Myth-conceptions
A couple days ago, Ali Eteraz wrote an excellent article called, "The Myth of Muslim Condemnation of Terror". In it, while pointing out that Muslims have in fact come out to condemn terror quite often, he also made the argument that holding Muslims as a collective responsible for the acts of individuals means holding them to a much higher standard than any other religious group, as well as being dangerous. After all, if you can make a collective responsible for individual acts, then you can bring down collective punishment for those acts.
In any case, one of his other points was that when Muslims leaders do come out to either condemn terror or otherwise reach out to other faiths, it gets ignored or downplayed. Yesterday, over a 130 Muslim religious scholars wrote to the Pope and other Christian leaders looking for greater understanding and peaceful relations between the two faiths. Cernig noted it and said that, like Ali Eteraz had noted, such would, "be entirely ignored or slapped down by the xenophobic bigots of the Right's-far-Right."
The ignoring goes far beyond the xenophobes of the far right. The story got very little coverage in the North American media, if at all, but it didn't take me long to find the slapping down part:
Yeah, it’s the fine print that really gets you. Basically, what these Muslim leaders are saying is that so long as we Christians don’t do anything against Muslims, it’s all good. What I didn’t see is a similar promise that Muslims won’t oppress Christians as they have done in Darfur and are doing in plenty of other nations. I didn’t see Muslims promise to work with Christians so that we can all worship freely in Islamic countries. I didn’t see anything there but demands upon Christians. See, that’s how it works in the wonderful world of dhimmi. The Muslims make the rules and we either comply with them and know the magnanimous peace of the conqueror or we get the sword.
Reading comprehension isn't exactly high amongst these folks, though with anything Muslim, I'm sure its more a purposeful blindness. The letter calls upon both faiths to come together in greater understanding and cooperation, but because in a letter addressed to Christian leaders, they don't first go about condemning every nasty act ever committed by people calling themselves Muslim, these scholars should just be ignored.
A few weeks ago, there was a story that had many on the right gearing up to watch some Muslim riots, because the Pope had made some critical comments about religious prosecution. I disagreed, in part because, unlike the last time when the Pope had actually said something against Muslims as a whole, this time he was only criticizing government oppression rather than the faith itself.
The fact that the riots never happened will gain no points for Muslims, of course. As with every other piece of evidence that doesn't paint their religion in a poor light, it will be ignored and forgotten. It does show the problem, however. Those on the far-right really do see Islam as a monolithic collective. When someone criticizes a Muslim, they take it as criticism of the entire faith and everyone who follows it because that is exactly how they see it. They don't make the distinction and therefore can't recognize when anyone else does.
It is a truly large and truly dangerous blind spot.
