Mapping religious persecution


Brian Grim of the Pew Research Center and Roger Finke of Pennsylvania State University have a new book, The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century. Guess which religion plays the starring role.

Writing about Islam in today’s politically charged climate is difficult, Grim and Finke admit. Many commentators, they say, tend to be either overly critical or timidly uncritical.

The thinly-veiled xenophobes on one end and the overcompensaters on the other.

Among the researchers’ findings:

• Seventy-eight percent of Muslim-majority countries, compared with 10 percent of Christian-majority countries and 43 percent of other nations, had high levels of government restrictions on religion.

• Violent religious persecution is present in every country with a Muslim majority with a population of more than 2 million.

• Sixty-two percent of Muslim-majority countries had at least moderate levels of persecution, with more than 200 people persecuted. In comparison, 28 percent of Christian-majority nations and 60 percent of other countries had similar levels of abuse.

• At the highest levels of persecution, 45 percent of Muslim-majority countries — more than four times the percentage of Christian-majority countries — were found to have more than a thousand people abused or displaced because of religion.

Not the least bit surprising, alas, but it’s useful to have some numbers.

However, one need only consider the role religion played in the Sudanese civil war or what Grim and Finke refer to as the “religious cleansing” of neighborhoods in Iraq based on Shiite-Sunni differences to understand the deadly toll religious persecution is exacting in Muslim-majority nations.

See this is why talking about this kind of thing is not anti-Muslim aka “Islamophobic” – it’s because the people who suffer most from the horrible aspects of Islam are Muslims.

Comments

  1. Stevarious says

    it’s because the people who suffer most from the horrible aspects of Islam are Muslims.

    “Oh, well, we can’t have THAT!” said the christians. “More Bombs!”

  2. says

    See this is why talking about this kind of thing is not anti-Muslim aka “Islamophobic” – it’s because the people who suffer most from the horrible aspects of Islam are Muslims.

    No, it becomes Islamophobic when people start ranting about how Islam is a threat to people who don’t live in Muslim majority countries. There is zero threat to Western Europe or the Americas from Islam, for instance. There are certainly conservative Muslim enclaves in those areas which retain many of the oppressive aspects of Islam regarding their members, and the governments do far too little about it, but that’s true of Christianity and Judaism in those areas too.

  3. Alverant says

    So what constitutes “high levels of government restrictions on religion”? Are we talking official (as in anti-blasphemy laws) or unofficial (a politician threatens to cut funding for a school that teaches evolution)? Also what constitutes religious violence? Is attacking a homosexual just for being gay count or does the attacker have to have some kind of religious justification? Because honestly, I think the amount of religious persecution by christians is underrated.

  4. Carmichael says

    And you have it folks. Carmichael’s Law. On any “liberal” blog, a post that presents Islam in a negative light will eventually attract a “Christianity is just as bad” comment. Here we have a particularly compelling instance. Every one of the first five comments.

  5. Psychopomp Gecko says

    Carmichael, it IS just as bad. You have to remember, the Christians want the U.S. to be a Christian nation in the same way Iran is a Muslim nation. There are fundamentalists out there who want blasphemy laws as long as it is Christianity being protected from blasphemy. They want prayer in schools, religious education in schools, and for the government and military to be deeply religious. You might have noticed our foray into the Middle East having been referred to by us as a Crusade, with some soldiers caught having bible verses on their guns, and our military having Christian chaplains. Maybe you’ve heard of those evangelical types who want us to defend Israel to the death because they believe the world won’t end until Israel takes over this one temple. Or how about our former President’s weekly meetings with Christian religious leaders?

    Putting god on money, the pledge of allegiance, and in the oath of office of the President ring a bell perhaps? The intense anger at the (false) idea that President Obama is a Muslim? Heck, if you go back to JFK, they didn’t even like that certain sects of Christianity (Catholicism in that case) might come to power.

    Where I live, when there was a lawsuit against school officials leading prayers at school, the signs that were up all over the place were about not removing prayer from school as if they never got the memo from the Supreme Court that it wasn’t supposed to be in there in the first place.

