When I listen to Democratic law makers and guests on shows like Bill Maher talk about Islam, it's absolutely mind blowing how out of touch with reality they seem. 1/4 of British Muslims think that the 7/7 bombings were justified and 2/3 want insulting Islam to be a criminal offense. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/many-british-muslims-put-islam-first/
These aren't the results of one cherry picked study, these kind of results are widely replicable. Pew did a massive survey consisting of the views of Muslims from dozens of countries and the beliefs were equally alarming. No one is claiming all Muslims are evil or terrorists, I grew up in a major city and have close Muslim friends who I consider to be good people. But what can't be denied is that radicalism within the Muslim world extends to more than just a few bad apples, we are talking about substantial percentages of the population.
This isn't the equivalent of modern day Christians or right wing groups like the KKK. 25% of American Christians aren't pro KKK and want bombings of black churches. 2/3 of Christians don't want insulting Jesus to be punishable by jail time. I'm not a fan of Christianity at all but this false equivalency just makes the person making it look dumb.
I want the Democrats to win elections, I believe in their platform overall. But their stance on this issue is just so out of touch with reality in massively undermines their credibility. We also need to discuss the policy implications of this reality, and we can't discuss it rationally until we are honest with ourselves.
This feels like something out of the Sam Harris playbook. Harris had a discussion with Chris Hedges, source, that is pretty interesting.
Most of these terror attacks are not executed because of religious fanaticism so the term "radical Islam" is pretty misleading.
Source