Peaceful Muslims are Irrelevant to Peace

[SGOS]

Here's a video of a heated exchange during part of a Heritage Foundation panel on Benghazi.  A Muslim woman brings up the issue of most Muslims being peaceful.  While I hate practically everything the Heritage Foundation does, I found the response to the peaceful Muslims issue thought provoking.

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[Nam]

Most Christians™ are peaceful, yet look at what they're doing to the world: not making it better.

-Nam

[Hydra009]

I never thought I'd be saying this, but the Heritage Foundation is right.  Sharia (and more broadly, theocracy of any sort) is the problem.  The problem is the constant attempts by the religious to subvert secularism, seize control over the state, and impose religious law to the detriment of virtually everything and everyone else.  And this conflict is playing out over vast swathes of the world, not just the Middle East.

[Nam]

I never thought I'd be saying this, but the Heritage Foundation is right.  Sharia (and more broadly, theocracy of any sort) is the problem.  The problem is the constant attempts by the religious to subvert secularism, seize control over the state, and impose religious law to the detriment of virtually everything and everyone else.  And this conflict is playing out over vast swathes of the world, not just the Middle East.

They're not right because, in their minds, Christians™ are the ones who actually bring "peace" to the world when they argue against other religions. They are a Christian Conservative organization. When the first guy spoke on the panel he was talking how Muslims feel they are superior to others: that's how the Heritage people feel about themselves: they are superior to all others.

They're hypocrites.

-Nam

[Hakurei Reimu]

Peaceful Muslims make themselves irrelevant to peace by not speaking out against their more violent brothers and sisters. If and when they start speaking up against Jihadists, they'll be relevant.

[Solitary]

Some of them have spoken against the terrorist and insist like Christians that a religious war is about love and freedom, not violence. However, the Old Testament and the Quran contradict that, and also the New Testament if read as is for the most part. I do believe most Christians are more civilized than most Muslims, but there are those that pay the price for the radicals in both religions. I'd like to see the moderate Islamics and Christians get together with secular organizations to censor radical religious beliefs that bring more harm than any imagined good by the insane religious. Solitary

[Nam]

Some of them have spoken against the terrorist and insist like Christians that a religious war is about love and freedom, not violence. However, the Old Testament and the Quran contradict that, and also the New Testament if read as is for the most part. I do believe most Christians are more civilized than most Muslims, but there are those that pay the price for the radicals in both religions. I'd like to see the moderate Islamics and Christians get together with secular organizations to censor radical religious beliefs that bring more harm than any imagined good by the insane religious. Solitary

If conservative Christians could stone people in the streets legally, I think many of them would. Secular government prevents them from carrying out theological judgement.

-Nam

[SGOS]

Peaceful Muslims make themselves irrelevant to peace by not speaking out against their more violent brothers and sisters. If and when they start speaking up against Jihadists, they'll be relevant.

Yes, I used to wonder about that quite a bit.  Why don't they speak out against terrorism?  How could we enlist their help?  But watching that video was like one of those insight moments; I had never considered peaceful Muslims as irrelevant.  They profess that they are not like the terrorists, and that's true, but they are irrelevant.

[Hydra009]

Peaceful Muslims make themselves irrelevant to peace by not speaking out against their more violent brothers and sisters. If and when they start speaking up against Jihadists, they'll be relevant.

To be honest, this is sort of a weird expectation.  I mean, it's not like you and I have to denounce other atheists' actions whenever something happens in some Communist hellhole - North Korea comes to mind.  Or Christians have to collectively denounce Breivik.  It's pretty much a given.  Of course, we all often go that extra mile and actively denounce this stuff, but we don't have to.  And anyone trying to infer support from silence would be mistaken.

[frosty]

In a broader sense, the point is correct yet the point itself is irrelevant. Humans are a very mixed bunch, Muslims included. If a Hindu kills somebody, does that mean that every Hindu on the planet is magically connected to the murder and they should all condemn it until the end of time? No. People make the mistake of pasting other people into distinct groups, then attaching every action of a person/persons to that group, or in other words, guilty by association. You look like these people, you have similar ideals, therefore you are attached to what they do even if you don't have a social connection with them.

The next time you see someone accuse all Muslims of either being violent or being apathetic to violence, read what I said above. I have researched this before, people do it with Muslims and other groups as well, where they taint their own perception of a group even if only one person in that said group does a harmful act. Human beings are tribal, instinctual creatures, sometimes when people are being "bigots" it's not necessarily their own conscious fault.

[Cocoa Beware]

I dont understand the loud woman's point.

Every population on Earth has its share of violent people.

Peaceful people dont really matter anywhere... therefore lets get our hackles up about everyone?

I am confused.

[SGOS]

I dont understand the loud woman's point.
Peaceful people dont really matter anywhere... therefore lets get our hackles up about everyone?

I think the loud woman got her hackles up about the Muslim lady pushing the politically correct view of Islam during a panel discussion of what to do about violent Islam.  We don't have the entire clip, but it would be logical to assume the purpose of the panel was to discuss solutions to the problem of Islamic terrorism.

The Muslim lady tries to reframe the discussion into talking about the peaceful intentions of Islam.  She seems to want the panel to take time out of their agenda and praise peaceful Muslims.  She is attempting to score points for Islam, or at least criticize the panel for not awarding peace points to her religion. In effect, it is borderline proselytizing.  But such warm fuzzies are more appropriate in diplomatic speech; Not so much in problem solving on the issue at hand.

Consequently, the loud woman tells the Muslim lady that her purpose there is irrelevant to the problem.  The Muslim lady then acknowledges the comment by saying she doesn't want to think of herself as irrelevant, which of course she is not in her everyday life, but her agenda is viewed by the panel as irrelevant in solving the problem of Islamic violence, which she seems uninterested in discussing.

At least, those are the dynamics of the exchange as best I can tell. 

[Cocoa Beware]

The problem I have is that Muslims are anything but a unified people, and as such very much distinct from Nazi Germany or WW2 "Bushido" Japan.

Its an extraordinarily diverse 1.8 billion, and conflicted amongst themselves almost as much as with others.

Now if you want to claim that there are a number of Muslim nations who are ruled by repressive regimes who for example kill people for being atheists or homosexuals then you can compare these states to the Nazis or whomever you feel like.

[frosty]

The problem I have is that Muslims are anything but a unified people, and as such very much distinct from Nazi Germany or WW2 "Bushido" Japan.

Its an extraordinarily diverse 1.8 billion, and conflicted amongst themselves almost as much as with others.

Now if you want to claim that there are a number of Muslim nations who are ruled by repressive regimes who for example kill people for being atheists or homosexuals then you can compare these states to the Nazis or whomever you feel like.

Muslims in their heartlands are either ruled by oppressive demigod regimes or oppressive medieval religious brutes. I think you need to understand that the people of this organization are bashing Muslims in the way they are because it's their MO, and they score political points in doing so. It's the way the game is played.

[SGOS]

Without the entire video, we don't know if the panel was bashing all Muslims or not.  But it wouldn't surprise me if the Heritage Foundation was promoting a rather ham fisted George Bush agenda.  But even Bush was careful to point out that most Muslims were well meaning.  He stated that publicly on several occasions.  However, his actions treated the well meaning Muslims as irrelevant.  But then, Bush's agenda was in no way an effort at peace.  It was an effort at war, and for purposes that we can only speculate about.