Liberal opinion of Bill Maher's views on Islam...

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Religion is stupid, but thinking that violent morons actually care about their religions beyond using them as a great excuse to yell at people and blow stuff up is equally stupid.

This is why people posting Muhammad on facebook and waxing about their caricatures with titles like "ZOMG single-handedly defeating ISIS lol!!11!" are really barking up the wrong tree. You think any extremist (beyond the simple-minded grunts who are riled up in sermons) actually give two craps about poxy drawings? No, it's just further ammo, further potential to distort the West in propaganda and further abilities to undermine the free nations of the west.

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because the vast majority of people are intelligent enough to not get upset about cartoons alone.

I imagine the thugs who shot up the office were very very upset about the cartoons because empty people end up filling their lives with platitude based ideologies.They don't have a particular "understanding" of the religion they use, any more than the anarchist who shot President McKinley had a deep understanding of anarchist literature or that Gavrilo Princip was an intellectual icon of Slav nationalism. They saw a way to enter the history books (and have their 72 virgins) and took it; because have a deep-rooted lack of purpose that is easily fulfilled by the "charm" of chaos.

Blaming things on religion is a silly response. Sure - the prospect of martyrdom is unique to religion, I'll give you that. But terrible people will continue to be terrible regardless of the religion they attribute their actions too; and vice versa.

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And of course I ignore the other players: the faceless men who fund these idiots and spread violent ideologies across the globe. Of course, that can be blamed on religion; but a faith that predates Islam : the worship of Mammon.

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I think people overestimate the role of religion in their lives, to the risk of denying themselves agency. MLK, to take an drastically different example, often spoke of being inspired by religion. But - with the greatest of respects to the good man - I think underestimated his own inherent goodness. If MLK was an atheist or irreligious, would he have been less motivated to fight racial and economic inequality? Somehow I doubt it.

In the case of the Nazis, they are a perfect example of how ideologies hijack a widespread emotion. The proto-Nazi's like the Freikorp started to band together because of a mutual feeling of betrayal, humiliation, destabilisation and anger; which was channelled into the organised movement of the Nazis. Anti-Semetism is little more than an extreme form of loathing of an easily identified "out-group". It's an emotional reaction rather than an intellectual rationalisation.

All ideologies start as emotions. A person is disgusted by inequality so becomes a socialist. A person is enamoured with freedom so becomes a liberal. A person horrified by change becomes  a reactionary. And so on. This is not an inherently bad thing - but I don't think it can be denied.

I think it's all too easy to make Islamism an "alien" belief that is entirely separate from our Western lives. But I find it far more interesting - and useful - to examine the human dimension of these nuts, rather than view them as a faceless horde controlled by a single ideology.

(People are welcome to sage this post, btw)

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...no and I appreciate words not being placed in my mouth.

People do horrible things due to their own internal rationalisations and psyches, which make them appear to be horrible people.

If you grow up in a culture where everybody else thinks apostates should be murdered, guess what? You're going to think that is a normal action. People are people everywhere, and we all are products of our environment.

But, quite frankly, I wasn't even talking about them. I was talking about the subversives: the ISIS fighters, the shooters and the bombers. I think you just saw a few random phrases and decided to have a go at me for something that I don't think I even implied.

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um I was responding to Deus's weird non-sequitur not your point.

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I just think people are too overeager to look for theological reasons why we are seeing a bunch of Islamic extremists rather than looking at things from a humanistic perspective.

I don't think they are "sociopaths", but simply using religion as a crux to work off ... aggro, for lack of a better word. (an extremely and almost certainly broad generalisation I'll admit).

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I agree with alcon and Bedstuy.

Crabcake, you seem to be seeing things through a secular lense to the point that you are having difficulty perceiving things any other way.

e.g.

because the vast majority of people are intelligent enough to not get upset about cartoons alone.

Why is not getting upset over a cartoon a question of intelligence? It seems to play to the stereotypical New Atheist view "he's just an imaginary friend anyway".

Apologies if it seemed that way. I was actually desperately trying to avoid looking through a Dawkinite perspective which is essentially "religion is always a malevolent force and the religious are little more than ciphers for their ideologies". I think far more highly of the religious than to assume they are entirely subservient to their religion. Again, I am sorry if I sounded like a stereotypical angry atheist.

@Alcon

If Islam didn't exist, wouldn't these people just find some other excuse to be violent? People (warning: hyperbole incoming) seem to be acting as if violent acts are exclusive to the Islamic world.