What you’re describing here is not whataboutism. I have no issue with people who bring up Christianity as way of detailing their anecdotes. Personal experiences in of itself serves a point. No, what I’m talking about are the instances where there is no point, or rather the point is derail the conversation.
Here’s just a quick hypothetical example. Let’s say you make a post criticizing ongoing islamic imperialism campaigns, and you get a bunch of comments bringing up the crusades being bad. These comments have no relevance and serve no point besides trying to derail the original topic and serve as a weak “gotcha” where the implication is that you’re a bad person if you don’t admit that the crusades are equally bad, regardless of validity. I’ve seen these types of comments a lot, and they annoy me.
What you’re saying is only true to a degree. While it’s true that all religious fundamentalist share the same core traits, there is a HUGE difference in environment. Extremism is a relative concept that varies wildly depending on the context. Religious extremists in American are MAGA idiots who want to ban abortion, bible thump, and be homophobic. In my home country of Iraq, religious extremists are literally ISIS. It’s perfectly fine to recognize both are extremists in their societies and they both cause harm. There is no issue with Americans talking about fundamentalists in their country. My problem lies when a specific subset of Americans insist that “y’all qaeda” and the actual al qaeda are basically the same or something along those lines. They’re absolutely not the same, and implying as such is just ignorant. MAGA would be considered soft moderates in a middle eastern religious extremism scale.
I’m not disputing the statement all religions are bad, I’m saying that’s the baseline. Endlessly preaching it to the choir is entirely meaningless, and it actually takes away from real discussions. Again, it’s like the “all lives matter” nonsense. We know all lives matter, that’s the baseline. Repeating that takes away from the real discussions that lie in the nuance, like how black people are being treated worse than others despite their lives mattering just as much as everyone else’s. It’s a similar story here. We can’t meaningfully criticize harmful aspects of specific religions if all the attempts get drowned and diluted by “all religion bad” comments.
You misunderstood all 3 of my pet peeves.
Here’s just a quick hypothetical example. Let’s say you make a post criticizing ongoing islamic imperialism campaigns, and you get a bunch of comments bringing up the crusades being bad. These comments have no relevance and serve no point besides trying to derail the original topic and serve as a weak “gotcha” where the implication is that you’re a bad person if you don’t admit that the crusades are equally bad, regardless of validity. I’ve seen these types of comments a lot, and they annoy me.
What you’re saying is only true to a degree. While it’s true that all religious fundamentalist share the same core traits, there is a HUGE difference in environment. Extremism is a relative concept that varies wildly depending on the context. Religious extremists in American are MAGA idiots who want to ban abortion, bible thump, and be homophobic. In my home country of Iraq, religious extremists are literally ISIS. It’s perfectly fine to recognize both are extremists in their societies and they both cause harm. There is no issue with Americans talking about fundamentalists in their country. My problem lies when a specific subset of Americans insist that “y’all qaeda” and the actual al qaeda are basically the same or something along those lines. They’re absolutely not the same, and implying as such is just ignorant. MAGA would be considered soft moderates in a middle eastern religious extremism scale.
I’m not disputing the statement all religions are bad, I’m saying that’s the baseline. Endlessly preaching it to the choir is entirely meaningless, and it actually takes away from real discussions. Again, it’s like the “all lives matter” nonsense. We know all lives matter, that’s the baseline. Repeating that takes away from the real discussions that lie in the nuance, like how black people are being treated worse than others despite their lives mattering just as much as everyone else’s. It’s a similar story here. We can’t meaningfully criticize harmful aspects of specific religions if all the attempts get drowned and diluted by “all religion bad” comments.