Why is sympathy for Islam so common on the political left?

Self-identified Muslims likely don't need your help determining the fault lines in their faith. They know them better than you. You are not their savior or guide to truth.

Except they aren't, because you routinely group them into the problem. When you say that Islam is the problem, then anyone who is Muslim has no choice to be on the opposite side as you, as you have identified them as the enemy, as the problem that must be fixed. That is the core problem with lumping Islam and extremist Islam in the same sentence.

As for the OP's question, this is a key example of why people on the left have sympathy for Muslims:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/18/media/fox-apologizes-for-anti-islam-comments/index.html

It's not sympathy for terrorists or extremists or crazy people. It's sympathy for the everyday people that get lumped in with lunatics because people like the ones in the link are too stupid to make a distinction and instead choose to fan anger and hatred, and those regular people are the ones that bear the brunt of the consequences of it.

It's no different than why the left tends to have sympathy for death row inmates - not the guilty ones, but because there some that never got a fair trial or might be innocent. Or sympathy for people on welfare - not the "welfare queens", but those that get mocked and associated with them despite working their hardest. Or sympathy for Guantanamo prisoners - not the ones that did something bad, but all the innocents that got swept up and had their lives destroyed with no recourse. It boils out to a simple concept that the left struggles more with the idea of "injustice" than the right, which tends to be more accepting of the idea that the world is not always just and that is just how life is.

 

And Bill Maher agrees with the op that the left apoligizes for Islam

 

Well...aid to Israel is like aid to any other US client-state. We don't give them a check, we give them equipment made by a US contractor that gets paid by Congress. So if you propose cutting this, you propose cutting jobs for some government contractor in some Congressman's district somewhere, making it really politically difficult to cut aid essentially to anyone.

 

7-10 million?

Per year?

We're going broke

 

When you say equipment let's be more specific... Military equipment. And the US spends billions in military aid to Israel. The US has the most pro-Israel foreign policy in the world and we don't need them. And I didn't propose anything. I said if people on the right support that than they are sympathizers as well because the US does that out of sympathy.

 

We don't need the US?

 

1. The United States spends more on its military than the next top 10 biggest military spenders combined.

2. We tried fighting the war on terror the rights way and just got a long list of dead civilians and money going down the toilet right into government contractors pockets. Killing innocent civilians makes it easier for the terrorists to recruit. You cannot defeat an IDEA with bombs, you can only beat an idea with better ideas. We need to win the minds.

3. There is more right-wing, Christian terrorism in the United States than Muslim terrorism. Remember the boyfriend and girlfriend who killed 2-3 cops, lay down a don't tread on me flag and were paranoid Obama was after there guns? No, off course not because it was only reported by some new sites.

4You're government doesn't attack terrorists if they are friends. All but 1 9/11 hijacker was Saudi, Saudi Arabia have beheaded more people than ISIS, it is illegal for women to drive, women get lashes if they are raped. They are an oil gold mine though and ISIS want to after taking Syria and Iraq take over....Saudi Arabia. If North Korea had natural resources, would be in there in a heartbeat.

You guys forget, for over a decade we tried your idea with war, war and more war. Guess what...IT DIDN'T WORK! We said, going into Iraq will just create a power vacuum and once we leave, a new worse terrorist group would form...what do ya know!

Study your history. Religion itself is the problem. It happened to the Christians and now Muslims. Religious people who are crazy, are attracted to the violent, crazy **** in the Holy Books and think they are right by definition. They think God is on there side, they will die fighting for God and be greeted with open arms or by virgins.

I don't remember hearing or reading people on the left say there isn't a problem. We say the problem is not what you say it is and the solution is not the same solution...WE HAVE TRIED FOR OVER A DECADE! The fact are more war equal more money for the military industrial complex, it won't end terrorism, it creates more.

You bring up the march in France? Damn dude, most of the politicians who were there are guilty of arresting Journalists, American itself is guilty of grouse human rights violations itself. The France march was a bunch of hypocrites looking for a photo op.

I must add one more time. We have tried it your way and seen nothing but more blood, more bombs and more money spent. This isn't about left vs. right, it is about good ideas vs. bad idea and your ideas have changed NOTHING. Your solution is to just try and kill everyone.

SO while normal Americans are working full time jobs and still need welfare to survive, just keep spending billions and billions to kill...I mean liberate the Muslims and bomb away an IDEA!

 

I never saw any information where that couple killed the police officers in the name of Christianity. Can you point me to the link showing that?

