by Manny SchewitzFrance experienced another horrific act of terrorism today in Nice. Thousands of innocent people turned out to celebrate Bastille Day, and dozens were murdered by what appears to be an Islamic extremist who ploughed a truck into the crowd and then started shooting.
All over social media, the usual bigots have emerged to spew hatred towards Muslims. Donald Trump will almost certainly use this latest act of terrorism to further his message of isolationism and banning Muslims from entering our country.
There is absolutely no doubt that Islam has a problem with terrorism and extremist beliefs. It is a very conservative religion that has some fundamentalist sects like Wahhabism which have gained power over the past century.
The mistake that people make is blaming terrorism on Islam, rather than extremism. As a former Catholic of Jewish heritage who is now an atheist, I believe that all religions have both good and bad in them.
Religion gives people an excuse to act in horrific ways because they claim it is the will of their religious texts and their imagined deities. Religious extremism and terrorism is nothing new, it has been used since the beginning of recorded history to justify genocide, wars and greed.
Christianity was used to justify the subjugation of native peoples in the Americas by settlers and the Conquistadors. It allowed the Catholic Church to persecute, torture, kill and exile Jews and Muslims during the Inquisition. As the prominent religion of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church used its power to suppress scientists like Galileo and launch multiple crusades which killed Muslims, as well as fellow Catholics. In American history, acts of domestic terrorism by groups like the KKK have almost always been committed in the name of religion.
Judaism has allowed right-wing Israelis to avoid making peace with their Palestinian brothers, while Hamas and Hezbollah have used Islam to excuse attacking innocent Israeli citizens. Even though members of all three Abrahamic religions have more in common than they have differences, they continue to be separated by their most vocal and extreme clerics.
Terrorism isn’t born in a vacuum, but religion certainly helps people justify barreling a truck into a crowd of innocent people, or flying a jetliner into a skyscraper. It allows warlords and clerics to maintain political power and resist secular society in order to keep their territories or followers poor and ignorant.
The difference between Saudi Arabia or Iran and Western governments is theocracy versus secular government. If right-wing Christians like Kevin Swanson who promote bombing abortion clinics and executing LGBT people were allowed to control our government, we would see radical Islamic terrorism in a different form here in the United States.
Our human history is full of terrorism that was committed in the name of religion, but we didn’t always have the modern media to make angry young men famous. We can make these attacks less frequent, but only by leaving religion behind. –Modern Liberals
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