Echoed by entire countries, or the leaders thereof? That's an important distinction. After all, we have the leader of one of the two main political parties in the U.S. who has said some pretty racist things. Does that mean all Americans are racists?
That would be compelling if you weren't cherry-picking the data. The graph you posted is from a Pew Research Center poll in 2013. Among its findings was that Like with anything else, people rarely act as a bloc.While most favor using religious law in family and property disputes, fewer support the application of severe punishments – such as whippings or cutting off hands – in criminal cases. The survey also shows that Muslims differ widely in how they interpret certain aspects of sharia, including whether divorce and family planning are morally acceptable.
Only if we're willing to ignore the poll you posted.But we can still acknowledge a majority of Muslims, and at the very unprobable least many millions of them, agree with what the shooter did.
Alright, but even if that's true, where do we draw the line as far as tarring all members of a group with what the group does?
Maybe, but I also think it's a bit of a straw man to equate these kinds of mass killings with even those who are okay with the severe punishments of Sharia law. The same study we've been talking about, for example, noted that in everywhere (except Palestine) a majority (often sizeable) said suicide bombing was rarely or never okay.
I think it's very unfortunate that the phrase "Sharia law" actually does translate to the word "law" like it does, since it confuses Muslims and Westerners alike. We have to recognize that we are translating from a completely foreign language here. For instance, the word "Torah" actually can translate and most often translates to "instruction". However, it also translates to "law" by some Jewish scholars. The idea, whether people of any belief system understand it or not, is that these religious texts, the Bible included, are supposed to set out a set of morals that you are to follow if you want to call yourself a member of that specific religion. The Koran itself is simply more detailed than most ancient religious texts. The Koran has many types of punishment laid out while the others didn't express the punishment because they were already culturally known. If you look at historical reference it's not much different from what Christians or Jews were doing during similar time periods. For instance, the Koran mentions crucifixion as a real punishment. Jews crucified Jesus because he was to them a false prophet who was blaspheming their religion, and crucifixions, stonings, and lashings were a regular occurrence all over the place in those time periods for similar things. Anyone who believes that the Koran is laying out explicit punishments is simply not looking at the context of when it was written, Muslims especially. Many Muslims are stuck in a culture of perpetual third-world lifestyles simply because they can't get out of the rut of whatever African or Middle Eastern war torn region they are in and are under educated on even their own religion. Many Muslims can't even read because of this, let alone understand the historical context of the books they can't read. So I guess my point is, citing statistics on global beliefs doesn't really mean much in the grand scale of things when the majority religion in the third-world countries is Islam. There are plenty of Christians committing heinous crimes in the third-world countries, there are plenty of atheist drug lords committing heinous atrocities, etc. The data is skewed because the population of Islam is skewed towards third-world countries which already are constantly at war, constantly fighting for survival, and are majorly under educated. As for San Bernadino and Orlando, it's simply a matter of the same thing as any other crazy mass shooting and isn't exactly the same. Crazy people be crazy, yo. You can make excuses for committing mass murder from anything, religious texts are just the most popular for crazy people to delve into. Sometimes it's religion, sometimes it's politics, sometimes it's simply not liking your job as a postal worker, hence the phrase, "going postal".