Popular blame of religious belief for violence remains scientifically untested

Evidence

Looking at Christianity’s brutal history today, one might well advance an argument that all Catholics are bloodthirsty fanatics. Indeed, this logic would be analogous to the argument that Islam is inherently violent and that Muslims have a “predisposition” toward violence. Yet such a generalization is unthinkable. To my knowledge, no mainstream newspaper or magazine has drawn a straight line between the Crusades and the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, let alone between the birth of Christ and various acts of terrorism committed by Christian fundamentalists. Furthermore, as Talal Asad argues, the same people who call the actions of suicide bombers unjustified legitimize the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In short, only the violence of certain groups is highlighted and coded as a product of those groups’ religious affinity. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 198 (#complicates, via linked claim)

To put the difference starkly, if al-Qaeda launches violent attacks against Western targets, some might conclude that this is due to an inherent quality in Islam and that, by extension, all Muslims are prone to violence because all Muslims are fundamentally the same. By contrast, when Anders Breivik, a self-identified Norwegian Christian, went on a killing rampage in and near Oslo in July 2011, Christianity and Christians as a whole were not implicated in his crimes. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 54 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Religion factors into most wars but rarely causes them — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 512; A religion’s violence depends on context, not inherent character; The media codes only certain groups’ violence as religiously motivated — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 198 (+6 more)

Related

• Only Muslim violence is read as caused by the perpetrators’ religion (similarity 0.91)
• Violence by one Muslim is generalized to all while Christian violence is not (similarity 0.90)
• Christian violence is never generalized to all Christians, but Muslim violence is. (similarity 0.90)
• The claim that Muslims are intrinsically violent is sociologically inconceivable and unsupported. (similarity 0.88)
• Islamophobic ideology selectively attributes violence to religion only in the Muslim case. (similarity 0.88)
• Applied to Christians or Jews, such rhetoric would be considered taboo (similarity 0.88)
• The media codes only certain groups’ violence as religiously motivated (similarity 0.88)
• A religion’s violence depends on context, not inherent character (similarity 0.87)
• Fewer than one in a million Western Muslims per year turned to political violence (similarity 0.84)
• Powell’s study also claims that the media is much more likely to blame religion for the actions of Muslim terrorists than for white non-Muslim terrorists. This is evident in CNN’s description of… (similarity 0.84)
• Violence by Western actors is never blamed on Christianity or Western culture (similarity 0.84)
• For Islam isolated violence offsets billions of peaceful examples, but not for white Christianity. (similarity 0.84)
• Religion factors into most wars but rarely causes them (similarity 0.84)
• Christian violence is individualized while Muslim violence is collectivized. (similarity 0.83)
• Cultural racism explains Muslim violence through religion rather than lived circumstances (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The media codes only certain groups’ violence as religiously motivated #complicates (0.85) — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 198
• Environmental framing made Muslim violence seem causally inevitable #complicates (0.85)
• Violence by one Muslim is generalized to all while Christian violence is not #complicates (0.80) — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 54
• Religion bundles separable traits whose conflict roles must be disaggregated #expands (0.78)