If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam.
To me, that's a scary number.
Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends.
And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.
That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come to Europe by the millions.
It's not my opinion, but please don't compare that opinion with people who advocate that homosexuals, adulterers and apostates should be put to death. There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Your relativism goes too far.
[Edit] And just to make it clear, I do not believe that it is really 40% who really hold those opinions. It's probably less. I hope.
Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is immaterial, the numbers are scary.
http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-...
That's 30% declared right there, another 10% undeclared would not surprise me at all.
I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria.
But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.
"In the region", you can choose whether to send them to:
1) Turkey, an increasingly-authoritarian regime which is already overflowing with millions of refugees, making money with the fanatics and holding mainstream cultural values that tend to despise people from Syria/Kurdistan/Iraq;
2) Lebanon, a country where refugees from other conflicts already account for over a third of the total population, and which is far from stable on its own (half-run by the unofficial Hezbollah militia)
3) Israel. They don't even want "their own" arabs...
4) Iraq, another war-torn country half-owned by the same petro-fanatics;
5) Iran, which is logistically very difficult (being on the other side of warzone Iraq) and, well, not great for people running from religious fanatics;
6) Jordan, another poor and unstable country already full of refugees from previous conflicts.
7) Saudi Arabia. They're the ones funding the fanatics. Enough said.
8) Egypt. Yet another dictator, vaguely more stable, as ruthless as Assad. They also have permanent Palestinian camps which have been there for decades and clearly don't want any more.
9) Palestine/Gaza or Palestine / West Bank. Let's not even go there.
Ok, let's go further then: Libya? Sorry, other war. Tunisia? Another wobbly government, and so close to Europe to make it look silly. Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan? Dictators, guerrillas... Yemen? Other war. Oman? Same guy has been in charge for 45 years. We can go on, but tbh, it's all like that. Countries in the region are either f*ed up, autocratic regimes, or are actively sponsoring the lunatics. Decent people have nowhere to go.
Right now, most refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon, Germany and Jordan (not counting the internally displaced). Lebanon and Jordan in particular are completely overwhelmed. What many people (such as the UK government) suggest is to help these countries cope by sending money and logistic support.
Many refugees understandably do not wish to spend the coming years in bleak refugee camps and want to leave the region. That is very understandable and in my opinion the world should agree on refugee quotas according to population size and economic strength. The world includes the United States of America that otherwise likes to make its presence felt in the Middle East.
Also, I'd like to point out that there's no Palestinian camps in Egypt that I know of but good on you seeing through all the BS that Sisi is just another ruthless and bloodthirsty dictator who is by the way a closeted Islamist who holds equally despicable fundamentalist views but he's good enough so far in hiding them under the veneer of reformist moderate leadership.
Armenia estimated 17,000
They prefer that such migrants should travel to Europe, who are naively taking those migrants in.
Meanwhile, people die.
And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About the Palestinians.)
Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.
And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.
I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.
Bush caused most of this current ISIS problem by lying about WMDs. At that point, we're the bad guys invading on a lie. It made us afraid of and hostile towards the Iraqis which caused the Abu Ghraib treatment, etc. He didn't make the terrorists but he provided them with their recruiting propaganda, made an ideal nest, and let them crawl in. It sucks, but we've got an uphill slog because we elected someone who was fine with murdering people on a lie.
No, it's not. I have no expertise in ME affairs, do you? Who is the expert? What country has successfully demonstrated they can "handle it better"?
> Bush ... lie.
Yeah, and people died. I get it. But the next guy was elected partially because he wanted to withdraw from Iraq, and we did. Power vacuum. So we go back in and then what happens when we elect someone who wants to withdraw?
I mostly agree with fineman, except that I think it's too late for backing secular resistance to have much of a point. Just like Iraq, we left them high and dry when they needed us, and so now the only chance of having any significant influence is a direct invasion, which nobody has much stomach for anymore.
I'd summarize as grow up already. The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict, and have been for decades. The West keeping out of it only guarantees that one or the other will win and any chance of secular democracy will lose.
"We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a real plan to get involved on the ground, that was just a huge bluff; Assad and Putin saw right through it. "We" (and French elites above all) did way too much already, and it's high time we stopped.
> The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict
That's really rich. "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime, the US just sold them a new crapload of weapons... nobody gives a shit about that stuff. What "we" care about is that the "right" totalitarian mofo is in charge, like in Egypt. Everything else is theatre and propaganda.
The real solution is less weapons and more diplomacy. Get the interested parties in a room and throw away the key until they come up with a shared plan. The US/Russia agreement is a first step in that direction, next it's for Saudi, Turkey and Iran to work out an agreeable compromise and pull their weight in the right direction. Otherwise, until countries like Turkey and Saudi keep buying IS oil and selling them weapons, you can invade a thousand times and achieve nothing except increasing shareholder value in the defence sector.
Reminds me of that Adam Curtis documentary Bitter Lake[1]. I wonder if Oil Countries are the real reason these terrorist keep appearing again and again.
I bet the moment world gets rid of oil, is the day Islamic terrorist stop appearing.
A secular democracy requires some kind of enlightenment on the part of the people, and usually this enlightenment happens after a great sacrifice has been made (something on the level of a war of independence) or through the slow and steady movement towards universal suffrage by way of representation.
All that ends up happening when you give democracy to a population that is not ready for it are strongmen who vote themselves additional executive power through legislative hook or crook leading all the problems that a secular democracy is supposed to prevent.
Whether or not the West gets involved, one side will win or lose guaranteed. Trying to pick the least evil from the outside is an exercise in gambler's ruin.
At any rate, the 'secular' fighters are now more often called 'moderate' rebels. Hell, Al Queda (fighting in Syria as the Al-Nusra Front) is moderate compared to Daesh. Since 2012 they and other 'moderate' Islamist groups received funding and weapons from the US, UK, France, Israel, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia. Many of the arms ended up in Daesh's hands anyway. One doesn't hear a lot about the, at one point much lauded, Free Syrian Army except that many in their ranks have defected to Daesh.
The stuff I mentioned above is as close to factual as it gets in this chaotic war. The information comes from so-called reliable media sources with supporting documents provided. This doesn't guarantee absolute truth of course.
It's interesting how almost every person has strong opinions about the clusterfuck unfolding in Syria/Iraq and the role Daesh plays in it, but very few of those people actually have enough trustworthy information to make an informed opinion. The fog of war and the spread of disinformation, and just plain old misinformation, is as relevant here as in any other war.
It doesn't help that Senator McCain advocated supplying Daesh with weapons to shoot down Russian fighter aircraft and even had his picture taken posing with Daesh. The US and its allies and lackeys have a rich history supporting and arming extremely vile regimes and insurgent groups when it serves their interests.
The West provided the fertile soil from which Daesh sprouted and now the chickens have come to roost. Big time.
In any type of rebellion, or any other organization for that matter, the views of the group will naturally change over time to be more in line with whatever the source of funding and resources wants them to be. Let a couple of years go by with the West providing essentially no support, and all of the support coming from the Gulf Arab states with a history of exporting extremism, and naturally any moderate groups and moderate elements in less moderate groups will wither and fade away, and the extremist elements will come to the front. The more time goes by, the harder it is to find any actual moderation to back.
Whatever moderate and secular-leaning elements there may have been at the beginning, they've long since withered and died, and there isn't much of anybody good left to back, aside from the Kurds. We have the Iranian-Russian aligned Assad regime, versus the ISIS extremists so out there that even Al-Quada is fighting them. I don't see much in the way of good options now, honestly.
It might have been different if we had backed groups heavily from the start and gotten that view-shifting effect working in our favor. Of course, it also might not have. And it's hard to fault the American people for not wanting to get deeply involved in another messy Middle-Eastern war. But if you care about spreading democracy and liberal western values, this is pretty much the worst thing to do.
But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).
> And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU?
That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better.
The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power).
> If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).
Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war.
Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.
In that bastion of critical thought called 'the Onion' they had a pretty good summary of such a solution:
http://www.theonion.com/article/northern-irish-serbs-hutus-g...
But as all seemingly extremists becoming prime ministers, he'll eventually learn to see a bit more of the bigger picture and cool down if he gets in office.
</humor>
This is a very scared, very scary person who is pushing every emotional button available with his policies and rhetoric who has the backing of a much too large segment of the country already. If you had told me 25 years ago that this would happen in NL I would not have believed you but I'm witnessing it. This whole thing started with the murder of a guy called Pim Fortuyn, the previous populist (who at least made some sense some of the time), he would have done some damage but not enough to seriously threaten the country. The segment woken up by the voice of Fortuyn was then handily co-opted by Wilders, who is now in an excellent position to put his play-book into action. It's super scary to watch friends and even relatives succumb to this idiots words and to hear his words being echoed by people dear to you.
It's like watching a re-run of Germany, ca. 1935, and then too people were saying 'Oh, it won't be that bad, he's just going to wake up when he actually has power' and we all know how that one ended.
Again, fortunately, NL is a crappy little country, but don't forget that Hitler came from Austria, not from Germany to begin with, who knows what his plans are. There is a large body of similar minded people in Belgium, and a much larger one still in France led by one Marine Le Pen. You can bet they're planning some sort of collaboration (too early to call it an anschluss) once they have managed to capture some power.
It's like watching the periscope of a submarine moving through a flotilla of merchant boats.
That's incredibly depressing. I only know of Geert Wilders from the court case (it was part of a law class), but I always assumed he was some uber-fringe politician who would never get anywhere near high office.
The world is entering a new period of radicalization and I'm very worried about the consequences.
But then again these are just polls. And then there needs to be a majority coalition.
But it's a far cry from the Netherlands I knew in the 90's.
Back on the topic: there are some really disturbing messages on social networks and in politician mouths regarding the refugees (who are called migrants here).
And yes, the coalition is pretty much our hope right now, but Wilders is ex VVD and SP might even join (they have a lot of similar things in their programs even though they're on opposite points of the political spectrum in nl, how that happened is another story). A 'cordon sanitaire' has been discussed but it is also already being broken.
The Netherlands that you knew in the 90's is dead, 25 years of divisive politics have seen to that.
Yes, it is absolutely deplorable how our 'chosen leaders' are positioning themselves and how they use the Paris attacks as a fig leaf cover to do things they nominally would have nothing to do with, except now that it is politically expedient.
Threatening to close your border to incoming foreigners is nothing like like closing your border, enslaving locals trying to flee you, and murdering them systematically.
And there's a difference between a leader being elected once on a wave of fear and the leader declaring themselves god's representative on earth - let the slaughter begin.
There was a boat of Jewish refugees that Roosevelt hoped would be accepted to Cuba but whom the United States was unwilling to accept. 254 of those refugees ended up murdered in the Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#.22Voyage_of_the_....
Well, only 50+ years ago there was an over 40% population in the US that thought that blacks were inferior and shouldn't sit in the same restaurants/hotels/schools with whites. In fact it was even law in some states.
Beyond that, there were about all major western countries, France, UK, Belgium, Holland, Italy, etc, that had other people enslaved in colonies up until the sixties. 2+ billion people had their countries managed by foreigners, and their fellow countrymen tortured and executed when asking freedom (and sometimes, just killed for fun).
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-...
http://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/27/how-britain-denies-its-hol...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france...
http://www.theplaidzebra.com/human-zoos-one-europes-shameful...
Heck, even in Paris itself, the French police famously killed over 200 Algerians marching for their country's freedom in a single day in 1961 -- and it took them 40+ years, after all officials were dead or too old, to finally admit it and ask for an apology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961
These countries also thought that they should have a say as to whether a remote country should have this or that president or regime -- to the point of toppling legitimate regimes, bombing those countries, coming to assist one party or another in a civil war, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
There have been over 2 million victims of those interventions in the last 10 years alone. Every despicable hit by muslim terrorists (and we all agree its despicable) was met with 4-5 orders of magnitude many more innocent victims on those countries.
If some muslim country managed to harm 1/100 that number of, say, Texans, where would the percentages of "tolerance" and "acceptance" towards them go?
We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.
I suspect you too have a bulging bookmark folder like I do of hypocritical western behaviour.
However the battle against militant jihadi extremists is one issue where 'we' are completely in the right. Completely.
No need to apologise for past wrongs. If we have regarded life as too cheap in the past, that is irrelevant to ensuring your own family cannot be killed.
Now prior actions of our own may have exacerbated, strengthened and accelerated the militant jihadis ( Iraq, Afghanistan ). But even without our own errors and crimes militant jihadis would have arisen eventually.
The jihadis have so many 'reasons' to kill us. If some 'reasons' did not exist because we didn't invade Iraq say, or we addressed other 'reasons' ( say for example we disbanded Israel ) there are just so many more 'reasons' left for the jihadis that single us out for killing.
Lets say Iraq was still under Saddam and Syria under Assad. No ISIS perhaps. What then about al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Qaeda in the Yemen, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah.
And the militant jihadis have found a brainwashing method that repeatably draws from a small but replenishing minority of evil, vain and stupid young people.
Young people join ISIS not because they are "evil" (what, are they Darth Vader?). They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination. I'm not saying we should try to prove them wrong by being really nice or something, I think it's too late for that, but it helps to understand this.
ISIS gives them a clear path to rectify the situation. Terrorism is pathetic militarily, killing 100 civilians is no accomplishment. However it is brilliant strategically.
Terrorist attacks cause the western world to completely fly off the handle and give the terrorists everything they could ever ask for. So far, we've gifted them 3 countries (there's no way they could have ever invaded by themselves, but we did it for them). We've also gifted them with a huge number of weapons, which were originally intended for such entities as "the free Syrian army" and "democratic Iraq".
All of this is made possible by the cowardice of western morons whose entire education on geopolitics comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Please stop helping the terrorists.
People love this kind of fantastical good/evil stuff. Who's good and who's evil depends on what side you're on, of course. Like that Russian book I heard about that's a rewrite of Lord of the Rings from Sauron's perspective.
Look at what games boys and young men so often choose to play. When I was seven I was out in the forests with my friends with fake guns. It was really fun. Then I put down childish things and got into Counter-Strike. I loved playing the terrorists. The AK-47 was just great and the avatars looked pretty cool.
This is kind of off-the-cuff sociological speculation or something, but: religion is a very powerful aesthetic phenomenon. In combination with war, you get a combination of thrills, ecstasy, excitement, danger, meaning, and hope that's hard to beat, for certain personality types.
Look at the ISIS propaganda videos. They're not laying out a rational strategy for improving the world. They're presenting an aesthetic image, a very masculine one, full of cars and guns and desert missions and fighting and stuff. Combined with the pious literalist faith that also has its own appeal. They do offer a hope for a future world, a glorious Islamic caliphate and whatnot, probably the deserts will bloom and peace will reign and Muslim Jesus will rise from the dead.
