> On Feb 22, 2015, at 10:44 AM, BILROJ via Centroids: The Center of the Radical > Centrist Community <[email protected]> wrote: > > How many violent Christian or Jewish or Buddhist street gangs are there?
There were quite a few violent Catholic and Protestant street gangs in Northern Ireland. True, the comparison is mostly unfair — but not entirely. It is foolish to deny the religious component of Islamic aggression, but equally silly to prevent it is 100% about Koranic interpretation and deny the cultural and social factors that contribute to Islamic community violence. Socially, the purpose of religion is to give meanin to life. The deeper social tragedy of Islam is that is has no good theology of suffering at the hands of non-Muslims, so people respond to their pain in destructive ways. It is certainly necessary to criticize traditional Islam, but that isn’t sufficient. We need to articulate a better way out. And that means embracing the Christian and Jewish analogues to Islamic brutality, in order to help us understand how those communities broke the cycle of violence. Yes, we probably need to fight wars and engage ion violent coercion. But if we don’t do it with empathy and sympathy, it won’t win the peace. — Ernie P. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
