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Goodbye Jesus

Why Do So Many Christians Hate Muslims?


Neon Genesis

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Why do so many Christians, especially right-wing fundamentalists, hate Muslims so much? Given how much they share on social justice issues, you'd think they would be best pals. But for some reason it's the left that seems most supportive of Islam and the Christian Right who is the most opposed to it. Yet both Christians and Muslims condemn homosexuality, they both have draconian and out-dated sex laws, they both promote a lot of anti-evolution pseudoscience, and many of them both believe their religion is the one true way. I know some Muslims believe that Christians and Jews will also be saved but they also believe the Trinity is blaspheme and most Christians believe in the Trinity, so it amounts to the same thing as thinking their religion is the one true way. I just don't get it when Christians and Muslims have so much in common why don't they get along more instead of condemning each other all the time?

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Same reason two people with narcissistic personality disorder can't get along. Both believe they are the way. Both believe every other religion is evil. Both claim divine punishment for nonbelievers. Both believe they have no need to understand the other side because the other side is "lost" and "inferior" to them. Neither can admit they are the same because that would go against their unwarranted self importance / irrational superiority complex.

 

Christianity and Islam cannot get along because they are too similar. :shrug:

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But then Christianity got along fine with Mormons when they fought against gay marriage in Prop 8.

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Christians can't get along with Christians and Muslims can't get along with Muslims either. And of course, everybody hates the Jews. If there's a point I guess it's that religion is psychosis in many instances.

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Why do so many Christians, especially right-wing fundamentalists, hate Muslims so much? Given how much they share on social justice issues, you'd think they would be best pals. But for some reason it's the left that seems most supportive of Islam and the Christian Right who is the most opposed to it. Yet both Christians and Muslims condemn homosexuality, they both have draconian and out-dated sex laws, they both promote a lot of anti-evolution pseudoscience, and many of them both believe their religion is the one true way. I know some Muslims believe that Christians and Jews will also be saved but they also believe the Trinity is blaspheme and most Christians believe in the Trinity, so it amounts to the same thing as thinking their religion is the one true way. I just don't get it when Christians and Muslims have so much in common why don't they get along more instead of condemning each other all the time?

 

Think about this Neon and try to think why it is this. You said yourself the left seems to be more supportive of Islam, when generally the left is anything but supportive to Christianity (legal sense and pandering sense)or religion in the grand scheme of things.

 

This is something I never understood about the left and it is something they seemed to have adopted over the past few years. Why is that? They don't really give a crap about Christianity but the care enough to not hurt the feelings of Islam?

 

The reason I think Christians hate Muslims or vise versa, it is just because it is another religion. Christians fight among themselves. So not that unusual, I don't think it is just the nature of religion.

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I think it depends on which type of left you're talking about because I think there are two types of liberals. There's the secular humanist liberals like the FFRF who are generally critical of all religion and then you have the postmodern left which places a high emphasis on multiculturalism and the idea that nobody can know the truth.

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Some time prior to the rise of the Moral Majority, 'born again' xtians proclaimed that Catholics were headed to hell, a la 'do not pass purgatory, do not collect a crown of jewels'.

 

When, due to the abortion issue, Catholics got in bed with the political (born again) fundamentalists... they stopped looking so evil.

 

So Catholics were evil at one time and now less so(but not good).

 

It appears to me that to a fundamentalist, any group that does not serve their purposes is evil and headed for hell.

 

So the question is not one of logical analysis but one of examining the pros and cons of another religion (Islam) and establishing whether they help or hinder Christianity. And that kind of circles back to your question, which paraphrases is, don't they have more in common than not.

 

Well... the structure of Islam and the structure of Christianity have alot in common in the same way that Deomcrats and Republicans have a whole lot in common.

 

That doesn't stop them from being enemies.

 

Still, if the Communist party (perhaps a more Chineese version rather than a Soviet) arose and became popular... Democrats and Republicans would suddenly be doing the nasty.

 

So in absence of a larger common enemy, both Islam and Christianity share a mutual emnity.

 

Mongo

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This is something I never understood about the left and it is something they seemed to have adopted over the past few years. Why is that? They don't really give a crap about Christianity but the care enough to not hurt the feelings of Islam?

 

They share the same common enemy. "The Left" sees "The West" as the epitome and source of all evil in modern times. "Islam" is presently at war with the West, so the old saying "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" holds true.

 

Apologies for all the quotation marks.

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Why do so many Christians, especially right-wing fundamentalists, hate Muslims so much?

 

Because they seem to pose serious competition, just like back in medieval times. Also, they're pissed that the Muslims stole their Abrahamic god and changed shit all around.

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This is something I never understood about the left and it is something they seemed to have adopted over the past few years. Why is that? They don't really give a crap about Christianity but the care enough to not hurt the feelings of Islam?