They say things like "Are you satisfied with your shitty life in suburban London or Paris? Do you like the way people look at you? Do you feel alive? Do you love your life? ...no? Come here. We not only have an exciting virile lifestyle full of action and terrible sublime beauty, but also we are the true messengers of the true prophet and God is on our side."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
I will not speak about young people joining ISIS, but I've known people who joined or wanted to join the military strictly to kill. These folks exist. You give them a strong ideological or philosophical reason to kill for and it brings in some of those sitting on the fence. In the case of the US military, I've not known anyone who made it through bootcamp with these attitudes (though I'm sure plenty have). They actively weed out these folks because, while their main mission involves killing, psychopaths aren't usually good soldiers. Groups like ISIS have no qualms in this regard, so these attitudes will survive their equivalent of basic training.
And women can desire to kill too. Or see conservative Christian women in the US (where I am) choosing to deliberately set aside careers and other "modern" or "masculine" things for their beliefs.
I can't explain that either, seems bizarre to me to deliberately reduce your agency, but some people think it's the thing to do.
Bullshit. The people who are destroying ancient statues and slaughtering other Muslims didn't sign up for some grand scheme of bringing down the west after a reasoned argument. They signed up because they are violent psychopaths and they were given an avenue to do all of the fucked up things that struck their fancy.
I think it's more like gangs. Kids join gangs because they want to belong to something bigger than themselves. ISIS offers something similar to people who feel alienated from the West.
If they signed up because of this, boy I wouldn't want to be in their shoes once they realize their mistake! Judging by everything I read, ISIS rulers enforce a strict Sharia law, with patrols making sure everyone is using the correct dress code.
I've also seen a documentary with a woman going undercover into ISIS-held territory (I think it was by the BBC) which claimed that Jihadists that break the "law" get killed, and that in fact ISIS welcomes any reports of misbehavior of their troops and punishes them hardly. ISIS seems to be ruling their territory with an iron hand, it's definitely not the land of do as you please and kill whom you fancy.
I was comparing social attitudes not counting casualties of armed conflict and its repercussions. Comparing these two things quantitatively makes very little sense.
The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries. They don't execute European or American racists from the 1950s and they don't do it as an act of revenge for the Iraq war (that I strongly opposed by the way)
Yes. So other countries should not encourage the tolerant co-patriots of those fanatics to adopt their attitudes -- e.g. by showing a plundering, hypocritical and hateful face of western democracies that destabilize the region, arm dangerous fanatics like ISIS and Laden, meddle in their politics, pillage their resources, and while condemning backwards islamism at the same time hi-five equally backwards Saudi regimes.
Because that's what has been happening. All of these countries were much more tolerant and humane 30 and even 50 years ago.
I'm also not really sure that I'd paint 1985-era Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Death-To-America Iran as markedly better than they are now. The region has historically been ruled by despots. Western intervention has occasionally (by design or accident) made things worse, but the West has the same responsibility in the rise to power of noted humanitarian Khomeiny as France's position during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles.
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-14-African-countries-a...
You are using the "someone did some bad things some time ago (and now that I've put things into perspective for you), lets be open minded about another someone doing another something bad right now, because it's only fare!" argument.
So many misunderstandings I don't know where to start.
First, did I say anywhere "lets allow another someone do another something bad right now, because it's only fare!"?
No, and that's why you didn't directly quote from my comment. In fact in it I very precisely write: "We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.".
Second, I don't try to justify or excuse (I mean, Jesus!), just to put in perspective and explain. And one main I try to explain is that "40% of people" believing a horrible thing is neither irredeemable, nor unknown for even in our countries, even in the time of our fathers and grandfathers. Those people grew up in countries that resulted of those conditions and heard those horror stories from their relatives.
Third, as I noted it's not "some time ago", it's something ongoing. Foreign powers still plunder, meddle and hold those countries down, with unbelievably far greater blood tolls than all those attacks combined.
So, more like "If you fuck people over repeatedly, including having a history of enslaving their parents, you shouldn't be that surprised that they might come and hit you back, or that they develop a cult of hating you and what you stand for".
That's the point, you are putting in perspective unrelated things and unrelated places and unrelated times...
None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy. That's something inherent to the ideology and its resulting culture.
That's why it's called a perspective though: because it has to expand the places and times (the "perspective view") we're taking into account to explain a situation.
But while expanded, they are not "unrelated" -- the places that had those things done to them are the homelands of those people, all have ancestors, relatives and friends that suffered from those things. And similar things (interventions, plundering etc) happens to this very day. Heck, those ISIS fanatics were pampered initially by foreign powers to topple the, call it whatever but at least stable, regime.
>None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy.
When you hold people in misery, fear and bad living conditions (and poor education), don't be surprised if they revert or held closer to backwards beliefs. Carpet bombing and plundering creates more fanatics than investing or opening a school.
So they probably would agree with this passage from their bible: Deuteronomy 13:6-10:
“If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you … Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die.”
So... Yea. Oh, and in the 80s in high school, I had a loaded gun held to my head and was told that if I did t believe in god (which god??!!) I must surely be worshipping satan. (The kid with the gun was pulled away by his friends. Lest I forget to mention it, this was a school in Texas. Somehow that is relevant, I'm sure.)
No. The bible says itself that those laws no longer apply.
Romans 7:6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
Galatians 5:13-15 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.
That never stopped Christian fanatics from selectively mix and matching the Bible.
For so-called Christians, ALL the Old Testament stuff should no longer apply when it clashes with what Christ said (which is like all of the time).
But they still prefer the Old Testament's more barbaric and base rules than what's in the Gospels.
Especially in light of this: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/17/te...
Which shows that the people fleeing are mostly Muslim. Muslims are more likely to be the victims of terrorist violence, not the perpetrators.
Having read various internet comments over the past few days, I'm doubting if that number has gone down any since then.
And to make it clear, I'm not concerned about the number of people coming to Europe. I'm concerned about the attitudes of conservative Islam, anywhere in the world.
If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.
I wonder if this is really true though. Some statistics:
https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20...
While Anders Breivik was shooting kids on the island in Norway, the Norwegian media were speculating that it was most likely perpetrated by muslim extremists. Even though we've historically had way more examples of terrorism perpetrated against immigration related targets by right-wing Norwegians (which was the case with Breivik as well).
The average Norwegian won't remember any of the mosques, immigrant reception centers and immigrant stores that were bombed in Norway in the past. I guess terrorism is quickly forgotten when it isn't your own group that is targeted.
Nonetheless, Breivik, unless I'm wrong about it, was not part of a movement trying to dominate the world and install a Christian kingdom, so ISIS differs from the white "movement" in that regard.
In regards to the current discussion, I am not sure which side of the argument I am on. I am not a Muslim so I can only comment from what I see from the outside. I have Muslim friends who are not at all sympathetic to ISIS or any of its friends, so I don't find it hard to believe that most Muslims find ISIS reprehensible as most Christians found Breivik. However, I have the opinion that nations in the region need to step up because ISIS threatens their freedom. There needs desperately to be a fight against ISIS in the form of a fight against their ideology... a movement that teaches that hatred and intolerance is not the way of Islam. I am not a Muslim, so I have no right to demand that of my Muslim brothers and sisters, especially as they've endured much in terms of discrimination in France (as that fascinating New Yorker pointed out) and elsewhere, but the ideology of hatred will survive bombs and invasions, if not be inflamed by it. The only way we can defeat ISIS is to defeat their message.
The biggest difference is - for want of a better word and I'm really sorry about using that term in the current context - because of their ability to execute. They would if they could, they just can't.
And in this simplistic scenario, why would you posit is the reason they "can't"?
US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists - see the numbers of people injured and killed by various mass shooters or clinic bombings.
How is that a fair or even interesting comparison, though? Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. Islamist terrorists aren't otherwise expected to be agents of the government charged with using physical force to protect the laws. Islamist terrorists target innocents in a deliberate effort to maximize damage and loss of life. Body counts tell almost nothing of the story in an honest comparison of the threat from police officers vs Islamic terrorists.
US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists
This is a slightly more interesting comparison, but even then you have to look at who the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are watching to understand that Christian extremists are individual actors who target specifics like abortion providers. They're not looking to take down all of Western society. They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer.
So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) - but that doesn't mean that they're the same level of threat in a strategic geopolitical sense.
True disturbingly often for police officers. About half the people shot and killed by police in the US (about 500 people per year) have mental illness. Compare that rate with the rest of the western world (less than 100 people since 2000) where people with mental illness tend not to be murdered by police. Even if we remove all the mentally ill people with guns from those numbers (to make the weapon use comparable across countries) we see very many more people killed in the US than any other western nation.
And if you want numbers for innocent people shot by officers with poor aim, well, they don't keep numbers so you can't get accurate stats. Here are a few: https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-yo...
> So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11)
I'm not excluding 9/11. Christian and right wing extremists have killed more than 3,000 people in the US in the 19th and 20th century. At least 3,500 black people were lynched, for example. We've seen in this thread people claiming that Islam has centuries of violence, so let's go back 200 years and see who's being killed and who's doing the killing. Black folks are being killed, and Good White Christians were doing the killing.
> They're not looking to take down all of Western society.
Sure they are. "NEW WORLD ORDER" and "THE JEWS DID IT" and "FREEMEN ON THE LAND" are all about how corrupt the current system is. Read the Unabomber manifesto. That's all about overthrowing the system.
> They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer.
There's no point having this discussion if you're just going to shift the goal posts to keep redefining what terrorism is or what extremism is or what atrocities do or don't count.
No, they aren't. Christian extremists include organized extremist groups, including those that have been behind or sheltered abortion clinic attacks (e.g., Army of God), and also much of the militia movement (large segments of which are Christian extremist groups with apocalyptic views.) Sure, there are apparently lone wolf attackers (just as there are among Islamic terrorists), but they generally turn out to have both pre-attack affiliation and post-attack shelter from organized extremist groups (just as is true among Islamic "lone wolf" terrorists, though fewer of them have the opportunity for post-attack shelter.)
And there have been a number of investigations and arrests connected with these groups and specifically addressing them as organized, active, violent extremist groups. However, unlike international Islamic groups, they don't get reported in the media, in part due to media bias, but in part due to the fact that the FBI (and DoJ more generally) don't put out press releases for the arrests the way they do with Islamic terror investigations and arrests, and on the occasions when they do, they don't highlight the organizational links in the cases.)
This may, for the government at least, be part of a deliberate strategy to avoid aiding the growth of homegrown domestic terror groups by avoiding giving the specific groups visibility, but it has the added effect of misleading the general public about the nature of the sources of organized violent extremism threatening the United States.
What information sources do you follow that indicate that Christian extremism is even remotely as great a threat as Islamic extremism? When I look at the FBI most wanted terrorists lists and other sources, I see a complete dominance by Islamic terrorist groups.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/23/fbi-c...
Contrary to your claim that the DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism, I've noted several efforts by the administration to "talk up" domestic terrorism and downplay Islamic terrorism - then when pressed on who these domestic terrorists are, administration officials have been at a loss to name any specifics.
Actual statistics on who kills Americans in America.
> When I look at the FBI most wanted terrorists lists
That tells you which individuals the FBI sees the most value to the policy objectives set by their political leadership to draw public attention to.
It doesn't tell you anything about relative risk of classes of terrorists. At most, given complete trust of the judgement of the FBI and assumption of their policy objectives being aligned with risk to Americans and assumption that there are no factors other than risk weighing into what they draw public attention to, it gives you information on the relative risk attached to individual terrorists. But, even then, if there are relatively fewer Islamic groups posing danger to Americans, and each of those groups is more dependent on a narrow set of senior leaders for effectiveness, then members of Islamic groups could be dominate the 10 most wanted list by being the individuals responsible for the most risk, even while Christian groups are collectively responsible for greater risk.
> Contrary to your claim that the DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism
I didn't claim that DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism.
What I stated is that they don't issue press releases as frequently, and don't highlight organizational ties in the press releases they do issue, for the actual specific arrests or specific investigations of homegrown Christian terrorists in the way they do for arrests or specific investigations of Islamic terrorists tied to international groups.
This is actually in tension with the DoJ's portrayals of the overall risk from domestic, non-Islamic groups (I suggest a possible motive for this inconsistency in my early post, though that is pure speculation.)
Edit: Not sarcastic. Something like the FBI's list that someone else shared, of the group responsible for US terror attacks from 2002-2005.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-conf...
> At the same time, the United States also faces significant challenges from domestic terrorists. In fact, between 1980 and 2000, the FBI recorded 335 incidents or suspected incidents of terrorism in this country. Of these, 247 were attributed to domestic terrorists, while 88 were determined to be international in nature.
> Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat. Two of the seven planned acts of terrorism prevented in 1999 were potentially large-scale, high-casualty attacks being planned by organized right-wing extremist groups.
And that's a discussion that has been had many times over, it's as boring to me as vi versus emacs.
Terrorist is a relative term, it mostly depends on which side of the fence your bed currently resides and what your personal belief system is.
I see precious little difference to an attack on Fallujah to 'liberate' it and an attack on Paris to murder a bunch of people. In both cases lots of innocents will die and the world will end up a substantially worse, not better place for everybody afterwards.
While you can point out differences in their justifications, you can't pretend their actions are unrelated.
In the large, one side wants to impose rule based on beliefs about what an omnipotent sky person wants and is willing to sacrifice innocent lives (even celebrate such sacrifice) to do so. The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
In the small, things don't always play out quite like this, but to draw equivalence between the two sides is morally abhorrent.
You talk a lot about not having a clue on "the reality of the conflicts" and yet, you are unable to take a step back and look from the perspective of someone completely alien to the situation.
America has, time and time again, used and abused its armies for strategic and economical purposes (The "if you have oil..." meme has been beaten to death, hasn't it?). It certainly is willing to sacrifice innocent lives as long as it doesn't make the news - which it doesn't because of how hostile the entire country is to muslim ideals. And I've heard more than once the term "God" being thrown around by US politicians to justify these things. Does all of this ring a bell to you?
One of the sides is certainly a lot more barbaric than the other, what with the beheadings and what not... but whether your family is dying to american bombs or to barbarians doesn't really change squat for the victims. With the exception that one of them is actually less destructive - take a guess which?
[0] Since we're talking about countries with backwards ideologies, how is it that it's political suicide to be an atheist in the US? We have plenty of them in France and nobody gives a shit...
Edit: I'll add to this... It's really hard to take a step back and picture yourself as being the bad guy. It's nearly impossible, in fact. You are raised on one side of a conflict and you simply do not have the full picture unless you've yourself lived on the other side or been with people on the other side. But try to understand this: In these wars, there's no "bad guy and good guy". There's two bad guys and a lot of followers who have been completely brainwashed to think the causes are worthy.
