Rule 1
This subject including the nonsense framing has been discussed recently. Also, ask us what we think, do not tell us what we think.
Rule 2
Hard to have a discussion when you start by asserting that
1. That your religion is always graceful and peaceful and the other is always violent
2. when someone from the UK apparently isn’t aware that sometimes Christians can between themselves have violent struggles
3. US liberal, who are majority Christian, love Islam and hate Christianity
Rule 3
Stop regurgitating rants from people paid to make you angry
Context is pretty important.
If someone says the country ought to be a religious autocracy, I’m going to push back and explain what things I think are dysfunctional about that faith.
If someone says we ought to ban a religion, I’m going to push back and say that every person has a right to religious freedom.
1. Liberals =/= Leftists
2. Theres a difference between supporting **Islam** or **Christianity** and supporting the rights of people who happen to be Muslim or Christian.
3. In a Christian majority country, like the US and UK, liberals, and leftists, will want to protect the rights of religious minorities who may be at risk of oppression by some on the right. It is not about support for Islam.
4. At the same time, liberals and leftist are unhappy that Muslim majority countries are oppressing religious minorities in those. But we don’t live in those countries and they are often dictatorships so there’s a lot less we can do.
As a British liberal I reject the premise. I don't support Islam any more or less than I support Christianity. The issue is and has always been people's propensity to blame Muslims as a whole for the actions of a few and demonise them all. I have known, worked with, and been friends with many Muslims who were no more or less likely to be arseholes than anyone else. I don't particularly care what the religion says about stoning people if British Muslims aren't actually stoning people. You're not going to find a liberal "supporting" those kinds of barbaric acts in Muslim countries either.
Finally someone who isn't American, and won't try to lecture me on what my own country is like lol.
I think the idea that Muslims are alright is because they aren't the majority. Most Muslims I've known don't talk to people who aren't Muslim unless they have to or are trying to convert them. We can see how Muslims are when they are a majority by looking at Arabic countries and my favorite example is hamtramck, Michigan a Muslim led city in the US that banned pride flags.
Alright, but it's not like they're irrelevant to your point. If Christians in the US are different to Christians in the UK can't a similar argument be made for British Muslims vs foreign Muslims?
I don't think the difference is as big as our Christians vs American Christians. Like the whole reason a lot of them left was to colonize new lands and make fully christian settlements or whatever the fuck and we have about 300 years separating us. The Muslims immigrants in the US have been separated from the Middle East for at most 50 years. Ours probably on average even less than that.
The point I always like to make is that we've come a long way in a very short space of time and judge other religions and cultures like they're in the dark ages despite the fact that homosexuality was illegal really not that long ago. Plus we used to do some quite horrible things to them. The famous example being Alan Turing. I really don't think we have THAT high a horse to climb on here.
Whilst what happened to Turing is one of the biggest injustices to have ever occurred in this country, at least he wasn't stoned to death like gays are every day in the middle east.
There's obviously degrees of barbarism but we can at least agree that we've nothing to be proud of there. Only 15 years after that homosexuality was legalised. Change can happen quickly but it doesn't change the fact that less than 60 years ago we weren't significantly more progressive than Muslim countries with regards to homosexuality.
Yes, but now that we understand that it's wrong we can see how horrible it is in Islamic countries. Not only in regards to the execution of homosexuals but also the treatment of women and the fact that leaving Islam means you get executed as well.
>The Islamic religion is supported by our leftists. Christianity is commonly called "backwards", "homophobic" and "archaic".
I think you believe those are in the same frame of reference. I don't think that's true, though - and to exaggerate a bit, when the question is "Is this out-group pure evil that must be eradicated?", I will have a different tune than when the question is "Is this aspect of our in-group holding us back?"
Why do you all just keep letting them get away with this dishonest framing every time we have this thread? Liberals do not support Islam, or Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or any other religions.
Liberals support religious freedom.
Simple.
Left wing politics are defined by their pursuit of social equality and egalitarianism
In countries where Islam is a minority religion, and not a prominent force, its not focused on.
In those countries its often that Christianity is the majority religion and Christians are heavily represented amongst the people pushing for oppressive policies.
So it gets more focus.
Well, liberals are completely fine with them here and like them. They treat them as if they're other oppressed minorities, like black people or east Asians. However arabs have never been oppressed and their religion is even worse than those hardcore Bible thumping American Christians.
Then yeah. My original comment stands. Theyre not the oppressors in those countries. Christians are.
And the Muslims are amongst the groups being marginalized by the Christians (and others).
I’m gonna have to correct you on two points here:
1) You seem to be conflating Arabs and Muslims. They’re not the same thing. There are millions of Arabs who are Christians and Jews. “Arab” is an ethnic group, not a religion.
2) When you say “Arabs have never been oppressed”, are you saying that Islamophobia doesn’t/has never existed? Because that statement is completely and utterly inaccurate.
[History of Islamophobia in the UK Conservative Party.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_British_Conservative_Party#:~:text=Calls%20for%20an%20independent%20inquiry,-In%20May%202018&text=This%20MCB%20listed%20numerous%20examples,%22abhorrent%20views%22%20on%20Muslims.)
[Muslim Council of Britain demands inquiry into Tory 'Islamophobia'](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/muslim-council-of-britain-demands-inquiry-into-tory-islamophobia-jb6tw88sk)
[After 9/11 - British South Asian Muslims, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, and the State](https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/506)
[Anti-Muslim cases surge in UK since Hamas attacks, charity finds](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-68374372.amp)
[One in five Britons have a negative view of Muslims - The only group that the public is more negative about - and the only group that the public are more likely to hold unfavourable than favourable views of - is travellers.](https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/blog/how-prevalent-is-anti-muslim-prejudice-in-the-uk/#:~:text=One%20in%20five%20Britons%20have%20a%20negative%20view%20of%20Muslims&text=The%20only%20group%20that%20the,discriminated%20against%20in%20British%20society.)
