Reply to Thiagan

Submitted by Safraz (United States), Apr 2, 2008 at 22:57

Thiagan,

You, like so many others on this board, are confusing violent ethnic conflict with Islamism - and this is a profound misunderstanding that will, at best be unhelpful in finding real solutions, and at worse cause folks to take their eye off the ball and allow violent Islamism to spin out of control.

The violence in India during the British Empire was ethnic conflict - a conflict between two cultures or ethnicities for control that had nothing to do with the philosophy of Islamism. During the partition of India, millions of Muslims and Hindus died in conflict against each other for this same reason. Violence in India during the British rule was committed by both Hindus and Muslims and it is disingenuous to lay the blame solely on one group.

Furthermore, it is fact that some Mughal emperors were peaceful to their subjects, while others were violent. Such is the nature of empire and emperors, and that was also true of the some Christian empires, and indeed also true of the the Hindu empires of ancient times that conquered and pillaged much of Southeast Asia.

Millions and millions of Amerindians were slaughtered all over the Americas by Christian soldiers fighting in the name of Christianity. Was Christianity to blame then? I suppose if you lived in that time you would have said yes. I say no because it was empire building - using and misconstruing a religion to suit the purposes of the empire builders.

I don't know whether people blame Islam itself because it is just simple to do so, or whether it is in a zeal to vilify a competitor religion, but whatever it is - it is disingenuous and quite dangerously misguided.

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