    I’m not saying every Christian wants that, but neither does every Muslim in Iran want their government to be so religious. It’s just that a few very fundamentalist guys got a lot of popular support this one time, aided by intense xenophobia (a bit justified at the time), and took the opportunity to establish a religious government.

    But that’s over there. It isn’t like Muslims are trying to replace the Constitution with Sharia law over here like some people think. Instead, some people would really prefer it if they could make the 10 Commandments law (after all, they like putting them in courtrooms so much) despite not even knowing what all 10 say just because their preacher tells them that the U.S. needs to “return” to being a Christian nation.

    That’s why we often criticize Christianity so much more. It’s in our face, wanting to mess with our country. Islam is horrible in all the ways Christianity is, just to a greater degree. It’s just as ridiculous as any other religion. If you want to make fun of it, go ahead. No one is stopping you. Drag it through the mud and show the bottoms of your feet to it.

    Go ahead and say that Islam is horrible at women’s rights (civil rights in general, actually, but especially women), science, and governing based on their ridiculous religion. Meanwhile, some of the rest of us will put pressure on the people over here who want to legislate that women can’t get pregnant from rape unless they want to, legislate that global warming isn’t real because Yahweh said the earth would be destroyed by fire, or declare days of prayer to invoke an end to a drought.

  6. Psychopomp Gecko says

    Actually, I probably could have managed to say that in less of an antagonistic way towards people who criticize Islam. I was more trying to point out that one of the big reasons to always claim Christianity is just as bad is because it would be if given the chance, as it has in the past.

    As a sign of apology, let me just say that at least Christians moved on. Islam had its period of being more flexible, but then it all whiplashed back and wants the Middle Ages back. You know, when men were men with each other and women were covered with a sheet so the men wouldn’t have to see them, because that might tempt them away from all those more noble male-male interactions. Kinda like the Athenians, you might say.

    That’s ok, Muslim women. If your men don’t want to look at you, or if they want to burn your face, come on over to the West. We have civil rights, plastic surgery, and men who uncomfortably tread the line between seeing you as a sex object they want to fantasize about and seeing you as an inherently beautiful human being of a certain gender that just happens to make part of us want to stand up and say hello. The men here, we’re not perfect, but you’ll have the right to compete against and even surpass us over here. Just not with your paycheck, but we’re trying to fix that. And thanks to our amazingly advanced ability (It slices! It dices! It pickles and fries!) to allow women to get elected in our government, you could too!

  7. Psychopomp Gecko says

    Not that I have anything against LGBTQ people or anything, as some of that might imply.

    I’m just going to stop here before I go and say something else that has unfortunate implications that I need to apologize for.

  8. says

    @Carmichael
    Reading comprehension fail there. I said that in the Americas and Western Europe the abuses perpetrated by Christianity are as bad or worse than those perpetrated by Islam in those countries. Certainly the Islamic theocracies are more religiously abusive than the theoretically secular governments of Europe, the U.S. and Canada, but compare their abuses to those of Christian Theocracies and you see that there’s very little to choose from. And as Psychopomp Gecko points out above, there are a lot of people in the U.S. who are trying to turn it into a theocracy. So, in the Americas and Western Europe, Christianity is infinitely worse than Islam, in terms of both present abuses and potential future abuses.

  9. Rebekah says

    @Dalillama, Schmott Guy

    “…it becomes Islamophobic when people start ranting about how Islam is a threat to people who don’t live in Muslim majority countries. There is zero threat to Western Europe or the Americas from Islam”

    That passage exemplified the mindless cowardice of much of the modern left.

    1. Islamic terrorism may not be threat the conservatives and neocon hawks claim, but it is a reality. Seriously, what sort of liar is so brazen as to claim there “zero threat” in the face of sinificant evidence to the contrary.

    2. My liberalism is not just about what impacts me. I guess some lefties prefer a more solipsistic version of what constitutes justifiable concern. Dalillama’s attitude is precisely why we have made such poor in roads against abuses within Western Islamic communities. It much easier to remain in a safe bubble where no one will smear you as a ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobe’ for speaking out.

