thats what happen to atheist and secular muslims in the west, they are rejected and hated against by all sides muslims treat them as traitors and "normal" people treat them as members of ISIS
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Sad, very sad, but I feel I should point out a couple of things.
1. It never says that David Salha is an atheist, but rather a "not-very-pious Muslim". So I am not sure if they mean he is an atheist, but it would be weird to put it that way if they did, because believing in Islam is kind of what makes someone a Muslim. If you don't believe in the religion of Islam, you are not a Muslim. Just like how people who don't believe in Christianity are not Christians.
2. The vast majority of the people who are whipping themselves into a frenzy are Christians, and even if they considered him an atheist instead of a Muslim, chances are high that they would still have a gigantic problem with the camp. Look at the graph with this article:
http://www.pewforum.org/2014/07/16/how-americans-feel-about-religious-gr...
So, whether the article read atheist or Muslim, I doubt the reaction from the surrounding community would change very much.
3. Americans(collectively) are rather reactionary and dumb, being one I would know. The majority here associate Islam to terrorism, and the media doesn't help. It seems like every time a Muslim kills someone, regardless who it is, it becomes national news regardless of whether it is related to ISIS or not. We are fed a steady diet of such events, which are sounded loudly, and get a rather dim view of Muslims as a result.
I suspect this is because people ,in general ,are lazy and tend to think in stereo-types..... they see some one with "arabic" looks ,they automatically think ...suspect motives , possible terrorist ... etc. etc.
Its quicker and easier than actually talking to some one and finding out if there are real reasons for concern . Not sure what the answer is...Indeed if there is one.
I suppose that its just part of the "fall-out" caused by the activities of the various Islamic terrorist organisations. Sowing distrust and suspicion ....
"I suspect this is because people ,in general ,are lazy and tend to think in stereo-types..... they see some one with "arabic" looks ,they automatically think ...suspect motives , possible terrorist ... etc. etc."
I don't think the primary cause for that is laziness. I think it's predicated on how the brain works. For instance, not all snakes are dangerous, however, since we know many are, a common reaction when seeing one is to be startled and go into self-protection mode.
We now have big, fat forebrains and can override the reptilian brain but that takes quite a bit of focus and energy and an understanding that this is an active rather than passive process.
Cyber....
Exactly...."but that takes quite a bit of focus and energy and an understanding that this is an active rather than passive process.".... that's precisely it.
Some years ago ,I read somewhere that we ,as a species ,had developed to a point where we could "cope" with up to around 200 acquaintances
This it appears is our capacity.
As such it was fine while we were tribal groups living and interacting in "village" societies.
However now we have cities of millions our daily interactions can mean we have to manipulate our perceptions around many hundreds ,perhaps even thousands.
It was suggested that it was in order to cope with this "overload" that our species developed the tactic of thinking in stereo-types in order to simplify the job of making sense of our world..
It may be that it is part of a sort of behavioural evolution process.
It could be a sort of short cut necessitated by the rapid development of our societies over the last ,say ,10,000 years.
I just wish I could remember where I read this article.
Yea, it makes sens.
Though there is also the other factor of people not being objective in their lives, but instead jump to conclusions to make life easier and faster.
Eg:
You are looking for a restaurant and you like the color blue, and if you have an equal choice and you see 2 restaurants with one of them have a bluish entrance, you choose that first without even thinking.
This happens basically even on people, you see a guy that looks different, then what you usually talk to, and you would choose to talking to someone which hits your preference if placed in a position of choice.
It has to do a lot with bias and intuition(built on experience/trust)