Kari posted:I am telling you that Islam has an image problem, in addition to a real problem in that it has become attractive to more nutcases than is currently the case with other religions.
caribny, saying that Islam has an image problem means 2 things: (i) a belief that terrorism has its roots in the religion of Islam; (ii) Islam is not a religion of God but an ideology of evil.
You try to live in the world of (i) above and say you disavow (ii). Well you can't have it both ways, because to say there is an image problem with Islam means to deny Islam is a religion of God.
Now while you wail that Muslims can do nothing, and imply that NON Muslims must fix the problem.
You see that word "imply"? Now that's your construct.
No one says non-Muslims must fix the ISIS/Al Qaeda/Taliban problem. No one says that Muslims must fix that problem. All one is saying is that the problem must be fixed. It is when you ordain that ONLY Muslims can fix that problem because they "own" Islam, then you come to that construct of a Muslim/non-Muslim divide over fixing that problem. Worse, it feeds into the notion that Islam is not a religion of God as it has inherent violent flaws. In other words you seek to negate Islam as a religion, yet you say I lump you with baseman. Now you see how much align you are with baseman. Interesting that one must begin a sentence with your handle and that of baseman's with lower case letters. You are both of lower understanding of the human condition. He's a full-out bigiot and you have to defend such charges on your own.
I wonder why you fixate in ISIS. When the Federal building in Oklahoma was bombed in 1995 America had already decided that it was "Muslims" until it was discovered that domestic white supremacist terrorists were involved. So Islam already didn't have the best image.
Get rid of ISIS and some other group replaces them. Joe Blow doesn't care about the details. All they care is that for some reasons most of the time bombs blow up in Europe, and quite often when bombs blow in the USA it is Muslims.
So feel free to think that Muslims don't have to figure out a solution to this problem, when indeed they suffer MORE from this than non Muslims.
As a matter of a fact, the more that bigots fixate on Muslims, the less they do on blacks, so it may even be in my interest for the image of Islam to remain what it is, so they get off my back. I do know that after 9/11 racism towards blacks almost disappeared for a bit.