The Daily News is 100 percent right. But since these other lone-wolf gun nuts don't have a worldwide network recruiting legions of others to do the same thing, what really is their point? Fine, they're ALL terrorists. But it still reeks of false equivalency to me. I keep trying to say Muslims are not the problem -- Islamism is -- but hardcore liberals say it's still a dressed-up way of pointing the finger at Islam, which makes me [insert horrible word(s) here]. (Ouch! It was the first time I understood why the right calls liberals "bullies.") (See also: Afflecking.) Well, here's the thing. Every religion has skeletons in its closet. And they've all been particularly horrible to minorities, women, LGBT people and so on. But there's no denying that Islam is the one major religion that hasn't progressed as far into the 21st century. One of my friends is from Yemen and spent his childhood moving from country to country, watching his mother and sisters go from being treated as people to treated like dirt depending on which type of government was in power. Girls in "modern" Indonesia are given "virginity tests" to enter the military. Saudi Arabia cuts criminals' hands off as punishment. And you can be KILLED IN THE STREET for holding hands with your same-sex partner in many Muslim nations. I don't know about your level of "religious tolerance," but this is UNACCEPTABLE to me. Secular and secularish members are, obviously, not the problem. But there ARE way more people who follow Islam more by the book -- and it's obviously having an effect on large groups of people, making the Islamist movement possible. If we don't acknowledge this, how can we address it? We talked openly about not wanting the religious right telling us we couldn't get married, so I don't understand why we aren't allowed to talk openly about this.
Hard to tell out "ally" apart from our enemy, isn't it?
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