[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by ynwa03

I think its important to take a step back and really look at this situation with open eyes and an open mind. Its easy to have preconceived notions about this kind of complex conflict. The media in many ways plays a significant role in closing people off from really looking at issues from all sides. I urge you to read the article below and give it some thought.
Islam is not the problem here. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes with varying political beliefs.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...rror-islamist/

Like i said, this issue is really complex and to dumb it down to unconsidered generalizations is at the least insensitive and at worst very offensive.

Originally Posted by Rerun

Thank you. I also found many of the 56 comments to Mr. Fish's article to be very interesting.

This is also a very interesting article in rebuttle to Mr. Fish's.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/01/uc...stians-won-big

I found both pieces somewhat disappointing in their failure to deal with the issue from a more historically sensible perspective. On the one hand, I would agree that Islamic texts prone to predispose predispose readers to a acceptance of religiously motivated violence. On the other hand, while some of the same problems preside in Christian scriptures, what is ignored by both commentators is the hermeneutical gulf that separates Christian and Muslim readers from one another. Even in those Christian circles in which the "plain truth" of biblical texts is espoused, this is always enveloped by a practically impenetrable layer of Christianised axioms that have nothing to do with the texts themselves, and which have produced a benign acceptance of "what would Jesus do" over and against the tribalistically conditioned intent behind most of the imprecatory biblical texts. In other words, while there is an alarmingly high number of North American Christians who would condemn same-sex marriage, there are hardly any who would support legislation against homosexual behaviour as a capital crime.

The real stark difference between Muslims and Christians is not primarily tied to socioeconomic disparities, but rather more straightforwardly to the relationship between each religion and modernity. Modern Islam has much more in common with mediaeval Christianity than it does with any current expression of the faith, and here is the fundamental problem: One faith has been forced to re-invent itself in the face of scientific and social enlightenment, while the other has not. Even the Christian biblicists read their texts and practice their religion in a context that is thoroughly beholden to humanistic principles in such a way that is only just starting to make (very small) inroads into contemporary Islam.

I am fairly confident that reformation in Islam is only a matter of time, and that its occurrence will inevitably change the face of religious terrorism. However, I am not at all convinced that there will ever be any sort of appetite on the same scale within Christiandom for violent responses to social and political inequities, and this is because of the impact that +250 years of critical engagement with the biblical texts has wrought in our society. There is no historically realistic model in which Christianity and Islam are straightforward replacements of one another.