I am curious about something....

[Occhidiangela]

Please dont talk gibberish at me. We alll ready have one poster here is specializes in long and pretty nothing.

I made only 2 generalization and I doubt you had a problem with them.

1 "This is ALL rather silly" this not a bad generalization because its actually rather obvious what I was aiming at(the original poster and thoe who accepted his basic framework)and "all" was a form of speach.

2 "We ALL know plenty of bad things done by people in Christian nations"
Its possible some of us have  never heard of an ill dead preformed by a cgristian, but unlikely.
At any rate I did not make generalizations for my point, in faact I was measured and rather careful.

Actions of sub groups CAN be used as evidense for a whole group but only when you show at least that they arent a varient on your point, this was not done at all here.
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The Bhuddist Japanese was not a parallel. First off, the dominant religion for cultural shaping in Japan was, in the context of your WW II example, Shinto. Also, Bhuddism's ability to coexist with Shinto is not mirrored in the Islamic cases presented. Cultural shifts typically take generations to manifest themselves and stabalize. Are you familiar with Future Shock?

Your Christian example was careless, in a temporal sense. It is not a current parallel any more than the Japanese parallel was. The "woman's rights" position that informs much public and international discussion is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'll put a stake in the ground and tie it to Women's Suffrage movements in Western/Enlightenment societies. That was influenced by Christian cultural mores, more specifically, Protestant branches.

This gets us to where we agree. The sub genres of a culture do not always line up: as true in our own country as anywhere else. What you can say is that those Muslim cultures, or subcultures, that have embraced some elements of the Enlightenment are more likely to accept better social equality, whereas more conservative or reactionary elements reject them with vigor.

The Christian and subset Enlightenment founded cultures have led in the ideology of equality, pulling the less progressive ideologies with them . . . for better and worse.

Is the conversation silly? When you play the reducto absurdum card, perhaps, but I think the conversation had already gone a bit further than that.

Occhi