Slain policeman’s family warns against confusing extremists with Muslims

[RiverNoord]

28. I am so sick of people like you twisting reason to its breaking point to justify your politics.

On a post above, you equated differences in nations' internal civil rights norms and laws with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of a specific nation - Israel. There is no logical connection between the two. Does refusing to accept the Russian annexation of the Crimea as legitimate mean that Poland has major human rights problems? One is utterly unrelated to the other.

Yes, a few countries in the region we refer to as the 'middle east' have what many Americans would consider severely repressive laws concerning political dissent, corporal punishment, and gender relations. So do almost exclusively Christian countries such as Uganda - the 'kill the gays' law that was very recently signed by the country's President (life in prison for simply being gay - just barely got watered down from the death penalty) and was heavily backed by American fundamentalist Christians, is a crystal clear example.

In the Ugandan example, does that mean that Ugandan Christains are terrorists? Or, perhaps we should militarily intervene in order to force the Ugandans to respect our recently evolved norms concerning homosexuality? Is it impossible to simply accept that people around the world have different perspectives on things, including what we consider human rights?

American norms and, say (in the case of this topic), French norms differ immensely. For example, the French are extremely secular, and ban the wearing of virtually any religious symbol in primary and secondary school. This includes crosses, stars of David, headscarves, etc. Could such a law ever pass in the United States? No - it would go strongly against American values and would, with no doubt, violate the provisions of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. How about European laws and norms concerning private ownership of firearms? UK laws concerning wide-scale use of surveillance cameras in almost every significant public space?

It seems to me that, if you are so upset about what you seem to consider human rights in the 'middle east,' you should also be fiercely speaking out against extremist secularism in France and Ugandan brutality against gays. But you don't. It wouldn't serve to reinforce your biases or political perspective.