I didn't think that you personally were accusing people. I hope I didn't give that impression. I probably could have written "we" instead of "you."
Someone trying to explain how Islam doesn't encourage terrorism is on the defensive. The accusation has already been made. But the accusation doesn't make sense if the religion has no life of its own and exists only in the medium of individuals.
It's tough to defend against an accusation that doesn't make sense. If we can't point out what is bad, what is there to defend? The whole thing has a guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling to it. If the prosecutor can't make a sound case, there should be no need for a defense in the first place.
Anecdotally, the people I know who claim that Islam encourages terrorism don't know much about it. What they do know is shallow and cherry-picked, and any decent explanation immediately goes into the "it's different, so it's bad" bucket. It must be very difficult to demonstrate anything to these people.
First, inanimate objects can still be influential. Comics books, for instance, where one claimed to encourage violence, anti-social behaviour.
Second, The religion lives in those other individuals, much like any thought, meme, or ideology. Even the inanimate influences are often created by such individuals.
In the case of Islam, there are some fairly authoritative objects and people.
Are you suggesting there is no such thing as religion? Islam seems to be pretty serious about standardisation.
> The whole thing has a guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling to it
Not to me.
> Anecdotally..
In context, I can't really see these anecdotes as in good faith...
Someone trying to explain how Islam doesn't encourage terrorism is on the defensive. The accusation has already been made. But the accusation doesn't make sense if the religion has no life of its own and exists only in the medium of individuals.
It's tough to defend against an accusation that doesn't make sense. If we can't point out what is bad, what is there to defend? The whole thing has a guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling to it. If the prosecutor can't make a sound case, there should be no need for a defense in the first place.
Anecdotally, the people I know who claim that Islam encourages terrorism don't know much about it. What they do know is shallow and cherry-picked, and any decent explanation immediately goes into the "it's different, so it's bad" bucket. It must be very difficult to demonstrate anything to these people.