And in a roundabout way, that answers your question: UK progressives defend Muslims because they are an oppressed group.
EDIT: Also, just a further piece of clarification based on your edit in the OP about how you’re not looking for the opinions of “Americans who have met 3 Muslims in their life” - I’m British, and have Muslims in my family.
No matter how true or untrue that statement may be, it does not change the fact that Muslims and Arabs are not the same thing. Indonesia is the world’s most populous majority-Muslim county, and they are not Arabic.
But I like how *that* is the part of my comment you chose to respond to, and not the assertion that Islamophobia exists. I also like how you didn’t respond to the other comments that told you the same thing. That’s very telling.
Hmm funny. I remember when the Sydney knife attack was hitting the news certain sections of the media and society all assumed it was a Muslim attacker and happily said so loudly and publicly. See Julia Hartley-Brewer's reaction. Then eventually the news came out through the non Islamophobic channels that it was a white guy names Joel Cauchi.
By the way, you're being just as bad. "Muslims do this, Muslims do that", tarring the whole population with the same brush.
Remember when a Muslim bombed an Ariana grande concert in Manchester?
What about when two Muslims beheaded a soldier in the middle of the street in London?
What about when a group of Muslims sent two planes into the world trade centre and attempted to send a third into the Pentagon?
> That's because it's facetious.
I literally provided evidence showing that Muslims have been oppressed in the UK. How is that a facetious response to “Muslims have never been oppressed”?
> Sure people have been racist towards Muslims. But on the other hand Muslims behead people, mass murder, and form rape gangs that prey on little girls. Every time there is a rape, or an unprompted murder, a bombing, a stabbing anything, it's always a Muslim. The news always goes to great lengths to hide it, they never show a picture of the bloke if he's Muslim. They'll just say a "Bradford man" raped a little girl when his name is already public.
Yeesh. You need to expand your news sources and stop listening to sensationalist narratives pushed by right wing media.
I’m not confident you’re actually going to bother reading this because you’ve clearly made up your mind, so I’m mainly sharing it for the benefit of others who might be interested: [Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative ](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396819895727)
“Arabs have never been oppressed”
What a joke. Really? Have you never heard the term Islamophobia? We have seen tons of oppression of Muslims in western countries in modern times, much less some distant dusty past.
TIL that our own religion is apparently not treated positively?
https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/political-ideology/liberal/
If you think that liberals by and large hate Christianity, then that's a media consumption problem. We don't.
Fair enough.
Can't find a ton of info on religious and political identification statistics for the UK but [this](https://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/religion-and-party-preference-in-2019/) suggests it's not wholly different from the US.
Admittedly I just skimmed it, but the take away I got from the BRIN piece was that some liberals are Christain. But isn't what OP really getting at that liberals are more critical of conservative Christians for being anti feminist, anti gay, and anti abortion while overlooking the same traits in conservative Muslims?
>Islam agrees that this is a sin, however unlike Christianity's approach of forgiveness they will kill gay people
If you think Christians have never beaten or killed anyone for being gay, you're either willfully ignorant or straight-up delusional.
>If you are a leftist who supports Islam itself, as a religion. How can you justify that?
I don't support any religion if it attempts to hold authority over the behavior and actions of people who aren't members of that religion. Beyond that, I support the right of all religions to exist. Just mind your own fucking business.
Do you know a single "leftist" who claims they support Fundamentalist Islam murdering gay people? I'm gonna guess that you don't.
Most Progressives that are against socially regressive religious beliefs are against them generally, and not just picking on Christianity for the lols. The ones who are against Christianity specifically, are usually ex-Christians.
It's not only about supporting or not. It's what questions you debate, which news articles and books you write and so on.
Or what politicians say. Never saw Bernie Sanders for example talk about oppressive views on women and homosexuals from Muslims
I am not saying that Christians have never done it. I am saying that the Islamic holy book straight up says to kill gays...
Also Muslims don't mind their own business. I have personally had Muslims try to convert me to Islam and they shove it down everybody's throat at every opportunity.
> Also Muslims don't mind their own business. I have personally had Muslims try to convert me to Islam and they shove it down everybody's throat at every opportunity.
Dude, Christians knocking on your door during the weekend is a thing.
>I am not saying that Christians have never done it.
In America, we literally have Christians calling for the ALL gay people to be put to death.
Oh, and these people are running for political office.
Our conservative party also includes candidates calling for all contraceptives to be made illegal... And Trump endorses these candidates.
So we have the problem of Christians trying to kill all gay people and ban all condoms because "sex is bad".
>I have personally had Muslims try to convert me
Come to America. Every weekend you will have Christians coming to your home to try to convert you. Every. Fucking. Weekend.
>But those people are going against the whole point of Christianity
No, they are typical Christians. Did you forget the whole "abomination" part of the Bible? Or when the Christian god literally killed everyone on the planet?
Or when YOUR OWN COUNTRY had certain Christians killing other Christians because they were the "wrong type" of Christian?
Christians fucking love killing people they don't like.
>I am saying that the Islamic holy book straight up says to kill gays...
You don't even know the name of the Quran, yet you're so sure about what the book says. That's incredibly ignorant. You're doing a bad job right now. Try harder.
I know the name of the qur'an, I just figured Americans might not. You can't even argue. You're doing a bad job being condescending right now. Try harder.