  10. Rebekah says

    Also I agree completely with Carmichael. The absurdity of the moral equivocations and deflections spun on behalf of Islam often defies belief. Nick Cohen has spent the last decade detailing these nicely.

    Also these posts manifest the paranoid style of American politics disturbingly well and remind us it is not an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. Honestly other than abortion, the (Christian) right wing has been losing ground in the States on its other conservative social positions for the last twenty year. Just look at the unprecedented shift in favour of marriage equality in less than a decade.

    Yet to hear many Americans leftists tell it, the barbarian are at the gates and the entire programme of gender and racial equality is a stake. Nevermind Bush was in office eight years with no major social roll backs. The worst offences came on issues like the environment that had nothing to do with religious beliefs.

  11. Psychopomp Gecko says

    Rebekah, Dalillama didn’t call anyone racist or Islamaphobic.

    It’s just that criticizing Islam shouldn’t be the main focus. If we focus solely on eradicating the threat of Sharia law in Oregon or something, then we might get sidetracked from dealing with politicians who want to use the Bible as a governing text.

    And what do you want us to do? I mean it, what do you want us to do? Do you really imagine that anyone in this predominantly Christian nation is going to vote for a politician who wants to bring Sharia law to us? Don’t you think that kind of guy would be lucky to ever get elected and would soon find himself out of office if he did so? Don’t you think the courts would strike down that kind of thing?

    So, if it’s not as much a threat in this country…what, we go to war to oust Islamic governments from power? That doesn’t work too well, and will only lead to major pushback, such as the Iranian Revolution.

    I mean, I have ideas. We could push an agenda of using special operations to secretly destabilize Islamist countries and topple those regimes, but the religious influence is going to be strong no matter what, and they must never learn it was us or else they’d go further the other way because it justifies those regims that see us as the Great Satan. I also think we could help to promote an international culture of free speech and freethought where anyone is free to criticize the predominant religious influences in their country.

    What are your ideas for how to approach this, considering our roles as “decadent” outsiders that they have been taught will act only in our country’s interests?

  12. Stevarious says

    And you have it folks. Carmichael’s Law. On any “liberal” blog, a post that presents Islam in a negative light will eventually attract a “Christianity is just as bad” comment.

    Christianity IS just as bad. Was it Muslims passing laws in Uganda that make homosexuality punishable by death? Nope. Christians. Was it Muslims encouraging people in South Africa that it’s better to die of AIDS then use a condom? Nope. Christians. Was it Muslims holding Tutsi children in churches for slaughter in Rwanda? Nope – it was Christians. Christians show just as much disregard for life, health, and happiness as Muslims, when given the reins of power in third world countries.

    Give me one reason to think that the worst parts of Christianity are an inch better than the worst parts of Islam.

  13. says

    Rebekah,
    I said that claiming that Islam is a threat to the West is irrational Islamophobia. This is true. The likelihood of and American or European dying due to Islamic terrorism is similar to the likelihood of dying in a lightning strike, and considerably less likely than doing so from slipping in the shower; that is not a threat significant enough to justify current levels of expenditure even if they were being spent on genuine security rather than political theater. I did not address at all the problems of the Islamic theocracies except to say that they exist. I would also argue that the operative word here that guarantees that those countries are oppressive hellholes is the theocracy part, not the Islamic part; anyone else’s theocracies are equally oppressive and hateful. So, there is no reason to spend time, money or effort fighting the ‘Islamic threat’ in the West. If you are in the West and Islam is your particular bugaboo, I would recommend that you advocate against policies which install and prop up oppressive dictatorships (The U.S., Britain, and France have all done that within the past 50 years, I don’t know offhand about other European countries). Also increased trade with Islamic countries, encouraging people from Muslim countries to get university educations from your country, for starters. Do you have any proactive ideas for dealing with the evils of Islam? You certainly seem to be quite concerned about them.