Wars are not about justice. They're not about spreading culture, be that culture islam or democracy. We'd be at war with North Korea if they were about any of those things. Wars are strategic, and always about taking something away from the enemy, be it territory, riches or political power. The two sides are equally bad, and the civilians/soldiers on both sides only see how evil the other side is - they don't get to see the evil of their own.
We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread.
EDIT: Sorry for making this personal. Some details removed.
That's rich, given that you all but dragged the whole thing out in the first place.
If you're ready to call me 'ill informed' and you're unable to see that to victims of war it hardly matters whether the perpetrator is two old white guys praying in an old building for guidance or some Imam in a mosque who by remote control pull the trigger then indeed, I should have left this well alone. But trust me, as long as that is a thing that can not be discussed with some dispassion this mess will not end, it will only get (much) worse.
Embrace the occasion to reconsider whether it's actually ill-informed, then. :)
To clarify what I was saying before, I don't mean to say that "God" hasn't been the main driver for wars and terror before. My point is that it's usually just an excuse, so that more may join the cause.
If you want to wage war on Madeupistan and 95% of your country is hardcore vegetarian, it's easier to get followers if you tell your people you're spreading vegetarianism than if you tell them you want their unobtainium mines.
> We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread.
Wanna try twitter? #140characters
This is why you're wrong. No, the leaders (whether it is the politicians or the military command) don't care about civilian casualties unless there's large vocal resistance.
Displacing democratically elected leaders like CIA has been doing? Lying about WMDs like with Iraq? Being careless in general? Refusing to change, justifying collateral damage with unproven "national security"? Doing nothing to avoid civilians from being harmed? They're not bothering to ensure the military knows what areas to avoid and confirming who's who before bombing. They so obviously put profits first, and care more about having puppets in the governments than about the people. (It is even more obvious in the case of Russia's support of Assad.)
NSA have even admitted they kill on metadata = the position of cell phones, with as much accuracy as programs like COTRAVELER can give you when you have no clue who's who. Guess why so many weddings have been hit? Because somebody 2-3 degrees off from the suspect suddenly meets a hundred people including more people linked to some other suspect. So they bomb the place.
US = an nation state with an identifiable military subjected to rule of law
>and both sides are very clearly not very precise in who they actually target (the bombing on Doctor's Without Border, anyone?). Both sides cause tons of civilian casualties
For better or worse the US is operating on intelligence specifically designed to avoid/minimize civilian populations, which is very difficult when IS doesn't wear military uniform (as required by the laws of war to distinguish military actors from civilian populace) and hides among civilians. I don't know if it is "tons" or what that even means in relation to human death figures, but I'll concede it happens, still it should be defined as collateral damage because the goal of US operations is not to kill the civilian populace but those individuals bearing the most responsibility.
On the other hand IS specifically designs its quasi-military attacks to be inflicted directly on the civilian populations with the goal of maximizing civilian casualties.
These are not just differences in justifications, but differences in actions...at least according to the law. Now I could see your issue if the US was secretly funding, training and arming non-identifiable combatants and recruiting/embedding them all over the globe to specifically orchestrate indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations.
When you're under attack from a vastly superior military, your options for response are very limited.
It's hard for us in the US to even conceive what it would be like to be in that situation. The only analog is a War of the Worlds style invasion by aliens.
[1] and I still hold the idea that I held in 2003, that the Iraq war was a completely idiotic veture
Al Qaeda had very specific grievances. They wanted US troops to leave Saudi Arabia, where they first put bases before the Persian Gulf War.
(Aside: Bin Laden offered his irregular forces to Saudi Arabia to help defend the kingdom from Saddam. He was rejected. That pissed him off some, but the presence of infidels in the land of Mecca pissed him off even more.)
Not saying terrorism is a legitimate response, but it's much more explainable than "they hates us for our freedoms."
That was a position used to justify action, rally supporters, and which was quite overtly an instrumental (rather than terminal) goal in their grand strategy --- which was -- like that of Daesh -- to achieve a pan-Islamic caliphate.
(It's worth noting that al-Qaeda was formed several years before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that prompted the creation of those bases, and adopted the position of opposing the bases after the Saudi government turned down bin Laden's offer for al-Qaeda fighters to defend the Kingdom against Iraq in favor of accepting aid from the United States. And both al-Qaeda's long-term goals and their anti-Western rhetoric existed before those bases.)
> Not saying terrorism is a legitimate response, but it's much more explainable than "they hates us for our freedoms."
Sure, but not for the reasons you propose: al-Qaeda's opposition to the West is because their strategy for achieving dominion in the Islamic world is the time-tested strategy of totalitarians everywhere -- sell the target population on the threat of an external enemy, and use that to sell the idea that the totalitarian leaders and their proposed system of rulership are necessary to combat that external threat. Its not a response to anything the West does, although anything that the West does that creates (or can be fuel for propaganda to create) widespread grievances (legitimate or not) in the populations in which al-Qaeda seeks to establish its caliphate will be leveraged. Daesh is much the same in this respect.
Back in 1991 after Saddam invaded Kuwait, I remember thinking "why the hell do we have to solve the problem? Why not force Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States to take responsibility for their security?"
Practically all the Islamist terrorism that the US has experienced since then has flowed from that decision.
The likelihood of terrorism should be part of any decision making process when it comes to the Mideast, no different than estimating potential body counts from land invasion.
At least Eric Shinseki wasn't afraid to estimate the real costs of the Iraq war.
al-Qaeda has for more than a decade overtly targeted China over its policies in Xinjiang, and the Chinese government claimed that the East Turkistan Islamic Movement behind many attacks there was tied to al-Qaeda (and, indeed, some senior leaders of that organization were killed in fighting against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.)
BTW if you ever go to a Uighur restaurant try the horse. Tastes like chipped beef.
It's not always easy from the outside to tell them apart from their propaganda.
Rule of law does not excuse or lessen atrocities, it defines them. Moreover, the laws of war are specifically designed to lessen/avoid atrocities by limiting: 1. When a nation-state may engage in the use of armed force, and 2. How a nation-state may actually use armed force.
Having an open mind, I ask you to look within and ask whether the US is specifically targeting civilians, or has simply targeted military actors hiding among civilian populations? No matter what you answer, you must acknowledge IS is responsible for planning/executing military style attacks against civilians specifically.
We can agree to disagree, certainly there is nothing wrong with an all life is sacred approach, but you should not feel deeply disturbed that the law distinguishes between responding to a military attack with the use of force targeted at those most responsible and a non-state actor engaging in terrorist/quasi-military attacks against civilian populations?
Are you saying that codified law is the only thing that determines what is and isn't an atrocity? As in, anything that's legal isn't an atrocity? I certainly do not agree with that.
> Having an open mind, I ask you to look within and ask whether the US is specifically targeting civilians, or has simply targeted military actors hiding among civilian populations?
I don't have any clue, but I don't think that's the primary concern. I think there can be unacceptable civilian casualties even if there is a legitimate military target in the middle of civilians.
> No matter what you answer, you must acknowledge IS is responsible for planning/executing military style attacks against civilians specifically.
Of course, but why is that relevant? The existence of a worse actor does not make the acts of another actor more excusable.
> We can agree to disagree, certainly there is nothing wrong with an all life is sacred approach, but you should not feel deeply disturbed that the law distinguishes between responding to a military attack with the use of force targeted at those most responsible and a non-state actor engaging in terrorist/quasi-military attacks against civilian populations?
That's not what disturbs me. What disturbs me is the notion that a formal law in any way determines the acceptability of a violent act.
It matters here because my top level comment was a reply to someone emphatically stating there is no difference between the actions of the US and IS and I disagree. I believe there is a difference in the actions of US and IS, I used the law to distinguish between two acts. If someone said there was not a difference between the act of 1st degree murder and manslaughter, I would disagree and turn to the law to give examples of the differences.
>That's not what disturbs me. What disturbs me is the notion that a formal law in any way determines the acceptability of a violent act.
No doubt, to many laws of war is an oxymoron. However, the laws don't determine what the acceptable violent acts are, instead humankind determines what is not acceptable based on International consensus and through the treaty/UN we codify it into law.
One example, humans decided land mines as a weapon of war were to indiscriminate and had potential to far outlast armed conflicts and were outlawed by treaty and then codified into a UN Resolution, every year since then annual deaths of landmines has decreased from ~10k/year down to ~3.5k/year. Moreover, often times these laws of war have nothing to do with violence, but make sense such as requiring all military actors in armed conflict to be identified by uniform so as to be distinguished from civilians. Other laws such as Arms Reduction Treaty lead to Russia/US disposing of some combined 50-60k nukes.
Oh of course, they're the same thing.
Bombing civilians (without those being the explicit target) in a military context is exactly the same thing as just invading a concert room or shooting randomly at people
You're missing the context and the intent, just that. But I can see your ideology prevents you from seeing that
Pick some, they're all true.
Bombing civilians in a trumped up war about resources is to the victims exactly the same as shooting randomly at people. Ditto blowing up weddings with rockets, killing a few hundred thousand civilians to stop them from subscribing to another ideology and so on.
All of these activities are deplorable. I'm all for national defense, I'm not a pacifist (try harming me or someone I love and see how that ends) but at the same time I'm all for restraint and very careful consideration of the consequences of actions.
Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris. Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still. And only when and if you've identified root causes can you go and attack the problem.
Attacking Iraq on false pretexts after 9/11 was a step on the way to Liberating Fallujah (or should that be 'wiping it off the face of the earth') which indirectly led to the US leaving Iraq which led to a power vacuum which led to on the raid of Mosul by IS which was one step on the way to IS becoming more coherent which was one step on the way to a bunch of murderers shooting up the Paris nightlife.
It's not that hard. Context and intent are a lot more complex than they seem to be at first glance, ideology has precious little to do with it.
Depends on the way to go.
If you're going for 100% freedom of speech then you'll have to accept things like the WBC or Neonazi hate speech
Now if you're going for what happens in Europe then going agains hate speech should work for all forms of hate speech, including hate towards any groups and the country itself. Tolerance goes both ways.
> Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris.
Yes, and I agree with the correlation, but they were against it and got the short stick first.
So damned if you do, damned if you don't? Might as well do it then
> Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still.
I agree. But you can't predict all consequences. Saddam was a ruthless dictator but he kept the other ruthless wanna-be dictators in check.
I'm fine with that. I'd rather have such sores out in the open than underground where they can rot and fester that much more efficiently.
It also shows them for the idiots they are instead of being able to isolate their wanna-be company into a nice little echo-chamber.
This is absolutely, truly, astonishing.
Imagine if a drone from Saudi Arabia or better yet Assad's Syria swooped into your community looking for, the leader of a US infantry commander, and instead blew up a wedding party. And not just once, but dozens of times over the course of years.
How would you feel about that? Would you want retribution?
Would you want to spend time debating what a "terrorist" is?
Before Japan's surrender they were planning kamikaze operations against the US invaders and believed casualties might be in the millions. They had already launch 2,000 kamikaze operations to that point in the war.
Hirohito ordered his people to submit, and the US allowed him to stay on the throne as a reward. Most of his generals were executed.
If Hirohito himself had been executed, it wouldn't surprise me if there had been a horrific backlash against the occupiers.
I don't know why you mention Vietnam. From their perspective, Vietnam won the war. More importantly, they got the US to do what they wanted: leave them alone.
If you start talking about intent like this what your really saying is I share the values of one side and hence find their actions more justifiable. And I obviously even after with you about the west fighting for the better value system, but I would also prefer it would win on its own merit and not because it was forced on countries like Iraq.
One intends to cause terror, the other to hit military targets (against a certain government).
Who mentioned values?
To your question though, the French resistance during the second world war could easily have been called terrorists, as could the American revolutionary army.
It's absolutely not inconsistent to hold the view that Islamically-inspired terror is a big problem for the world, whilst simultaneously holding the view that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. I don't know why anyone would think otherwise.
A vocal and deplorable minority of Muslims are actively attempted to split the world into Us and Them, I don't see that playing into their hand and deciding that I'm going to declare all Muslims want me dead is really going to help matters.
Nobody in this thread has suggested this
> ... declare all Muslims want me dead ...
nor this.
I think one of the major issues is defining peaceful and non-violent. From my personal experience (I am from a Muslim country), I have seen many Muslims who would not commit violence themselves, but they do not have any trouble if some extremists commit violence. Some would even give moral justification of the violence. In our country's atheist community we commonly joke "Extremists want to kill us, Moderates want Extremists to kill us". FWIW, apostasy is punishable by death in some Muslim countries.
To sum up, almost all the Muslims are non-violent, but how many of them are truly peaceful? You will be very surprised to know the number.
- Vietnam
- Cambodia
- Ghana
- Iraq
- Afghanistan
The list is endless, you can keep that going for a long long time before you run out of names.
There are over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide [1]. Size estimates for the terrorist groups are: ISIS (52k - 258k [2]), Al Qaeda (19k-27k [3]). There are others, but I believe these are the main ones that people are talking about when worrying about terrorist threats abroad. We're talking about 1 in 5,600 to 22,535.
My humble opinion is that the terrorist threat worldwide is indeed significant, but if you think that it is a problem with Islam, then you are playing right into the hands of the extremists, who want (and they have publicly published these intentions) to divide the world into two camps that hate each other. The more hatred you direct towards Muslims, the more you drive them apart from you. ISIS's stated objective is basically world war - they want you to hate Muslims, so that Muslims feel like they have nowhere to go in the Western world.
[0] http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/01/08/3609796/islamist-t... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7552225/terrorism-europe-chart
(and you can add a big chunk of green for France November 2015 now too)
Your third point I responded to in another reply.
I find this comment very strange. It's as though I can't acknowledge that Islamic terror is the biggest violent threat facing Europe whilst at the same time not hate muslims (?!?!?! how can anyone do that ?!?!?!).
> At least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing
> extremists in the 14 years since since the September 11
> attacks -- almost twice as many as were killed by
> self-identified jihadists in that time.
You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the government has a similar concern for white supremacists.
And they were in fact doing more, but a lot of it (along with funding) has gone by the wayside since 9/11.
If those white people were part of a religious movement indiscriminately targeting the larger society, then of course they would be labeled "terrorists". Do you have an example of where I'm wrong?
calling the president a terrorist
If you'll recall, the White House referred to the GOP as suicide bombers over debt ceiling negotiations. That's political posturing when either side does it and has little to do with legitimate use of the word "terrorists" in the context of labeling organizations seeking to maximize loss of life and destruction through surprise attacks on civilians.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...
Edit: spacing
white supremacists: 11,000,000+...
Furthermore, it makes sense to start post-9/11 since "we're in a different world now" and all that rhetoric that politicians have been spewing since. This is about today's political context, where 9-11 was the defining moment.
