Smasharoo wrote:
How hard is it to see that religion happens to be, at least, a likely proximate cause?
It's not hard, it confuses the issue. If you could wave a wand and eliminate Islam tomorrow, you would have done very little to eliminate this sort of violence. Islam mainly acts as the cover pretext and unifying mythos. In it's absence nationalism, tribal identity, racism or whatever would rush in to fill the vacuum. People are by and large willing to kill other people given the shallowest pretext of them being "the other". What that pretext is sort of misses the point.
As you may or may not realize, I'm not a fan of religion, generally. Blaming it for this sort of thing is foolish, however.
Edited, Jan 8th 2015 10:59pm by Smasharoo
Interesting point, I definitely disagree about about religion being blameless here. I doubt removing religion, not just Islam - all religion, from our society would not have far reaching consequences. I am not insane enough to state it would eliminate violence, because, as you already stated it is about a question of a much more deeper conflict ( us vs them ), but saying that any other -ism would just fill the void ( because people are basically retards ) is about as defeatist as it gets. What I am saying that you are arguing for the status quo.
I would argue that US today is about as nationalist ( and briefly after 9/11, oh boy ) and religious ( slowly chipping away Roe vs Wade ) as you can get in the first world country. The unifying mythos is a little different ( exceptionalism being the favorite one ), but the tribal aspect is very much still factor here. Yet.. all we get is a massacre by regular crazies here and there.. we just don't seem to get many massacres that start with "my god is bigger than your god" as the underlying reason.
I listened to a radio show yesterday where a person with mild nationalist and religious bent ( they seem to go hand in hand ) say that she is not Charlie, because while she does not like the violence, she didn't like the message that particular "satirical"(her quotation marks), offensive, anti-religious text published and, well, they were really asking for it. I am sorry. I do not believe in hornet's nest argument.
Fundies are not bees. Or hornets. They are human. If they can't function in this society, maybe we should have a discussion about why that is.
I will paraphrase House:
What asses get to keep being asses and which ones we get to kill...
I am saying all this, because pollacks get routinely shat upon and yet we don't blow **** up and kill people over it. We call the editors, send letters and ***** about it in a slightly more civilized way.
Edited, Jan 9th 2015 8:03am by angrymnk Edited, Jan 9th 2015 8:09am by angrymnk