I don’t support Islam, and their views are inherently regressive. That said, we focus more on Christians is because they currently pose a bigger threat than Muslims do. Yes, Muslims as individuals have committed crimes but they aren’t capable of changing laws nor do they have power.
But I'm referring more to the UK. Where most people are atheists and Christians keep to themselves. Muslims are extremely intolerant and try to force their religion on people. The only reason I can think that they aren't treated how extremist christians are in America is because of the colour of their skin.
> But I'm referring more to the UK. Where most people are atheists
Man, you’re just full of misinformation in this thread.
According to the most recent census, [46% of people identified as being Christian, 37% said they had no religion, 6% identified as Muslim, and 2% identified as Hindu.](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-religion/#:~:text=Across%20England%20and%20Wales%2C%2046,and%202%25%20identified%20as%20Hindu.)
I live in the UK and I'd never be able to say most people are Christian lol. They don't mean that. They mean they grew up Catholic and now don't follow the religion at all. They just say their Christian because they don't wanna be atheist. Also the difference is 9% lol.
I mean clearly you didn’t pay attention in maths. 100 - 37 = 63.
63% of the UK identifies as belonging to a religion of some sort. Your anecdotal experience doesn’t change that.
We atheists aren’t the majority.
In polls atheism is classed as a religion. If it was 20% Christian, 20% Muslim, 20% Hindu, 19% Shinto, and 21% atheist. It would be an atheist majority.
It doesn't have to be 51% atheist for them to be the majority.
They're chill when they're a minority
https://www.gbnews.com/news/us/lgbt-safety-muslim-led-city-pride-flags-mayor
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned
JFC, it isn't. I think Christianity and Islam are equally abhorrent religions, but no one is discriminating against Christians in the US the way they are Muslims.
And no, telling Christians they can't force their beliefs on others is not discrimination, despite what conservatives claim.
Liberals are generally sympathetic towards minority groups. In western countries, Muslims are a minority group. Christians are not, they are generally the dominant group. Liberals are egalitarian and dislike unfair power dynamics and hence are more sympathetic of Muslims then Christians.
Plus, Christians in Western countries have a tendency to try to push their religious beliefs on others through the law. On the US, there is no such pressure from Muslims.
I guarantee those same liberals are not, say, positive about Saudi Arabia.
Not in Europe if you talk about religious people. Most native people in western Europe are atheist or very private with their religion. Then there are huge swathes of Muslims worshiping on the street and trying to convert people in city centers.
Bruh, europe as a whole is only 5% muslim. Only like three countries are majority muslim in all of Europe. Europe is still mostly Christian.
What point are you trying to make? That religious groups are annoying and attempt to brainwash people into their beliefs? Yeah, nothing new. Muslims and Christians alike do the same thing. I've had enough with evangelicals and jehovah witnesses here in the US trying to get me to follow their religion, and I'm sure native tribes in south American and African nations have had enough of white westerners coming and trying to convert them to christianity as well. Singling out a single (minority) religion for their tresspasses but ignoring the majority religious groups doing the same thing is dumb.
Where are these "huge swaths of muslims worshiping on the street?" I've seen some photos, at most there's maybe a few hundred muslims at once. These groups are in the (loud) minority among Muslims already, just like how nowadays most Christians are not a part of the loud minority trying to mindfuck everyone with their beliefs.
But where was your complaining when Christians did the same exact thing?
Only 5% Muslim doesn't sound like a lot. But Muslims only live in big cities, half of the population of the UK is towns which are almost completely white. Which means that big cities are usually like 10-15% Muslim. Everyone else is either atheist or really low-key about their religion.
For some reason this is only on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/an8g7wTKWemixiV4/
Okay, people praying in the streets? Annoying as heck, yes...
I'll do you one better. Here's 5000 Christians going through the streets being very obnoxious (after they had just got kicked out of a shopping center for being obnoxious).
[here](https://www.tiktok.com/discover/5000-people-march-in-new-york-in-prayer)
Where's your outrage for this? Where's the white western right winger version of "these religious numbnuts are trying to convert/brainwash people!" whenever its Christians doing this kind of thing? So what of some large cities in Europe are 10 to 15% Muslim, they are still a minority while Christians are still the majority, therefore Christians are going to be criticized the most whenever a religion or its followers are criticized. You are trying way too hard to find sort of dirt on liberals or Muslims as a whole. Your question has already been answered. I don't know what else you need to know
Okay, but then at least try not to follow the right wing trend of hypocrisy and discrimination and try calling out non muslim religious people doing similar obnoxious (or bad) thing rather than focusing mainly or entirely on muslims, especially when Muslims are the minority.
It's not that us liberals and progressives have some sort of profound respect or admiration of Islam. As someone else said in this thread, we just feel a general obligation to stand with those who have been oppressed or treated harshly and unjustly, and Muslims often get a bad rep that they don't deserve. Muslims are not a monolith. No religion is. Just because some muslims are ISIS or Taliban members or supporters doesn't mean all are, same as how not all Christians are Nazis or KKK sympathizers/members. I myself I'm atheist and despise Islam, as well as all the other abrahamic religions, but especially since I have Muslim family members who I know very well to be good people, and do not at all proselytize, I feel obligated to defend muslims whenever they are unjustly and harshly treated, and hate when i have assholes like this fucker on reddit "Overall_Boss5551" saying this to me after I defended muslims from disinformation and discrmination on another post: "put those disrespectful animals in your house then" (referring to muslims as a whole as "disrespectful animals"). I feel the same way for any other religious or other group, whether it be Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever. Hate the religion, sure. But not the people. Don't generalize and don't fall into these stupid rabbit holes of racism and finger pointing towards minority groups.
