As for the Australian news show on Islam, I don't know any "leftists" who wouldn't agree with the correlation between certain Islamic "theologies" and murderous terror. All ideologies that can answer every question with such certainty are murderous. Linda(?) was doing a poor job of articulating her concerns. Here in the States the danger is that, while those Aussie talking heads seemed to have a good grasp on the distinction between Muslim and the specific form of Islam that is open to this ideological violence, the lazy discourse here doesn't find such nuances as sexy as crusades based on their own certainties.
The one extra misleading part of the broadcast was the bit about "name a terror act in the last ten years not connected to radical Islam". The codification of the various violences daily present in the world is skillfully and carefully done to achieve just the sort of triumphant silencing of the self-examination that was achieved on the show. Ask the question differently. Name a systemic violence that has caused terrible suffering in the world for an idea other than Islam. Ask the question that way and the list would be a spectrum of primate activity. This is not to absolve the Islamic ideology in anyway but to wonder what thought patterns you are being trained in to see only one subset of the murders on the planet and what ends does this thought pattern serve.
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