There are studies on it. One has even been linked ITT.

And there are equivalent studies on poverty and race that show the same kinds of relationships.

It's also common sense.

When people point out 'extremist' groups of Muslims - it's easy to point out extremist groups of Christians. When people point out populations of 'uncivilized' Muslims - it's easy to point out equivalent populations of 'uncivilized' other groups that have the same socio-economic situations. When people point out 'radical' parts of Islam - it's easy to point out equivalent parts of Christianity. It's easy to point to historical periods where Christianity was just as horrible.

Furthermore, almost all 'advances' have come with a decline in the power of religion. Hell, the US was founded with the basis of limiting the power of religion, so again it seems unintuitive that it was secretly the cause of the US's historical rise to power.

Now, common sense can be wrong. But the burden of proof should be on people arguing that Islam is inherently more evil. And nobody has shown that except by making unbelievably poor analogies. Yes, the average American Christian is probably more 'civilized' than the average Muslim in the world. But the average American is probably more 'civilized' than the average person in the world. It seems ridiculous to think thats an inherent trait - rather than a side effect of being much wealthier than the average country. And of course, this is also somewhat begging the question in that we're using the American definition of 'civilized'.


Look at the US. Do you believe Christianity was the reason its been so successful? Or is it because of a founding group of people that specifically limited the power of religion? The abundance of natural resources that could be exploited? The power of immigration and being able to attract some of the best types of people for the past few centuries? And so many other reasons.

agree that it is down to economic factors.

however, it is not a surprise that a society which forbids 50% of its brains/productivity/creativity/talent from contributing fully to the economy falls behind schedule.

Sure, I agree. But that isn't a differentiating factor of Islam. Remember, this started as an objection to calling out Islam as a particularly dangerous religion.

Countries where women are contributing more productively are doing so not because Christianity (or insert other religion) encouraged them to do so. Hell, even now there's a large group of Christians that still actively work against women contributing fully to society.

I'd accept that religious societies are less able to advance than non-religious societies, or are at least slower at it. And perhaps part of the problem with Islam is that many of the non-Muslim areas developed faster (not because of religion but because of a myriad number of other historical factors) and now its much harder for them to develop to a point where secularism takes hold.

Christianity doesn't have to encourage women to contribute, to be far superior on that score than Islam. It merely has to less of an obstacle for women than Islam. Which it clearly is.

Sorry but comparing the rights of women under Islam to any other major religion in the 21st century is laughable.

comparing islam in the 21st century to most other religions in the 21st century is stupid. comparing it to christianity 900 years ago, however, is pretty much spot on. islam just hasn't grown up yet. give it a few more hundred years and they'll probably catch up.

Oh I see... it just hasn't grown up yet. I guess that means the actual teachings of the religion are no problem. Because in 900 years or so, Islam will be less like Islam.

The problem is we live right now, so nobody is content to just wait the crazy out.

If the world can come up with some ways to move that 900 year timeline up a bit might be cool.

you think christianity and judaism has always been joel osteen looking mother ****ers with big wide smiles just conning you out of your money or do you think there might have been, oh i don't know, a few centuries for both of lots and lots of murder? hell, fundi christians are still murdering people IN AMERICA in the name of their bull**** religion.

it's the same pattern: religion forms, spends a few hundred years with like 3 followers, finally gets a foothold, destroys any and all progress made in the region up to that point, continues to **** on people's faces for a few more hundred years, then finally people start to get fed up with the stupid murdery parts and temper it a little bit. islam was started some 750 years after christianity; it's got a little bit of catching up to do. obviously the sooner the better, but don't pretend this ****'s any different than what we've seen before.

Just tough **** for the next 300 years worth of muslim girls then I guess .

Agree with this 100%.

It would depend on the people who interpret it and how that role is played out in their societies. Many of the literal things in the Bible are reprehensible. Meeting Christians 500-800 years ago would be shocking compared to how moderate the vast majority of Christians are today.

The issue is that I don't think we have 500 years for them to work it out. We live in a world that is increasingly easy for a very small group to cause large amounts of destruction because of technology.

We also live in a world where knowledge, science and reason are expanding at an exponential rate. Makes no sense to compare pre-Enlightenment anything, with today. Because Christianity took hundreds of years to become more moderate, it doesn't follow that Islam should take the same amount of time. The world they are inhabiting is totally different, and societal changes happen at a pace that is many magnitudes faster.

