main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate Revolution in the Muslim World

Discussion in 'Archive: The Senate Floor' started by Lowbacca_1977, Jan 28, 2011.

  1. TheGuardianofArlon

    TheGuardianofArlon Jedi Master star 6

    Registered:
    Feb 26, 2007
    It's the two legs in the Book of Daniel. One in the west, the other in the East. since Rome and Constantinople was established it been this way, even beforehand. Always the West vs the East...

    In other news some friends of mine got kicked out of a bakery by Arabs seemingly. I mean literally kicked out, the guys were yelling at them and everything. Why is a different question. Maybe it's because one of my friends had the star of David on and because of the currant circumstances going on. No idea. Find out tomorrow though.
     
  2. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Condition, I would suggest you read the Koran. Of the three mainstream monotheist tomes, it's the best written (from a prose point of view) and a lot different to how you present it.
     
  3. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
  4. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    Let me try this again.

    Terrorists used a faked/dubbed video to assault a U.S. embassy and said vid sparked a violent protest by what appears to be an uninformed populace to join in though said folks do not speak for the majority which is unfortunately under the thumb of said armed batch of terrorists and the anti-Obama camp used this an as excuse to try and paint Obama's foreign policies as the cause of said terrorist attack even though it has been shown as false and a major stumble by the Romney camp said camp is sticking by their lie that it is all Obama's fault and we should all vote for Romney because if he were President there would never be a terrorist attack and tax cuts for the rich will solve everything.

    ????
     
  5. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    No, terrorists probably did not "fake" the video. The film was made by an anti-Muslim Coptic Christian (and supported by a few American Evangelicals) who deceived the actors into believing they were making an innocuous film about pre-Islam Egypt and then dubbed over the video to make it anti-Muslim.
     
  6. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    We VLM did say "dubbed" video DG so I suspect he meant the video was real too.
     
  7. VadersLaMent

    VadersLaMent Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Apr 3, 2002
    Oh I know about the felon film maker. The lady who filmed it said what she filmed was not what was presented to the world. The dubbing was added by said felon. The attack appears to organized, militant, backed, planned, and such. The film was an excuse to execute. How they are connected beyond that is up for grabs.
     
  8. Condition2SQ

    Condition2SQ Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2012
    Well then, I guess it's a good thing I didn't post this a few pages before I went on to deconstruct these riots in particular and the response to them.

    Oh, wait.

    ---

    aPPa, your reply is forthcoming this evening. It will be longish.

    ------------

    On another note, we have another instance of FBI agents ensnaring a young Muslim into a suicide bombing plot, and then charging him with it, entrapment laws be damned. What is the point of this?
     
  9. Katana_Geldar

    Katana_Geldar Jedi Grand Master star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 3, 2003
    There were protests here about the film. I'm finding it hard to believe.

    I was even near where they were going on, heard the sirens. Of we had decided to do things differently yesterday we might have run into them.
     
  10. Condition2SQ

    Condition2SQ Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2012
    aPPmaSTer



    I would like to say that this is a delightful audio clip, and that everyone here at TF.N should listen to it--especially those of you who seem to imagine that Muslims are inherently incapable of responding to insults to Mohammed in a civilized manner.

    The problem I have here is that most Islam apologists of the kind I have argued with in this thread(not a Muslim such as yourself) will listen to it, brandish it at me, and triumphantly declare victory in the debate, labeling me (yup) a bigot. While this is an absolutely admirable and unobjectionable speech, I think it is fair of me to say that it does not represent any codified school of Islamic thought. There is no school or sect of Islam with any historical or political salience that espouses these teachings. And no, I am not saying that there aren't individual Muslims who have tried. Another example is Irshad Manji, a lesbian Muslim who I am a long time admirer of. She recently authored a book entitled Allah, Liberty, and Love expressing a desire to merge Islam with modern liberalism. For her effort, her book was banned in Malaysia and was physically assaulted in Indonesia , in both cases for "distorting the teachings of Islam". These events clearly have nothing to do with United States imperalism or the Israeli occupation. Muslim scholars with political and religious power have found her book to be a gross misrepresentation of the Islamic scriptures. What is a non-Muslim to make of that?