 

I hate those Al Qaeda/Taliban pig fuckers as much as anybody else, but I also realize the Ground Zero people are trying to be on our side and that they're the first line against home grown Islamic terrorism on our own soil. Consider that ordinary people in the Muslim world have a lot more to fear from Islamic fundamentalism than we do. We decry any possibility of a theocratic dystopia, though the possibility is remote. If you're a secular-minded person in Pakistan--and believe it or not, Pakistan has no shortage of them--you'd have a lot to fret about right now.

 

Islam is a shitty religion conducive to all sorts of violent fanaticism, but I'm against small countries being fucked over geopolitically and economically regardless the dominant creed. Also, most people in the Islamic world are really not all that religious, contrary to popular belief.

 

Here's a partial explanation I've been playing with. I think a lot of Americans look at our own Bible Belt, and they see that half of everyone there is a fundamentalist. And then they look at our entire homegrown crop of domestic fundies ranging from Pat Robertson on down to the crazy Jesus lady at work who helps make their shitty job even shittier. They see that and they take that and they project that onto the scarily foreign Islamic World because they have no other frame of reference by which to judge.

 

That's my pet theory.

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Here's a partial explanation I've been playing with. I think a lot of Americans look at our own Bible Belt, and they see that half of everyone there is a fundamentalist. And then they look at our entire homegrown crop of domestic fundies ranging from Pat Robertson on down to the crazy Jesus lady at work who helps make their shitty job even shittier. They see that and they take that and they project that onto the scarily foreign Islamic World because they have no other frame of reference by which to judge.

 

That, and they are fed a constant stream of news shot through a narrow lens. The world looks a lot different when you see it up close and in person than it does through the media.

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May as well ask why Christians hate other Christian groups. One is going to burn in hell and the other is bound for paradise......

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That, and they are fed a constant stream of news shot through a narrow lens. The world looks a lot different when you see it up close and in person than it does through the media.

 

That, and those Americans who are hardcore fundies...

 

...well, their religion says you're going to burn in hell forever unless you become one of them. So when they're confronted with radical/political Islam, they're confronted with the following:

 

1. An "offer you can't refuse" that's just as arbitrary and totalitarian as American fundie Christianity.

 

2. A God who's every bit as mean and nasty as the God of American fundie Christianity, and by extension, the God of medieval Christendom and of the Old Testament. So put 1 and 2 together and you've got serious ideological competition. Allah is as threatening to hardcore Christianity as a new McDonald's would be to a small town burger joint.

 

3. On top of that, the terrorists/soldiers of this rival God have bigger religious balls! They're as vindicative and nasty and violent as the God they serve, whereas the Christians lost their balls sometime back in the 18th century after all the shit that went down between the 13th and 17th centuries. Although I suppose there are Christian lads in this country who are itching for a religious war and feel compelled to join the military, or who came to see it that way after they enlisted. So they have comparable 'faith testicles'. Though they're not as crazy or as willing to die as the Mujaheddin.

 

So in short, they recognize their own God in the God of the terrorists. They resent the competition, because Allah stole their material! (Allah even claims to be Jehovah!) But the fundie Christians all know that Allah is really one of Satan's main henchmen who's gleefully fucking with the world, going so far as to have the audacity to claim he's also the god of the Jews and Christians. The less nutty ones believe that Allah is a non-existent fabrication and a terrible parody of the One True God.

 

And they're scared (and feel a little inadequate) because the violent factions of Allah seem to exhibit the kind of holy righteous fervor and stop-at-nothing ballsiness that hasn't been seen in Christendom since the days of Cromwell.

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I think it is because in the end, fundamentalists look at morality in a different way to regular people. To more secular people morality seems to be first and foremost about minimizing harm and maximizing happiness for the society, as such it is reasonably easy for more secular people to say that a good person is a good person regardless of whether he believes in my God or not (assuming I have one), because that is secondary to his doing good things. On the other hand from what I've seen of fundamentalism, morality is about submitting to the will of God, with doing "good" things being secondary (I would argue that secular "good" and fundamentalist "good" are two different things).

 

Is it good to perform human sacrifice? No. Was it good for Abraham to be willing to sacrifice his own Son? Yes. Why? because he was submitting to God's authority. It is submitting to God's authority which makes someone good, not good actions in and of themselves.

 

Even if Muslims agreed with fundamentalist Christians on all moral issues, they still would still be lacking for the simple reason that they are not submitting to God's authority, but rather following some false God.

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It has much to do with opposing points of view concerning the god of Abraham. Both Christians and Muslims claim to be descendants of Abraham and that their religion is based upon the god of Abraham. However, neither side can prove if their god is 'The God of Abraham™.' I guess the holy ghost just is not doing his work correctly.

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