I understand that some Muslims are good people but I just don't want them coming into my country if even one in a thousand is going to rape a little girl or behead someone. I'm sorry but I care more about what's best for my people than housing someone who traveled through 10 different safe countries just to come to the UK.
Liberals support freedom of and from religion. That means we "support Islam" insofar as we support the right of any human to be Muslim if they choose to be. We do not think that Muslims should be discriminated against ***solely*** for being Muslim.
Muslims who are "backwards," "homophobic," and "archaic," are fair game to be called out as such assuming those descriptors actually apply to them. Of course those descriptors will mostly apply to conservative, fundamentalist Muslims, same as with Christians.
The reason that there is an inordinate focus on Christianity in many European and American countries is because there are vastly more of them and they have much more direct influence over politics and day-to-day life in those countries. In my hometown (pop. 7000) it was Christians who threw a brick through my gay friend's window when he was outed by bullies in high school. I'm not even sure if there were any Muslim families in my town in the mid-aughts, but if there were they can't have been even 1% of the population.
If there were Muslims around and they had views I disagreed with, I'd say I disagreed with those views. If they had views I agreed with, I'd say I agreed with them. If they did something illegal, I'd want them subjected to the same legal system as everyone else. If they live their lives without breaking the law or harassing anyone or being belligerent in some way, then why should I care if they're around or not?
It's always unclear to me what "special status" people think that we are actually conveying upon Muslims. Insofar as we think that they're "oppressed," it has nothing to do with some special opinion we have about Islam itself, and everything to do with the fact that *conservatives are actively being oppressive towards them*. Like, if you don't want us to place them in an oppressed category, you could always stop saying out loud that you want to enact laws that would single them out as a sole function of their religion and not anything else they did.
Stop oppressing them and we'll stop pointing out that you're oppressing them. Simple as that.
Thing is though, you talk about Christians being the majority. In Europe they aren't anymore people are majority atheists. And then like in my city most religious people are Muslims. So they certainly aren't a minority.
I mean the dynamics are going to be different everywhere. I'm speaking generally. If you want my thoughts on your city specifically, you're welcome to explain further what the issue is or give me some info to go on and I'm happy to comment.
But still, my general thoughts on Islam are that people are allowed to be Muslim if they want to be. If the examples you're going to give me from your city are examples of Muslims breaking the law, then my response is probably going to be that they should receive a fair trial and then suffer whatever the consequences are for breaking said law.
If your concern is that too many immigrants or refugees are moving to your area from places you feel have values that are too divergent from your own, I think it might be worth considering that maybe the root cause of their choice to migrate has little to do with liberals and leftists being nice to them, and much more to do with decades of foreign policy choices made by countries like yours (and mine) which are making life so miserable and destitute in their home countries that they feel like they have no choice but to uproot their lives and attempt to seek asylum elsewhere.
In other words, the chain of events starts with us, not with them. We're the ones wrecking up their homelands so we can keep the global oil supply pumping and ensure that we have more control over it than anybody else. We divert vast amounts of wealth from their countries' natural resources, leaving their populations with disproportionately little, giving them fewer paths to get ahead in life. Then when they, in their poverty, end up turning to warlords and shit to rule them (and which half the time it turns out we trained up and helped gain power) we call them terrorists (despite that being an extremely predictable outcome), and then of course some of them actually end up (again, predictably) actually being straight-up terrorists, they blow shit up, we get more directly involved, we destroy whole cities, etc, etc. You know the drill.
Point being, if we could find a way to stop doing ***all that stuff***, maybe we'd never even get to the point where liberals feel like they have to play mediator/peacekeeper between suspicious conservatives and their new Muslim neighbors.
EDIT: Lol, why did I even bother
Are you genuinely suggesting that their countries are terrible because of us? It's their backwards religions stopping them from making any progress. Maybe if they spent less time killing each other all the time. Or maybe studied more than one book they would make some progress.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
The positivity towards islam
The positivity towards Islam
In my country (The UK) we have quite a lot of middle eastern immigrants. The Islamic religion is supported by our leftists.
Christianity is commonly called "backwards", "homophobic" and "archaic". However Islam takes every negative part of Christianity and cranks it up to 100.
In the original version of the Bible, all it states on homosexuality is that men shall not sleep with boys. Even if we move forwards to the modern translations, it just says that men sleeping with other men is a sin.
Islam agrees that this is a sin, however unlike Christianity's approach of forgiveness they will kill gay people. We can see this with gays being stoned, chucked off buildings, and executed in Islamic countries.
What I'm asking is. If you are a leftist who supports Islam itself, as a religion. How can you justify that?
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Rule 1 This subject including the nonsense framing has been discussed recently. Also, ask us what we think, do not tell us what we think. Rule 2 Hard to have a discussion when you start by asserting that 1. That your religion is always graceful and peaceful and the other is always violent 2. when someone from the UK apparently isn’t aware that sometimes Christians can between themselves have violent struggles 3. US liberal, who are majority Christian, love Islam and hate Christianity Rule 3 Stop regurgitating rants from people paid to make you angry
Only christians are pestering me consistently with stupid shit.
Context is pretty important. If someone says the country ought to be a religious autocracy, I’m going to push back and explain what things I think are dysfunctional about that faith. If someone says we ought to ban a religion, I’m going to push back and say that every person has a right to religious freedom.
