Last week, we were apparently bigoted against Catholics. Now we're bigoted against Muslims.

[backscatter712]

Apparently, someone forgot to send me my white sheets.

I was under the impression that our criticisms were of irrational behavior, of belief in unprovable superstitions, of violence, bigotry, and extreme repression directed against women, the GLBT community, non-Muslims, anyone who dared to criticize their sky-daddy or their book of fairy tales, of the authoritarianism used to keep people brainwashed and toeing the line, as opposed to making broad-brushes against people based on their ethnicity.

[Trajan]

1. I guess I am bigoted towards all of them ...

I reject religious belief of ALL kinds .... Belief in deities or supernatural powers is absurd ....

I refuse to either adhere to their canons, nor to refrain from saying so ... To reject a theology means to reject ALL of it, which, by nature, is a broad brush ....

Is that bigotry ? ... Some in DU would have you believe that, but it simply isnt true .... I reject Nazism too, and ALL of it's tenets, whether mouthed by one Nazi or by all of them .... Such is the nature of disbelief ....

[Rob H.]

2. Anything to slime atheists

It's just sad at this point. Some religious people just can't help being assholes to non-believers, I guess.

[Apophis]

3. Agreed.

[Gore1FL]

4. They start from a premise that we are going to be punished for eternity.

It's a bit of an uphill climb from there.

[defacto7]

12. The funny thing about the word bigot....

It's one of those words that as soon as you use it to label someone, you become that very thing yourself. It seems to me the concept works as a definition of a condition but no one can use it to label lest they become a hypocrite.

Those on the theist side sure like to hurl that word at us.

Coward is being used a lot as well. I just posted asking those who think RD is a coward to please post their name, city, state, profession, place and date of birth, religious affiliation and a recent photo. If they do this, then they can claim not to be a coward. If they feel uncomfortable doing so and do not.. they are very smart... but not necessarily a coward.

[trotsky]

5. So many believers are incapable of accepting that religion inspires evil, too.

When atheists provide airtight reasoning proving it does, those believers have no response. Being so emotionally committed to their belief, they can't admit we are right, so therefore we are bigots. They wield that word as the ultimate weapon to silence those who disagree with them.

[Rob H.]

6. Exactly

They'll do everything they can to lay claim to progressive icons like MLK and Gandhi while simultaneously saying that people like Fred Phelps, Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, etc., aren't True Christians™ even though they preach from the same bible and believe in the same god liberal believers do. A lot of them also try to claim that things like slavery never would have ended if not for religious people, while downplaying that supporters of slavery used bible passages to justify it! (And how, exactly, do they think the Southern Baptist Church came to be? Hell, it took 'em 130 years after the end of the Civil War to apologize for trying to ensure that slavery continued! Better late than never, but not much.)

[Ron Obvious]

7. The bigotry card

Since the majority of muslims are not white, we're supposed to give the misogyny, the homophobia, and the sheer violent lunacy a pass, you know.

Watching American left-wingers defend the most rabid right wing of all religions is rather amusing, but I suppose to them it must be like being an environmentalist who sees one endangered species eating another endangered species.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. And Dawkins has gone in one month from appeaser of Islam to Islamophobe

From http://www.democraticunderground.com/121871232 to these latest accusations.

[Apophis]

9. I hate religion when it forces its beliefs on me or others and

when it discriminates against a certain group of people.

If that makes me an anti-Catholic or an Islamaphobe, so be it.

[Act_of_Reparation]

10. They conflate criticism of Islam with racism

With the exception of Sam Harris, I haven't heard from a single atheist who actually thinks Muslims--despite the absurdity of their religion--should be treated differently under the law than everyone else.

Still, in their defense, I understand it being difficult to separate criticism of the religion from Islamophobic fear-mongering because, in some places, the arguments do overlap.

[backscatter712]

11. To be fair, I too have disagreements with Sam Harris.

I have a different moral philosophy than Harris does, and I'm not happy with a lot of his positions.

[Act_of_Reparation]

16. I've often found myself at odds with Hitchens...

... especially when it came to his criticisms of socialism and his advocacy of the Iraq War, but despite this he still seemed to genuinely care about people, and their rights. For all the harshness he reserved for Islam, the man had the fortitude to have himself waterboarded to prove that shit was torture.

Harris, on the other hand, is either deeply paranoid or too full of himself to know when he's spouting bullshit. Frankly, I'm inclined to think it the later; even after others have attempted to correct him on his absurd advocacy of torture and racial profiling, he keeps marching merrily down a dark and terrible road.

[defacto7]

13. Gee... and I thought we were all alike?

That's what theists keep telling me.

[mr blur]

14. We're equal-opportunities bigots!

No-one is safe from our venom!

[onager]

15. I've met Muslims who were more tolerant of atheists.

So I'm LMAO at these so-called DU "progressives." Any old excuse to bash the non-believers, I guess.

There's also a lot of stereotyping going on about us, as usual. And about Muslims.

Which reminds me of a co-worker. Knowing I'd spent a lot of time in Muslim countries, he once asked how many times the Muslims I lived with had tried to convert me.

I replied that they hadn't. His response was: "Nah, they don't try to convert you. They just cut off your head if you don't convert, yuk-yuk-yuk."

That's about the level of the current conversation from our liberal Xian friends.

When I lived in Egypt, my favorite tour guide was a Muslim woman. A very devout Muslim - always wore hijab and modest dress, and I could not buy her a meal, or even a glass of water, when she was fasting. But she was also college-educated and spoke 4 languages. And was a History Geek like me, so we got along great.

One time I asked her opinion of atheists. She said atheists could be just as moral as anybody else, and in fact could be even more so than members of her own religion. Said she hated the awful things that her co-religionists were doing in the name of Islam.

In fact, anyone who thinks this is a simple, cut-and-dried question can just look at the al-Banna family of Egypt. Hassan al-Banna was a fanatic who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. He was executed by the Egyptian government for terrorism in the 1950s.

His brother, Gamal al-Banna, was a liberal union leader and scholar who fought his whole life for separation of mosque and state. (He died in January of this year at the age of 93.)