null0010 wrote:"violence is not more strongly connected to one culture than another."
Perhaps you need to define how you are using culture?
Either of these definitions would fit the way I am using the term:
the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group
The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.
Under those definitions, radical fundamentalist Islam a specific culture. So is radical fundamentalist Christianity.
Of course, culture is a very vague term with a LOT of overlap. Perhaps it would be best defined using venn diagrams.
Consider Islamic culture as a "whole" the outer circle of the venn diagram. Within it there will be many smaller circles. Radical Fundamentalist Islam is a pretty good sized circle within Islam. In one poll, sponsored by pro Islam people, showed that 7% of Muslims think that the 911 attack was completely justified. Thats a fairly small circle within the "Islam as a whole" circle. But another 29.6% in the same poll thought that the 911 attack was at least partially justified. That's a pretty big circle.
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So what we have is a culture grouping where the majority are not radical, BUT, they tolerate a VERY radical sub group that is nearly a tithe of their population, and a pretty radical sub group that, when added on top of the very radical adds up to over a third of their population.
This is a problem. Are all Muslims bad? Of course not, but any culture group where more than 1 in 3 people think flying planes into buildings of civilians was at least partially justified has a SERIOUS problem.
I don't have hard numbers on how Muslim's treat women, but I suspect you would see groupings that were similar, or very likely larger on the radical side. A significant portion of the Islamic culture views women as lesser creatures, and mistreats them terribly. A larger percentage gives women very few rights, although they are not terribly abusive. And the majority tolerates both views. Again, this indicates a serious problem in this culture.
Islam is not the ONLY culture with these kinds of problems, by any means. But they are a very large culture which makes the problem quite big.
