad giving commands to people during specific situations, which makes it sometimes unclear what is general and what is specific. For instance, the violent suras usually take place on battlefields, so when Muhammad is telling people to kill infidels its always in the context of him commanding troops in a battle. And that's all irrelevant anyway since infidels means pagans, whereas Christianity and Judaism are presented as good religions that should only be taxed. The Quran, however, is a fucking boring read because Muhammed doesn't have a very complicated message. Its basically "Fuck pagans, follow the law, only worship God." In fact you could read the first Sura and you've pretty much read the book. That only takes about an hour or so to do. The rest of that shit is redundant.
I feel like the real problem with Islam is that the middle east and the Arab world is more uncomfortable with globalism than anybody else is. Extremism is a focusing lens for all the anger that people in the region have against the west, particularly our forcing Israel upon them. Not saying this as an excuse obviously; killing civilians is always fucked up, and none of the people killed in terrorist attacks have had anything to do with the policies that are pissing off modern Muslims. Christianity doesn't have this effect because Christianity was born out of the culture that is globally dominate.
Another interesting thing I got from a book I read about the rise of ISIS is that there is a conspiracy theory popularly believed in the Sunni world that The West, Israel, and the Shia are conspiring the commit genocide on the Sunnis. The uneven way the Iraqi occupation was handled has largely driven the people of northern Iraq into the hands of extremist Jihadism. That's the reason the region was so quick to fall into ISIS hands when it did.
Which is to say this shit is really complicated. Very few people are evil just for shits and giggles. You don't try to identify why somebody is doing something because you are soft or weak or whatever. Rather, the real reasons for behavior can give you the map to fixing the problem, whereas simplistic stereotyping and reactions will lead you astray and complicate the entire matter. So whereas I have no interest in defending the religion itself, I do feel oversimplifying is dangerous because our most important allies against extremist Islam are the non-extremist Muslims. You don't want to paint, say, the Iraqi government or Rojava with the same brush you paint ISIS, lest you lose these important allies.
Wilted Rose
