Actually that doesn't really surprise me. I don't disagree that we all have to denounce the acts of ISIS (and other outdated practices) and fight against them ideologically, the difficulty comes in how to do that, as a non-Muslim person, without also marginilizing Islam itself, and therefore pushing more people to extremism as you denounce their fundamental beliefs. It's not hard to see why a young person would look at what goes on the US, the hate that is being spewed about them (Islamics, not necessarily just ISIS) there and in other nations, and have an angry response. Imagine the garbage we see shat all over Fox News and the like but reversed and propaganized against something that is a fundamental truth to you. Something that you build your life around. Even if youre a peaceful person it would make you angry, possibly enough to bring about violence. Think about how mad some people get over something as minor as a sports match.
Now, I don't know if I believe in something passionately enough to kill someone over it, but we do have to find a way to fight it without A) physically fighting it and B) angering even more people with rhetoric that groups them as a single entity that is a plague on society. We have a few of those, neither ISIS, nor Islam are alone in that regard.
So while we should all be against what they stand for, what can we really do? That's not a throw my hands up and give up statement, it's a sincere question. What is there to do? Even as a Muslim moderate, what can they do? There's a lot of people throwing up how they should be denouncing the actions, and publically shaming it all. There is terror and bravery involved in those actions that is not in everyone's DNA. It's part of the way we need to fight it, but people also need to understand that doing so, in major ways, involves putting their, and their loved one's safety at risk. Would you do that? If the KKK had another uprising and was bombing people who disagreed with them all over the world, would you be holding large Christian, gatherings denouncing their actions publically, a group known to torture and murder for far less?
The world needs people who put themselves in harms way to do good, but it's not an accident that those people generally end up dead, and that they are few and far between. It's easy to sit at a keyboard and claim we want to be part of the solution, but how hard are you really willing to try?
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