Refuting Idiocy With Idiocy

I find it very very annoying when people try to refute a stupid and offensive argument by saying something equally stupid and offensive. Here is an example from the notoriously careless Juan Cole:

Contrary to what is alleged by bigots like Bill Maher, Muslims are not more violent than people of other religions. Murder rates in most of the Muslim world are very low compared to the United States.

Yes, Maher was being an idiot when he said this. But Cole is being the same kind of idiot. Murder rates are not indicative of absolutely anything. In the USSR under Stalin, murder rates were extremely low. Murderous criminals had legitimate, state-sponsored and state-rewarded venues to fulfill their need to torture and kill. Crime rates, especially for violent crime and murder in particular, also plummeted during Hitler’s rule in Germany. Did that signal a lower degree of violence among Germans in 1930s? Ask the Jews, the Slavs, the Gypsies, etc.

Murder rates per se don’t indicate whether the populace of a country is more or less violent than anybody else.

And if you think I’m comparing Muslim countries with Stalin’s USSR or Hitler’s Germany, you are an idiot who should leave my blog and head over to Cole’s.