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Comment by logical42 | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one puzzled by this comment?

You shouldn't be. I'm a Muslim and I've dealt with numerous such individuals painting Muslims as backward and illiterate. Muslims are the scapegoat of this generation, as the Jews, Blacks were before them.

Their entire worldview is constructed of an us vs. them ideology rather than understanding that we're fundamentally the same regardless of our ethnicity/faiths/inclinations/etc.

Saying dumb things like that (now flagged) post is yes dumb.

That being said religion is not the same as race. Clearly people do believe different things. Most of the time with a little understanding conflict can be avoided. But some difference are real and then yes it is a us vs them.

> I'm a Muslim and I've dealt with numerous such individuals

Sorry. It must be annoying.

ameen, may I ask how you regard people who call themselves reformers such as Maajid Nawaz https://twitter.com/maajidnawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali https://twitter.com/Ayaan?

Can we not pretend that a thread started by a hateful comment about locking an entire culture out of Europe is a good venue for a discussion about religion? Actually: the whole of HN is a bad venue for that discussion.

The thing is that I'm genuinely interested in how people of certain groups regard themselves. I follow both of those individuals on twitter and they seem to an outsider to be talking sense. I would however like to know the opinion of people who are Muslim before I decide that though.

I agree that HN isn't the forum for this, but surely the best place to rebut such thinking is when it arises? You can hopefully see from my other comments on this thread that I certainly don't condone what the op said..

This isn't the time or the place.

There is no good venue for that discussion, Thomas.

Why all the down votes at an honest attempt at dialogue?

I promise you that most of us, regardless of our faith (on HN, that will mostly be Pastafarianism), are embarrassed by bigoted comments like those.

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