Terrorism is what other groups do.
Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppression too? Because from the extermination of 6 million jews down to colonialism, slavery, the pogroms, nukes on civilians, gulags, the massacre in Manchuria, 2 world wars, etc, most western and asian countries don't look that good either.
Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?
The question in the thread wasn't whether "islamic terrorism" was compatible with open society, but whether islam itself is.
And my point it, whether it is or not, that "open society" is not as "open" as it pretends to be either.
If some family had done "a bunch of things" (of enslaving, torturing and murderous nature) to your family "over the past thousand years", would you see them as friends? Especially if they continued those things in one way or another up to today, while celebrating how "open" and "tolerant" they are, (as opposed to you, who hates them).
They were "westerners" only in their nationality not in their ethnicity. For some western societies it's difficult to imagine the difference, but it exists -- not everybody gets assimilated to the culture he lives in, especially if there's another culture he feels he belongs to by inheritance.
For those of people (who are not the majority of ISIS, but a small minority) it's about a twisted idea of revenge for what happened and happens to their (origin) countries and to people of the same faith there, and how the west views and treats them -- not about struggling with poverty.
However, in actuality, libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is very clear about what its core foundations are. And you'll only find the left-libertarians that are very wishy-washy about their beliefs such that each one has their own definition of "stuff I like, and not stuff I don't like".
Open inside (market place of ideas, secularity, people generally subscribing to the live and let live) and open outside - welcoming, letting people join or willing to help people that are not from that society.
Wanting liberal, secular and socially oriented Europe inside and sealing the borders and isolating oneself from the human suffering outside is definitely lacking empathy, but not incoherent position.
We've been refugees, have taken in refugees, have been a battle field and have waged war with neighbors and overseas creating battle fields elsewhere.
An isolationist strategy is given that history to me morally bankrupt and not an option, even if the position is coherent I find that for me personally that's not a road worth walking due to the inherent hypocrisy that would require.
There are no good answers right now. We are very deep and there will be a lot of pain in the coming years. Everything else is wishful thinking.
ISIS and their ilk kill far more Muslims than any other group.
What would be those means employed by non-Muslim radicals to effect social change?
I'm inclined to say that urban warfare and terrorizing an entire population with open aggression tactics are not among them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army
All these are fairly recent examples of non-Muslim radicals attempting to effect social change by the same means Muslim radicals use to try and effect such change in Western countries. That they have not succeeded in building a near-nation state out of that terrorism is largely due to the higher stability of “Western” countries compared to the middle east, though, depending on whom you ask, they were quite successful in Ukraine.
I see this line of argumentation regularly, but since those movements were brought down with significant police and military operations, I don't see them as good examples for why Muslim extremism should not be brought down by police and military operations. There are other reasons, but this comparison doesn't qualify.
I remember the centre of my local town being blown to shit when I was a teenager.
1996 is not that long ago. You really shouldn't discard it as 'the past'. What's funny is, large segments in the US actively supported these terrorists. All their rhetoric and they're just as guilty.
There's much less logistical support for various left-wing movements. After 2001, American authorities no longer approved of funding and supporting IRA operations in Britain so any hopes of "military" achievements by Irish nationalists dwindled. Also support for ETA and similar movements in Europe have declined.
RAF (Red Army Fraction) and various Arab groups used to work together; that seems nowadays negligible. But jihadist violence has increased its profile.
Yes, but I would say that the hope of any "military" achievements by IRA (in the sense of aggravating so much violence as to make UK give away North Ireland) was lost as funding and arms dealing was more difficult and surveillance more effective. So it was good sense to stick to the Good Friday agreement.
At which point does 9/11 not matter anymore?
Also, I have reservations including nationalist movements and lone-wolf ops in your rebuttal as the underlying nature of the struggle is completely different than that of the Islamic terrorism. You could reason with a radical nationalist and persuade them to explore other options than an armed struggle to reach political goals but good luck trying that with a faith-driven, theology-loving radical who thinks he's on some divine (read: apocalyptic) mission to cleanse the masses of their imaginary sins.
Though here that's beside the point. The Paris attacks were not because France is a free country, but because France was bombing Daesh. This is more like the Lockerbie bombing than like some sort of "clash of civilizations" that so many are implying
What a disgusting rationalization of the indiscriminate killing of innocent people.
"An online statement said eight militants armed with explosive belts and automatic weapons attacked carefully chosen targets in the "capital of adultery and vice," including a soccer stadium where France was playing Germany, and the Bataclan concert hall, where an American rock band was playing, and "hundreds of apostates were attending an adulterous party.""
Oops, they were actually "carefully chosen targets". That's better.
[1] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/isis-statement-france-to...
I think ISIS is a horrible, horrible movement that should be destroyed. But their strategy has been very consistent: attack countries that attack them.
They left Russia alone until Putin decided to bomb them. It was only a few weeks before they blew up a Russian airliner.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/kidnapped-frenc...
I'm not arguing ISIS are good people. I'm arguing that, if you don't want to be on the receiving end of terrorist attacks from ISIS, the best way to do that is to stop bombing them.
Otherwise you should assume that they will happen as a matter of routine.
Thus validating the terrorists' approach. They use fear as a means of control and, according to your argument, it is an effective approach. I don't know what the answer is, but I do not think that allowing marauders to wander around the world staking claim to peoples' land is acceptable. Much less when they commit so many atrocities along the way.
If the choice is to: a) stop bombing and be hopeful that the terrorists will go away or b) try to stop the raping, murdering, and other atrocities via violence... I know where I stand.
You may know where you stand, but dollars to donuts you don't know what your government is doing in your name.
I'm not "blaming America first." I'm asking that we behave like adults and take responsibility for the consequences of our behavior.
World's largest arms importer: Saudi Arabia ($4,243,000,000 in 2014)
To me, these are scary numbers.
> When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious. – Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
Whether their armed forced are capable is, sadly, depending on your POV, another story. Like in most autocratic societies, a strong military is seen as a threat to the leadership.
https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabia...
Germany will spend at least 8000 million euros for refugees this year (2014 it were about 2400 million euros).
If there is any relation between exporting arms and the number of refugees, this is not only a humanitarian, but clearly a financial disaster.
DoD spent about $115B in 2013 and budgeted $100B in 2014 for procurement (PDF source: http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...)
That's a lot of weapons.
I wish Pew had interviewed Christians in the same countries at the same time and asked them what they thought should be done to homosexuals.
It would be interesting to see what we could glean about Christianity.
However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years.
True, but I think it's more complex than that.
First, I do not think the Vatican automatically represents the most conservative brand of Christianity; not at all times, anyway. Not now, for example. Second, beheadings seem rightfully barbaric and horrendous to us, but as terrible as they are, I think their impact is superficial in a way (though obviously not to their victims, and please make no mistake: I do not wish to live in a country that beheads people!). ISIS beheadings are a matter of form, a propaganda tool; a way to shock the West into action, and the local population into compliance.
But as for actual damage, compare their beheadings with the damage caused by some Christian leaders of First World countries who have been bombing cities in the Middle East and causing a lot of deaths. These conservative Christians sometimes describe themselves as "born again", surround themselves with religious phraseology, describe their wars as Crusades and name them with Biblical sounding names (Righteous Fury, Infinite Justice, etc, etc), feel their countries have a God-given right to shape the world as they see fit. Wouldn't people living in a city bombed by a Western country consider themselves the victims of Western religious zealots?
And if, say, we know Obama and Bush are NOT the same, are we not making the mistake of thinking every bellicose Muslim is exactly the same terrorist fundamentalist that cannot be reasoned with and must be exterminated? Maybe there are shades of gray with them, just like it happens in the West?
Absolutely, and from my perspective, some western nations (in particular the US) do have the problematic tendency of voting Christian fundamentalists into positions of power.
There's a debate to be had how much of the blame for past actions should go to religion, and how much to worldly motivations, but there clearly was an element of that (remember Gog and Magog?).
But talking the long-term perspective, religious 'nones' are on the rise in the western world, even in the US.
Wrong. The beheadings are the things Mohammad did, as written in their holy books, so they just do that, following their role model even without the cameras.
It does have something to do with religion, but only because that is being used as _motivation_ to do bad things which isn't inherit to just Islam. I mean, Klu Klux Klan
> Klan members had an explicitly Christian terrorist ideology, basing their beliefs in > part on a "religious foundation" in Christianity. The goals of the KKK included, > from an early time onward, an intent to "reestablish Protestant Christian values in > America by any means possible", and they believed that "Jesus was the first Klansman."
What this is about is radical _people_ finding whatever motivation they can do to force _their own views_ onto the world.
What is your motivation in protecting islam? Why the finger pointing to Christianity and other religions? Sure, they also got problems, but do we currently really have a huge problem with those religions? What you are doing is like saying: "Well national socialism isn't that bad because other totalitarian ideologies also are stupid. Look at communism and how many dead people resultet because Stalin distorted the true teachings of marxism. See, national socialism isn't the problem."
I'm not trying to protect Islam or bring Christianity down. I honestly don't care either way about any of them. What I'm trying to explain that blaming Islam is the wrong thing to do, is pointless, and if anything it helps disenfranchise the at-risk, on-the-fence-extremeists who are (getting) upset at how everyone else deals with their religion.
Wrong again. You're not actually comparing. Go to the sources. It's not about "looking hard" it is on almost every page of Quran. Please try the reading sample, Sura 9:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/009.htm
All those are considered to be the direct words of god by Muslims. As long as they declare them so, the problems will remain. But suggesting them not to declare that is probably worse than suggesting to the Catholics to give up having the Pope. They surely need some kind of reformation. Unfortunately, "back to the original texts" can't be the basis of reformation as they are really filled with violence and intolerance. The only reformation that isn't disastrous for humanity can only be "don't take these original texts too seriously." Other Abrahamic religions managed to move in that direction, for Islam it's going to be much harder.
What I don't understand is that effectively not a single person of those who claim that there is equivalence in the holy texts of different religions try to read them themselves, because once they'd read they would not be able to even say such sentences like "if looking hard enough."
Recommended reading: "The Phony Islam of ISIS", http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/wha..., on the dangers of believing there is a literal, undilluted interpretation of a contradictory holy text.
(I'm an atheist, by the way. Not a Muslim.)
What "this" you mean? What I've written is true, specify what you doubt. Now...
> Or maybe they modernized their religion
There's no "modernization" as such but not every branch is as fanatic as the Wahhabis, the official branch in Saudi Arabia, and the direct religious base for ISIS. Saudis Invest billions in spreading their fanatical Islam branch.
> Why aren't they killing infidels left and right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Ar...
"The death penalty can be imposed for a wide range of offences[4] including murder, rape, false prophecy, blasphemy, armed robbery, repeated drug use, apostasy,[5] adultery,[6] witchcraft and sorcery[7][8][9][10] and can be carried out by beheading with a sword,[11] or more rarely by firing squad, and sometimes by stoning.[12][13]"
> Recommended reading: "The Phony Islam of ISIS"
Balderdash, the whole article. One more writer speaking from his ash instead of reading any primary source. How do I know? Because "the Quran is" "a complex and nuanced text that deals with legal, moral, and metaphysical questions in a subtle and multifaceted way" can be claimed only somebody who never read it himself. Nuanced my foot.
I've given one link (Sura 9). Read it and say what's nuanced there. Here another, Sura 111:
"The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will be plunged in flaming Fire, And his wife, the wood-carrier, Will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre."
That's the whole Sura 111. What's nuanced about that? Reading Hadith, you can find that Abu Lahab was Mohammad's uncle who didn't believe in Mohammad's "I've received the message form god" pitch.
And that Sura was from the "peaceful part" of Quran(!). Fire of hell for unbelievers is preached in almost every Sura! Almost only those which are bad retellings of some less drastic Old Testament stories can happen not to mention at least "fire" or "hell" for "unbelievers." I don't care how nuanced is if they should pray five or 18 times per day, the view of unbelievers, Christians and Jews is very clear and repetitive.
> 27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”
For another,
> 20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.
...I'm afraid that your crusade of trying to prove Muslims violent by reading passages from Quran is not terribly persuasive, to anyone who have read the Old Testament. If you really want to persuade others, you will have to search harder.
Or read the "Gospels" from New Testament for the "deeds of Jesus" especially related to stoning:
http://biblehub.com/niv/john/8.htm
and compare with the "deeds of Muhammad" as told by Hadith:
http://quotingislam.blogspot.co.at/2011/06/muhammad-ordered-...
Yes, many Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia support ISIS; it's well-known this is a major source of funding. But how is this a counter to the fact the vast majority of Muslims -- are you aware that not all Muslims are Wahhabis, live in Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, are Arabs? -- are NOT trying to murder nonbelievers?
"Balderdash", you say about the article "The Phony Islam of ISIS". But what you say flies in the face of everything we know about religious texts; that they are anachronistic and self-contradictory in multiple places, and there is NO single interpretation of them. Evidently most Muslims choose not to acknowledge the part about spreading the word of Mohammed by the sword, or maybe you secretly believe they do -- all of them! -- and that they are biding their time?
The author argues that some parts of the Quran contradict other parts; that there are treatises and purported quotations of Mohammed that are meant to explain the Quran, but themselves are subject to interpretation and to varying degrees of reliability. I don't know about you, but I tend to trust the word of someone who studies religion for a living and specifically Islam to have read the Quran. Are you sure it's all "balderdash" and that this professor who teaches religious studies at college "has never read [the Quran] himself"?
But mostly I trust the reality of a world in which most Muslims are not trying to murder non-Muslims. I don't even need to appeal to authority here, just to reality.
After you read enough to have your view based on your own experience, also try to find out how many of those who believe claim those aren't the actual words of god but "some old contradictory texts." (As far as I know, only "apostates" dare to do so, once you read the original, you'll know why.)
http://www.ibiblio.org/britishraj/Jackson5/chapter09.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
Morally wrong, sure, from my PoV. From their PoV they are the good guys.
Islam is a religion that teaches a few good things in verses and hadith from the early times of the religion when it was weak and had few members. So they needed to be tolerant and also wanted the Jews and Christians to be tolerant towards them.
Later, after the immigration to Mekka Mohammed changed his teachings and they become more and more intolerant and violent. The religion became more political as the teachings contained more and more text/rules about how to treat non-muslims. According to the koran, "Allah" knew that some verses contradict others, the later (more intolerant verses) abrogate (replace) the earlier peaceful verses (sura 16:101 and 2:106) - so you see that there is a bit of a problem with different verses telling different things.
