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Guilt by association is also handy when you don't want people to build mosques.



A fallacy that could not be used if Muslims openly and harshly criticised their fundamentalist brothers, instead of remaining silent and ocasionally nodding in agreement when others are described as unworthy, because that feeling is most fundamental and hardest to overcome. The core of what binds people together is the united enemy and appeals to hating the enemy are easy. At least they have the excuse that most of them are usually being repressed, by the government or the direct social community, and don't dare voice their opinion.

Moderate American Christians, on the other hand, could easily wipe out the ridiculous overpresence of fundamentalist Christians on national television. This is assuming the majority actually consists of moderate Christians. If that assumption is false, then the feelings of nopassrecover are justified by appeal to the probability that the commenters are actually the type of people that are guilty of this mans death.


Thanks for making my point for me. Yep. That's one thing that could make things better for American Muslims. If they'd just change their behavior, just a little bit.


American Muslims are a minority, who can hardly be expected to change the public perception of 'Islam', which depends on what millions of foreign Muslims say or do. Those foreign Muslims have a hard time being moderate and because of that my appeal to Christians does not equally apply to them. The American Christian majority has both power and freedom of speech. They're just not using it efficiently to shut down the blowhards that keep hijacking 'Christianity'.

I admit it's a fine line between what I'm trying to argue and the 'guilt by association' fallacy, but the difference is the answer to the question: how responsible is a powerful majority subgroup for taking action against the minority leading the group, when the majority subgroup is suffering from that leadership, because members of the majority subgroup are being held accountable for opinions and decisions of the leadership that they don't even agree with? Humans use fallacious reasoning and pointing that out doesn't change a thing about that. Taking away the origin of the fallacy does change a thing and makes the world a bit better. I'm not committting the fallacy in my argument: I'm just pointing out that others will commit the fallacy, which is an unchangeable fact of human nature the majority subgroup should better acknowledge.


Guilt by association is guilt by association however you choose to wield it. Have the last word, if you'd like.




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