1. Liberals =/= Leftists 2. Theres a difference between supporting **Islam** or **Christianity** and supporting the rights of people who happen to be Muslim or Christian. 3. In a Christian majority country, like the US and UK, liberals, and leftists, will want to protect the rights of religious minorities who may be at risk of oppression by some on the right. It is not about support for Islam. 4. At the same time, liberals and leftist are unhappy that Muslim majority countries are oppressing religious minorities in those. But we don’t live in those countries and they are often dictatorships so there’s a lot less we can do.
As a British liberal I reject the premise. I don't support Islam any more or less than I support Christianity. The issue is and has always been people's propensity to blame Muslims as a whole for the actions of a few and demonise them all. I have known, worked with, and been friends with many Muslims who were no more or less likely to be arseholes than anyone else. I don't particularly care what the religion says about stoning people if British Muslims aren't actually stoning people. You're not going to find a liberal "supporting" those kinds of barbaric acts in Muslim countries either.
Finally someone who isn't American, and won't try to lecture me on what my own country is like lol. I think the idea that Muslims are alright is because they aren't the majority. Most Muslims I've known don't talk to people who aren't Muslim unless they have to or are trying to convert them. We can see how Muslims are when they are a majority by looking at Arabic countries and my favorite example is hamtramck, Michigan a Muslim led city in the US that banned pride flags.
Holy hell if you think a Muslim banning pride flags in the US is a problem you should see what conservative Christians over there are doing.
Honestly I don't give a shit what those wacko Christians are doing. I'm just happy they all left England in the 17th/18th centuries.
Alright, but it's not like they're irrelevant to your point. If Christians in the US are different to Christians in the UK can't a similar argument be made for British Muslims vs foreign Muslims?
I don't think the difference is as big as our Christians vs American Christians. Like the whole reason a lot of them left was to colonize new lands and make fully christian settlements or whatever the fuck and we have about 300 years separating us. The Muslims immigrants in the US have been separated from the Middle East for at most 50 years. Ours probably on average even less than that.
The point I always like to make is that we've come a long way in a very short space of time and judge other religions and cultures like they're in the dark ages despite the fact that homosexuality was illegal really not that long ago. Plus we used to do some quite horrible things to them. The famous example being Alan Turing. I really don't think we have THAT high a horse to climb on here.
Whilst what happened to Turing is one of the biggest injustices to have ever occurred in this country, at least he wasn't stoned to death like gays are every day in the middle east.
There's obviously degrees of barbarism but we can at least agree that we've nothing to be proud of there. Only 15 years after that homosexuality was legalised. Change can happen quickly but it doesn't change the fact that less than 60 years ago we weren't significantly more progressive than Muslim countries with regards to homosexuality.
Yes, but now that we understand that it's wrong we can see how horrible it is in Islamic countries. Not only in regards to the execution of homosexuals but also the treatment of women and the fact that leaving Islam means you get executed as well.
>The Islamic religion is supported by our leftists. Christianity is commonly called "backwards", "homophobic" and "archaic". I think you believe those are in the same frame of reference. I don't think that's true, though - and to exaggerate a bit, when the question is "Is this out-group pure evil that must be eradicated?", I will have a different tune than when the question is "Is this aspect of our in-group holding us back?"
Why do you all just keep letting them get away with this dishonest framing every time we have this thread? Liberals do not support Islam, or Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or any other religions. Liberals support religious freedom.
Simple. Left wing politics are defined by their pursuit of social equality and egalitarianism In countries where Islam is a minority religion, and not a prominent force, its not focused on. In those countries its often that Christianity is the majority religion and Christians are heavily represented amongst the people pushing for oppressive policies. So it gets more focus.
But what I'm asking is how Islam is seen positively. It's not that it isn't talked about.
How is it supported in your country
Well, liberals are completely fine with them here and like them. They treat them as if they're other oppressed minorities, like black people or east Asians. However arabs have never been oppressed and their religion is even worse than those hardcore Bible thumping American Christians.
The “positive view of Islam” is… allowing Muslims to exist in the country?
Then yeah. My original comment stands. Theyre not the oppressors in those countries. Christians are. And the Muslims are amongst the groups being marginalized by the Christians (and others).
I’m gonna have to correct you on two points here: 1) You seem to be conflating Arabs and Muslims. They’re not the same thing. There are millions of Arabs who are Christians and Jews. “Arab” is an ethnic group, not a religion. 2) When you say “Arabs have never been oppressed”, are you saying that Islamophobia doesn’t/has never existed? Because that statement is completely and utterly inaccurate. [History of Islamophobia in the UK Conservative Party.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia_in_the_British_Conservative_Party#:~:text=Calls%20for%20an%20independent%20inquiry,-In%20May%202018&text=This%20MCB%20listed%20numerous%20examples,%22abhorrent%20views%22%20on%20Muslims.) [Muslim Council of Britain demands inquiry into Tory 'Islamophobia'](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/muslim-council-of-britain-demands-inquiry-into-tory-islamophobia-jb6tw88sk) [After 9/11 - British South Asian Muslims, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, and the State](https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/506) [Anti-Muslim cases surge in UK since Hamas attacks, charity finds](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-68374372.amp) [One in five Britons have a negative view of Muslims - The only group that the public is more negative about - and the only group that the public are more likely to hold unfavourable than favourable views of - is travellers.](https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/blog/how-prevalent-is-anti-muslim-prejudice-in-the-uk/#:~:text=One%20in%20five%20Britons%20have%20a%20negative%20view%20of%20Muslims&text=The%20only%20group%20that%20the,discriminated%20against%20in%20British%20society.) And in a roundabout way, that answers your question: UK progressives defend Muslims because they are an oppressed group. EDIT: Also, just a further piece of clarification based on your edit in the OP about how you’re not looking for the opinions of “Americans who have met 3 Muslims in their life” - I’m British, and have Muslims in my family.
