Thus spake Ischaramoochie…
Holding Islam directly responsible for the wrongs of several extermist groups or individuals shows how ill informed majority of the people are regarding the nature of responsibility and how their understanding of this principle is fundamentally flawed.
An entity could only be held directly responsible if it had a legitimate choice to do or not to do an action, and those who do not have such a choice may be held indirectly responsible for conspiring, funding, condoning, and/or encouraging - but should not be regarded with same moral status due to the individuals who had acted. it makes no sense to persecute Islam solely for the sins of some members, just as it is absurd to accuse religion itself as condoning such atrocities just because Islam is part of it. if we were to accept the former proposition, then we might as well include all humans in the picture, since the individuals who perform such acts of terrorism and human rights violations are also humans.
furthermore, it is useless to argue that the Islamic religion had caused individuals to perform the undesirable terrorist acts, since if that were the case, then all muslims should have done the same or at least would have agreed with what happened. since this is not the case, then the argument of islam being the cause of terorism fails. and consequently, the act of persecuting either muslims in general or Islam itself is uncalled for.
in my opinion, the misunderstanding of the principle of responsibility rests upon a category-mistake and a flaw in the understaiding of logical subalternation. Islam cannot be identified by simply observing its members’ behavior. it is characterized by the ideology which its members adhere to. how they base their acts upon this ideology does not necessarily correspond to what Islam reaslly is. in addition, logic dictates the necessity of the proposition that "if indeed islam promotes terrorism, then some of its members would be terrorists;" however, logic also tells us that it is incorrect to say that "because some of Islam’s members are terrorists then Islam promotes terrorism."
I often feel compelled to believe that most people use religion is simply an excuse to hate other groups. I sincerely hope that this is not the case.
