A Bit Random But What The Heck Lol: Options

[CrystalStone]

hello everyone, I hope you are all well and if you are not I hope that you soon will be.

Right, random thought/question here:

Has anyone else noticed how different religions are sterotyped into types?
For example most non-Cathoilics I know thing anyone one who is Cathoilic is a 'prude', many non-Islamics seem to think that Muslims are 'brusque', those I've spoken too seem to think that Hinduism is all about 'dancing and death', that buddhism is all about a 'fat little God-man', Anglicans are dupbe as 'lazy cathoilcs', etc. Sad to say the list goes on.

Has anyone else incountered this or similar? If you have or havent please share your views and opinions with me, I always like to learn new things

Thank you.

Assalamu alaikum (Peace be upon you)
Xx

Please note that what I have said above is only what I have personally picked up over the years through converstation with various people of various faiths and religions and non of it is fact or my own personal opinions of those religions.
No offence is meant to anyone reading this. InshAllah (If Allah wills) no one will find it offencive but if anyone does then I am sincerly sorry.
GB Xx

[Binty]

Wa alaikum salaam CrystalStone

Yes I've noticed this, from time to time. It's a good random thought/question, and I understand it's definitely not your personal opinions about the mentioned groups/religions!

I feel it's important to distinguish generalizations from stereotypes.

What I think is that when someone stereotypes, they stick people into a mold into which they may not fit. Stereotyping is typically done blindly and carries a more narrow-minded view with it. Perhaps we see a general trend and attempt to associate a causal relationship with the character trait and the character. With that being said, stereotyping is less susceptible to change, because it is the act of forming a narrow mold and putting people into that mold rashly.

When we generalize, however, we are grouping data based on some sort of reality, and the data does not carry any extra weight with it. Generalizations are susceptible to "exceptions", in my opinion.

As an example:

Stereotype: "Women are not too interested in cars and the like, as are men. Therefore women are far too inept in the area of mechanics to even ever be interested in the mechanical system, to the extent that they should not be hired for these types of tasks at all."

Generalization: "It seems that women are less likely to enjoy automobiles" (while making no corollary claims as a result of that initial observation). Generalizations can't be used to predict the traits of women and cast them into a mold before indeed finding out that an individual woman dislikes automobiles. That is what I mean by it being susceptible to 'exceptions'.

Given the above example, I want to share with you a book I read by Ayn Rand, called "Atlas Shrugged", in which the protagonist is a woman who is heavily interested in railway transportation systems, contrary to popular belief, and this talent was the backbone to her quests, motives, goals and what not.

That's the same case with what you mentioned in your post. I've also noticed that most of the time, nobody seems to have a problem being grouped together when compliments are collectively assigned to a particular population. So I wonder whether it's human nature to categorize people and look for similarities and patterns? It's probably one of those survival techniques, the sort of archaic ones, to group people up into one, in order to know who your enemies are and who your friends are, and to know what people to avoid and which to not avoid. At least if you go down the line of human history, this type of survival mechanism may be true! I try not to do it, because some are completely incorrect anyway. I just try to correct myself when I do it negatively and incorrectly. Yes, there are traditions which arise in societies, and some of these traditions can be construed as negative, and some are construed as positive. This cannot be applied to individuals, however.
People some times choose to classify themselves, and this is not inherently bad or good. Nobody should be sticking anyone else inside any compartments prematurely... though unfortunately people have a tendency to do that anyway. I guess it's ignorance that's usually the problem.

But more than that, attitude is important, because it can either increase ignorance, or make you smarter, a much more well-informed and insightful individual. Some people try to take the convenient excuse that they are "not smart enough" to consider new ideas. That too is absurd. Taking in new ideas and modes of thinking are exactly how one becomes smarter. Everyone, whether they know it or not, has a personal philosophy to guide their actions. Getting "smarter" is the process of improving that philosophy over time to better understand and deal with reality. One of the best ways to test and improve your philosophy is to have civilized discussions with people who disagree. The goal is always to discover the truth. There are times you will be wrong, and times you will be right but for a totally different reason than you originally thought. Some say they are too busy to learn. How can that be so?! Learning now can save a person decades of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. So when one hears a foreign idea, I hope they will take three minutes out of their schedule to consider whether it is true or false, and why they think so. They'd be enriched, and the world will be enriched. Every person who turns his or her back on thought makes us all worse off. I hope people can overcome such stereotypes about faiths and religions, many have and continue to do this.

This post has been edited by Binty: Mar 27 2011, 08:01 PM

[msazad]

Thanks for your good wishes CrystalStone.

If you're from the UK you must know about the bad blood between Catholics and Protestants in Scotland and Ireland.

People of my parents' generation had lots of mostly harmless stereotypes.
But if you go back one more generation, there was a cold war between religions. You could get hurt by wandering in the wrong place and your religion affected your employment prospects. Some people actually believed people belonging to the wrong religion were the spawn of the devil or something. There are stories about ignorant country folks taking it so litterally that they would be interested in physically examining people with the wrong background for signs of the devil like hooves.
Go back a few generations more and you'll find shooting wars. Religious segregation is a dangerous thing.

Stereotypes can be borne of ignorance as well as of a long history of segregation.
The less said about the prejudices people have about religions and cultures they're not familiar with, the better.
Religion is not only a matter of faith but is part of a culture passed on from generation to generation. So in places where different religious communities have long lived side by side in relative or absolute segregation (like different schools, few or any mixed marriages and so on), people who have a different religious backgrounds really are different in some ways. So I think that having setereotypes in such a context is somewhat legitimate as long as you don't take them too seriously.
And I confess to having stereotypes in mind when I deal with people coming from a segregated Protestant or Catholic background. In my experience, the differences are real. But I guess prejudice could make me believe that...

I'm surprised that some people stereotype Catholics as prudes. Where do people believe that? Judging by pop culture artifacts like the Monty Python's "Meaning of Life", this is not the traditional stereotype in the UK.
I see Catholics more as lewd and feisty drunkards myself. :-) Or perhaps I should put it that way: Catholics tend to have more fun than Protestants. Obviously I don't believe it works like that the world over. Actually I don't even believe it tends to work like that in cities which have a more cosmopolitan culture and are inhabited by folks with a wide range of backgrounds. These rural stereotypes are linked to regional cultural histories.

This post has been edited by msazad: Mar 28 2011, 08:15 AM