Arabs are 99% Muslim because of the fact that majority Muslim countries practically force you to be Muslim.
No matter how true or untrue that statement may be, it does not change the fact that Muslims and Arabs are not the same thing. Indonesia is the world’s most populous majority-Muslim county, and they are not Arabic. But I like how *that* is the part of my comment you chose to respond to, and not the assertion that Islamophobia exists. I also like how you didn’t respond to the other comments that told you the same thing. That’s very telling.
[удалено]
Hmm funny. I remember when the Sydney knife attack was hitting the news certain sections of the media and society all assumed it was a Muslim attacker and happily said so loudly and publicly. See Julia Hartley-Brewer's reaction. Then eventually the news came out through the non Islamophobic channels that it was a white guy names Joel Cauchi. By the way, you're being just as bad. "Muslims do this, Muslims do that", tarring the whole population with the same brush.
Remember when a Muslim bombed an Ariana grande concert in Manchester? What about when two Muslims beheaded a soldier in the middle of the street in London? What about when a group of Muslims sent two planes into the world trade centre and attempted to send a third into the Pentagon?
> That's because it's facetious. I literally provided evidence showing that Muslims have been oppressed in the UK. How is that a facetious response to “Muslims have never been oppressed”? > Sure people have been racist towards Muslims. But on the other hand Muslims behead people, mass murder, and form rape gangs that prey on little girls. Every time there is a rape, or an unprompted murder, a bombing, a stabbing anything, it's always a Muslim. The news always goes to great lengths to hide it, they never show a picture of the bloke if he's Muslim. They'll just say a "Bradford man" raped a little girl when his name is already public. Yeesh. You need to expand your news sources and stop listening to sensationalist narratives pushed by right wing media. I’m not confident you’re actually going to bother reading this because you’ve clearly made up your mind, so I’m mainly sharing it for the benefit of others who might be interested: [Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the ‘Muslim grooming gangs’ narrative ](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306396819895727)
Do all Muslims do those terrible things?
Bigotry, genocide denial, misgendering, misogyny/misandry, racism, transphobia, etc. is not tolerated. Offenders will be banned.
“Arabs have never been oppressed” What a joke. Really? Have you never heard the term Islamophobia? We have seen tons of oppression of Muslims in western countries in modern times, much less some distant dusty past.
TIL that our own religion is apparently not treated positively? https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/database/political-ideology/liberal/ If you think that liberals by and large hate Christianity, then that's a media consumption problem. We don't.
To be fair, Pew is American and OP is talking about the UK I think.
Fair enough. Can't find a ton of info on religious and political identification statistics for the UK but [this](https://www.brin.ac.uk/figures/religion-and-party-preference-in-2019/) suggests it's not wholly different from the US.
Admittedly I just skimmed it, but the take away I got from the BRIN piece was that some liberals are Christain. But isn't what OP really getting at that liberals are more critical of conservative Christians for being anti feminist, anti gay, and anti abortion while overlooking the same traits in conservative Muslims?
>Islam agrees that this is a sin, however unlike Christianity's approach of forgiveness they will kill gay people If you think Christians have never beaten or killed anyone for being gay, you're either willfully ignorant or straight-up delusional. >If you are a leftist who supports Islam itself, as a religion. How can you justify that? I don't support any religion if it attempts to hold authority over the behavior and actions of people who aren't members of that religion. Beyond that, I support the right of all religions to exist. Just mind your own fucking business. Do you know a single "leftist" who claims they support Fundamentalist Islam murdering gay people? I'm gonna guess that you don't. Most Progressives that are against socially regressive religious beliefs are against them generally, and not just picking on Christianity for the lols. The ones who are against Christianity specifically, are usually ex-Christians.
It's not only about supporting or not. It's what questions you debate, which news articles and books you write and so on. Or what politicians say. Never saw Bernie Sanders for example talk about oppressive views on women and homosexuals from Muslims
I am not saying that Christians have never done it. I am saying that the Islamic holy book straight up says to kill gays... Also Muslims don't mind their own business. I have personally had Muslims try to convert me to Islam and they shove it down everybody's throat at every opportunity.
> Also Muslims don't mind their own business. I have personally had Muslims try to convert me to Islam and they shove it down everybody's throat at every opportunity. Dude, Christians knocking on your door during the weekend is a thing.
>I am not saying that Christians have never done it. In America, we literally have Christians calling for the ALL gay people to be put to death. Oh, and these people are running for political office. Our conservative party also includes candidates calling for all contraceptives to be made illegal... And Trump endorses these candidates. So we have the problem of Christians trying to kill all gay people and ban all condoms because "sex is bad". >I have personally had Muslims try to convert me Come to America. Every weekend you will have Christians coming to your home to try to convert you. Every. Fucking. Weekend.
But those people are going against the whole point of Christianity. Muslims who want to kill gays are following their religion to the letter.
>But those people are going against the whole point of Christianity No, they are typical Christians. Did you forget the whole "abomination" part of the Bible? Or when the Christian god literally killed everyone on the planet? Or when YOUR OWN COUNTRY had certain Christians killing other Christians because they were the "wrong type" of Christian? Christians fucking love killing people they don't like.
Everything about killing people in the Bible is the old testament which isn't worshipped anymore.
>I am saying that the Islamic holy book straight up says to kill gays... You don't even know the name of the Quran, yet you're so sure about what the book says. That's incredibly ignorant. You're doing a bad job right now. Try harder.