This is no longer the dark ages, yet radical Islam makes the conscious choice to live as if it is. I am not sure why, in an age where all religion should already be irrelevant, so many think radical Islam will magically disappear if given a few more centuries.

If anything, the more things progress globally towards liberalism/secularism, the harder radical Islam will fight against that progress.

yours is a fair point here. And I agree.

I hope you can apply the same rationale towards our side's Christian brand of crazy.

because ... "our side" is just as crazy. Ours just go about it way more cleverly. And with Western crazy, truths are so effectively muted that when the kernels of those truths leak, they're relegated to "conspiratorial nonsense."

I'm an enemy of fundamentalism. Are you?

You're right, Cotton. We can't outwait the crazy. Surely the Muslim fanatics are toothepaste that won't go back into the tube. ... and are going to have to be dealt with. I guess. Color me unimpressed with the process... But the crazy we can't outwait, that has to include "crazies" like century-old Red Scare paranoias and billions-dollar denials of science. ... or just the indecency of refusing to pay both genders an equal wage. "We live right now."

fair point.

Perhaps the liberal/secularist message needs to change then. Including funding both sides of each conflict, most every time. ...

to me, the current path (i.e. aggression, arms allocation/subsidy) is just a feed loop.

Our liberal/secularist influence on modern Islam would be on much firmer ground if we didn't have bases all throughout the region, and weren't smart bombing every militia that threatens a tiny fraction of global oil trade. If we'd ever lead by moral example (for real), who knows the trajectory of Islam the past 70 years. We could certainly stand to be more progressive and Green in order to hold any new-found moral high-ground when it comes to much of anything.

Half of Latin America hates us too. And it's because of similar blowback, not our way of life.

Jiggs, for some reason you are lumping our bad and their bad into the same category. One is much worse than the other. While you can be an apologist for the evil American empire and all the bad things in the world, it doesn't mean that we caused fundamentalist Muslims to fly planes into buildings and kill innocent people.


Half of Latin America hates us, but they don't go around taking literal interpretation of religious texts and crucifying people in the streets. The fundamentalist Muslims just have to be dealt with. Us changing our foreign policy won't make them less crazy.

In terms of what?

Death toll? Absolutely not.
Horrific images? Racism? Debatable.
Repression of women? Of course.

Depends on perspective and what we're talking about.

Are you quite sure about that? The CIA has a term. It's called blowback.

Well, not this generation or two, no. I'm talking about, you know, the next tube of paste.

Your argument, at base, is a little like saying it's too late to reverse climate change, so might was well keep doing what we're doing. ... Hope I'm wrong. But OK, play missile command again for a period of time, even provide the night optics for America in hi-def with no blood. But have a time frame, present a partition plan and have an idea what comes next after the job is done. Not like last time.

I'm sure certain kinds of people rabid for revenge will clamor for the same blank check America gave the Bush League in terms of "going to the Dark Side" in dealing with this new Frankenstein our chickenhawk foreign policy has created. Replete with zero oversight and censored images of the "distasteful" carnage.

The great irony is that what finally pushed Western hawks over the edge THIS TIME around was the execution of a journalist.

So what do you think should be done about it? As far as how US foreign policy works.

Islam's has constantly failed to incorporate modernity and has throughout history spurned social advancements and contributions from non Islamic factions. Their fatal flaw is the persistent failure to embrace modernity and the technology and contributions outside the Islamic sphere.

The acts of jihad relate more to economical suffering and lack of access to opportunity than Islamic scriptures. The majority of the world are denied access to opportunity and financial success as their birthright. The third world and sufferers who constitute the global majority. They see Western culture as exploitative and attribute their personal suffering to the oppression and exploitation of war mongering wealthier countries. They also see a country like the US, who has been engaged in war and conflict for over 90% of its existence and perhaps see war as an effective way to achieve goals and financial success.

The primary reason terrorist go to violate extremes relates more to their global isolation, economic inequalities and victimization from collateral damage from wars/bombings directly or indirectly caused by the US. Islam may provide the alleged justification and philosophical underpinnings for their actions, but no more so than Christianity provided the same justification for countless others throughout history to terrorize, oppress and act savagely. In that sense Islam and Christianity are equally flawed and can be distorted by extremists to justify acts of "terrorism." Islam and Christianity are equally broad and generalized to allow for fringe groups to distort their interpretations and justify their acts of terror.

