Your attempt to show "moral equivalence" between a Christian "Martyr" and a Muslim "shaheed" is very typical of the Left's attack on Social Conservatives. And sickening.
It may well be that the left is doing what you said but that's not what I'm doing here. You are attributing to me a motive that is not mine and that I find defamatory. Even in the absence of motive, no way could my statements be "typical" of any such campaign. In fact, they undercut any campaign for moral equivalence.
For some reason that I do not yet fully understand, you are set on attributing to me a variety of motives and affiliations that couldn't be much farther from the truth. In the last week you have designated me a liberal without evidence and twice accused me without evidence of motives that are so far off base that they are quite contrary to my actual motives. I find that both fascinating and disturbing. It's fascinating as an example of cognitive bias, a subject that compels me. It's disturbing as an example of the deterioration of discourse.
I repeatedly differentiated between "good" martyrs and "bad" martyrs. There is no valid logical process that can find "moral equivalence" in the face of such a differentiation. (Likewise, claiming that one differentiates to "obscure" is turning "differentiation" into an autoantonym.) What internal bias, defect, attitude, or motive leads you to make such charges I do not claim to know. I only know that they are absurdly bogus.
I will synopsize my original point: "Muslim 'shaheed'" is redundant. There is no shaheed but a Muslim one. And "Muslim martyr" is the English definition of the Arabic word, "shaheed."
If one grows up surrounded by flower gardens, one might be forgiven for claiming that a dandelion isn't a flower but a weed. But a dandelion does, indeed, have a "flower" atop its stem as do other flowering weeds. That yellow bit of the dandelion is, in fact, a flower, the reproductive part of the plant. That's the broad definition of "flower" as opposed to the comfort-zone definition that flowers are the pretty colored plants intentionally grown in a flower garden. To make the point that they are both flowers is not to claim moral equivalence between "good" flowers like tulips and lilies and "bad" flowers like dandelions. Such differentiation is "obscure" only to those who can't comprehend it or who are themselves being obscurantic so as to repudiate a legitimate meaning of "flower" in favor of their own cramped version--that only a cultivated or otherwise desirable flower is a flower. But that's why we have modifiers for nouns, such as "cultivated flower" or "wild flower" as opposed to simply "flower" and "Islamist martyr" vs simply "martyr" when we need the modifier for clarity. Recognizing a dandelion as a flower is not denying the difference between a cultivated flower and a flowering weed. It is not insulting to roses and petunias.
If I knew a rose who was hurt by someone's reference to a dandelion as a flower, I would try to comfort that rose by explaining why there's no insult in it thus obviating future hurt. I do that rose no favor by allowing it to be hurt unnecessarily going forward by supporting its cramped perception with an "amen."
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