Thank you for pointing this out. I am a leftist. I am an athiest/agnostic from a Muslim family. I wholeheartedly condemn what Israel has done and is doing to Palestine. That being said, fuck Hamas so much. They are no better than the Israeli government and IDF, and they would be worse if they were the ones who had the upper hand. You can support the plight of the Palestinians while condemning Hamas. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Conservative Islam is like Conservative Christianity with nothing to hold it back from going full crusade mode. Abrahamic religions are a curse on the world.
Conservative Islam is like Conservative Christianity with nothing to hold it back from going full crusade mode. Abrahamic religions are a curse on the world.
I agree, although I’d characterize them more as extremists than conservatives. There’s a lot of extremist Jews intentionally starting shit too; the way that some of the Orthodox Jews treat Palestinians is atrocious. Their flash-mob takeover of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was citied as one of the reasons for Hamas’ terror attack. When one believes that they are right, that they are the chosen ones, and are literally supported by God, it’s a recipe for endless conflict and atrocity with no end. Compromise becomes impossible without going against one’s conception of God.
I suspect all parties would behave differently if they gave up traditional myth and realized that we only have one go through this life and it’s not a prelude to something else.
Well said. Extremists is a good word, as there are religious people with conservative beliefs that still wouldn’t cross the line into violence.
I completely agree that the world would be better off if we could somehow shed the chains of harmful religions. The decline of religion seems to come about naturally with education and modernization as shown with the decline of Christianity in the modern western world. The myths start to lose their power when there is access to a bunch of evidence to the contrary of what some musty old book says.
Iran used to be a beautiful place when the people in charge there were focused on modernization instead of religion. As soon as conservative Muslims took over, the focus was put back on Islam, and the place is an authoritarian third world hellhole now.
Iran used to be a beautiful place when the people in charge there were focused on modernization instead of religion. As soon as conservative Muslims took over, the focus was put back on Islam, and the place is an authoritarian third world hellhole now.
Which is a shame, the refugees I’ve met from there have always been friendly and there’s a lot of fascinating history and tradition and natural beauty in that part of the world that I’ll probably never get to experience because of extremist hatred. If they come to their senses I would love to visit Iran one day.