  14. Carmichael says

    I’m not convinced that Christianity is as bad as Islam, but I’m open to the possibility. It seems to me, though, that there is a definite tendency in some circles to move the conversation from Islam to Christianity rather too quickly. If a commentator on a liberal blog pointed out the evils of Islam every time there was a post on some idiot Christian, the likely reaction would be cries of Islamophobia.
    @Stevarious: I’m aware that Christians do crazy stuff. I just think that, at this point in history, Muslims can match all of it and raise it several fold.
    I also think that Islam is harder to reform. Jesus certainly said plenty of dumb stuff, but he’s a much more attractive figure than Muhammed. (I’m assuming for the purposes of the argument that Jesus’s and Muhammed’s words and deeds have been accurately reported, as do their followers.) In addition, very few Christians believe the Bible is the actual word of God. Most believe in varying degrees of “divine inspiration”. But almost all Muslims believe the Quran is literally the word of God. Liberal Christians can simply ignore the worst parts of the Old Testament. The stories were written by a bunch of goat-herders a few millennia ago. It’s much harder to ditch parts of the Quran. Obviously there are liberal Muslims, I work with some. I just think it’s harder to get to a liberal interpretation of Islam than of Christianity.
    @Dalillama Schmott Guy: Yes, your point was more nuanced than my original post suggested. It was a more general point I was making.

  15. Rebekah says

    “Was it Muslims passing laws in Uganda that make homosexuality punishable by death? Nope.”

    Those laws have never passed, which shows precisely how ignorant you are despite your childish change-the-subject-to-Christianity antics (I saw you do that on the speed marriage article – exactly as Carmicahel Law predicts). No Christian nation has a death penalty for homosexuality. European nations began decriminalising homosexuality as early as the 18th century, certainly from the Code Napoléon forward.

    And Uganda does have a decent-sized Muslim minority, are you telling us they would not have suppported the law? Which gets to the real issue, homosexuality is illegal in all but a handful Muslim nations. Multiple Islamic nations have a death penalty for homosexuality. There is no movement except for fringe ultra-liberal groups to make homosexuality more accepted in Islamic cultures.

    Past that you show the ignorance typical of people who react like you do over Islam in that you did not bother to even look at the findings of the study in question. It lays out pretty clearly why Islam is legitimately more dangerous for democracy and human rights at present, based not on theoretical, but the actual state of affairs in nations. For example:

    “In their study, Grim and Finke found two-thirds of movements seeking the adoption of religious law were in Muslim-majority nations. Only 4 percent of such movements were in Christian-majority nations.”

  16. Rebekah says

    Dalillama, don’t use hyperbole like “zero threat” whilst swinging about the cudgel of Islamophobia and you will not have to backtrack with proper nuance so much.

    “Do you have any proactive ideas for dealing with the evils of Islam? You certainly seem to be quite concerned about them.”

    Pathetic. Just keep sneering at Islamic human rights abuses. It shows most people what a fraud you anti-imperialists are. The irony is you are usually the sort fixated on the “evils” of Israel.

  17. Rebekah says

    “If we focus solely on eradicating the threat of Sharia law in Oregon or something,..”

    No one from the liberal/secularist camp is suggesting a sole focus on Islam. That is an absurd strawman.

    The reality, especially in the UK, is that there is so much fear surrounding standing up to Islam, that many of their intra-community crimes (e.g. home confinement, forced marriage, genital mutilation, slavery) go virtually unchecked. If the police intervene the response is immediate grandstanding and shouting about “Islamophobia” and “racism”.

    I am not a Telegraph reader, but this came up first on google and is quite illustrative:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9253250/Rochdale-grooming-trial-Police-accused-of-failing-to-investigate-paedophile-gang-for-fear-of-appearing-racist.html

    Maybe you Americans should base your view on a bit more than the state of affairs in Oregon.

  18. Carmichael says

    We all have our opinions on the “Christianity is as bad as Islam” idea. The question is, what do we mean by “just as bad”? The study that Ophelia cites in the original post attempts one measure; i.e. the effects of the religion on people in the world. On this measure, the results of the study suggest that Christianity is, in fact not as bad as Islam. It is only one study, and of course you can question it, but if we are going to claim that Christianity and Islam are as bad as each other, we should be using some evidence rather than just making lists of bad things done by members of the two groups. I think the evidence suggests that the effects of Islam in world today are worse than those of Christianity, bad as the latter may be.
    Another way to address the “just as bad” question is theologically. I think that Islam comes off second best here too, for the reasons I outlined at 17 above.
    As always though, I could be wrong.