Don't get me wrong, I would hope that all muslims would only follow the earlier peaceful teachings (and ignore the concept of abrogation) and many already do. But I don't think it helps in telling the others are simply "wrong" becaus that helps avoiding a much needed discussion (self-criticism). It would be better to acknowledge that there are intolerant verses and to understand why they are there and finally to come to the agreement that such intolerant teachings should no longer be accepted as part of the doctrine (well, only as some kind of "rejected part").
The Muslims from the another "sects" are also considered "unbelievers" by the fundamentalists (unless they join them), so it perfectly fits their ideology to do to them "what Mohammad did."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Banu_Qurayza
"All Males who reached puberty and 1 woman beheaded"
Directly from the holy texts:
"No woman of Banu Qurayza was killed except one. She was with me, talking and laughing on her back and belly (extremely), while the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) was killing her people with the swords."
(The "Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him)" is how Muhammad is referred to in the texts. Whenever we write just "Muhammad" it already sounds "improper" to his believers.)
The fundamentalists know the content of the holy books of Islam.
Public beheadings, whether televised or not, are always propaganda, a show of force, a message to the common people. Public punishment is sometimes a barbaric form of entertainment, which is a form of propaganda as well. Historically this was the case in most countries, including those in Europe.
In the case of ISIS, I also think they are meant to shock Europe and the US into action. A war between Islam and the West is just what ISIS needs.
I find your explanation about Mohammed utterly unconvincing, because most Muslims don't go around beheading people, only some. ISIS and people from backwards, poverty-stricken countries/communities do, but that's a different issue.
Saudi Arabia is not poverty stricken, and they actually behead people for, for example, "adultery" or "homosexuality"(!) They invest 56 billion dollar per year for education, out of that billions for "exporting" their view of Islam, exactly the one with which I have problem.
Statistics show that most Muslims don't support ISIS: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/17/in-nations-w...
Even in Saudi Arabia, support for ISIS isn't universal. According to this ( http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/isis... ) there is only 5% grassroots support for ISIS there. Now, even 5% is certainly worrying, but that's nowhere near universal.
Sorry, I remain unconvinced by your arguments.
But not all Muslims identify with Wahhabism (which percentage of the total Muslim population is Wahhabi?), nor live in Saudi Arabia. It's also not automatically true that all Wahhabis, even if more intolerant, want to murder the infidel.
Again, your conclusion about Muslims being fundamentally blood-thirsty is unsupported. The fact remains that most Muslims don't want to kill you.
I've certainly never concluded that, you can verify all what I wrote. What I wanted to point out is that there is real danger that once Muslims attempt to read the "primary sources" themselves discover inspiration for immense intolerance, really not comparable to such present in Old or New Testament (and I've met some very radical and unpleasant Christians too). Not to mention that most "converts" are sucked in over their acquaintances, independently of the will of their families.
> most Muslims don't want to kill you
One of my best friends from childhood from basically secular Muslim family later converted to more fundamental Islam and he specifically isn't fighting except intellectually, at least as far as I know about him now, so you don't need to explain me that. Still I personally saw the fundamentalism rising and was actually close enough to atrocities of different kinds and directions. A member of my family had the luck just by accident to avoid one Islamic bomb attack. A few generations ago more neighboring (Christian) villages of my relative were wiped out by Muslims, women and children included. The world isn't for everybody as nice as is maybe for you so that you can just turn the head away and pretend that dangerous and disgraceful things don't exist and in some periods don't ugly grow.
Ask Armenians (Christians killed by the Ottoman Turks): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
A Hindu from India also gave his voice in this discussion and somebody downvoted him, even though he wanted to point to something meaningful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus
"The Indian historian Professor K.S. Lal estimates that the Hindu population in India decreased by 80 million between 1000 AD and 1525 AD, an extermination unparalleled in World history" [3]" (at the time of Muslim invasions and rule)
The Christians in the areas controlled by the Islamic law had the periods of "relatively quiet times" (with always much worse treatment than Muslims) and another periods of extreme suffering performed by the Muslim ruling minority. Note: just the minority of the population in their area were Muslims, and that was enough for extreme suffering. The biggest proof: Hindus.
So what the "most" of Muslim population does isn't even important. Even small number of determined oppressors (claiming to do just what their religion gives them right to do) is enough to make huge damage. And this can't be downplayed.
PS: I know about the Armenian Genocide, and it's terrible. But as I'm sure you're aware, at other times Christians killed plenty of Muslims (and other Christians, while we're at it) and were decidedly intolerant of Jewish people. Ahem, I don't even want to go there. So I'm not sure what we can conclude from this about the current world-wide Muslim population.
Sorry, you can quote the Quran all you want, and I can quote it back with verses promoting peace (or verses from other holy texts promoting violence; or even violence from other religions which are not frequently linked to terrorism).
There is no inherent danger from Islam. There is real danger in the world, but I think you're mistaken in placing the source. And Western countries are oblivious to their own historical contributions to violence in the Middle East. All too easy to blame it all on weird raving fundamentalists.
In the end, you think I'm mistaken. I think you're mistaken. Let it rest.
Oh, yes, it is, absolutely is, especially combined with Hadith. Both together are the primary holy texts of Islam. Read it, read the historical materials, compare the texts and the history (what is written as the "words of god to Muslims" and what was done in the name of Islam in the last 1400 years -- the instructions and the actions match, and why wouldn't, if the "believers" performed them following the "manual") then you can try to give arguments how it is not. Right now you have no real arguments. And you know you won't have, since I'll recognize if you try to give something out of the context, that's why you don't even try.
What is your background in claiming what you claim? What do you actually know about Islam and Muslims, personally? Who tortured your ancestors? Or whom your ancestors tortured? You must have ancestors and they must have been involved in something. I've given you my background. Do you know anybody who's not Muslim but who's parents and grandparents lived in the Muslim country? Try to talk to such people.
> There is no inherent danger from Islam.
Yes there is, whoever isn't a Muslim and reads Quran immediately understands. It's totally not comparable to the texts of any other religion, that's why we see what we see now every day. Muslims "behaving normal" (never having read Quran themselves before and being more in the secular environment) and then in short time becoming suicidal bombers or mass shooters or even "just" "mad" car drivers after somebody (a friend or a relative) just shows them what's really there:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3325180/Two-fingers-...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30583390
So everybody should read himself what's in Quran. Especially non-Muslims.
"The Koran teaches fear, hatred, contempt for others, murder as a legitimate means for the dissemination and preservation of this satanic doctrine, it talks ill of women, classifies people into classes, calls for blood and ever more blood. Yet, that a camel trader sparks uproar in his tribe, that he wants to make his fellow citizens believe that he talked to the archangel Gabriel; that he boasted about being taken up into heaven and receiving a part of that indigestible book there, which can shake common sense on every page, that to gain respect for this work, he covers his country with fire and iron, that he strangles fathers, drags away daughters, that he leaves the beaten a free choice between death and his faith: now this is certainly something that no-one can excuse, unless he came as a Turk into the world, unless superstition has stifled any natural light of reason in him."
Voltaire (1694-1788)
You can quote the Quran all you want. I can quote back verses preaching tolerance and understanding, even of unbelievers. The fact remains that, like all holy texts, it's contradictory and open to interpretation. Islam is what modern-day Muslims choose it to be. And the vast majority of Muslims choose it not to mean a perpetual war against the unbeliever.
The notion that as soon as a reasonable Muslims picks up the Quran and "really reads it" (as I assume you imply you've done, and that all Muslims who disagree with you haven't... how condescending can you be?) he/she will turn into a murderous jihadist is so patently absurd it merits no further discussion.
Sorry, quote Voltaire all you want, but the real world contradicts you. Yes, some vocal fanatics are intent on murdering the infidel, but the vast majority of Muslims just want to live their lives. Repeat after me: "no, my Muslim neighbors are not biding their time for the moment they can kill me."
That's actually true, and it's not just "branding," nobody can deny them that they are qouting the words in the primary holy books. And still some people believe in "peacefulness" of that "pure, original, undiluted Islam." It's the opposite: only by "diluting" (honestly reforming) it can the violence induced by it be avoided long-term. But it's easy to imagine how those that don't want the reform will behave: more "pure, undiluted" acts.
That said, there's a reasonable case to be made that this is ISIS "branding". What their leaders truly believe is unknowable, but we can see their masterful use of propaganda, with smiling jihadis next to happy-looking children, and of course also the brutal beheadings shot in high-definition using modern techniques. I doubt the Prophet approved of HD cams.
There's also a good case to be made, as in this article from The Atlantic, "The Phony Islam of ISIS" ( http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/wha... ) that "literal" intepretations of the Quran and other Holy Texts are a red herring. You cannot claim there is a literal interpretation; just an interpretation that claims to be literal. But holy texts are rife with ambiguous and contradictory paragraphs, as explained in the article -- you can find an equivalent of "You Shall Not Kill" and in a different verse "Kill The Infidel", and you need some Wise Man to explain to you "ok, you shall not kill believers, but you can kill the unbeliever, unless there is a full moon (as mentioned in verse XYZ), in which case you can only kill goats". But this is the Wise Man's interpretation; by definition there is no single valid "literal" interpretation. And once you accept there is some degree of interpretation at play, you can no longer claim ISIS is evidence that Islam is fundamentally more blood-thirsty and terrorism-prone than other religions; just that some of the current high profile terrorist organizations are using their reading of the Quoran to justify their actions, and that they claim their interpretation is the "purest".
Even within ISIS and Al-Qaeda there is doctrinal dispute, as evidenced in this other article from The Atlantic, "What ISIS really wants" ( http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi... ), which shows fundamentalist clerics disagree, and this creates splits. How can this be, if all of them believe they are following "pure, unadulterated Islam"?
www.lettertobaghdadi.com/14/english-v14.pdf
"God says in the Qur’an: ‘Because of that, We decreed for the Children of Israel that whoever slays a soul for other than a soul, or for corruption in the land, it shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers have already come to them with clear proofs, but after that many of them still commit excesses in the land.’ (Al-Ma’idah, 5: 32)."
And that is actually cherry picking. If you read the sentence before and the few sentences after together with 5:32 you get what was said:
"32 For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth.
33 The only reward of those who make war upon Allah and His messenger and strive after corruption in the land will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternate sides cut off, or will be expelled out of the land. Such will be their degradation in the world, and in the Hereafter theirs will be an awful doom; "
That's 5:32 and 5:33 together. Is there some nuance? The command is the "old" one given to the Jews but they became "prodigals," says "god" speaking in plural about him (as he does on other places in Quran too). The "reward" is specified one verse afterwards.
Or even better read the whole Sura 5, to get the whole message. One clearer translation (start from the verse 1 and beware the following side is behind the left arrow):
http://quran.ksu.edu.sa/index.php?l=en#aya=4_176&m=hafs&qare...
That ISIS uses modern propaganda techniques?
To the article I linked?
To the assertion that holy texts need interpretation?
That there is a doctrinal dispute between factions of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, therefore showing there can be no single interpretation?
All of it?
You're so hell-bent in replying "wrong" and "no" to every post you disagree with, it's really hard to understand what you actually mean, beyond "here are some horrible passages from the Quran".
I also think that understanding a religious book isn't as simple as sitting down one day and reading end to end. It's not just the Quran anyway; there is a huge body of followups that must be read in order to understand it. Some of them contradictory, some open to interpretation, some of varying degrees of reliability.
Have you read them all?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
ask the victims of Boko Haram:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram
It's not something exclusive for this period in history, the motives, principles and methods can be traced through all the 1400 years of the existence of Muslim faith.
I understand there are Islamic extremist groups; I've never disputed that. I'm arguing here that it's the extremism and not the Islamic that's worrying. I've read about Islamic culture and its history, and much like Christendom, it has both admirable and reprehensible parts. It's simply not true that the majority of the Muslim world do or support violent terrorist acts. Your position simply doesn't stand a reality check.
Have you read the Quran back to back, fully, including the verses that preach tolerance and compassion?
Here's a poll which includes Muslims living in Europe:
Consenting to slaughter is not love.
A bunch of Americans think you should be killed for being black; or gay; or trans.
A bunch of Americans don't think rape is actually rape - "s/he didn't fight back!", "s/he had a beer!"
Lots of people have wrong ideas.
Harmful ideologies do not get a free pass in my book just because they claim divine backing.
What proportion of people - even of western college-educated liberals - genuinely, in their heart of hearts, supports free speech even when it's speech they disagree with, freedom of religion even when it's a religion they disagree with, and all the other enlightenment values? I fear it's pretty low.
That, at first reading does not appear to be internally consistent. At some level freedom of religion is freedom of speech. Unless you want to lobotomize people who are religious so they no longer speak their mind on the subject but you can't have the one without the other.
The first part I support - no one should be prevented (or punished) for saying - I believe in X. On the other hand there should be total override of secular laws towards the commandments - if your country orders you (or forbids you from doing) something that contradicts with your beliefs - you do it, and sort it out with your deity later.
Independently of religion, this is horrible policy. Not every country has rational sane laws, not every goverment wants their populace to be free. If you'd be given the option in Hitler's Germany to join the army or die, would you comply or try to fight?
The rational thing is to figure out if your beliefs are reasonable, then adjust them if necessary, and then to act according to them, law or not. The source of your beliefs aren't half as important as what you do to figure out if they are sane and have a positive impact or not.
What if my "free speech" involves drawing masses of people and telling them, persuading them, to kill you, your wife, your kids, your mother and father because you have the wrong skin color, eye color, religion or whatever else I imagine?
I've seen first hand that most people bend easily. A very charismatic leader can do a lot of harm.
I'm a firm believer in anti-hate-speech laws.
And I am firm believer of benevolent dictatorship. The main problems comes with the inheritance - how can we ensure the next is also benevolent?
Same is with speech - we cannot project into the future how laws banning (especially widely defined as the lawmaker bodies love to do them) categories of speech will be abused - so it is better safe to not have them at all.
Why should speech be absolutely free when I am not absolutely free?
Here is a good rule of thumb - any restrictions on speech hurt the weaker side more ...
Try to imagine being a black islamic lesbian undocumented immigrant in a small bible belt town. You have little knowledge of the English language. An immunology disorder makes it dangerous for you to get a vaccination. Your hobby is collecting fossils. Your neighbors would have to throw quite a bit of their culture out of the window if they really want to treat you with the respect you deserve as a human. Good people will make the effort, and rightly so.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_ofA very strong reason for moving moral positions for may... _ignorance
However I would also argue that for all of those their are non cultural/religion arguments that can be applied.
Although I don't think that is the point you were trying to make.
> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that
> are incompatible with an open society.
For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. Sounds pretty progressive when you put it that way...
Of course you can. The issue is not that such generalizations are invalid, but what conclusions to draw from them and what actions to take in response.
Also note that I have a black friend^W^W Muslim roommate (in fact a Hafiz) I get along well with. That does not mean I don't consider Islam as it presents itself today on a global scale a dangerous ideology.
