The more comments I read on various gun blogs the more I realize that there are a lot of bigoted assholes who read gun blogs. Talk about disappointment. As Caleb at Gun Nuts Media pointed out, a lot of gun owners lose their shit when anti-gunners insinuate that we’re all violent psychopaths but then go around and insinuate that Muslims are all violent psychopaths. And if you read through that link’s comments you’ll see his statement confirmed.
It’s obvious that a lot of people in the shooting community are dead set on being bigoted assholes. Fine. Who am I to tell them otherwise? But if they’re going to be bigoted assholes I would appreciate it if they at least understood a very important point: Muslims don’t share a hive mind and Islam isn’t a single undivided religion. Many of the people being bigots against Muslims are Christians, which is kind of ironic when you look at the history of Christianity. Between the Crusades and Inquisition the Church killed a whole heap of people. When I point this out the usual response is that the Church isn’t representative of Christianity, which is why so many different sects exist. Guess what, Islam is the same. There are many different sects of Islam.
The two major well known sects are the Sunni and Shia. But there are other sects as well including Ahmadiyya, Kharijite, and Quranism. Just as there are Catholic, Lutheran, and Presbyterian Christians there are many different sects of Islam. So when you insinuate every Muslim is a member of one big group you are demonstrating your ignorance and your ignorance is probably why you’re a bigot. Let’s look at the current boogeyman, the Islamic State (IS). If you listen to many people in the shooting community you would believe that the IS represents all of Islam. It doesn’t. The IS is part of the Sunni sect of Islam. Specifically it is part of the Salafi sect, which many Sunni clerics consider to be part of the Wahhabi sect. In other words the IS considers itself Sunni but not every Sunni agrees. In fact many Muslims disagree with the IS so strongly that they’re shooting its members.
So if you really feel the need to be a bigoted asshole please at least realize that Muslims aren’t bees, they don’t exhibit a hive mentality. It may even surprise you to know that Muslims are people and like all other people they exhibit individualistic behavior.
That concludes this public service announcement. Feel free to go about your day.