  19. says

    Carmichael #17
    I also think that Islam is harder to reform…. In addition, very few Christians believe the Bible is the actual word of God…. But almost all Muslims believe the Quran is literally the word of God. Liberal Christians can simply ignore the worst parts of the Old Testament…. It’s much harder to ditch parts of the Quran…. I just think it’s harder to get to a liberal interpretation of Islam than of Christianity.

    Precisely! A (crude) summary is that the Qur’an is to Muslims what (the word of) Jesus is to Christians. The New Testament is really a historical interpretation/narrative/reporting of Jesus, not itself the word of god. Since there is so much fragmented and contradictory reporting of what Jesus said, Christianity has been able to achieve a partial modernisation since the Age of Enlightenment by careful selection and re-interpretation.

    The Qur’an, the final and eternal word of god, has frozen women as second class. (2:282, 4:11, 4:34, 4:176, etc). And departing from Islam is considered to be a betrayal of the Umma, in effect a traitorous act. I’ve seen arguments from Muslims who appear desperate to put a more enlightened interpretation on the core of Islam but have admitted they are too constrained by the eternal word of god to do so.

    I have written about 10 or so large articles (with more references than anyone might want!) on my website. I make the comment there (although without specific evidence):

    Most of the people who suffer from Islam are Muslims.
    Most Muslims suffer from Islam. (Take into account women, and the effects of antipathy to science, etc).
    Most of the people killed by Muslims are Muslims.
    Most of the people who kill Muslims are Muslims.

    Islam “in its natural state” is currently at best medieval, (for example, its typical attitude towards science), and at worst intolerant and barbaric, (for example, various aspects of Sharia (Law) including attitude towards women, intolerance towards other religions, and immature and exaggerated reactions to criticism).

    This isn’t a “Clash of Civilisations” – Islam “in its natural state” isn’t yet civilised. This is a “Clash of Eras” – the 1st millennium CE (Islam) versus the 3rd millennium CE (“the West”). Islam has not undergone its own “Enlightenment”, and in general appears unable to do so. Christianity has had hundreds of years to adapt itself to modernity while Islam has had modernity thrust upon it.

    It is hard to see how Islam can be modernised. But individual Muslims may be far more enlightened than Islam itself, of course! This is potentially true where they are integrated tiny minorities in non-Islamic states, and are free to cherry-pick the less medieval, intolerant and barbaric bits.

  20. says

    Barry: Yours is an interesting website.

    The OT and the NT were both written by multiple (inconsistent and at times contradictory) authors, leaving reformers plenty of divergent texts to cherry-pick from. The Koran offers nothing like it, which I think is why, though there has been plenty of sectarian conflict in Islam, there has never been a reformation, and probably never will be.

    The Koran is basically a manual of fascism: everyone will think the same, confront the same enemies, behave the same, live the same. The god of Islam is The One, where Christianity’s is the multiple Three-In-One (plus the Blessed Virgin, and saints galore to pray to). Oneness is the dominant theme in Islam, which justifies its intolerance.

    It is intellectually and philosophically vulnerable, which at the heart of its extreme intolerance.

    Muslims on the other hand are people who have had the misfortune to have been born into Islam. This should not be held against them, even though showing the world that they too can be whipped up into a frenzy is a way to prove they belong. And believing is the means to belonging.

  21. Carmichael says

    Thanks Barry. I’ll read your articles when I get the chance.
    Another way to look at the “bad as each other” question is to consider contributions to the arts from the two societies.
    Islamic societies have given us very little in the way of figurative art. Some painting, no, as far as I am aware, sculpture. They have given us little literature, apart from poetry and folk tales. No theatre or opera. No ballet and little other dance. No music, apart from folk music. Certainly there is some magnificent architecture and architectural detail, but Christendom had these as well.
    There is no Mozart, no Michelangelo in Islam.
    Personally, I think that a society with more art and music is, all things being equal, better than one with less. So on this measure, I would rate Christianity above Islam.
    It is not that the arts are completely absent from Islamic societies, just that the arts are better represented in Christian ones. Similarly, it’s not true that the effects of Christianity are all good and those of Islam all bad. It’s just that in a comparison, Islam fares poorly.

