18 November 2015

Widening negative religious stereotypes?

Just after the Paris shootings/bombings on Friday last, one of the people I follow on Twitter tweeted:
Now, I know this guy is self consciously not religious, but I'm quite used to the 'non-religious'  people around me getting the idea, for example, that just because someone who does something wicked self-labels as, say, "Muslim", doesn't mean that this person really represents in any meaningful way the views, attitudes or likely behaviours of others who might bear the same self-designation. So I responded:

Now, I'm not sure that this really conveyed my concern because Ben responded in ways that indicated he hadn't really picked up what I was concerned about. I was trying to at least hint towards the idea that it looked like being creeped out by Abrahamic monotheists praying for victims etc perhaps came from a place of lumping us all together with the Abrahamic monotheism of the criminals who committed the murders. In most of the rest of our society's more informed discourse, that would be seen as negative stereotyping. Of course, it might be that I've misunderstood Ben's point; though I'm struggling to put another interpretation on it -hence the question mark at the end of my tweet and the attempt not to be too accusatory. This particularly because I follow Ben because I like some of what he posts and reposts and find some of his perspectives helpful, so this came as a bit of a shock.
There were a couple of further tweets, but somehow I can't access them just now...

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"Spend and tax" not "tax and spend"

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