For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state.
And how many out gay politicians are there in such countries? And anecdotally speaking, remember what happened to Benazir Bhutto.
You could say the same about the followers of other religions. And of certain popular political persuasions. And of many economic belief systems.
Just because adherents don't usually make the news by indiscriminately shooting members of the public doesn't mean they don't do incredible damage in other ways.
A public massacre is a horror, for obvious reasons. But it's not truly more horrible than many other everyday outrages, some of which take place on much bigger and longer timescales.
I don't think there's anything particular to the Islamic faith that lends itself to this pattern, though. Charlatans and tyrants have effectively used religious beliefs for their own goals since the very beginnings of human civilization. I believe Islam faces a "perfect storm" now; it is immensely popular across the world, but a large number of its adherents are stuck in a region that has been dramatically destabilized by foreign influences. The Muslims there are able to use the shared elements of their religion as a way to reach out to Muslims outside of the region and incite them to revolution.
To paraphrase Dan Carlin of Hardcore History: it's not religion that's the problem, it's the tyrants that are the problem.
Of course, even if you (and I) are right in assuming that a (relatively) large percentage of Muslims are currently radicalized in comparison to other religions, this doesn't actually mean that there's any practical way to respond to that. The lazy answer is "stabilize the middle east at all costs" but that never seems to actually align with Western political and economic realities, so here we are...
How do these numbers compare to other religions?
For example, there is an unconfortable number of Christians who do have a fundamentalist mindset, too (although I didn't find any exact numbers). Probably similar issue for other religions and possibly also among non-religious people.
Even fundamentalist Christians don't have divine commandments to kill apostates. Nor do atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, or Jews (well, they do, but it hasn't been in force since the Exile.)
This is a false equivalency.
Christians, ideally, are supposed to behave like Jesus. Buddhists, ideally, are supposed to behave like Buddha. Muslims, ideally, are supposed to behave like Mohammed.
These three individuals were very different.
Of course, adherents aren't ideal adherents. But you can still generally expect different behavior from each set of adherents. That's now calling one set evil and one set good (now that's some cultural imperialism!), that's recognizing reality. Muslims, historically, have taken very seriously that apostasy is a serious crime punishable by death. Christians and Buddhists, not so much; it's the rare exception and not an almost-rule.
not that religions aren't powerful. the kinds of religion-based stupidity you see in other nations is exactly the reasons why the founders of the U.S. explicitly separated church and state.
I grew up very religiously christian, but that changed after I went to war in Iraq. It took me years of reading, studying, and discussion with others to pull myself out of that mental bondage, and one of the things I realized is that it is religion itself that encourages irrationality, and that is certainly no false equivalance as you claim.
I see more American taliban where I live in the bible belt than I saw jihadists in Iraq. We have killed thousands upon thousands more men women and children. (Not debating justification at the moment)
That is not to ignore the varying of degrees of extremism and the probability scale on which one religion produces extremists over another, especially given cultural contexts which I would consider more important than the religion itself. (See differences between wahhabi suadis and shia who live in America)
That being said though, the real danger is for the west to accept the idea that this is a purely ideological war of muslim fanatics against the oh so peaceful christian (or culturally christian) west, all the time ignoring that same seed of extremism in us that mirrors our so called enemy.
Until we can admit that it is religion itself that is the danger, and the irrationality it encourages, this issue will never be solved.
Also, regarding France, And I may get downvoted for this, but wasnt France bombing in Syria for almost two months prior to the attack? I would be willing to bet they killed at least as many civilians as died in the Paris attack, not including military age males, but where is the outrage for the syrian people?
Ill tell you the main thing I realized about terrorism, is that we create terrorists faster than we kill them, and very few of them are purely reliously motivated. I put it this way to my family and friends:
I am a warrior first and foremost. If a random bomb fell on my house and killed my family, or a stray shot from an occuping nation in America killed my son, daughter, mother or wife, I can guarantee you I would be on a great warpath. If the chinese invaded America because they claimed we were a terrorist country, and kidnapped my friend, we would try to rescue him by force if necessary.
If we want to reduce terrorism, the number one way is to stop fucking bombing every country in the middle east. not just that, but we need to stop propping up every dictator who has friendly policies to us and overthrowing any democratic movement that isnt friendly. We undermine the very foundational principles of America by doing so, and we should be leading by example, and not by force.
That is not to say force should never be used, for Im not a pacifist and beleive in the right of self defense, but I am increasingly having a hard time beleiving self defense means bombing countries halfway around the world. I would like to have that debate with someone knowledgeable.
Undoubtedly, but important questions about the ethics of war aren't usually based upon the body count. They're based upon initiation of force, hostility, ability to negotiate peace, treatment of captives, willingness to adhere to treaties, etc.
Actually, one of the most important principles of the laws of war (International humanitarian law) is that of proportionality, and body count is a major determinant of proportionality [1,2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(law)
2. http://www.crimesofwar.org/a-z-guide/proportionality-princip...
The Iraqis suffered casualties of greater than 150 to 1 vs casualties of the coalition forces.
The hostility and attack upon national sovereignty committed by the Iraqis was far more important than the subsequent body count in determining proportionality.
Abe: "The U.S. and the U.N. gave several public justifications for involvement in the First Gulf War, the most prominent being the Iraqi violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity.
However, shortly before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, April Glaspie, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, had personally communicated to Saddam Hussein that America “took no position on these Arab affairs”.
In addition, the U.S. justified its military actions as support for Saudi Arabia, a key supplier of oil.
Shortly after the Iraqi invasion, Defense Secretary Cheney made the first of several visits to Saudi Arabia where King Fahd requested U.S. military assistance. During a speech in a special joint session of the U.S. Congress given on 11 September 1990, U.S. President George H. W. Bush summed up the reasons with the following remarks: “Within three days, 120,000 Iraqi troops with 850 tanks had poured into Kuwait and moved south to threaten Saudi Arabia. It was then that I decided to act to check that aggression.”
The Pentagon stated that satellite photos showing a buildup of Iraqi forces along the border were this information’s source, but this was later alleged to be false. A reporter for the St. Petersburg Times acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images made at the time in question, which showed nothing but empty desert.
Other justifications for foreign involvement included Iraq’s history of human rights abuses under Saddam. Iraq was also known to possess biological weapons and chemical weapons, which Saddam had used against Iranian troops during the Iran–Iraq War and against his own country’s Kurdish population in the Al-Anfal Campaign. Iraq was also known to have a nuclear weapons program, but the report about it from January 1991 was partially declassified by the CIA on 26 May 2001.
Although there were human rights abuses committed in Kuwait by the invading Iraqi military, the alleged incidents which received most publicity in the U.S. were inventions of the public relations firm hired by the government of Kuwait to influence U.S. opinion in favor of military intervention. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the organization Citizens for a Free Kuwait was formed in the U.S. It hired the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for about $11 million, paid by Kuwait’s government.
Among many other means of influencing U.S. opinion (distributing books on Iraqi atrocities to U.S. soldiers deployed in the region, ‘Free Kuwait’ T-shirts and speakers to college campuses, and dozens of video news releases to television stations), the firm arranged for an appearance before a group of members of the U.S. Congress in which a woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait City hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor.
The story was an influence in tipping both the public and Congress towards a war with Iraq: six Congressmen said the testimony was enough for them to support military action against Iraq and seven Senators referenced the testimony in debate. The Senate supported the military actions in a 52–47 vote. A year after the war, however, this allegation was revealed to be a fabrication. The woman who had testified was found to be a member of Kuwait’s Royal Family, in fact the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador to the U.S.[95] She hadn’t lived in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion.
The details of the Hill & Knowlton public relations campaign, including the incubator testimony, were published in John R. MacArthur’s Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), and came to wide public attention when an Op-ed by MacArthur was published in The New York Times. This prompted a reexamination by Amnesty International, which had originally promoted an account alleging even greater numbers of babies torn from incubators than the original fake testimony. After finding no evidence to support it, the organization issued a retraction. President Bush then repeated the incubator allegations on television."
World | Sun Sep 27, 2015 4:36pm EDT Related: WORLD, UNITED NATIONS, FRANCE, SYRIA France launches air strikes against Islamic State in Syria UNITED NATIONS/PARIS | BY JOHN IRISH AND DOMINIQUE VIDALON
France said on Sunday it launched its first air strikes in Syria, destroying an Islamic State training camp in the east of the country to prevent the group from carrying out attacks against French interests and to protect Syrian civilians.
France had until now only struck Islamic State targets in neighboring Iraq, carrying out just 3 percent of air strikes in an offensive on the group by a U.S.-led coalition. France has also provided limited logistical support to Syrian rebels it considers moderate, including Kurds.
So, zero. They participated in 3% of the air strikes in Iraq, 0% in Syria.
This is a fallacy that's constantly repeated by atheists. It's not true. Lack of religion is just as bad, if not worse (e.g. nazis, communists).
The issue is the "us or them"-thinking that all humans are born with. We all want to belong and in trying to achieve that it's inherent in us to define our group as different from "that other group". This is human nature. The problem comes from us going too far to define our group as better than "that other group", we start to claim they are not human/not worthy to live. It quickly goes downhill from there. The dividing factor can be anything: religion, culture, politics, race, sports and so on.
There is words, in the Quran, which Muslims believe every word is true and correct, that literally tells you to kill someone for leaving Islam. And before someone makes the "taken out of context", that's in context.
Near as most can tell, Islam _is_ a central factor in recent events. A lot of people are looking for a reason to conclude it isn't; if you can explain (either way) please do.
Source: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/africa...
The Rwandan genocide, just like the Paris attacks, must've been carried out by a bunch of nutsos. They both used religion and its tools to promote and support their wicked agenda forward.
Beware the rationale of "X had its bad moments, so you can't criticize Y." The current question remains: how to draw a line between the "good" and "bad" actors? lines are being drawn, and better to help draw them well before people act on them being drawn badly.
It's like saying, "You'd need to find a Jainist[1] population that's at war or serious unrest."
Their ideology tends to self-select states that aren't at war.
A significant number of adherents of Christianity also hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society.
The problem is that the term "open society" has no objective meaning, so you can use it to exclude any set of beliefs that you don't like, up to and including anarchists.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_a...
Religious dogma is as much shaped by the current cultural norms as it shapes them, something that many religious leaders are loathe to admit.
Your statement reminds me scarily of something I read relatively recently in a book by a conservative Christian author. The sentence, to paraphrase, was along the lines of "I'm not saying all Muslims are extremists, but the threat of Islamic terrorism is so high we should kick them all out to be safe."
Not sure where you got that statistic, but the much better documented statistic are those of...say...US Republicans. An actual significant population (backed by polls) support outright genocide. Here is a Christian Pastor calling for genocide. Its not some conspiracy-esque statistic like yours, he does it out on the puplit. http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-...
And, if you actually read the study, you find this number is 28%, not 40%.
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-mu...
I know how to do maths, thank you very much.
There's a mosque around the corner from where I live, and a lot of people called Mohamed and Hilay and so on live in the area. Few of them visit that mosque, so if your extrapolation were right, there should be a considerable number of murdered apostates. Which there isn't.
Im guessing you're not living in, say, Egypt or Pakistan, are you?
Not necessarily, no. Support for murdering apostates can be low in countries with a majority Muslim population (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are all in the low single-digit percentage range, it's at 8% in Turkey), and the figures for minority Muslim communities in western countries might be comparably low.
Also note that supporting an action does not automatically translate to enacting such an action, but such a mindset is still problematic.
And as the cases of Bangladeshi atheists that have been hacked to death show, such things do happen. Generally, apostates probably know to keep their head down in places where it is an issue. The fact that you say you live in a place with a considerable number of apostates shows that it's likely not one where you are.
Christians make up 52% of the population (Serbian Orthodox 36%, Catholic 15%, Protestant 1%). There are also a few percents of atheist, Jews, and others.
Edit: Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnia_and_Herzegovina#Ethnic_...
Many countries also have hate-speech laws, including France, which would punish you for speaking out against protected groups.
Being vengeful against those that are disloyal to you is a common human ethos.
If you naively extrapolate, ...
1. Where is the boundary of your beliefs? I'm always trying to be polite with my dev co-workers, but for example if I write a flagged variable `$bible = false;` somewhere in my code, would you feel offended?
2. How do you mix the very science-based nature of IT with purely non-scientific phenomenon of religion?
3. Do you accept all scientifically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like evolution of homo-sapiens, big bang, etc.
4. Do you accept all historically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like politics behind let's say writing the bible, purpose of the religion and use as a tool of manipulation.
Again really sorry if my questions sound offending not only to you, but to anyone else who reads this.
Ok I've got some time now for a brief response.
1. There are none. And where there are I try to push them. I don't really see your example as a boundary issue. If other people malign or ridicule my beliefs it doesn't really bother me except to feel sadness for those people.
2. Acts 17:11 says: Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.
It's out of context but basically its commending the Berean Jews for closely examining the teachings they were receiving from the apostles to verify that they were true. My faith demands rationality and my God is a rational God.
3. The Bible is not a science text book. The Bible is not a fairy tale either. I accept the bible as true understanding that it's purpose is not to teach me about scientific phenomenon. The travesty to me about evolution and the big bang is not that it is or isn't opposed to biblical teachings, it's that it is such a huge distraction from the true message of my faith.
4. No. This is the one I'm most likely to get into an argument about because history itself is subject to manipulation and interpretation. Has the bible been used to nefarious purpose? Yes. Is the bible's purpose nefarious? No.
I definitely have better understanding now.
This quote is attributed to F Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
My grandmother was deeply religious (Catholic) and yet was very much down to earth and practical when it came to every day life. It never seemed as if she had any apparent problem with this. Religious people are not computer programs and do not need to pass some kind of unit test for consistency before they are allowed into production.
And plenty of so called rational people hold contradictory beliefs as well, in fact I'd be surprised if anybody had a completely consistent set of beliefs and facts that they subscribed to.
Case in point: I have a close family member that is extremely rational except for that one point where we are descended from primates, that's one step too far.
1. I love talking to people with different beliefs. If we have a respectful debate based on our best evidence I assume we will both learn something.
2. Facts are facts. However, I think all people build world views around those facts which interpret those facts in ways that are consistent with their non-scientific beliefs. The scientific method is just a important to me as an agnostic in terms of whether a medical procedure is safe.
3. See answer 2. Many Christians have no trouble with evolution. It was discovered by an Anglican after all. It's true that Darwin lost his faith over the discovery, but after a few years, many Christians just incorporated it into their faith.