    Another Muslim I greatly admire is Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, and he is really someone who is worth talking about to make a point about the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Jasser is a Syrian Sunni who is disturbed by Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and so narrated a film called "The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision for America. CAIR--an organization constantly brandished by liberals as being a paragon of Islamic moderation--pounced immediately, calling it "a notorious anti-Muslim propaganda film", this despite the fact that a devout Muslim physician had played a significant role in its creation! In light of this, and the fact that a former CAIR official appeared on national television and admitted that "'moderate Islam' is just a violation of the teachings of Islam", is it really unfair for a reasonable person to conclude that CAIR is disingenuous, duplicitous organization?

    Regarding faithfreedom.org, I neither endorse nor not endorse the content of the site. I had only once found that specific article, and I think it makes very good points. It is rather amazing, though, that it's liberal orthodoxy that people who criticize Islam are "bigots", and yet the fiercest of all critics of Islam that I'm aware of are the founder of faithfreedom, Ali Sina, the former member of Dutch parliament Ayan Hirsi Ali, and the apostate-turned-scholar Ibn Warraq, all from Iran, Somalia, and Pakistan, respectively. And all three live with bounties on their heads, which leads me to address your point about death penalty for apostates being non-Islamic. Yet this is an extremely well-known and widely-practiced statement from the Bukhari Hadith. Watch this video



    These aren't some rag-tag marginalized terrorists huddled in a cave discussing this...this is a debate among scholars on television! Again, what conclusion is a reasonable observer supposed to draw from this?

    I have no doubt that there are a smattering of verses in the Qu'ran that you can stitch together to underwrite some form of liberal Islam; there are who are both sincerely Muslim in conviction and sincerely committed to liberalism, and I have no doubt you are one of them. But that acknowledgment has to be bracketed by the fact that the Muslims committing terrorist attacks are not simply individuals cut from this "liberal Islam" cloth, but are practicing a very rational and very historically solvent manifestation of the faith.
     
  11. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Maybe you should take another read though. The Koran unapologetically outlines some acceptable uses of violence, yes. But none of them are really analogous to either the mob action or terrorists attacks that are so concerning at present. This is probably why an overwhelming majority of devout Muslims are not involved in terrorist activity, and the scholars whose interpretation of Islam support such things are decidedly outside the long-recognized intellectual powerhouses. Do you really think anyone would put Al-Zawahiri's jurisprudence on par with Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani's? Have you ever stopped to think about why their leaders aren't already big names in Muslim communities before they turn to terrorism? The only people who give their views such deference are those who are either credulous or bigoted enough (or both) to believe something stupid about a religion they know nothing at all about.

    There are two things wrong with this statement. The first is that it is just flatly incorrect. Geopolitics are often part of published statements by terrorists. For instance, you'll recall that Osama Bin Laden's specific citation of the invasion of Lebanon as the motivation for the September 11th attacks.

    The second is that you're reasoning is backwards. It is true that listening to terrorists gives us their motivations for why they did something. But it is extremely strange to presume that they have an objective and definitive view of whatever ideology they feel inspired by. For instance, are people who bomb abortion clinics to be considered the foremost authorities on Christianity? Is the Unabomber representative of the true feelings of anyone who has ever expressed skepticism about technology? Or are these individuals' interpretations of ideologies fairly ideosyncratic, such that we might at least need a better argument than "look at what they're telling us" before we pass judgment on the entire broader movement?

    Let's just pause and analyze this suggestion for a minute. In the first place, Loughner's motivations were not known at the time, and Palin's apology came out less than a week after the original incident, and before his motivations were at all clear. In the second, Loughner was a middle class American pursuing a tertiary education. Why would we look at the same motivations for him as we do the other cases under discussion? Is he a citizen of a country with severe political repression, such that he would either be unused to hearing dissenting views, or feel that his only way to express his own is through violent criminal acts (because non-violent speech would be met with state-enforced brutality)? Was he desperately impoverished, such that life stressors would have negatively impacted his judgment and made a violent act seem a more viable alternative to his current state? Was his culture one that sociologists have sometimes analogized to the "culture of honor" that is said to operate in the former Confederate states of the US? Does a lack of education and independent news media restrict his ability to get reliable information, such that he might more easily believe untruths and conspiracy theories?

    I feel pretty safe saying the answer to all of those is "No." Unless you'd like to object, then I don't see why you are upset we are treating two totally different cases differently.

