"I would be very interested to hear your argument for why a large group of religious moderates, relative to an equally large group of nonreligious people, is a positive influence to extremists."
The issue is peer influence.
For example; Democrats and Republicans do not tend to exert much peer influence on each other. If anything, the two groups often push away from each other. However, groups within those parties do often exert an influence on each other.
Similarly, no amount of secular atheists like myself are likely to influence the way that various Islamic communities evolve over time. What you need is moderates that exist not only within the same religion but within the same community.
For example, notice how American Christianity evolved in a somewhat alarming and bizarre direction once the religious radicals who sailed off to the Americas were separated from the more settled and 'mainstream' versions of the faith back in Europe (I don't want to white-wash Christianity in Europe, but I think it fair to say that the reason why American Christianity tends to be so much worse is because it was founded out of the radical parts of European Christianity).
"Young Muslims you say? Who is alienating and marginalizing them, and why? The UK is 60% Christian - almost entirely Christian "moderates", I assume. Is that helping matters or hurting them, do you suppose? Or perhaps that's too on-the-nose. Perhaps the point is that it's marginalization and alienation by way of being poor and uneducated? Well, I don't intend to blame religious irrationality for everything. Just for greasing the path to legitimacy for otherwise hard-to-swallow movements."
Anti-Islam sentiment and Islamic extremism are pretty symbiotic; each reinforces the other.
The more xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic Britain gets, the more Islamic extremism it will breed. The more Islamic extremism found in Britain, the more people will acquire xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic sentiment.
"Then why do you bring it up? Or, more interestingly, why do you suppose the extremist groups bothered to align themselves with a religion?"
The British are predominately Protestant. The Irish are predominately Catholic. The IRA did not choose to align themselves with Catholicism but inherited it via an accident of history. It's not as if Catholicism is more obviously aligned with Irish nationalism or Protestantism is more aligned with Unionism.
In fact, religious identities in such situations (and even outside) are often surprisingly independent of religious belief but more a statement of cultural identity. It's surprising just how many Church of England attendees are seemingly completely disinterested in the quesiton of whether there's actually a God and that is seemingly true of many Irish Catholics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdolFXcNAH4) too. I wish I could find it, but there's a quite amusing bit by the comedian Shappi Khorsandi about young boys in England who are very devout in that they want to check that you're the same religion as them before they try to finger you behind the bikesheds... sometimes 'Muslim', 'Hindu' and 'Christian' are just cultural identities, not religious identities.
When people form 'us and them' groupings then they can latch onto surprisingly irrelevant beliefs, values and policies. In the case of separatism/unionism in Northern Ireland, it's religion. In the case of Southampton and Portsmouth, it's football ('soccer'). In the case of the American left-wing, the attitude towards 'state rights' / 'secession' is completely reverse of the association between left-wing politics and 'devolution' / 'independence' found in the UK. Sometimes, the 'sacred cows' of a community are formed by historical accident rather than any rational justification (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/).
So, basically, the answer to your question 'no reason that's very relevant to this conversation'.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2015-05-21 08:56 pm (UTC)The issue is peer influence.
For example; Democrats and Republicans do not tend to exert much peer influence on each other. If anything, the two groups often push away from each other. However, groups within those parties do often exert an influence on each other.
Similarly, no amount of secular atheists like myself are likely to influence the way that various Islamic communities evolve over time. What you need is moderates that exist not only within the same religion but within the same community.
For example, notice how American Christianity evolved in a somewhat alarming and bizarre direction once the religious radicals who sailed off to the Americas were separated from the more settled and 'mainstream' versions of the faith back in Europe (I don't want to white-wash Christianity in Europe, but I think it fair to say that the reason why American Christianity tends to be so much worse is because it was founded out of the radical parts of European Christianity).
"Young Muslims you say? Who is alienating and marginalizing them, and why? The UK is 60% Christian - almost entirely Christian "moderates", I assume. Is that helping matters or hurting them, do you suppose? Or perhaps that's too on-the-nose. Perhaps the point is that it's marginalization and alienation by way of being poor and uneducated? Well, I don't intend to blame religious irrationality for everything. Just for greasing the path to legitimacy for otherwise hard-to-swallow movements."
Anti-Islam sentiment and Islamic extremism are pretty symbiotic; each reinforces the other.
The more xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic Britain gets, the more Islamic extremism it will breed. The more Islamic extremism found in Britain, the more people will acquire xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic sentiment.
"Then why do you bring it up? Or, more interestingly, why do you suppose the extremist groups bothered to align themselves with a religion?"
The British are predominately Protestant. The Irish are predominately Catholic. The IRA did not choose to align themselves with Catholicism but inherited it via an accident of history. It's not as if Catholicism is more obviously aligned with Irish nationalism or Protestantism is more aligned with Unionism.
In fact, religious identities in such situations (and even outside) are often surprisingly independent of religious belief but more a statement of cultural identity. It's surprising just how many Church of England attendees are seemingly completely disinterested in the quesiton of whether there's actually a God and that is seemingly true of many Irish Catholics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdolFXcNAH4) too. I wish I could find it, but there's a quite amusing bit by the comedian Shappi Khorsandi about young boys in England who are very devout in that they want to check that you're the same religion as them before they try to finger you behind the bikesheds... sometimes 'Muslim', 'Hindu' and 'Christian' are just cultural identities, not religious identities.
When people form 'us and them' groupings then they can latch onto surprisingly irrelevant beliefs, values and policies. In the case of separatism/unionism in Northern Ireland, it's religion. In the case of Southampton and Portsmouth, it's football ('soccer'). In the case of the American left-wing, the attitude towards 'state rights' / 'secession' is completely reverse of the association between left-wing politics and 'devolution' / 'independence' found in the UK. Sometimes, the 'sacred cows' of a community are formed by historical accident rather than any rational justification (http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/).
So, basically, the answer to your question 'no reason that's very relevant to this conversation'.