The thing I always point out is: Over the last century, how many Muslim majority countries have invaded Christian majority countries, and how many are in the reverse? After the fall of the Ottomans, who already had been demoted to a second-class regional power, the guns have been overwhelmingly pointed in one direction. That’s not the only issue, of course, but answering the question makes quite clear that you can’t just view Islam as the only problem in the world either… unless you want to openly embrace racist colonialism.

You’re right and I think there is a huge moral failure where people will not criticise people for voting for the same specific policies, when done by Christians. I think there’s always an issue when people have more of an objection to who is doing the action, rather than the action itself.

I think there is a big self-examination failure and we’re not as advanced as we like to think we are. Ireland only legalised gay sex in 1993, Tasmania in 1997 Texas in 2003 (by the Supreme Court) and Thatcher’s gay propaganda law “Section 28” was only repealed 2003 and the current Trans panic is more or less the same thing.

And there is now a situation where the Supreme Court has a reactionary Christian majority in the US. It should be shocking really just how reactionary overturning Roe Vs Wade is, given that not all the judges who joined the majority opinion were liberals, i.e people like Warren Burger and Lewis Powell and the original reasoning was well thought out.

Similarly, reactionary Christian groups in Europe have become very hostile to the European Convention of Human Rights , because the courts have found that it protects things like a right to family life, not just for straight people, but for gay people too.

And more. For example, Christian “kill the gays” candidates for political office in Texas get over a hundred thousand votes. Are there a hundred thousand Muslims trying to kill gay people in Texas? No. It’s the Christians trying to kill gay people here. And when they fail, they find another country to do it in, like Uganda (yes; American Evangelicals successfully lobbied Uganda into killing gay people a few years back).

There is no “evil thing” Muslims supposedly do that Christians aren’t already doing even more. Take away women’s rights and even vote? Christians are now openly calling for that. Force women to dress modestly? Yep. On it. Commit mass murder? Done. Bomb women and children? Standard practice. Societal censorship and total control of education? On the platform. Enforce sharia law? The word “sharia” is simply Arabic for revealed, i.e. biblical/scriptural. Christians are always pushing for that. They recently mandated their own sharia laws be posted on walls in schools (half the ten commandments are oppressive human evils banned by the constitution).

Yes, I think that’s all true, Islam is basically a version of Christianity at the end of the day.

It’s always worth pointing out that the people pointing the finger at Islam have no problem with backing the Wahhabi theocracy of Saudi Arabia.

I think likewise, we can say the same when elites point the fingers at religious minorities in any country. Northern Ireland is a case that springs to mind, as is oppression of Shia Muslims and Christians in Saudi Arabia.

That said, I do think that there probably should be stronger rules about religious donations from foreign governments as it can be used as a tool to further agenda, I would say the same about donations to political parties, loads of politicians are on the Saudi payroll.

Just another footnote:

Fear of Islam is a distraction because Islam no different from conservative Christianity, which actually does run our governments and control the nukes and bombs and is responsible for actual mass murder and suppresses rights and ruins lives everywhere in the West. Islam has no power here. But if the elite can get us whining about Islam we might forget that we should be directing all that fear and ire at the Christian industrial complex that is the real danger instead.

I think also the problem now in the West is that fear of Islam is a bigger problem for our democracies than anything we might question about Islam itself.

We might end up with actual fascists like Marine Le Pen/Bardella and Farage in charge of France and the UK, there already is a Christian fascist govt in the US and in Italy and you can see how well that’s going for people’s rights.

And one of the big reasons people like this can win elections, is fools who are absolutely paranoid about Muslims. Their views about what Muslims in their country actually believe are often very far off and lacking in nuance they’re a grotesque parody and that is actually dangerous. They act as if all Muslims have Wahabbi-like views, which they absolutely don’t, even conservative Muslims are different from out and out fundamentalists. In the UK, there’s been a huge suggestion that Muslims all secretly support grooming gangs when the exact opposite is true: https://www.opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/UK27401-Concordia-Forum-UK-Muslim-Poll-Report.pdf.

There’s also plenty of polling (a couple of google searches will suffice) that shows that Muslims in the UK actually place a high value on democracy and accept that other religions have rights. This is also one of the more conservative populations in Europe, but even then liberal Muslims are not exactly rare.

When we have politicians openly now talking about mass deportations, I don’t think the main focus should be things we dislike about Muslim beliefs. To me, it would be like focussing on criticising Jewish beliefs we disagree with in the 20s and 30s and not people like Hitler and Mussolini.

Yes, you’re right, plenty of people do consult them for fun. I haven’t found a poll that distinguishes clearly between people doing it for a laugh and serious believers (like the Yougov poll I shared did with medians). My experience talking to people is that there are quite a few people who believe in it, but of course that could be just me.

I’d say that one of the biggest paranormal belief system in Spain atm is astrology. I think the belief in Ghosts is more the remnant of folk beliefs, I think spiritualism was never quite as popular in Spain as in the UK and US and medians don’t have quite the presence in popular culture that they do in the UK and US.

Ah. A lunatic. Got it.

Which is a good point to mention: gods make things happen, they don’t just passively predict them. If people could magically predict things, that’s not godlike, but minor magic. But if they predict something and every effort to thwart the predicted thing happening is always undone by something, so that the outcome is always puppeteered into happening, only a god could do that. And that’s the kind of evidence you need for gods: evidence only gods can produce. If it’s just something a lowly demon or human wizard could produce, you could prove supernatural things exist, but you still wouldn’t have evidence of a god. This is a point I illustrate in Christianity Is a Conspiracy Theory.