I am surprised one of the few geniuses in modern media, Bill Maher, would make such a gross over simplification and say he hates Islam more than other religions. Obviously something as multi faceted and complex as terrorism cannot be blamed on Islam as financial factors far outweigh the impact of religion. Not to mention the gross discrimination and massacre of Islamic people throughout the world, especially in Africa and Asia that takes place daily. Even Maher knows and says, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" yet he can't take the heat when that terror is directed at his own over consuming, war mongering, exploitive country.

This is not true on almost every level. The 9/11 hijackers were college educated, above average financially and experienced very little in the way of direct political oppression. Islam and Christianity are no where near the same level, right now in history, in justifying killings or death in the name of their religion.

The motives are light years apart.

LOL. so islam is the reason the people dont have the same level of life as the "western world". but on the other hand islam has nothing to do with the fact that the same poor people turn into islamic fanatics.

How many acts of Christian terror/barbarism can you name that have happened recently? Specifically, "in the name of Christianity"?

We obviously do not have to do this for Islam.

Edit : you can do this for Judaism, Hindus, etc. No reason to pick on Christianity in general.

The motives of any religion is a function of the practitioners and their interpretations and are fluidly changing as social conditions fluctuate. The motives of the great majority of Islamic people have nothing to do with violence on any level, let alone terrorism.

Currently more massacres have occurred by Christian militias against Muslims in Central Africa Republic than all of 9/11. They savagely kill all Muslims, innocent men, women and children, for the sake of revenge. The genocide that occurred in former Yugoslavia involved a six figure death toll many against the targeted group, Bosnian Muslims.

Oppressed, uneducated, frustrated people who resort to violence are influenced by social factors well beyond religion. They are propelled by hatred based on continued historical violence and seek revenge or perceived injustices they have endured and lash out at those who they view responsible. Religion is more of a coincidence than a causal factor as clearly these frustrated people are killing for reasons beyond religious scripture as a truly devout person abhors violence as a common tenant.

Yes I would contest that a lot of the present suffering of Islamic people has much to do with their historical distrust and disregard for modernity, the oppression of their women, and inability to integrate non Islamic ideas and contributions into their own.

As a result of their poor isolated economic state, extremist factions among these people are lashing out at the perceived enemy who they feel has created an unjust, impure world full of their people suffering and enduring massacres in places throughout the world.

ok, so islam isnt a religion if u want evolution in life quality. glad we can agree on that.

I might agree with you if they were only killing the rich westerners who they feel are oppressing them. But this is not the case. They are also killing equally poor people (including other Muslims), from their own region, who happen to disagree with their strict interpretation of Islam.

The idea that the terrorism is all about lashing out at perceived injustice, and has nothing to do with strict interpretation of their holy book, is very misguided - and also probably dangerous, if world leaders act under this false image of their motivations.

I think too many of us really want this to be an issue where if we changed our actions as human beings, the actions or perceived reactions from the other side would be all rainbows and karaoke.

There are a few times in my life where I fundamentally changed my view of things. It would be almost like being raised to be against homosexuality and then making a homosexual friend while in college and realizing for all those years everything you were taught is just wrong. I think many people can understand that type of example because it's such a common experience to us as humans.

One of my thoughts of human nature, for almost all of my life, has been the concept that we as human beings want essentially the same things. Security, jobs, education, freedom. I've felt that if we can provide this for people, they will live happy, healthy, and productive lives.

That idea for me has changed. Reading their propaganda and watching their videos have made me realize there are people in this world who actually do NOT want that. They don't want modernity, societal advancement, advancement of women, etc. When asked in an interview if a jihadist spent much time with his family, he answered that he did not, and that spending time with his family and fun was not something that he desired. He responded that living a harsh life with much suffering was desirable, as it brought them closer to God. This is a man who rejected those ideas, and actually DESIRED to live a harder life than what was possible.

I agree with revots33. It could be very dangerous for us to ignore these differences. It's not always politics. It's not always economics. Ideas have consequences, and it's not a coincidence we're not having a worldwide struggle against Buddhists.

There absolutely must be a change inside of Islam itself. We can't force that change. That doesn't mean we shouldn't treat it as a threat, because it is.