    In general, I think we should beware of the “They’re as bad as each other” line. Think fundamentalists vs militant athiests or feminists vs MRAs.

  22. Trends says

    No, it becomes Islamophobic when people start ranting about how Islam is a threat to people who don’t live in Muslim majority countries. There is zero threat to Western Europe or the Americas from Islam, for instance. There are certainly conservative Muslim enclaves in those areas which retain many of the oppressive aspects of Islam regarding their members, and the governments do far too little about it, but that’s true of Christianity and Judaism in those areas too.

    The study cited clearly demonstrates that religious persecution is the overwhelming purvey of muslim- majority countries and yet you still insist there’s an equivalence between muslim obscurantism and chritstian and jewish fundamentalism.

    The Amish have curious, old-fashioned customs, but as Sam Harris has said, how many of us spend time fretting about Amish fundamentalists…

    To portray those pointing out the dangers radical ( and not so “raical”) islam poses to secular, democratic societies belongs to the past.

    The gov’t of France has identified some 760 no-go zoners it consideres dangerous for non-Muslims and it identifies these zones on official gov’t websites.

    Lately the french have mulled sending the armed forces to patrol marseille (no close to 30% Muslim)ostensibly to contain gang warfare.

    People have yet to wake up to tyhe fact that a lot of muslim immigration isn’t imigration at all, but rather a form of colonisation, one seeking integration…ours.

  23. Trends says

    This isn’t a “Clash of Civilisations” – Islam “in its natural state” isn’t yet civilised. This is a “Clash of Eras”

    Yes, that,s a very good way of framing the situation.

    It’s as though the 12th century was encountering the 21st

  24. Q.E.D says

    Rebekah @ 13 says

    Yet to hear many Americans leftists tell it, the barbarian are at the gates and the entire programme of gender and racial equality is a stake. Nevermind Bush was in office eight years with no major social roll backs. The worst offences came on issues like the environment that had nothing to do with religious beliefs.

    Wrong. Citation to a US Congressman on the House Energy committee quoting Genesis as proof that global warming doesn’t exist John Shimkus

  25. Stevarious says

    @Rebekah

    “Was it Muslims passing laws in Uganda that make homosexuality punishable by death? Nope.”

    Those laws have never passed

    Oh, right, so the christians failed to pass the kill-the-gays bill, that makes them… better christians? Because they tried to do something awful but better minds prevailed? Please.

    That you have to pick on the wording of my post (‘passing’ instead of the more accurate ‘trying to pass’) instead of addressing the substance demonstrates the weakness of your own position.

    And Uganda does have a decent-sized Muslim minority, are you telling us they would not have suppported the law?

    So… your response to my ‘Christianity is just as bad as Islam’ is to say, ‘Nuh-uh, Islam is just as bad as Christianity!’

    Nobody is arguing that there are not more human rights issues in Muslim countries – this is an obvious fact of numbers. But this is not due to any moral superiority on the part of Christianity – nothing that Islam does is new. After all, there were American Christians who supported the kill-the-gays bill in Uganda – this behavior in Christians is not limited to third world countries.

    @Carmicheal

    I’m aware that Christians do crazy stuff. I just think that, at this point in history, Muslims can match all of it and raise it several fold.

    Muslims can only raise it in that they have more opportunity for evil, not a greater capacity. Rwanda was only 18 years ago, you know.

    At any rate, I didn’t say that, on average, Christianity is as bad right now in this point in history. I only said that the worst of one matches the worst of the other. Islam only looks worse if you restrict your sample size to the last 11 years – which seems to me to be as dishonest as ‘proving’ that global warming is a hoax by only using 11 years of data. If you include ALL of history, you will find that Christianity has the much greater balance of suffering on it’s plate, simply because it’s older.

    I also think that Islam is harder to reform.

    You will find me in full agreement there.

    Of course, as the antics of the current pope demonstrate, that works both ways – Christianity is easier to regress as well.