4. It is very hard to prove historical facts, but there is good evidence for many arguments (like the resurrection for example; or that the King James Bible was developed by a committee). I think for many Christians, good historical scholarship is fundamental to the sorts of things that they now believe. This works both ways; however. For example, after the Divinci Code came out I was able to quickly discard the sorts of claims it made because the evidence was so bad. Similarly, Richard Dawkins should not give up his day job to become a biblical scholar since he doesn't seem to have the knack for it.
Cheers
1. Offended no. I'll think you're rather rude, the same as if I wrote $manifestDestiny = false. If you know someone you can have banter with them.
2. IT has all sorts of articles of faith. vi versus emacs, I'm weird as I like nano. Religion is a way of living your life, my code is in no way affected by it. How I interact with my colleagues is, for instance I'd hope that having a nice easy rationale for being a good person makes me a decent co-worker. I'd rather not work with a hedonist who doesn't give a fig for anything other than their own happiness, and with the internet we're exposed to plenty of those.
3. I don't view evolution, the big bang etc as contradicting my religious views. Genesis has been viewed as a metaphor since the 4th century BC. Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions. It isn't about the "God of the gaps", it is about science revealing more of the complex creation we inhabit whilst being incapable of answering what the prime first mover was. That said science only shows us what we can measure from the construct of our own perspective. It cannot, and does not claim to be able, to answer everything.
4. Being a member of the Church of England you have to be pretty aware of the historical context of religion! I'm not a biblical literalist and my church is not solely guided by what is in the bible. One of the reasons theology exists is to take all that knowledge and use that context to look at what we can actually divine from the bible.
Being religious doesn't make you automatically not a jerk. Neither does being "scientific" provide an alternative, science isn't a set of ethics. Up until the 1970s academic philosophy was viciously atheist (the only thing worse than a theist was an agnostic). However since then theism has enjoyed a resurgence and disciplines like epistemology have taken on the challenges raised by atheist philosophers.
As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, what makes an act good? Be wary of associating it with something which makes you feel "warm and fuzzy" about having done it, because then would you expect someone who did not get that same feeling to do it.
How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality (as most secularist do).
Seems to me, that the only thing 'being Christian' is (outside of the institution), is that you take some more of your morality from the Bible compared to all other books.
What is it that keeps you Christian? Why not just go all the way and look at all books and history to make up your own morality?
"Doctor, I understand the point of the rorshach test, in theory- but this inkblot clearly depicts my mother having sex with the postman. It's completely unambiguous."
There are different fundamental truths that you need to accept to "be Christian", it's been discussed for centuries - probably the most accepted would be the Nicene Creed.
The idea that Christianity is about the Bible is a relatively view of part of the Protestant community that many Christians who don't hold it view as a form of idolatry.
Christianity is, in other models of Christianity, about a personal decision to come to God through Christ; the Bible is a uniquely useful tool in this, in those views, as a collection of works about the relation of God to humanity, and particularly (in the NT) about Christ and his teachings, which, understood properly (which may not be literally for all parts; just as much of Christ's teachings are explicitly parables, much of the rest is often viewed as illuminating metaphor rather than factual history or commands) is understood, in those views, to free of moral error. In many such views (including the long-standing view of the Catholic Church) it is one of the two main sources of the faith, alongside sacred tradition.
The idea that the Bible is the sole source of Christian truth, or that it is entirely literal, are novel and minority opinions within Christianity. (The groups holding them are more relatively prominent in the US, and definitely more political prominent in the US, compared to other Christian groups than they are globally within Christianity, but even so there are quite large segments of American Christianity that don't follow these relatively newfangled approaches.)
> How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality
Everyone is using their conscience to make their own decisions about morality, even literalists. That they choose to accept what someone tells them the canon is (about which there are disagreements among Christians -- and the canon favored by literalists is, like literalism itself, a recent change from the historical canon), and to accept that someone tells them the canon must be approached literally, and to accept the authority of a particular version or translation of the canon to be taken literally, and to then either choose their own or choose to take someone else's guidance on how to read the amibiguities are contradictions that arise when the text is viewed literally -- all of those are choices. Its kind of dangerous to think that the decision to delegate accept someone else's word for how to make these choices stops them from being choices.
Christianity, whether with or without literalism, doesn't evade the need to make decisions about morality.
> Seems to me, that the only thing 'being Christian' is (outside of the institution), is that you take some more of your morality from the Bible compared to all other books.
Except for those holding to a rather extreme version of the (also new) doctrine of sola scriptura, Christian's don't generally believe that books (whether one or many) are the sole source of morals.
> Why not just go all the way and look at all books and history to make up your own morality?
What stops someone from being Christian who considers all sources (not just books) in informing their conscience. Note that neither the Nicene nor Apostle's Creed -- generally held by mainstream Christians as the uniting features of Christianity -- makes more than a passing reference to Scripture (and that only in regard to the alignment between it and Christ's Passion.)
What keeps someone Christian -- or fails to, if it withers -- is their belief in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Trinity, not their dedication to a book.
> As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person,
> what makes an act good?
It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence of a deity).
In essence it makes the point that the religious idea of morality driven by a god with a big stick in the sky who'll discipline you if you step out of line isn't moral at all, and neither do most religious people actually adhere to it in practice.
E.g. we're not stoning homosexuals or burning witches as we once were, and it's not because the scripture changed, but because of secular progress despite of scripture. How do you decide which instructions to cherry-pick from the Bible or whatever piece of scripture it is you believe in?
He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being. Burning people to death of persecuting homosexuals, not so much. Looking out for your fellow man so he'll look out for you. Note that this isn't the same thing as reducing morality to hedonism.
Anyway, I'm doing a poor job of paraphrasing the gist of that book so I'll stop. But if you're genuinely interested in what constitutes a good act or moral behavior in the secular sense there's a lot of well-researched and interesting works you can read on the subject.
John Rawls, one of the foremost liberal philosophers of our time spends the bulk of his most famous book arguing agains that very idea. My take away is that from a secular perspective it is impossible to argue from first principles what is good and bad. It's also obviously not a very strong argument. If there was a tiny country that did dispicable things to it's citizens but it had nuclear weapons, by this argument, the 'good' thing would be to allow those citizens to continue to suffer rather then have the world intervene and potentially be obliterated in a nuclear war. However, the citizen's of that country would still be correct to say that the rest of the world was unjust.
That seems a very poor and weak definition.
1. It focuses on human as only a human can be happy.
2. net increase is relative, so this is relative to the author's life/view of the world.
3. Well-being doesn't mean anything. Does he defines it too?
> That seems a very poor and weak definition.
I'm just replying to the religious OP (@cmdkeen) that if he's interested in what secular people have to say on the subject of morality there's a lot written on that subject. I found Sam Harris's book on it interesting, but it's certainly not the first or the last word on a secular definition of morality.
Having said that I'll elaborate a bit more on my poor recollection of the book.
> 1. It focuses on human as only a human can be happy.
> 2. net increase is relative, so this is relative to the author's life/view of the world.
> 3. Well-being doesn't mean anything. Does he defines it too?
The basic idea he's putting forth is that there's actions you can perform which will make people happy (e.g. being nice to them) and sad (e.g. subjecting them to genocide).
Obviously this is not a single-axis spectrum. So he's setting forth the argument that happiness can be attained similarly to how we maximize the performance of a hill-climbing algorithm.
If we were in real-time able to monitor the net happiness of every human (and also animals, if you insist) and tweak our societies so that net happiness would go up we'd arrive at a moral society.
So thus we can say that some societies are more moral than others. E.g. every modern western state would be morally superior to the Mongol empire by this happiness ratio we can say the society is "better", and once we have a metric we can work to maximize happiness in our own societies.
I think the main hole someone who's religious would poke in this would be "but that's not morality, you're just optimizing for hedonism!". I think to some degree that's true, but from what I've read of secular literature on the subject the idea of "morality" is pretty much discredited.
It's based on the notion of absolutes, usually handed down by some deity. Once you get rid of that (because deities don't exist) what do you replace it with? Some combination of "don't do harm" and "let's make everyone happy" most likely.
Plus going back to burning witches and stoning homosexuals, really? Firstly there's some really interesting language translation behind "suffer not the witch to live" - in that isn't what it really says. Burning people has to be seen in the context of history and politics.
It isn't about "cherry picking". Different traditions have their basis, I'm not sola scriptorum, the CofE believes in "scripture, reason and tradition". But in all cases it is about looking at scripture as a complex document full of metaphor, stories and allegories. Then making an argument based on that which can be debated, discussed and a conclusion arrived at - and one that can later be decided as perhaps wrong. What you also need to bear in mind is that significant parts of what Jesus is recorded as saying is pointing out areas of religion where the Jews had become caught up in process or tradition rather than the underlying message.
Another commenter in this thread, @marcosscriven, also linked to The God Delusion. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it being quite informative too.
> no-one has come up with a good "right" way to
> live or act and it is often even harder without
> a theist grounding to decide on some pretty major
> points.
There's no innate compelling reason for why Reasoning about morality from a theist background would be easier. I think all evidence points to the contrary.
Perhaps you disagree with that, but we could have a more interesting discussion if instead of blindly asserting our positions we'd back them up with some arguments, don't you think? :)
There are a lot of societies on the planet today that have little to nothing to do with the Judeo-Christian tradition or are otherwise without a scriptural moral tradition.
Do you really think those societies or their members are more inherently immoral? At best the idea is naïve, at worst xenophobic and offensive.
> Plus going back to burning witches and
> stoning homosexuals, really?
> [...]
> It isn't about "cherry picking".
> Different traditions have their basis,
> I'm not sola scriptorum, the CofE believes
> in "scripture, reason and tradition".
You're quite correct that the moral tradition of Christianity doesn't stop at scripture. I'm not only agreeing with that, but suggesting that that post-scripture process is actually the only relevant process by which we arrive at moral truths.
Why is it that we've decided to put more emphasis on some stories in scripture than others? That really is largely a process that can best be described as cherry-picking. How do we decide what to cherry-pick?
I think the evidence is clearly on the side of the secular argument that humans are social animals, therefore we need to exist (mostly) peacefully in groups, which gives rise to "moral" principles like not screwing with your neighbor least he screws with you back.
Scripture is really just an adaptation of these principles in the form of stories and allegories. Those stories are important to reinforce those ideas in society, but to say that they're the primary source is putting the cart before the horse.
Let me respond to your counter question.
I'm considering myself as an atheist. I graduated law and (but) I'm currently working in IT.
What I found about myself and my own beliefs ( good vs. bad ) is basically a consequence of thousands of years of human civilization absorbed and morally embeded in human beings and in logically written laws.
So basically what I believe doing is good or what I believe doing is bad is defined purely based on logical concepts, incorporated mostly in our legal systems. Yes there are different legal systems, there are different cultural standards, but if you take a look at it, I bet :
1. Every legal system punishes killing, stealing, frauds, etc.
2. Every legal system has an exclusion of the first rule : self-defense, non-voluntary ( accidental ) steal, etc.
3. Every legal system also regulate the civil rights of people agains other people. ( Continental Law states that for a divorce there is a blame that might lie in one of the partners, based on this the other claims compensation - imagine cheating ).
So yes. You can find multiple examples for the most of the actions and you will see that they are mostly regulated.
e.g.
1) You found a passport on the street - By law you are obliged to return it to police ( good deed )
2) You drink a beer on the street - Based on the law you can decide if this is well received or not ( In Berlin it's pretty much everywhere )
etc.
For all other actions, that have no consequence in society and which are not regulated. I choose based on my own opinion and mood.
e.g.
1) Should I give a penny to that homeless person? Well If I feel in the mood, I would, If I don't I probably won't do it today.
2) Should I talk back to a rude person? If I feel really offended, I will most certainly do, usually I don't give a F.
The concept of "no good without religion" has a pretty decent intro with both sides at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality#Morality_requ...
Personally utilitarianism, often held as the secular morality, threatens to go down some really dark paths and has done so. You could easily see how things like eugenics (widely practised in the West until the Nazis put it beyond the pale) became popular, and it was the Catholic church who led the fight against it.
And indeed, as I said my way of thinking gives me huge library that suggest me what to do and what is good and what is bad.
Most importantly I think that human beings ( and animals in that matter ) have really big spectrum of emotions that we carry over thousands of years that are not here today, because we need to fight them.
Fear can save your life sometimes ;
Anger ( adrenalin ) can make you a better fighter in time of trouble ;
Jealousy sometimes give motivation of doing good deeds ;
etc.
If the results of those emotional decisions are not regulated by law and only by moral ( of your cultural ancestors, family, education, etc. ) then I really think it's up to me to decide, otherwise we will all be copies of the moral we inherited and there will be no change at all
1 : http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/shavell/pdf/4_Amer_Law_Ec...
This isn't really true. You're right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones. The catholic church, who pioneered some great non-literalist interpretations, also used to excommunicate you if you didn't believe all of humanity shared a single male ancestor named Adam.
Pick a random medieval christian peasant, and ask him whether the Ark was a real boat, and let's place wagers on what his answer will be.
The genesis stories were literal before they were metaphorical, and opinions about the relative percentages of fact to metaphor have shifted wildly based on century, region, and denomination.
> This isn't really true. You're right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones.
The existence of some literal interpretations is not literalism. Literalism is the doctrine which excludes any metaphorical interpretations, and it is, in fact, relatively new (and mostly isolated to a subset of Protestantism, not general to Christianity.)
For example: Is IT/open source/tech/programming a meritocracy? If so, how do you explain the massive gender skew? How do you explain how there are scientific studies showing people can be sexist in science (which should be as 'science-based' as IT)?
Many people in tech, confronted with this, will double down. They'll claim tech is a total meritocracy, that women must just be studier at tech etc. etc.
Atheist IT people can be just as closed minded as some bible thumper.
And a lot of the gender skew starts real, real early. Anyone who took Computer Science in college could see the gender skew in action. I regularly had between 0 and 1 women in my 30+ student classes. They just weren't signing up for Computer Science classes.
And there used to be quite a few female computer scientists, but that trend changed in the 70s. There was probably a cultural aspect to this (i.e. parents or peers influencing their decisions away from computers because computers are for asocial nerds, and you don't want to be a nerd!).
It does appear that the cultural influence is shifting at least slightly in favor of women being programmers again, with nerd/geek culture becoming more fashionable and so many people using computers/smartphones all day long, so hopefully we will see more women pursuing computer science, but the root of the problem is mostly right at high school/college age, not nearly as much in the workforce.
1.) The boundary of my beliefs - in terms of people offending me by what they say or write - I really don't care and don't get offended. I have zero expectation for people who don't adhere to my beliefs to say things in line with them. If another person who is a Christian says things I think are really out of line, it wouldn't offend me but I'd try to engage them and work it out - but people who don't believe in it, I don't expect to act like they do. If a person who is of another faith or an atheist is interested in discussing something like the validity of the Bible, I'm happy to have that discussion as long as it is a real discussion. If it's a debate with us just mindlessly exchanging arguments, I have better things to do.
