In my recent video review of God’s Not Dead with Capturing Christianity, I criticized the film’s uncharitable stereotyped portrayal of Muslim families. Predictably, conservative Christians pushed back. One fellow on YouTube replied,
@Randal Rauser Usually, that “reason” is that one person makes a superficial outside observation and reads too much into it, then makes up a straw man that gets repeated to everyone else who don’t know real Christians. The other common reason is nut picking, such as focusing on Westboro Baptist Church and ignoring the numerous counterexamples like Cameron. https://youtu.be/xE6Af7f9MBE?list=PLSQlg4QzakovoH1eb0ckfSwRqLHFWy5TM When are professed “Christians” ever this bad? When do they give death threats?
I replied:
@therealhardrock I’m guessing you have no Muslim friends because if you did, you’d recognize that the views you just expressed represent a selected portrait (one popular among conservative American media) which mirrors the uncharitable portrait of conservative Christians common in liberal media.
Your question — when are professed “Christians ever this bad? — suggests you have some rather dark rose tinting on your glasses. Professing Christians commit violent and un-christlike actions all the time. To be sure, you can say “Those aren’t real Christians” but then you fall into the no True Scotsman fallacy.
And the mirror opposite applies as well: my Muslim friends are loving and kind and thoughtful. They are like Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Muslim doctor who wrote a memoir, “I Shall Not Hate,” chronicling his journey of forgiveness for the Israelis that killed his family.
Of course, as you say the true Christians aren’t violent, you can also say the true Muslims are, in which case you can exclude Abuelaish as a false Muslim. And in that way, you can stumble yet again into the no true Scotsman fallacy.
A better way: you could choose to love your neighbor and treat them the way you want to be treated, to get to know some Muslims, and to set aside your stereotypes.