  26. Alverant says

    @Carmichael when did I say “Christianity is as bad as Islam”? I said I suspected the amount of religious persecution by christians was underrated, not that it equaled/exceeded the amount done by muslims. Go back and re-read what I said and quit pretending that by saying “both sides do it” you’re really saying “both sides do it in equal amounts”.

    And yes, I stand by what I said. Christians committing violent acts in the name of christianity are rarely reported as religious persecution or terrorism and instead considered “hate crimes” at best. For example there was a recent incident of four marines in CA beating up a gay man only because he was gay. No one called it religious presecution. Now what do you think would happen if it wasn’t marines but a group of four muslims who did the same thing? Would they use the same terms or go for more extreme language?

  27. says

    Rebekah:

    Honestly other than abortion, the (Christian) right wing has been losing ground in the States on its other conservative social positions for the last twenty year. Just look at the unprecedented shift in favour of marriage equality in less than a decade.

    Your outlook on gender issues is incredibly narrow. Marriage is only one of many issues for GLBT people, and you don’t at all address abortion rights, which the xtian fundies are trying to roll back far past Roe.

    Also, I would take anything from the Torygraph (or, worse, the Daily Heil) with a massive grain of salt.)

    Carmichael, go read this article, go read Talk 2 Action, go read DogEmperor’s old posts, and tell me xtians aren’t just as bad.

    In addition, very few Christians believe the Bible is the actual word of God.

    Uh, no, a significant minority (20-30% of Americans) believe that.

  28. Godless Heathen says

    The reality, especially in the UK, is that there is so much fear surrounding standing up to Islam, that many of their intra-community crimes (e.g. home confinement, forced marriage, genital mutilation, slavery) go virtually unchecked. If the police intervene the response is immediate grandstanding and shouting about “Islamophobia” and “racism”.

    I think that’s a major part of this discussion. The majority of the U.S. isn’t like that. Americans tend to be anti-Islam and anti-Muslim and a lot of it does descend into racism (in the U.S. Arab=Muslim and Muslim=Arab) and Islamophobia.

    I don’t police (or anyone else) are afraid to prosecute people for crimes because they’re afraid of being seen as Islamophobic. Very few people in the US would have that reaction.

  29. Rebekah says

    More leftist outrage at the audacity of criticising Islam instead of engaging in utter hysteria about CHristianity…

    “Your outlook on gender issues is incredibly narrow. Marriage is only one of many issues for GLBT people, ”

    I mentioned marriage equality as an example of advancement. Only in your dishonest ad hominem does that become by entire perspective on gender issues.

    “and you don’t at all address abortion rights, which the xtian fundies are trying to roll back far past Roe.”

    Actually I did address abortion. I specifically noted that was the one area where conservatives had made unfortunate advances in the states. You even quoted that specific section.

    Thank you for typifying an Internet troll as thoroughly as possible.

    “Also, I would take anything from the Torygraph (or, worse, the Daily Heil) with a massive grain of salt.)”

    I am not a Tory, but your immediate questioning of the paper is infantile political rhetoric, just as much as if a Tory wrote off a new piece because it was in the Guardian.

  30. Rebekah says

    @QED

    “Wrong. Citation to a US Congressman on the House Energy committee quoting Genesis as proof that global warming doesn’t exist John Shimkus”

    Most opposition to global warming is rooted in neoliberal economic views, not religion. Our economies are literally built around fossil fuels. A few nutters citing religion will not change that, nor does it show any general trend in Christianity. In fact there are far more Christians promoting environmental stewardship I would posit.

    That is the entire problem with much of current leftist rhetoric. People like you are so fixated on the flaws and exceptions that you cannot make rational judgements on a general level.

    My personal favourite is when discussing female genital mutilation, you can always count on someone mentioning the aberrant cases of Western doctors performing clitoridectomies. There is no evidence that even 1% of Western women were ever subject to such a treatment, yet the clowns feel comfortable raising that bloody flag when discussing cultures like Somalia where 98%+ of women are subject to cutting as we write.

    Worse you can usually count on FGM being compared to voluntary plastic surgery on adult women. The absurd moral equivalencies that the far left will indulge is boundless.

