Because incessantly bringing up Christianity is simply a diversion. Leave it to history discussions, a few abortion clinic bombings doesn't stack up in importance to the subject of contemporary Islam.
It's not a diversion, it's a reminder. I'm sorry if you find it annoying, but I'm not trying to foreclose discussion of Islamic radicalism. I'm trying to dissuade the fear-mongering that has already infected so many Americans who recoil when they see a woman wearing a burqa. It's important to balance our critique, and reminders are an effective way to do that.
Are you saying "prohibited" as in, via government law? Because that's an easy position, most people don't want that, even the most hysterical progressive-stack obsessed social justice warrior doesn't want criticism of Islam to be illegal.
I'm talking about legal and social prohibition. I'm not saying you can't criticize Islam; but I do believe it's the role of discourse at large to balance your criticism with skepticism. This isn't relativism, but an attempt to situate the discussion within a larger context, which I believe is absolutely necessary for having a legitimate discussion.
A related example--there are plenty of Palestinian families who will never consider bombing Israeli communities; but when we read about Palestinian opinions of such attacks, we're horrified to learn that they often support them. It's much easier to understand that position when you consider Israeli-Palestinian relations since WWII.
Does that mean that Palestinian attacks on Jewish families are justified? No, absolutely not, and it would be absurd to say that I'm proposing such a position. All I would be saying is that we can separate anti-terrorist efforts from our perception of individual Palestinians who happen to not care that much about dead Israelis.
That's false, there is extensive polling on the general Christian position on these subjects, you can simply look them up.
Thank you--I figured there had to be something, but I didn't find any handy graphs at a quick search.
And as you say, that graph reveals that organized does need to be criticized, especially all the Evangelical Protestant bullshit.
The reason the polling data on Muslims comes up is because a) it's a fast growing demographic in the west, especially in Europe b) the religion has a problem with radicalization right now and c) Muslim majority countries are distinct in just how illiberal they are, even in so-called moderate shining examples of Islamic civility like Indonesia.
That all makes sense; but many American Christians are hypocrites when they condemn Islam but forgive their own homophobic or anti-feminist attitudes. So in that respect, that's a helpful graph. It's too bad America is predominantly made up of the descendants of Puritans and Calvinists.
