US Army Reserve Teaching Material: Religious Extremists Include the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Mormons

Note that the materials don't say "Islam" broadly; in the case of Islam, the religion itself appears to be "non-extremist." The materials do name a specific political expression of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, to be extreme. But not the whole religion, certainly; Just A Few Bad Apples.

I suppose I understand the reasons for that.

But then I'm having trouble understanding why "Evangelical Christianity" and "Catholicism" are listed as "extreme." Not just some fringe political groups which might adhere to those religions (though a few of those are also named), but the whole of the religions.

Note that while "Islam" is not listed as a broadly-extremist religion (though Sunnism is-- ?), "Islamaphobia" is cited as an "extremist religion."

Social privilege is what I call (probably others call it this too) the general unthinking positive treatment that some statements are granted. Some statements are socially privileged -- politically correct -- and thus are a very good guide for the stupid, because you can generally not lose your job for saying incredibly stupid things, so long as those incredibly stupid things are socially privileged stupid things.

In drafting this idiot-show, the dummies figured, correctly, that it attacking all of Christianity as a bunch of raving lunatics is a socially privileged position in a way that attacking all of Islam is quite clearly not.

So long as your stupidities are directed against the correct socially-disfavored group ("God I hate white people, we're so lame!"), you can generally say whatever stupid thing that pops into your head, without fear of consequence.

We'll see if that general rule holds here.

posted by Ace at 01:04 PM

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