Re:Double Standard (Score 2)

Agreed that both Assad and ISIL/ISIS are horrible. However its not true that both sides are Islamic and this civil war is the farthest thing from a religious conflict.
I am of Syrian origin and been living in the US for the past 10 years. I am born Christian, lived in Islamic societies for a couple of decades and feel qualified to correct this mis-information. I'm now agnostic so I can also shed my perspective a bit later about the disparity.

Assad's regime is actually the Ba'ath party which is more socialist than anything. See wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... Assad himself is from a sect of Islam that is called Alawite (wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...). They are less than 10% of Syrian population. Also please note that about 10% of Syrians are Christian (wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...).

When the conflict started it was about social inequality and lack of freedom, it started with peaceful demonstrations that spiraled into what is now a civil war that has been going on for years. Sure now extreme groups such as ISIL are fighting based on religion but these people are not even statistically representative, they are about 30,000 fighters compared to Syria's population of around 23,000,000.

Regarding Christianity cast as a religion of hate, I dont believe it is a religion of hate, i grew up going to Church twice a week and the teachings were all about love and peace. However its people's tendency to generalize and use whatever means to prove their point. For example the comment you made above generalizes how the situation is in Syria and called it an Islamic fight yet you clearly dont have enough evidence to support that claim, this was your point of view based on the information you had at the time and hence you stated your opinion as fact. The same prejudice happened against Christianity, the acts of Christians tarnished their religion. For example "The Christians aren't stopping the LGBT couple from getting married", for the longest time they could and they did stop LGBT from getting married, if the Church had its way the law would still prohibit it. This is the problem with most religions, Christianity, Islam..etc People start thinking that their religion is the right one and that everyone else should abide by their beliefs.

We are all educated people on /. We should do our research instead of believing everything we hear/see on tv. Syria is going through a humanitarian crisis and instead of helping the innocent people we're painting it as a religious conflict between extremists who should just slaughter each other.