Religious Extremism should not be called religious extremism.

It should be called Religious Literalism.

Because they're doing exactly what their holy book tells them.

Relevant quote from Brian Keith Dalton (Mr. Deity)...

Apologists and defenders of the Abrahamic faiths -- even our president -- would like you to believe that religious violence is a perversion or distortion of the faith. But in fact, just the opposite is true. Historically, empirically, and literally, it is the moderate impulse found in the modern versions of these faiths, towards tolerance and non-violence, that is the perversion, the distortion.

And that beneficent, moderate impulse is found in these faiths only when secular liberal democracy has stripped religion and its followers of the power to execute the prescriptions of their holy books.

And this has never come about without a fight. Religions don't moderate on their own, and when they do finally join us in the modern world, they do so kicking and screaming. Just look at the tantrums the religious throw when marriage equality is finally secured by the courts. My religious friends, your fundamentalists are not perverting and distorting your faith, they're living it chapter and verse.

They're not kooks, and they're not irrational.
They're simply believers who know how to follow directions.

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.
--> Christopher Hitchens

Regarding the Qur'an:
It contains "at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter."

Clearly Islam goes a step further by condemning those who don't join the fight against the infidels, but I'd argue both religions (and Judaism too, given it shares the OT with Christianity) have the potential to lead to (hell, have led to many times in the past!) what ISIS and other 'extremist' Muslim groups are doing right now and, well, fight the infidels.

The stupid, moronic cretins in the leftist liberal cap believe that with many conversations with religious leaders, that they will see the errors of their ways and everybody will be sitting around a campfire singing Kumbaya in the near future.

How is religion not classified as mental illness , addiction or at the least a bizarre but rather interesting behavioral disorder?


Religious extremists aren't interpreting their holy book wrong, they're the ones interpreting it right.

This goes for all Abrahamic religions (Christianism, Islamism, and Judaism).

We hear a lot of people saying that religious fundamentalists are interpreting their holy book wrong, for example: "Actually, the Bible says we're all equal, so, if you're misogynistic, you are actually going against the word of God". However, they fail to acknowledge that the passages in the Bible that claim we're all equal are extremely vague, while the passages that instruct women who are victims of sexual abuse to marry their rapists are extremely well detailed.

We also see a lot of this type of argumentation with Islam, especially with all the horrors happening in Iran right now. People are claiming that what the government is doing to women in Islamic countries is a purely political issue when it's clearly, more than anything, religious. The Quran is very clear when it says that the end goal of the world population should be Islam. It's more than obvious that a Muslim person who actually reads the holy book correctly will force everyone to convert because that's their job.

We have to stop pretending that people are "ruining" religion. It's religion the one that's "ruining" people. Nobody decided to attach a bomb to themselves and kill a bunch of people for no reason. Violence is encouraged in these religious books over and over again. It's sad to see that we are so brainwashed we can't even say things that are absolutely true...

Send comments to: hjw2001@gmail.com