@RusA #9858941 What can I say? except that humans are schmucks, and the average Christian is no better than anyone else about using his religion to oppress, control, and manipulate other people if he gets half a chance.
Islam has been the Big Bad Guy to Europeans ever since the Crusades (Fun Fact: because Islam honors Jesus and his mother Mary, as well as the Hebrew prophets up to Abraham, for many centuries the Catholic Church considered Islam a Christian heresy that should be eliminated, rather than a different religion that could be engaged with.) America had almost no experience with Islam before the middle of the 20th century, so most of what we thought we knew were either the European misunderstandings, or romantic ideas derived from The Arabian Nights and the writings of British colonialists who went native - another reason why we tend to think Muslim = Arab.
To be sure, though 9/11 triggered a lot of anti-Muslim activity, it also inspired some people to learn more about the religion; and many cities with large Muslim communities are starting to let them apply their own laws on internal matters, subject to the general statutes, in the same way that Louisiana is allowed to apply their historic French civil law in some cases inside the state.
It's worth noting that before Islam became America's Big Bad Guy, that place was filled by Roman Catholicism: Catholics were unAmerican because they did whatever that foreign leader The Pope told them to do, and the Church was an authoritarian system entirely incompatible with American ideals. Now, six of our nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholics, and so is our President, and practically nobody thinks that's a problem.
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@RusA #9858941 What can I say? except that humans are schmucks, and the average Christian is no better than anyone else about using his religion to oppress, control, and manipulate other people if he gets half a chance.
Islam has been the Big Bad Guy to Europeans ever since the Crusades (Fun Fact: because Islam honors Jesus and his mother Mary, as well as the Hebrew prophets up to Abraham, for many centuries the Catholic Church considered Islam a Christian heresy that should be eliminated, rather than a different religion that could be engaged with.) America had almost no experience with Islam before the middle of the 20th century, so most of what we thought we knew were either the European misunderstandings, or romantic ideas derived from The Arabian Nights and the writings of British colonialists who went native - another reason why we tend to think Muslim = Arab.
To be sure, though 9/11 triggered a lot of anti-Muslim activity, it also inspired some people to learn more about the religion; and many cities with large Muslim communities are starting to let them apply their own laws on internal matters, subject to the general statutes, in the same way that Louisiana is allowed to apply their historic French civil law in some cases inside the state.
It's worth noting that before Islam became America's Big Bad Guy, that place was filled by Roman Catholicism: Catholics were unAmerican because they did whatever that foreign leader The Pope told them to do, and the Church was an authoritarian system entirely incompatible with American ideals. Now, six of our nine Supreme Court Justices are Catholics, and so is our President, and practically nobody thinks that's a problem.