On the one hand you have folks who become indignant or even obnoxious about their faith being denigrated by secular society. On the other hand you have Muslims who kill people for perceived slights.
Any time you make a comparison or group things together to make some point, there are some elements they have in common--the point you're trying to make--and some elements that they don't--extraneous factors. You can say that pop singer A and pop singer B have a similar style or sound if there is a resemblance. That doesn't mean that one can't be white and one black or one short and one tall or one an alto and one a soprano. And one could be much more talented at it than the other. One could be a person of character and one not. What they have in common is a singing style.
Fundamentalist authoritarians are fundamentalist authoritarians. Sure, there's a vast difference between the ones who are get indignant than the ones who kill people. There are other differences between them, too. One bunch comes from the US and the other from the Middle East, for example. One bunch speaks mostly English and the other bunch speaks mostly Arabic. One bunch bases its authority on the Bible and the other on the Koran. And, yes, one bunch uses violence and the other doesn't. They have many, many important differences in both kind and degree. But they have in common religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism, which put both out of sync, more or less, with the modern world and that present problems of greater or lesser degree because those elements demand an adherence that obviates their capacity for give and take, behavior that's essential in today's society.
Likening the two on key elements is not the same as equating the two overall. I see no moral equivalent. As reactions to the modern world go, terrorism and murder are reprehensible whereas expressing offense at pluralism is mostly just irritating, at least at the present stage. But I think it is important to not deny the key similarities among the vast differences. That's too PC for me. |
