Moslems

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

"Moslem" is a little dated, but it's perfectly acceptable.

Particularly from Clarence, who is also a little dated but perfectly acceptable.

Clarence: I'm joking, I don't actually think of old people as 'dated' but the juxtaposition was too good to pass up.

To answer your question, it's more or less what MaxQue said, except I'd add that there are still parts of the Third World where Christians act like this or can act like this under certain circumstances. There's this weird millennial flavor to a lot of African armed groups, for instance, which once you get south of the Sahel tend to be, or claim to be, very Christian.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I agree with the consensus...Muslims tend to come from inferior cultures and their religion is a bit more juvenile than the ones we are accustomed to.....wait, then why aren't newer religion even more violent...and for that matter, why aren't non-Muslims from the same places just as violent?

First let me say that this is one of the most spectacularly paternalistic-racist things I've ever read on the Atlas Forum.

Non-Muslims from places where Islam meets with other religions are, in fact, just as violent as the Muslims in those places, with some exceptions like the Copts in Egypt (religious minorities in the 'Arab World' proper, generally speaking; again, with exceptions within the exception).

There is actually a spectacular amount of Buddhist-on-Muslim violence in parts of Thailand, and Hindu-on-Muslim violence in India and Indonesia.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I didn't bring numbers into it. You did. You're also only looking at acts of immediate and proximate violence rather than uses of structural or symbolic violence, which in the case of Thailand are mostly directed against the Muslims. I will grant you Indonesia for the most part, because Indonesia among other things has a lot of friction between hardline and more syncretic Muslims, who aren't necessarily always as distinguishable from the 'Hindus' as you'd think.

One could argue that the sorts of violence that happen to be favored by Muslims lack finesse (let it never be said that they lack panache or pizzazz).

I'm also not 'defending Muslims' as such.

In general, returning to the subject of structural or symbolic violence, it is usually instructive to note one's own attitude towards other cultures if one is wondering why they might tend to respond in less-than-helpful ways.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There are also relatively few poor countries without large Muslim populations (compared to the proportion of rich countries without them, not necessarily in absolute terms), although the Muslim world tends to be somewhat more well-off than some non-Muslim parts of these same continents. Everybody sh**ts on everybody else. The Muslim countries where they are indeed so structurally violent to non-Muslims collectively get sh**t on by another set of countries, which they (and a bunch of other countries) in turn collectively spew sh**t back at.

When this was explained to me as a principle of anthropology, I think there was a less scatological metaphor employed.

Treatment of women is honestly pretty awful in most places, in different ways. Very conservative Muslim beliefs (or many other kinds of very conservative beliefs) certainly don't help, of course.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

And in no way do we treat women awful in the west.  Maybe 40 years ago one could make that argument, but not now.  Yes, SOME women are treated poorly, but so are SOME men.  Women can do anything they want in the west.  There is a list of things they haven't done yet, yes, but the great majority of those things are pretty freaking elite and it's only a matter of time before even those barriers are broken (I'm thinking US President, athlete competing against men professionally in sport...huh...others I'm sure).  Yes, there is some residual sexism, especially it certain places, but normally when it's brought to light the guilty take a lot of sh**t.  Like when men have the balls to take care of their children, women stand up and say "this will not do!".  Like recently in New Zealand when the government edited out a scene of a dad feeding his baby because of complaints from a breastfeeding organization.  As far as the west goes, women have almost as much power as the Jews or Skull and Bones.

Well, I have somewhat quixotic and very seriously held feminist tendencies of the sort that would be most easily characterized as 'radical' were they not also religious and queer, so you won't convince me on this point (although I do see and respect the merits of the perspective you're arguing), but I'm glad we at least understand each other as regards the subject of the thread.