10 Pious People Who Defy Common Religious Stereotypes
Stereotypes have a nifty way of condensing oceanic amounts of information about people into neat, bite-sized parcels. They’re also quintessential conduits for discrimination and cultural misrepresentation. Few domains exemplify this danger better than religion. Sweeping generalizations about what people of differing faiths are like can create the impression that a Christian, Muslim, or Jew, for example, can be reductively summed up by traits ranging from shrewd huckster to misogynistic terrorist. And while everyone can point to a real-life exemplar that bears some semblance to a crude generalization, to every overly broad rule there are glaring exceptions. For example . . .