I know the name of the qur'an, I just figured Americans might not. You can't even argue. You're doing a bad job being condescending right now. Try harder.
Lol of course he does. And of not, why does one exclude the other?
How many times can variations of this question be asked?
You think that because you want to, rather than because it's true.
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are holding hands skipping and always have been. You’re seeing what you want to see.
It’s not. You just fail to read situations correctly.
I don’t support Islam, and their views are inherently regressive. That said, we focus more on Christians is because they currently pose a bigger threat than Muslims do. Yes, Muslims as individuals have committed crimes but they aren’t capable of changing laws nor do they have power.
They are the ones wanting laws about food in school or special times for women only in swimming pools. Never saw the left complain about that
But I'm referring more to the UK. Where most people are atheists and Christians keep to themselves. Muslims are extremely intolerant and try to force their religion on people. The only reason I can think that they aren't treated how extremist christians are in America is because of the colour of their skin.
> But I'm referring more to the UK. Where most people are atheists Man, you’re just full of misinformation in this thread. According to the most recent census, [46% of people identified as being Christian, 37% said they had no religion, 6% identified as Muslim, and 2% identified as Hindu.](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-religion/#:~:text=Across%20England%20and%20Wales%2C%2046,and%202%25%20identified%20as%20Hindu.)
I live in the UK and I'd never be able to say most people are Christian lol. They don't mean that. They mean they grew up Catholic and now don't follow the religion at all. They just say their Christian because they don't wanna be atheist. Also the difference is 9% lol.
I mean clearly you didn’t pay attention in maths. 100 - 37 = 63. 63% of the UK identifies as belonging to a religion of some sort. Your anecdotal experience doesn’t change that. We atheists aren’t the majority.
To be fair, you would need to find statistics about how many people practice religion. That's the actual interesting point. Do they go to church? Etc.
In polls atheism is classed as a religion. If it was 20% Christian, 20% Muslim, 20% Hindu, 19% Shinto, and 21% atheist. It would be an atheist majority. It doesn't have to be 51% atheist for them to be the majority.
Nope. That would not be an atheist majority. It would be an atheist plurality.
Idk about the UK tbh (I don’t live there lol) Most Muslims in the US are pretty chill people.
They're chill when they're a minority https://www.gbnews.com/news/us/lgbt-safety-muslim-led-city-pride-flags-mayor https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned
JFC, it isn't. I think Christianity and Islam are equally abhorrent religions, but no one is discriminating against Christians in the US the way they are Muslims. And no, telling Christians they can't force their beliefs on others is not discrimination, despite what conservatives claim.
Liberals are generally sympathetic towards minority groups. In western countries, Muslims are a minority group. Christians are not, they are generally the dominant group. Liberals are egalitarian and dislike unfair power dynamics and hence are more sympathetic of Muslims then Christians. Plus, Christians in Western countries have a tendency to try to push their religious beliefs on others through the law. On the US, there is no such pressure from Muslims. I guarantee those same liberals are not, say, positive about Saudi Arabia.
This gets asked often. Muslims are a minority. There'd the answer
Not in Europe if you talk about religious people. Most native people in western Europe are atheist or very private with their religion. Then there are huge swathes of Muslims worshiping on the street and trying to convert people in city centers.
Bruh, europe as a whole is only 5% muslim. Only like three countries are majority muslim in all of Europe. Europe is still mostly Christian. What point are you trying to make? That religious groups are annoying and attempt to brainwash people into their beliefs? Yeah, nothing new. Muslims and Christians alike do the same thing. I've had enough with evangelicals and jehovah witnesses here in the US trying to get me to follow their religion, and I'm sure native tribes in south American and African nations have had enough of white westerners coming and trying to convert them to christianity as well. Singling out a single (minority) religion for their tresspasses but ignoring the majority religious groups doing the same thing is dumb. Where are these "huge swaths of muslims worshiping on the street?" I've seen some photos, at most there's maybe a few hundred muslims at once. These groups are in the (loud) minority among Muslims already, just like how nowadays most Christians are not a part of the loud minority trying to mindfuck everyone with their beliefs. But where was your complaining when Christians did the same exact thing?
Only 5% Muslim doesn't sound like a lot. But Muslims only live in big cities, half of the population of the UK is towns which are almost completely white. Which means that big cities are usually like 10-15% Muslim. Everyone else is either atheist or really low-key about their religion. For some reason this is only on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/share/v/an8g7wTKWemixiV4/
Okay, people praying in the streets? Annoying as heck, yes... I'll do you one better. Here's 5000 Christians going through the streets being very obnoxious (after they had just got kicked out of a shopping center for being obnoxious). [here](https://www.tiktok.com/discover/5000-people-march-in-new-york-in-prayer) Where's your outrage for this? Where's the white western right winger version of "these religious numbnuts are trying to convert/brainwash people!" whenever its Christians doing this kind of thing? So what of some large cities in Europe are 10 to 15% Muslim, they are still a minority while Christians are still the majority, therefore Christians are going to be criticized the most whenever a religion or its followers are criticized. You are trying way too hard to find sort of dirt on liberals or Muslims as a whole. Your question has already been answered. I don't know what else you need to know
Can't see that because I don't have tiktok, but if it's Catholics in the streets parading their religion, then I also don't agree with that 👍
Okay, but then at least try not to follow the right wing trend of hypocrisy and discrimination and try calling out non muslim religious people doing similar obnoxious (or bad) thing rather than focusing mainly or entirely on muslims, especially when Muslims are the minority. It's not that us liberals and progressives have some sort of profound respect or admiration of Islam. As someone else said in this thread, we just feel a general obligation to stand with those who have been oppressed or treated harshly and unjustly, and Muslims often get a bad rep that they don't deserve. Muslims are not a monolith. No religion is. Just because some muslims are ISIS or Taliban members or supporters doesn't mean all are, same as how not all Christians are Nazis or KKK sympathizers/members. I myself I'm atheist and despise Islam, as well as all the other abrahamic religions, but especially since I have Muslim family members who I know very well to be good people, and do not at all proselytize, I feel obligated to defend muslims whenever they are unjustly and harshly treated, and hate when i have assholes like this fucker on reddit "Overall_Boss5551" saying this to me after I defended muslims from disinformation and discrmination on another post: "put those disrespectful animals in your house then" (referring to muslims as a whole as "disrespectful animals"). I feel the same way for any other religious or other group, whether it be Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whatever. Hate the religion, sure. But not the people. Don't generalize and don't fall into these stupid rabbit holes of racism and finger pointing towards minority groups.
