This soils the reputation of islam. I know some good people (muslims) who suffer from prejudice on a daily basis because of attacks like these.
Being a muslim in a foreign country is an increasingly difficult and isolating experience.
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Being a muslim in a foreign country is an increasingly difficult and isolating experience.
42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall).
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-ameri...
No slurs, please. We've already banned one account for turning this thread into a religious flamewar. Comments here need to stay factual.
If you're going to restrict speech, restrict all mentions of religion, not just the ones that contradict your preconceived notion.
Definition from http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_eng...:
"An insinuation or allegation about someone that is likely to insult them or damage their reputation"
Saying that "Islam soils the reputation of islam" is a slur by any reasonable interpretation. The link provided some information but the first sentence did nothing to that effect and was simply inflammatory.
If your goal is to integrate Muslims living in Western nations into Western society, what is going on here is not helping to achieve it.
He then went on to say "42% of young Muslims in France believe suicide bombings are justified (35% overall)." So why wasn't his original statement "Islam in France among 42% of Muslims less than 30 years of age (that were prompted to answer a survey question in an environment we know nothing about) soils the reputation of Islam?"
So, he began by making a broad generalization about Islam as a whole and then quoted a statistical observation about a small percentage of Muslims. Sorry, but 2 + 2 = 4. Broad generalization + no proof = slur.
I also agree that he would have been better served to clarify in his post that the problem is particularly acute in France rather than in general, but even a cursory glance at the document he provided will bear that out. However that is something to bring up in further discussion (as I have actually done in a sibling comment). Then you can have a conversation about what France is doing differently from other countries that are having relative success, even to the point of e.g. the US where Muslims tend to be more peaceful than the wider population.
But when you just shut down the discussion as was done here, none of that can happen. That's why, as I say, if your goal is to integrate Muslims living in the West into Western society (and French Muslims into French society), then what happened here is counterproductive.
No, it's exactly the other way around: if the comment had omitted the first sentence, it would have been fine. That bit could be taken out without any loss of information, and should have been.
Despite how much you've posted about this, there's no serious argument here. A slur followed by a factual statement is obviously still a slur.
As for "shutting down the discussion", that's a bit of a stretch with 650 comments in one thread and 500 in the other.
I think you'll agree that giving a charitable reading to what a person says is the best way to have a clear discussion. While that first sentence, taken by itself and without context, could possibly be interpreted as a bigoted or racist statement, in the context of the whole post I took it to mean "Islam has a reputation for violence, but this reputation exists in part because adherents of Islam in the West support violence more than the rest of the population". I don't think I am going particularly out of my way or being overly charitable in reading it this way. Moreover the grammar "X spoils the reputation of X" is not harsh language, nor is it a tautology - it can be proven wrong. Therefore, I don't think this was an inappropriate comment. How am I wrong? If you bother to answer, please be specific.
That said, I don't fully agree with the statement, actually, as I already mentioned. If you look at support for violence and religious law, etc., in places like the US and Germany, it looks like Muslims do not support that stuff any more than the general population, or they support it less. But looking at the data for France OP might have a point. But, I don't know if he meant only France, or Islam in general, or what, because he never clarified. Maybe he didn't clarify because he stopped reading, or because he doesn't care, or because he realizes he's wrong. Maybe after elaboration he would have outed himself as being a simple Islamaphobe who cherry-picks facts to justify his bigotry. We'll never know that now. But, he also may have stopped posting because you inappropriately called him out in this thread before giving what he said due consideration.
Emotions were probably running high at the time as it was shortly after the attacks and so what you did, in that case, is actually quite understandable. Even if I think you were wrong here, I don't hold this one against you at all. But as the moderator of HN I have seen you time and again shutting down discussion because you perceived something that wasn't there. You are making HN into more of a boring echo chamber and that's sad.
> there's no serious argument here
That's a pretty ridiculous opinion to have considering the voting in this thread. Even if you're right, I'm clearly far from alone in thinking that what you've done here is wrong. So, in fact, there is an argument to be had here, and trying to preempt discussion like that just shows a false and unjustified confidence in your assertion. A little humility goes a long way, you know?