    I'm not rating your comprehension too highly at this point. In the first place, you are ignoring the obvious context of this statement. He's in the heat of a political contest, and trying to throw red meat to his base. That has about the same level of seriousness as Romney promising to label China a currency manipulator on day one or the Democratic candidates in 2008 vowing to renegotiate NAFTA. More importantly, though, what did he actually say? He first said that while he enjoyed living in the US, it was a non-Muslim country whose policies he largely did not appreciate. This is a fair statement. He goes on to object to what he views as the cultural imperialism of US foreign policy, and especially resents it as it regards their desired objective for predominantly Islamic countries of the Middle East. He is quite explicit about this, making several references to his essays discussing papers made by the RAND corporation. His critiques about US foreign policy are not really novel, and certainly aren't the same thing as saying that there is no possible co-existence between Islam and a free society. Why you would think the best source for a statement is a political candidate discussing foreign policy while specifically trying to appeal to people who feel outside forces have imposed upon them is beyond me.
     
    DarthBoba, Valairy Scot and Ender_Sai like this.
  12. Condition2SQ

    Condition2SQ Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2012
    I'm not even going to get into a back-and-forth of our personal Qu'ranic exegesis; that would be ridiculous. I find how flippantly you admit that the Qu'ran outlines acceptable uses of violence but then quickly move on rather telling. Honestly, I don't feel like I need to defend myself on this point. As I've said repeatedly, the Qu'ran is widely available at bookstores and libraries across the nation. Readers here can procure themselves a copy and read it themselves--imagining that they had been brought up to believe that it represented the Perfect Words of the Creator of the Universe--and decide for themselves just now benign its message is.

    Of course temporal geopolitics are part of their rationale How could they not be? I have not argued here, nor believe for a second, that Islamic terrorists read the Qu'ran in a vacuum, fall into a supernatural stupor, and then guided like Divine puppet's by Allah, commit a terrorist act. These things are perceived to be crimes, however, within an Islamic framework. Bin Laden wasn't angry because he was striving desperately to create a liberal democracy; he was angry for (among other things) because we were impeding on his desire to fashion a society based on Islamic fundamentalism. When you grow up in a milieu that teaches the that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is history and that Allah has promised terrestrial suffering for the infidels--a world where things like this are prosaically aired on public television-- why wouldn't you interpret the strong USA-Israel bond as confirming what the Protocols say? If you are promised a Divine Reward for doing so, why not help bring about the destruction of it?

    The mendacity of this is stunning, but given what passes for acceptable on this topic in contemporary discourse, I'm not surprised you attempt it. I've made this point probably a half a dozen times in this discussion(this aside from the fact that there have been, what, a dozen abortion clinic bombings in the past decade?) Adherence to the words of Christ do not permit for abortion clinic bombing. It is very easy to take someone aside who is poised to do this and show him that Christ would not have/does not approve of such behavior. Even allowing for the fact that people can be sincere in their religious convictions while not practicing its injunctions, do we have any massive contemporary schools of Christian theology that advocate this practice? You can probably point me to a handful of Westboro Baptist type organizations, but the contempt with which we speak of those organizations only drives my point home further. Imagine if the Westboro Baptist Church were its own sovereign polity.

    This is so absurdly convoluted I'm not even going to deign a response. Suffice to say that Islamic terrorists have been documented to come from wildly different educational and financial backgrounds. The invocation of "untruths and conspiracy theories" is interesting, though. Just who is distributing them? A ha, I've got it. Israel wants a pretext to annex all of Palestine, so they wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, distributed and promoted it as history throughout the Muslim world, while also convincing the rest of the world that it had been proven to be a forgery in the 19th century. Then, when the world saw the Muslims devouring the Protocols as history, they would be disgusted and side with the Israelis and their sinister plot to destroy the Muslims!

    I was not addressing his deconstruction of Middle East geopolitics; I was addressing frank admittance that "'moderate Islam' is just violation of the laws of Islam". Given the context I posted this clip in--twice--, I'm not rating your comprehension too high.

    The charge of imperialism is an interesting one, though. As Ibn Warraq has eloquently stated, Islam itself has a violent imperialist history. Afghan Muslims invaded and seized native Hindu and Sikh lands in present-day India and Pakistan, as well as uprooted innumerable tribal religions in northern Africa. From an Islamic perspective this isn't "imperialism", of course, since Islam is a "gift" to these benighted populations.

    That constitutes my response to your post. Before you seize on perceived errors and elisions, let me point out points I have made in this thread that have not been addressed.

    1) The 7th century provenance of Islam and the nonsensical and "ideologo-centric" nature of desperately trying to render it as more or less the same as Western society with a few theological trappings. I'm not going to post the blockquote for a third time.