2) I don't think IT and religion are at odds in any way. The tension happens more at the level of your next question. IT is too far removed from those fundamental questions. In fact, as someone who's life is focused on sharing a message with as many people as possibe, IT is awesome.
3) This is trickier. If something is for sure a scientific fact and it conflicts with what I believe my faith teaches about the nature of the world then my assumption is that I've somehow misunderstood what my faith teaches. The only authority I recognize for this is the Bible - so to simplify the discussion - if a fact contradicts what I believe the Bible says then I assume my understanding of the Bible is wrong and I adjust. For your two examples - coming to understand evolution and fit it into my faith has been an on-going process for me over a lot of year. The Big Bang is something that fits my world view better than one that proposes God does not exist.
4) Same as above but I think that a lot of what people believe to be "historically proofed facts" about the Bible are in fact wrong and reflect a lack of information with regards to current knowledge on history. A lot of theories about when parts of the Bible were written and who wrote them rest on the bias of the theories authors rather than any facts. For instance I believe the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus Christ, saw what he did in person or knew people from that group. I do not think it was written much later by people creating a religion.
If I were to find out something I believe to be true is absolutely false - I would evaluate and adjust. I've done it in my lifetime. It's something I do about more than just my faith. My politics have changed during my adult life and lots of beliefs I have, have moved as I experience more and learn more. I've been living in Europe for 4 years, for example, and in that time I've changed my mind about lots of things. It has been a real education. I don't cling blindly to any opinon. I don't mindlessly follow any 'leaders' teaching or instructions.
Hope that's the kind of feedback you are interested in - if you want to continue the discussion feel free to email me if that's easier than here - [email protected]
They had the usual integration problems (veil at school), there were big problems with domestic violence (they're used to hitting women and children), and they complained about salaries (which, to be fair, are very bad for non-trained people), they said they wanted to go to Europe specifically.
http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/09/150908_refugiados_...
http://www.elpais.com.uy/que-pasa/refugiados-guerra-siria-de...
We definitely don't want guys from the 2 group, and probably don't want the ones form the 3rd (they can use a traditional application for visa or something like that).
Moreover the problem is that most of the fleeing are young, healthy males, which is quite suspicious, if you fear war you should get your wives, kids, parents out sooner than later.
On the other hand groups 2 and 3 will mostly contain young, healthy males.
That's why (probably most) people in EU would prefer the stance that Australia made to illegal immigrants (the "No Way" campaign).
Another point is, why they are fleeing to countries that have completely different culture, they could as well go to ones that have similar (middle east or african ones).
If they do have a family, many are trying to establish themselves before bringing a family over through safer means. I know if I'm relocating my family (even if just arriving at a train station on holiday and trying to find accommodation for the night), I'm the scouting party ahead of the rest. It is dozens of times harder doing that with a full family.
How do you argue which definition is more correct than the other? By Historical precedence? By how we interpret the teachings? By popularity? It just seems like the definition of the religion itself is so amorphous that it is very susceptible to terminology hijacking.
Would it do the Muslim population more practical good if they started distancing themselves away from the term "Muslim" and called themselves something different to make the distinction more impactful in the eyes of the public?
A huge part of the problem is that they're not hijacking anything. The jihadists are reading the plain text of the Koran and the Hadiths and following them literally. Moderate Muslims typically have very little scriptural text to stand upon when decrying ISIS and its treatment of infidels. ISIS can be more easily argued to be following the "most pure" form of Islam.
The fact that the crazy has metastasized and the crazy's adherents can't tell the difference, doesn't mean that we can't.
And the blend of eastern orthodoxy from my country has its own flavor, compared to the the general eastern orthodoxy branch, as we've also picked up a set of local customs and traditions along the way. Consequently I think this is why, even though atheism is on the rise and even though I'm what you could call an agnostic, I happen to believe that religion is ultimately good, as it's a part of the local culture, the local culture being a huge part of our identity.
But speaking of Christianity, our local christians tend to be a little xenophobe. And this I never understood why it happens, because you know, Christianity being about the teachings of Christ above all else, with those teaching inviting us first and foremost to love our peers and to be more tolerant. Skipping over the obvious that sometimes Christianity has nothing to do with the teaching of Christ, I personally think it's more about the true human nature. I believe that in essence a large part of the population is xenophobe, fearing and hating what is different and the material is always there to be exploited by a capable leader that can canalize all that potential hatred towards a common goal that can blur our ethics. After all, we should always remember the nazis, as that's the history that shows us how an otherwise civilized society can turn overnight if you press the right buttons, the anti-pattern we should steer away from.
Which brings me to the point that I wanted to make. I see a lack of tolerance and hatred even in many atheists, having the same potential for evil as everybody else, atheists who otherwise claim to be more enlightened. Not all of them of course, just like how not all Muslims are jihadists. And so I don't think changing the naming would make that much of a difference.
> We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.
> We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature.
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-inte...
We all had young kids at the time and the Brahmin folks were much more comfortable leaving their daughter with us than with the other couple. This was mostly because we were conservative just like them and so could appreciate how strictly they followed their own dietary laws and things like that. They also trusted us to follow the same with their daughter. They weren't so confident with the other couple.
Interacting with people in real life belonging to any group is very transformative and "online" relationships are not really a servicable substitute.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attac...
In another article I read this month (but can't seem to find right now) it was explained that "terrorism" was mostly... a social network -- and the article above agrees with that characterization, I think.
This whole mess doesn't have a lot to do with religion, Islam or otherwise; it's about young people trying to find meaning.
It may sound absurd, preposterous, ridiculous, despicable even, to compare today's terrorists to peaceniks from the 60s, but dismissing them as "crazies" is even more wrong, and less helpful.
(And I say this as a Frenchman having lived in Paris all my life).
This is often referred to as the narcissism of small differences. It's one of those terms I found had a lot of applications once I knew it so I thought I'd share.
Do you feel judgemental or upset when people exist that are very wrong according to your morality?
What is it like to be so drawn to God? Why God and no one else? How do you feel about people that don't perceive God or don't experience religious experiences that would point to God existing?
No. Something I stil haven't found a way to explain is that I can disagree with someone or even think that someone's very personal decision is not a good one without feeling ill will towards them.
One of the fundamental teachings of christianity that many non-christians (and some christians even) are not aware of is that a person does not need to be good to be a believer. A person who is convicted by god to believe in him IS good. So if every person on earth suddenly agreed with me and other christians on moral issues it would be a hollow victory without those people also understanding Gods love for them.
So I do not focus my efforts on moralizing the world or turning it into a theocracy. I focus my efforts on being an example of Gods love to those around me. I cannot fathom that someone who is truly gripped by their faith would wish death upon anyone. To me, whatever those people say, they need to be converted as much as anyone else.
For example, sure, some minor book in the Bible might say that's it's kinda bad to be gay, but hating other people that disrespect a minor recommendation is contrary to the most important commandment.
There are many christian churches and religious groups that function more as social organizations than religious ones. I wish they organized around something besides religion as it would make it less confusing but I don't really have a problem with this. I just don't expect the same views and behaviors from them as I would from myself or from people who take their religious beliefs more seriously.
Most political leaders in the United States these days make only the most feeble attempts to convince constituents of their "faith". So it should not surprise you that this country is not a beacon of Christian values in policy or actions.
Another issue is that the Bible is quite thick, and it's very easy to forget that it's actually a collection of many different texts with very different importance, authors, meanings and context, and mistaking it with a coherent book to be taken to the letter. The tone of the Old Testament is very different from the New Testament, and people often forget that they were written at very different epochs, for very different audiences.
I live in the deep south and have never heard such viewpoints from a Christian.
The problem with religion is that it isn't one thing. It's a general philosophy and creation myth to many, and to others it's day-to-day marching orders. That latter set is purely crazy - hearing voices, believing counterfactual things, and is often programmed to kill other groups or at least believe they need to die. If someone is a flat-earther in a battle with round-earthers you can take them up in an airplane high enough to see the curve of the Earth, or to space. But there's no counterproof that can be given to a religious killer.
I think the reason people tend to see Muslims as a single group is that both camps (not Sunni vs Shia, but Sane vs Crazy) share the same sets of religious leadership and respect the same historical figures. For example, a southern baptist and a russian orthodox member would have nothing (religiously) in common. If one sect started murdering others, or picking at a weak justification in the bible for slavery, the other sect would condemn them. But Muslims (through the seemingly accepted method of death-threats from priests) control their religious world more tightly. To be a member is to at least profess to, if not actually believe, a specific set of things.
There's no broad blanket condemnation for entire classes of horrible actions. The Saudis control Mecca and yet the "peaceful" muslims continue to travel there and enrich not only a kingdom but one that routinely executes people for rejecting minor religious traditions. It'd be like me saying I didn't support the Catholic molestation coverup and then going on a three-day Vatican tour and coming back with a pope hat.
So while it may be a stereotype, it is a deserved one (Ask Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and Muslims should pay the price of changing it instead of insisting others simply trust them despite their memberships and alliances.
It's not that they like or support eachother, but knowing how the other thinks makes a difference. For them it's much more difficult to understand how moderate left or right works and can be influenced. There's a good chance that they fear "moderate" people more than those on the opposite end of their thinking, simply because they don't understand them.
I am ashamed to admit that I didn't realize until I was well after 25 that followers of the faith, some of them, really believed in such beings and that priests of the Christian faith have to at least pretend to do so as well.
I was raised catholic(I'm agnostic) and I always took "Adam and Eve" and Angels as tales and alegories, elements to tell a story.
I have had countless discussions (ok, arguments) with people who believe in the literal Biblical story of Creation, the talking Satan snake, and the flood that Noah endured.
They think that Evolutionary theory is a hoax and it's basically impossible to even get them to look carefully at convincing evidence like the fossil record, arctic ice samples, evolutionary history in DNA, or anything else that might point against their belief in the Creation myth.
I think that it's a weakness of the modern Westerner to disregard the depth of religious belief in fanatics.
Angels are like God's build tools. They are there. They may have a critical role but you don't have to understand them deeply or know too much about the intricate details to be a Christian or believe in God.
Still, there is quite the leap from one being to the other. I believe gravity is real, and its also a faith. There are different degrees of faith required for different elements.
More things point to God than to an Angel, since you could attribute existence or nature to something bigger. Where do angels actually fit there, the only thing to point to it is the bible.
I've asked my dad this before (Catholic), and his response was (paraphrasing):
Of course those stories are parables. There wasn't really a literal burning bush. But, whether the supernatural stuff is real, that's what faith is. Faith means that even when you can't see it, you know it's there because you can feel it. So you trust that what's there is what you think is there.
That's the supernatural parts of religion to my dad (I think he was in his 60s when I asked him about that.)
If you asked Pope Francis if angels are real, what would he answer?
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story...
Follow this with an interview with Reza Aslan on CNN which the anchors fail repeatedly at trying to digest things down to a soundbite.
It's not uncommon after a number of phases, you start to relate on other planes of abstractions and not on first level constructs.
If I may, I've also felt this religiousness coming up pretty much everywhere. Even if it doesn't impact us as much, architectures, languages (pure vs impure;), project practices, all of them are subject to cause emotional splits between people. We have to accept and live in peace with how people feel about anything as long as they do the same. Although balance is fragile.
I wish more people reached that conclusion about thinking across groups and see what's beneath the surface of each person and community.
"When Jesus was born, it threatened the growing rule of the roman empire and catholic church"
This question is the root of many violent clashes, especially where a smaller group disagrees on a preemption ordering than the larger group. In the US the most obvious example is the assertion that the constitutional rights of privacy between a woman and her doctor trump (or supercede) the rights of a group to declare abortion as murder. While many people will have different opinions on whether it is right or wrong to abort a pregnancy, when you read about bombing of abortion clinics or killing of doctors who have performed abortions, those perpetrators have stated that they believe they are enforcing God's laws above the laws of the land.
The narrative is that God's laws are more important because they determine if you go to hell or heaven, whereas the laws of men merely incarcerate you.
The challenge is that in the Medieval period people figured out that having laws under the control of a small group of people who were not checked by "the governed" gave rise to a conflict of interest which inevitably resulted in the law makers crafting advantages for themselves and their friends and to the detriment of the people.
As a culture it is important to respect and have tolerance for people who choose to follow their own laws, and it is essential to protect those who would choose not to be bound by a "cultural law" because they have come to disagree with that group. If you decide you want to leave the Catholic church because you feel their strictures on divorce or birth control do not align with your own values, then it is the responsibility of the society you live in to protect your ability to leave such an organization on your terms.
It is that last bit, letting people say "You know, I don't believe this is the right way to do things, I'm out of here." which is the essence of the rule of law having supremacy over the "laws" that a particular organization or group subscribe to. It makes those cultural laws voluntary rather than mandatory. And that undermines the authority of a religious figure to command your behavior and punish you for disobeying.
We call it Freedom of Religion but really it is Freedom from Religion. The right to choose to participate in a religious group, and to stop participating if you feel that is the right thing. Sure the group can excommunicate you but that is the limit of their "right" to retaliate, basically to not let you back into their organization.
There is nothing specific about this conflict of values. We have extremist Christian, extremist Jewish, and extremist Islamic groups. I would expect there are extremist Hindu and Buddhist groups as well although I don't know of any. But I do believe the battle here, both in the US with Christians and abroad with other religions, is about the idea that people should have the right to choose their own religion, and the right to choose no religion, and that the only laws which are mandatory to follow are the ones that we have arrived at collectively through a system where the government answers to the governed.
The current thread is managing to stay surprisingly less hostile than it could have been. Let's keep it that way.
They are Abrahamic (along with Judaism) religions and both feature the exact same God and many of the same practices and beliefs.
One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in Christianity, there are many divisions and sects within the religion. I am Atlantean and go to an Atlantean church. I would not want to be called a Phoenician or Liliputian christian (made up names cause I don't want to offend anyone this early in the morning).
Just as with anything else, the closer and more involved you are with something the more you see distinctions between different categories of that thing. As a total outsider your categories tend to be large, all encompassing and dominated by the loudest, most visible or most discussed sub category. For most westerners I think that sub category is, unfortunately radicalised Muslims.
I'm fortunate that my coworker has given me a different perspective. I never believed all Muslims were radicalised but the true revelation for me was that my Muslim coworker was more like me than most non-muslims. It saddens me to see states in my country rejecting refugees from Syria. They are depriving their residents of potential friends and coworkers, potential spouses, neighbors or playmates that can give them a new perspective and help make their world a little larger and more interesting.
Edit: I'd love to have a discussion with anyone who disagrees with me. (Not really making an argument but whatever) if you're down voting at least make a comment please.