I'm a big fan of The Young Turks on Youtube. They're excellent on politics, world affairs, finances, and other things. However, when it comes to religion, they unfortunately do quite a bit of shaming. The comment section especially, is full of hateful and judgmental atheists.
I compare the atheist commenters on the Young Turks channel to the atheists that Bill Maher attracts. Anyone who has seen Bill Maher knows that he's a hardcore die-hard atheist. His fan base comprises of these kinds of anti-religious atheists.
Before I get any further, we should differenciate the type of atheists. First we have the liberal ones. These ones do not care what religion you follow or how you practice it. They also don't insult or degrade holy figures in religion (Muhammed, Jesus, Moses, Abraham etc) because they know its a hateful and offensive thing to do. They are very accepting of all people, regardless of their religious affililiation. Now secondly, we have the die-hard conservative ones (what the media likes to call "New Atheist"). These atheists are very aggressive and hateful. They won't stop insulting religion, or the adheritants. They will bash and degrade God(s) and Prophets and holy scriptures. They will do their best to be offensive. They will also discriminate against you if you follow a religion. They might even start taking personal shots at you. (physical features, relationships) just for following a religion!
A common thing you see die-hards do is that they lump all religions together. They lump the followers of the religions together because to them, we are all the same. And they do this by examining the behaviour of one particular religion and then automatically assume all people of all religions are just like that. So for example, Christianity in America. Lets be honest, Christians in America are very hypocritical. This is the main reason atheists make Christians their number one targets. Not just because Christianity is the largest and most influential religion in America, but because many Christians are BIG TIME alcoholics, fornicators, in the pornography business, and supporters of bikini pageants. Atheists see this and laugh because the bible forbids all of this. Christians in other words are acting atheist, yet still saying the believe in every word in the Bible. Many Christians are also having illegitinate children, yet running around and condemning others for sexual immorality. And then we have NUMEROUS Christian models, actors, singers who claim they are "devout Christians" yet constantly go against what the Bible actually teaches (ex: Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Courtney Stodden, Evangeline Lilly, Kim Kardashian, Aly Michalka, Kate Upton, Carrie Prejean, and so on. BTW I'm not being biased by just showing women here, as many Christian men are the same. But the women I just mentioned are known to also flaunt their sexuality, something men can't really do). So again, atheists see this and laugh. They're wondering that 1) Christians are big time hypocrites, further proving religion to be false and 2) The Christian youth don't want to live a religious lifestyle that their parents live, meaning other youth of different religions are also the same.
Atheists also see Christians that believe inanimate objects can get possessed. They also see Christians being gun-lovers, anti-tax, climate change deniers, deniers of evolution, be against abortion, questioning if dinosaurs actually existed, and so forth. Atheists will take all of this and assume Muslims are the same. But we are not the same. Islam is much more open when it comes to abortion, evolution, dinosaurs, climate change, and abortion. And on the topic of economics, well Islam is actually pretty left-leaning. It supports high taxes on the rich, a strong welfare system, and nationalization of key resources. Christians in America are the EXACT opposite.
Atheists analyze the actions and beliefs of Christians, and then apply it to Muslims. They think that Muslims must be going through the exact same. BUT they are wrong, and here's why.
American Christianity is very liberal and secular. There's been many enlightenment influences on the religion that todays Christians follow. It really is a watered down version. This is why many Christians are fine with being drunk, getting high, wearing tight/revealing clothes, going to strip clubs, and so on. American Christians are thinking they're living a perfect biblically acceptable lifestyle. Take all of this and mix it with what I mentioned in the fifth paragraph above. Atheists end up seeing this, and they get a huge laugh out of it. Sadly, they end up laughing at Muslims as well, because in their eyes, we people of religion are all the same.
We Muslims (whether we live in the west or in Muslim countries) on the other hand have different attitudes to what I mentioned above. We have different ways of practicing and understanding our religion, which differenciates us from American Christians. Atheists won't get this, they won't understand. Many of them don't know much about Islam, but assume all Abrahamic faiths are the same. So when trying to explain to them that the vast majority of us Muslims don't date, flirt, drink, have sex outside of marriage, and so on, they won't believe you. They might get a little specific, asking for exact statsitics to show how we are not the same. This is what I run into- the die hard atheist crowds of TYT and Bill Maher. I argue with them all the time that we aren't like them, yet they won't believe. They might say "oh well I know this Muslim who did do A, B, and C so you can't all be good goodies". And thats true, we aren't all good goodies. There might be muslims who engage in un-islamic activities, but its nowhere to the rate of Christians.
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