A flyer I found in the library today

In the library today, I found this flyer about Islam, which I excerpt here:

Islam has of late been accused of being a violent religion. A quick glance at events around the world, however, leaves little doubt that Islamic violence is due largely to US and Israeli policies. The events in the following regions demonstrate this:

Kosovo: Islamic radicals burn down churches and persecute Christians.

Uganda: Muslim rebels in the north, aided by Sudan, have challenged the government.

Algeria: Islamic guerillas continue to attack a government dominated by fellow Muslims.

etc. etc. [there are a bunch of other countries, similar stories].

Do you see how the above states of violent Islamic unrest are due to US and Israeli policies? You don't?! Then you've read this correctly. They have nothing whatever to do with the US or Israel.

Whether you want to call Islam a peaceful religion or not is irrelevant. The fact is that the great majority of unrest around the world involves Muslims--- and has nothing to do with the US or Israel. It has to do with a violent people who have perpetrated some of the most heinous atrocities upon mankind, and convinced a great number of "useful idiots" (mostly on college campuses) that they have a "cause". ....this is not a "cause"-- this is evil in its purest form.
And please stopd the worthless nonsense of calling this note propaganda and racist. You're in college--- you should have the ability to research this easily verifiable truth.

The time to stop Muslim violence is now, the place is wherever you happen to be.
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Obviously I am above debating this note. It begs so many questions, it dismisses in advance any criticism of it as "propaganda" or "racist", etc. There is no debate to be had here.

BUT I am going to investigate (in this extreme case) a lot of bad argumenative practices that are indulged in nearly all public, political discourse.

1) Why shouldn't this note be called "propaganda"? Because propaganda has a pejurative connotation, of course. Because it might imply that this is reductionist and one-sided? Because it considers itself a reasoned, multi-faceted, fair account? Surely this is not the conception the authors had of it, and a leaflet like this is definitively propaganda. Which is not, as the author assumes, to dismiss it. It is to give it a GENRE.

2) Why shouldn't this note be called "racist"? This is another prohibition. My first response is, they are not talking about a race, they are talking about a religion. In this way, warning off charges of racism *raises* the very question it is dismissing-- whether the assumptions about Islam have more to do with people of color (in general) than with the religion (in specific) that it is openly questioning. So, I would say, what is "racist" is perhaps invisible to the authors, and so in the sense *intended*, they are correct-- it is not racist. But in the assumptions (as I'll show) that the logic depends on, there is a definite white, Western prejudice at work.

3) The examples by region. Each of these lacks any citation, although informing me later that because I am "in college," the "truths" they demonstrate are "easily verifiable." Could be. But none of these examples gives a context, either. The violence is presented as part of an endemic violence rooted in Islam. I'll grant that Muslims have engaged in some violence in recent years, and that their outrage is at times unsettling. But in order to prove that this violence is a result of Islam's nature, it would need to be shown:
-- that this violence within Islam is a relative constant throughout history and place
-- that the violence has to do with being Muslim, and has no mitigating history
-- that the violence has to do with being Muslim, in the sense that it is not an internal violence having to do with economic conditions or by subjects who *happen* to be Muslim
-- that the current violence in Afghanistan has "nothing to do with the US". I imagine this is an impossible assertion to prove, and yet the note calls this the "correct reading".

So, this is one long fallacy. If you replace the word "Muslims" with "people over 5'11'' ", you will see how there is no substantive proof LINKING violence to the state of being over 5'11'', although that is precisely what you would be led to assume about being Muslim.

4) That a "great majority" of violence in the world "involves Muslims". As no citation is given, we are not obliged to believe this, and yet even if it were true, the United States and Israel certainly must NOW be dragged into the discussion (which this note is at every effort to prevent), in the context of the great number of examples left out where the United States and Israel have aggressively asserted their policy in the face of a (supposedly unified) "Islam".

5) That there is any relation (having to do with Islam) between Indonesia and Kosovo--- other than the Koran, about which no proof is furnished that there is any incitation to violence.

So. Please consider this an exercise in argument and proving claims, rather than an actual "clash of viewpoints" with this drivel. I think liberalism and bourgeois ideology, and any number of debates, are based upon such disastrous reasonings. As Stuart's blog repeatedly shows, the claims of the Atlantic Yards project backers are contradictory, assert solutions to problems which are never shown to exist, and present numerous false binaries and strawman arguments. This post happens to attack a particularly easy (read: dumb) target, but I think this lazy, bullying style is so widespread that it is basically the Law of the Land.