    2) If there is no tension between Islam and secular government, why did the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood clash with Nasser's secular nationalist regime so fiercely, even though he had helped overthrow their imperial overlords?

    3)The reflexive impulse to apologize for lynch-mobs comprised of Muslims. It is inconceivable to imagine this prevalent apologia were the offenders white. I agree with Spike Lee that the casual acceptance of this practice indicates innate bigotry.

    4)The duplicity of CAIR and their reaction to The Third Jihad.

    5)The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Please, say something about this. Anything.

    6)The dismissive and violent reaction to Irshad Manij's book in Malaysia and Indonesia
     
  13. aPPmaSTer

    aPPmaSTer Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Dec 23, 2004
    @Condition2SQ, I was actually looking for that clip for the longest time; I had it in my list of favourites but it got deleted from youtube and I was unable to find it ever since. This clip to me outlines one of the things I mentioned in my second-last post that there are things in the Muslim community that need to change -- and change by becoming more Islamic (yes, you read that right). This goes in line with the current discussion, in that Muslims in general need to be better educated about their faith through critical analysis, which to me is mandatory, and this goes not just for ordinary people but for our imams as well. I don't want to deviate from the current discussion on the violence going on in the Arab world (obviously it's not related to apostasy), but I will explain what I see with the video that you posted in my next paragraph, just for those who are interested.

    I don't know if you noticed this, but the people sitting in the audience have probably never been confronted with a situation where they would actually have to think about apostasy or even what scholars say about it, that's why their reactions where like, "yeah ok, whatever you say", without much thought as to the consequences of what it meant to take a human life on the basis of a fundamental personal choice. Now, the two "scholars" present, I'd personally never seen or heard of either of them before, but the host is a really cool guy, and even appeared on the Doha Debates defending women's rights. It was pretty clear that he was trying to be neutral, but in obvious disagreement with what was said -- and just the fact that there are 2 opposite scholarly opinions on the matter means that it's not as cut and dry people make it seem. It is an undeniable fact that there is absolutely no mention of any kind of killing or punishment of apostates in the Qur'an. In fact there are verses in the Qur'an that completely contradict that, along with the general focus on religious freedom.

    2:256
    "There shall be no compulsion in religion."

    18:29
    And say, "The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills - let him believe; and whoever wills - let him disbelieve."

    10:108
    Say, "O mankind, the truth has come to you from your Lord, so whoever is guided is only guided for his soul, and whoever goes astray only goes astray against it. And I am not over you a manager."

    ...plus many more just like it. And surprisingly, when you read them in their scriptural context the meanings don't change :eek:

    So the only punishment mentioned to Qur'an for those who turn away from God once they've seen the truth is punishment in the hereafter. Now as for the hadeeths that are mentioned, it is unanimously agreed that those hadeeths are very circumstance-specific, apart from being highly ambiguous. There are also hadeeths that talk about apostates declaring their intention to leave Islam to Mohammed pbuh and leaving without any problems. There are many things that 4 schools of thought were unanimous on, but have been completely overturned over the ages by newer scholars. Their opinions are not canon and each of the respective founders humbly expressed this by saying, "if you find something in the Qur'an or sunnah that contradicts my school of thought, then go with that instead of what I say". Nowadays, this issue is coming close to agreement in the scholarly community that apostates should not be killed, which to me means going back to the original message of the Qur'an, and I think we can thank sites like Faithfreedom for bring that injustice to the light -- whether that was their intention or not. But just one more thing that these sites don't like to show is that there are many people leaving Islam on a daily basis, just as there are people entering it on a daily basis... and none of them are getting killed!

    As for the video I posted, the speaker in that video is Nouman Ali Khan, and him along with other prominent people like Sheikh Siraj Wahhaj, Yasir Qadhi, Tariq Ramadan, Hamza Yusuf, and many others, are accepted as mainstream Islam that most Muslims around the world adhere to. Now I'm not saying that everyone agrees with everything these people say, nor that there aren't people who disagree with them completely, but it's fair to say that the majority of Muslims are for peaceful coexistence tied with mutual respect with all people. I know there are many who express hate for America due to their generalization about what America stands for, just as many Americans who don't know much about Muslims would generalize about us. However, those who have seen the virtues that exist within American society, and the activism that exists among many American citizens for justice regardless of race or religion, they have a much more enlightened outlook, but one that they probably never would have had if they hadn't been privileged enough to visit America. This is why I would also encourage all Americans to go visit places like Egypt (once this thing calms down a bit) -- take a holiday and go see the pyramids, but also get to know the people and see the many colours, shapes and sizes that Muslims actually come in. And you will be enlightened.
     
