Archaeopteryx
Wanderer
Now here is a typical strawman if there ever was one. I did not say that to disagree with me or my 'ideological brilliance' is to be a bigot. I said that if one wants to maintain the analogy, one would have to draw equivalences between sharks and Muslims (a comparison that you seem to have no qualms making - if I've interpreted the above text correctly), and to make such a comparison has strong undertones of bigotry.
That is true. You can't be blamed for a primitive instinctual reaction of that type. You can, however, fight it rationally. Unless you wish to argue that you are completely a slave to your 'gut feelings'. As I pointed out earlier, people can be primed to show signs of implicit racism. They can, however, fight this primitive reaction post hoc with justifications against such responses.
Many people don't have any real knowledge about or experience with spiders (i.e. which types are dangerous and so on), yet they still fear them on the basis of instinct. What you are doing here in the case of the shark is a post hoc rationalisation of a rather primitive response. As you yourself said, you 'don't need to have actually been bitten to be wary.' What makes you wary when approached by a shark? Your instincts.
The human brain is a remarkable tool for reason. However, rational deliberation takes time, and in nature time can be the difference between life and death. If you are to survive, you need to respond to tangible threats rapidly. Deliberation is too slow. By the time you rationally think about that 'moving shadow in the water', and rule out all other possibilities, it would already be upon you. By the time you assess whether it is a threat or not, by measuring the size of its teeth, its jaw-line, and observing its attack moves... well, you get the picture. That's why your 'gut feeling' as soon as you see that dark shadow approach is 'Danger, Will Robertson'.
This doesn't justify why you don't feel 'uneasy' around anyone else in the same sense. The claim 'if only the bad people would wear signs' doesn't just apply to Muslims, lordbt... it applies to everyone! Serial killers have been known to blend into the fabric of normal society. Does that mean you are uneasy around everyone because... afterall... they don't wear signs either. Singling out Muslims and saying 'I feel uneasy because the bad ones aren't tagged' is no more helpful than saying 'I feel uneasy because bad people (in general) don't wear signs.'
Really now? The only ones... Fascinating.
Yes, you might get a primitive fear reaction. I don't deny this.
Then you concede the irrelevancy of your position. The fact that you can't tell 'friendly' from 'unfriendly' Muslims apart is also true for... everyone else! It seems futile then to use it as an argument for fearing Muslims when it is, at once, an argument for fearing anyone. If non-Muslims started wearing tags that said 'good' and 'bad' or 'threat' and 'non-threat', and Muslims were the only group left untagged, then you'd have an argument for saying 'These Muslims... I can't tell the good ones from the bad ones!' But as it stands... that is true of all persons in general. What is happening here is that you are the one assigning tags, and you have automatically given Muslims on planes the 'threat' tag and given everyone else a free pass even though the argument you are using doesn't support that conclusion.
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