 

I've just glanced at this thread and this is more of the same. As Glynch likes to point out I'm no Leftist but this idea that the Right seems to have that the Left loves Islam shows how little understanding there is out there. I'm pretty sure most Leftists despise the social practices that the fundamentalists engage in (Ironically many Christian conservatives who rail about the Homosexual agenda might find common cause with Islam). As others have pointed out this has more to do with holding our own country to a higher standard than we do others and that Leftists tend to have a greater interest in protecting civil rights. All of those make the Left much more leery of blanket condemnations of groups of people be they Muslims or others.

I will add this though. I do think there are many on the Left who are caught up in other issues that causes them to lose perspective. There is an obsession with issues of imperialism, colonialism and a deep distrust of the Military Industrial Complex that at times do seem to sympathize with radical Islam, or at the minimum more interested in criticizing the US military and foreign policy. While I doubt that most of these people actually agree with the aims of Al Qaeda or ISIS we need to be very careful that while issues of Colonialism, American Hegemony and etc.. are important Al Qaeda and ISIS are threats that need to be dealt with.

This brings me to another point about this simplification of this conflict as being primarily between Islam and others. The vast majority of the victims of radical groups and the vast majority of those fighting radicals are Muslims. If anything this is a fight within Islam that we have been dragged into. Simplifying this conflict as it being Islam versus the rest of the World just plays into the narrative of those within Islam who want it to be an us versus them mentality while weakening those who are opposing them. Further our greatest asset in fighting radical Muslims is other Muslims particularly those Muslims here in the West. We need them to help identify who the radicals are and turn them in. Yet how likely are Muslims going to cooperate when they continue to hear talk "that Islam is evil" and that "all Muslims need to be under suspicion." I mean if you kept on hearing that about your religion and your people would you be so willing to root out radicals who say they are defending your people?

I don't have to like or agree with Islam to say that most Muslims aren't evil and that it is futile and self-defeating to turn this into a fight of us versus Islam. I also don't have to spend all my time making threads about evil acts being committed by Muslims to recognize that there are those who need to be fought.

 

Good post. I would add that we also express sympathy for Muslims because so many of the Islamaphobes have other agendas for pushing their Islamaphobia such as controlling Middle East oil and breaking up any Good sized country in the region which does not support Zionism, which is essentially all of them

Leftists don,t wish to further feed into the war/torture/ drone and the resulting blowback such as 9/11 or Charlie hebdo cycle which leads to more war and drones and
More blowback.

Also tend to be sensitive to racism which a lot of the Islamaphobia seems at the minimum to be partially motivated by.

 

Because Muslims aren't white straight Christians. Liberals hatred for that group is real.

 

Who is?

You don't appear to have any. You'll pop on to a message board and make baseless allegations of "sympathy and apology" from "the left" without even an article detailing any such actions.

I rate this post 0/5.

 

I don't see much "bigotry" from "leftists" against evangelical Christians, certainly nowhere near as much as from those (and other right leaning officials) towards Muslims.

Perhaps you should detail the "bigotry" you find odious rather than just tossing out unsupported accusations as if they are fact.

 

You're wrong. I don't know any liberals who "hate" white straight Christians merely based on the fact that they are white male Christians. Generally, to draw hatred, a specific person says or does something that draws the hatred.

As St. Augustine said, love the sinner, hate the sin.

 

Well I know a few. The Hate is strong.

 

Some of my best friends are white straight Christians. :grin:

 

It's easy to look at previous interventionist policies for both their dubious initial motives and ineffectiveness in ensuring favorable outcomes for anyone involved. As naive as religious tolerance may see to you, there are several other Americans who find the notion of infallibility and invincibility that some project onto our military policy and actions equally irrational and counterproductive.

 

Your post has several problems Dude.

1) Your trite Christian belief that the human heart is not good--or that the human heart can even be categorized as good or evil--puts you in the category of "the terrorists": everyone is a sinner and deserves to die (so that's why God makes people die), and you are ready to help them along. You want to wake us up to the true evil of the human heart, so we are prepared to match that evil with righteous ruthlessness. Waterboard! Kill their families! Nah. We really are better than the terrorists. We do not need to match their "hearts." (By the way, you can't even give a definition of "heart" as you use the term, can you? Please do.)

2) No one in America claims no problems exist.

3) Trump is the one who wants to reduce the military, withdraw from bases in foreign countries, reduce support for NATO. Hillary is the hawk. Try reading up on the candidates. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=276467

4) If you think the War on Terror is more important than, say, countering Russian aggression, you have your head stuck in the wrong place. As everyone knows, Americans have more risk of being killed by a cop than a terrorist. If you think ISIS can somehow defeat the United States, you are just . . . wrong.

5) Feel free to give any examples of any Americans supporting pure evil.