Why are conservatives obsessed with labeling terrorism as Islamic?

[Zioneer]

Because Obama is a Muslim, you see.

Also, this:

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The Crusades, the Inquisition, American slavery, and Jim Crow never happened, obviously.

You are aware that the movements that led to the end of American slavery and Jim Crow were led by Christian pastors of all races and political views. The First Crusade was actually a defensive war against Saracen aggression against Christian kingdoms.  

Nope, it was an attempt to (officially, at least) help out the Byzantine Empire and ensure the safety of Christian pilgrims that evolved into a godless, brutal powergrab that targeted even the Greek Orthodox and other non-Catholic Christians. Learn your history, please.

EDIT: Also the Fourth Crusade. No one on earth can justify that one.

[pbrower2a]

People call Islamic extremism ... Islamic extremism.  That's not racist, and it certainly doesn't imply that there aren't countless acts of terrorism carried out in the name of other faiths or, in the case of the recent North Carolina tragedy, lack of faith.

But Christian extremism is no less nasty. It may be closer to mass American culture. If one isn't a Christian, then Christian extremism could be extremely unpleasant.

...I have generally thought atheists and agnostics relatively tolerant people (unless Marxists who have the fanaticism and self-righteousness of religious fundamentalists at their worst) -- but there can always be mental illness and free-ranging anger.   

[The_Doctor]

If I may gingerly wade into this debate, I'd like to discuss Christianity versus Islam, in a way that may be agreeable to everyone or offend everyone. One of the two.

Radical Islam is no different from Christianity during the Crusades. We don't like saying it, but the Christian faith, before it was neutered by the Enlightenment Age and the Protestant Reformation, was just as ugly as Islam. The difference - and why it's legitimate to label terrorist attacks as radical Islamic in nature - is that Christianity was forced to undergo reforms that limited violence by its radicals. The violence exercised by crazed evangelical Christians is far less than the violence exercised, in scale, by radical evangelical Muslims.

Islam - as a whole - has not experienced a reformation which separates church from state. This is a state of a religion that existed in Europe up to the 16th and 17th centuries. Before Christianity became a non-state sponsored religion, nations regularly used the dominant faith to go after non-members (Huguenots in France, under Louis XV is one prime example).

It is important that we recognize that fundamentally, radical Islam carries the imprimatur of legitimacy from many Middle Eastern and Southeastern Asian nations. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, to name a few. Our American and European governments don't lend the imprimatur of the dominant religions to the extent these nations do. We don't sanction bombing of heathens or the deaths of those who don't share our faith. Even bombings of abortion doctors by Christian evangelicals are rightfully denounced as criminal by the vast majority of the public and prosecuted by the government, no matter the opinion of a small (and I do mean small) minority.

A considerable portion of terrorist activity in today's world is carried out by people who commit terrorism willingly because of their faith. And that faith, more often than not, at least in the news, is Islam. And it has been in multiple spots - London, New York, Washington, and New Delhi, Madrid, and elsewhere - to the extent that we rightfully label radical Islam as a motivator of these attacks.

I do not believe Islam as a whole is a destructive faith in the sense that it's distinctly a unique religion; many religions have been destructive at certain points of their evolution. I do, however, believe that Islam has not experienced the moderating influences that Christianity underwent centuries ago, that forced a recognition of the separation of church and state principle. More ever, I think there is a serious philosophical issue in Islam, in the sense that moderate Muslims are not doing enough to call out the radicals and that within Islam, certain views are tolerated that would be unacceptable otherwise, if they were not camouflaged in the faith (honor killings, for example).

[Libertarian Socialist Dem]

Racism.

This.

Reading through threads on free republic confirmed this for me. I saw one thread in which somebody basically advocated genocide against Muslims and got the highest number of likes. Replace Jews with Muslims and that site is basically indistinguishable from Stormfront.