  31. Stevarious says

    My personal favourite is when discussing female genital mutilation, you can always count on someone mentioning the aberrant cases of Western doctors performing clitoridectomies. There is no evidence that even 1% of Western women were ever subject to such a treatment, yet the clowns feel comfortable raising that bloody flag when discussing cultures like Somalia where 98%+ of women are subject to cutting as we write.

    Worse you can usually count on FGM being compared to voluntary plastic surgery on adult women. The absurd moral equivalencies that the far left will indulge is boundless.

    I have literally never seen this argument. Can you cite an example?

  32. Carmichael says

    @Alverant. Point taken. I’m happy to concede that your comment doesn’t precisely fit with the point I was trying to make, but it does still tend to shift the focus to Christianity. In any case, other commenters have specifically said that “Christianity IS as bad”.
    @Ms. Daisy Cutter. Thanks for the links. I’ll try to read those too. You may be right about the beliefs of American Christians regarding authorship of the Bible, even though, as far I understand, they have on theological warrant for such a belief. But it’s still a minority, compared to the vast majority of Muslims who think God wrote the Quran.
    Anyway, as I said, the “which is worse” question is debatable. Perhaps I am a victim of confirmation bias or something similar, but I still think that, on balance, Islam is worse.
    The point I was originally making, though, was that you’ll see this “Christianity is just as bad” or at least “Christians do it too” on any liberal blog with a post critical of Islam. It just strikes me as a something worth remarking on.
    Imagine, for example, the post had been about a study which found that Christianity was worse on some measure than was Islam. Would your first reaction be to point out that Muslims do terrible things too, or that Islam is just as bad? What would your reaction to such comments be?
    Worth a moment’s reflection maybe?

  33. Rebekah says

    Stevarious, since you are so deeply, deeply concerned about Islam being unfairly maligned by Islamopbobes, I am surprised you are completely ignorant of an argument which two seconds on google reveals in the New York Times and a major feminist academic journal:

    Comparison of elective adult surgery to forced genital cutting of children (the comparison to male circumcision is valid, something I say as a Jew who opposes the practice):

    http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/a-new-debate-on-female-circumcision/

    http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30140850?uid=3739960&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101028127803

    Western history of FGM being mentioned without any context of prevelance relative to its practice in Africa and the Islamic belt of Asia. I am not saying at all that the Western history is not noteworthy, but it is intellectually dishonest to just present it without a sense of its relative prevelence.

    http://www.fgmnetwork.org/Lightfoot-klein/prisonersofritual.htm

    Lightfoot-Klein is a major researcher on the topic, so her attitude is revealing.

    http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/fgm.html

    Basically you can cherry pick a few quacks and pretend it was ever a general phenomenon in the West when there is no evidence of that.

  34. Stevarious says

    @Rebekah

    since you are so deeply, deeply concerned about Islam being unfairly maligned by Islamopbobes

    What an absurd misrepresentation of my position. What have I said makes you think I give a dingo’s kidney about Islam? Fuck Islam, Islam is shit. My point was simply that Christianity is equally shitty, and the people who run around saying that Christianity’s shit doesn’t stink offend me deeply with their deliberate ignorance of history.

    As far as your links, they seem to be links to the quacks themselves, and not what I asked for, which is someone using them as justification for an argument for some sort of bubble-headed multi-culturalism that makes FGM ‘okay’. They are also all at least 5 years old, and two of them predate the internet. Nothing at all like the “when discussing female genital mutilation, you can always count on someone mentioning the aberrant cases of Western doctors performing clitoridectomies” that you claimed. One would expect that if it’s something you can ‘count on’, it would have happened within the last 5 years, wouldn’t it?

  35. Stevarious says

    Stevarious, Rebekah sounds like your typical frothing rightie who’s long on invective and short on facts. I’m surprised she hasn’t called us “moonbats” yet.

    Well, you know how it is. Since all liberals are identical, any ridiculous position claimed by a single liberal anywhere automagically belongs to all liberals everywhere.

    Technically, she is at least partially correct about this discussion, at least. She did bring it up, so technically, it has been brought up in this conversation. I don’t know if it really counts if she brings it up, though.

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