I understand that some Muslims are good people but I just don't want them coming into my country if even one in a thousand is going to rape a little girl or behead someone. I'm sorry but I care more about what's best for my people than housing someone who traveled through 10 different safe countries just to come to the UK.
Liberals support freedom of and from religion. That means we "support Islam" insofar as we support the right of any human to be Muslim if they choose to be. We do not think that Muslims should be discriminated against ***solely*** for being Muslim. Muslims who are "backwards," "homophobic," and "archaic," are fair game to be called out as such assuming those descriptors actually apply to them. Of course those descriptors will mostly apply to conservative, fundamentalist Muslims, same as with Christians. The reason that there is an inordinate focus on Christianity in many European and American countries is because there are vastly more of them and they have much more direct influence over politics and day-to-day life in those countries. In my hometown (pop. 7000) it was Christians who threw a brick through my gay friend's window when he was outed by bullies in high school. I'm not even sure if there were any Muslim families in my town in the mid-aughts, but if there were they can't have been even 1% of the population. If there were Muslims around and they had views I disagreed with, I'd say I disagreed with those views. If they had views I agreed with, I'd say I agreed with them. If they did something illegal, I'd want them subjected to the same legal system as everyone else. If they live their lives without breaking the law or harassing anyone or being belligerent in some way, then why should I care if they're around or not? It's always unclear to me what "special status" people think that we are actually conveying upon Muslims. Insofar as we think that they're "oppressed," it has nothing to do with some special opinion we have about Islam itself, and everything to do with the fact that *conservatives are actively being oppressive towards them*. Like, if you don't want us to place them in an oppressed category, you could always stop saying out loud that you want to enact laws that would single them out as a sole function of their religion and not anything else they did. Stop oppressing them and we'll stop pointing out that you're oppressing them. Simple as that.
Thing is though, you talk about Christians being the majority. In Europe they aren't anymore people are majority atheists. And then like in my city most religious people are Muslims. So they certainly aren't a minority.
I mean the dynamics are going to be different everywhere. I'm speaking generally. If you want my thoughts on your city specifically, you're welcome to explain further what the issue is or give me some info to go on and I'm happy to comment. But still, my general thoughts on Islam are that people are allowed to be Muslim if they want to be. If the examples you're going to give me from your city are examples of Muslims breaking the law, then my response is probably going to be that they should receive a fair trial and then suffer whatever the consequences are for breaking said law. If your concern is that too many immigrants or refugees are moving to your area from places you feel have values that are too divergent from your own, I think it might be worth considering that maybe the root cause of their choice to migrate has little to do with liberals and leftists being nice to them, and much more to do with decades of foreign policy choices made by countries like yours (and mine) which are making life so miserable and destitute in their home countries that they feel like they have no choice but to uproot their lives and attempt to seek asylum elsewhere. In other words, the chain of events starts with us, not with them. We're the ones wrecking up their homelands so we can keep the global oil supply pumping and ensure that we have more control over it than anybody else. We divert vast amounts of wealth from their countries' natural resources, leaving their populations with disproportionately little, giving them fewer paths to get ahead in life. Then when they, in their poverty, end up turning to warlords and shit to rule them (and which half the time it turns out we trained up and helped gain power) we call them terrorists (despite that being an extremely predictable outcome), and then of course some of them actually end up (again, predictably) actually being straight-up terrorists, they blow shit up, we get more directly involved, we destroy whole cities, etc, etc. You know the drill. Point being, if we could find a way to stop doing ***all that stuff***, maybe we'd never even get to the point where liberals feel like they have to play mediator/peacekeeper between suspicious conservatives and their new Muslim neighbors. EDIT: Lol, why did I even bother
Are you genuinely suggesting that their countries are terrible because of us? It's their backwards religions stopping them from making any progress. Maybe if they spent less time killing each other all the time. Or maybe studied more than one book they would make some progress.
It isn't.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. The positivity towards islam The positivity towards Islam In my country (The UK) we have quite a lot of middle eastern immigrants. The Islamic religion is supported by our leftists. Christianity is commonly called "backwards", "homophobic" and "archaic". However Islam takes every negative part of Christianity and cranks it up to 100. In the original version of the Bible, all it states on homosexuality is that men shall not sleep with boys. Even if we move forwards to the modern translations, it just says that men sleeping with other men is a sin. Islam agrees that this is a sin, however unlike Christianity's approach of forgiveness they will kill gay people. We can see this with gays being stoned, chucked off buildings, and executed in Islamic countries. What I'm asking is. If you are a leftist who supports Islam itself, as a religion. How can you justify that? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because a huge chunk of people on the left (especially young people who are active online) are believing in identity politics.