What, you mean like being black in Texas won't get you dragged to death behind a pickup truck (Byrd) or beaten to death (Tarron Dixon)? Or being 'gay' won't get you crucified in Wyoming, like Matthew Shepard?
Well, here, too, we have a difference: such crimes have been reported, and have caused great outrage and denounciations from all quarters, precisely because they are rare and committed by fringe groups.
Quite a difference from the Arab/Muslim world--where the massacre of millions of blacks in Sudan is going on as we speak, with great enthusiam, and where being gay is usually a capital offense, both "on the books" and in the ever-present danger of execution without trial, like the Palestinians are doing in the PA right now or the Ayatollah Khomeini did to homosexuals in Iran when he took power.
(It was, incidentally, the execution of most of his Iranian gay lovers by Muslim mobs who hanged them on the lampposts in Teheran, that made Michael Foucalt change his mind from being a supporter of the "anti-imperialist" Iranian revolution to an opponent of it.)
If you want to imagine the usual government of the Muslim world, say in Libya, Iran, or Sudan, imagine someone who's literally cross between Charley Mason, the grand dragon of the KKK, and Fred "God hates fags" Phelps being in charge. Obviously, there's quite a bit of reform to be had--but just as obviously, it isn't any wonder that it's dangerous to ask for reform.
There's always *someone* willing to kill over some perceived insult or infraction.
Yes, there is. But in the west, they are a tiny minority of powerless poeple; in the Muslim world, they are often a popular majority and hold the reins of power.
It's just too bad so many believe their 'omnipotent' gods are so impotent that they must take the moral law into their own hands.
But it isn't "so many" of them in the western world. It is so in the Muslim world--precisely why it needs reform, and why it is so dangerous.
To say there is no difference between religious violence in the US and religious violence in the Muslim world because in both cases it's people killing for God, is like saying that there's no difference between the Wright brother's first plane and a Jumbo jet because they are both aircraft.
Heck, just for saying torture done in the name of the U.S. is wrong on this web site, I had people telling me they would like to do violent things to me.
For some reason, though, you're still alive. And you have not been violently attacked. And you had it on your web site for months... not exactly a likely result if you were in, say, Libya, with a web site saying Quaddaffi is wrong to use torture, don't you think?
We have the religious right blaming 9/11 on atheists in America,
Yes, but unlike Iran (for instance), we also have millions laughing at their stupid @$$. So far as I know, nobody who did that was carried off in the middle of the night to prison for insulting the honor of a great religious leader. The very next day of Falwell's stupid statement, there was a cartoon in the local paper calling him "Osama bin Falwell". Can you see a cartoon satirizing, say, Rafsangani or Mubarak in the same way being printed after they said something equally outrageous?
and you don't believe someone in America would do violence in the name of Jesus against a heretic?
Of course I believe it. I also believe the Wright's brothers Flyer could, well, fly--but, not too often, and not too well. If you want ocean-crossing, mass-transit, 747-like, daily violence against heretics, you have to look elsewhere... in te Muslim world.
You don't think someone like Madalyn Murray O’Hair would have had her share of death threats?
Sure she did. But so far as I know, the death threats were issued by a few nuts, not by the president. And they were threats by nuts to the most vocal and famous atheist in America--the same sort of threats a prominent democrat or Republican will get; the average atheist hardly lives in fear of his life or gets death threats. Nor did an enraged mob burn down her house, or hang her on a steetlamp. Nor was she prosecuted and condemned to death for atheism. And so on and so forth.
Sure, she recieved some death threats... but an organized, state-supported, violent prosecution of atheists does not exist, and is in fact inconcievable, in the United States--while it is the bread and butter of the Muslim world.
