If a significant number of people seem to be causing problems or doing bad things in the name of something, be it squirrels or a religion, it seems like that is all the justification one needs to focus on that group as the common thread it unites under. It may not be all inclusive but it would also be no small number.
Well, apparently this would hinge on polls, since you are talking about the numbers of people. The number of Muslims that actually commit terrorist acts is easily well below 1 percent; the number of people who support religious extremism of the sort practiced in places like Saudi Arabia is hard to measure, but based on polls, is something like 10 percent.
So what to you is a "significant number" such that all Muslims should be held accountable? I'd be interested to hear at what percentage point in the population for both acts of terrorism and support for religious extremism you would start to consider those things "a common thread."
This is another good example of the local being blamed on the religious-from the Arab and South Asian perspective, the tribesmen in the Phillippines are regularly labeled pagans because of their own traditional religious prescriptions. It's a bit like taking the Philipino Christians who crucify themselves and then saying "look-90 percent of Christians in the Philipines think it's cool to nail yourself to a piece of wood and let others whip you to pieces for religion," and then drawing a conclusion about Christianity from it.
My understanding is that the largely muslim neighborhoods in france that have gained a little fame for their riots and burning of things also suffer safety issues to a greater degree than other areas. That of course ignores the riots and arson.
It also ignores the fact that a large number of non-Muslims rioted in these very same riots, which had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with race. They were African riots, not religious riots.
In your own view, do you believe that we see a significant number of "bad things" done in the world today either in the name of or in accordance with people's religious beliefs that they describe as Islam?
In my own view, there's very little done that is religiously specific to Islam. Most of the argument is on facts, not religion. bin Laden and his followers claim that they are simply "attacking people who vote to support violence against their own", and that said attacks are justified because in democracies, the civilians can be held responsible for what their governments do. They are using essentially the same reasoning that you use here-since a majority of Americans support the war on Iraq and Israel against the Palestinians, the radicals conclude, any Americans can be held responsible as combatants in a greater war.
That's not really a religious viewpoint unique to Arabs/Muslims/anyone else, it's a symptom of the "total war" disease that seems to have swept the planet since Napoleon. And I don't see how arguing about religion addresses it at all.