    Darth-Ghost and Dark Lady Mara like this.
  14. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    Okay so let me get this straight...C2SQ, your argument is that Islam, true Islam, endorses the use of violence and force to coerce people into their beliefs. If that is what true Islam is, then people are free to practice all aspects of Islam except for those parts which involve the use of violence and coercion since religious freedom doesn't extend to allowing a person to violate someone else's right to life and liberty. When a particular aspect of religious doctrine comes into conflict with the values of a liberal democratic society, the latter have to take precedence.
     
  15. LostOnHoth

    LostOnHoth Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 15, 2000
    In Sydney recently there was a protest by a large group of Muslims in relation to the youtube video. A smalll minority of fanatics showed up and engaged in violent destruction of property and clashed with police. A three year old was caught on camera holding a sign which read: "Behead all those who insult the Prophet". The result has been media hysteria on a grand scale. As a result of this protest, the violence, the stupid sign and the media hype, Muslims have been singled out as representing a unique menace to Australian society (and by extension to Western civilization).

    For some reason, we have forgotten about our history of soccer riots, including destruction of property, clashes with police and signs being brandished by children with messages of death and hate for the opposing side. In the UK and Europe, people have been killed in vioent clashes of mobs all in the name and honour of their football team. We have forgotten about our long history of race riots, the latest being in 2005 where angry mobs of young anglo teenagers pursued and bashed anyone of Middle Eastern appearance, clashed with police, destroyed property and brandished signs emblazed with racist messages in response to an altercation between some Lebanese guys and some life savers on a beach. We have forgotten about our history of the trade union protests which turned violent and involved clashes with police and destruction of property. I recall hoardes of dreadlocked hippies clashing with police and destroying property over climate change.

    How about US history? I'm no historian, but I do seem to recall that US history is replete with violence, shootings, killings, clashes with police and destruction of property all arising from angry mobs on the streets protesting against some political decision or policy or advocating a social or political cause. I recall burning flags, bashings, death, destruction, total chaos. Police have been killed during these protests.

    What about other parts of the world, such as Israel? If you want to see militant religious fanatacism at its best, go to the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza where you can see Orthodox Jews armed with machine guns brandishing signs which read "Arabs to the Gas Chambers". and "Death to all Sand N******". You can see religious fanatics (both Jewish and Muslim) invoke the word of God in support of genocide. In the UK, I do seem to recall a little clash between Northern Ireland and Britain - anyone remember that? I think it involved Protestants and Catholics. There may have been bombings and shootings involved. Pretty sure the IRA had dibs on the tag "terrorists" long before Al-Qeada was even a glint on Bin Laden's eye . Some of you might recall that the IRA was very much comprised of Catholics, all of whom invoked their faith in support of the cause. In Northern Irreland today, little kids are still taught to hate those of other religious denominations.

    So, you can really point to a history of violence and death being carried out by religious adherents (including Jews and Christians) in various places around the world. This is not a phenomena linked solely to Muslims or Islam (radical or otherwise). Some of those Jewish West Bank settlers make the most radical militant Islamic Jihadist look absolutely timid.

    The point is that we humans are a violent, troublesome lot and depending on the social, political and economic climate in which we live, we are always on the verge of becoming a mindless, violent mob. It is no coincidence that the countries where you regularly see mobs of violent Muslims are also countries which have significant political, social and economic upheavals. It is not a sign of any inherent incompatability between Islam and 'the West'. After all, the country with the biggest population of Muslims in the world, Indonesia, manages to get on OK with Australia and the US . I work for a US based company which deals with both Malyasia and Indonesia. Check out US relations with those countries. Both are OK (not fantastic, but OK). I don't see any inherent compatability there. On the other hand, it is no coincidence that religious adherents who live in relatively stable countries with little or no poliical, social or economic upheaval do not generally form angry, violent mobs or blow each other up in the name of their particular religious text.

    This hysteria about Islam and Muslims is becoming a little tiresome and misplaced. The human race is flawed. Muslims should not be singled out. If you took Islam away from most of these fanatics, they would probably blow you up in the name of something else, anything really -politics, football, fashion, music.
     
  16. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    LostOnHoth to the rescue. It's been a while.
     
  17. Condition2SQ

    Condition2SQ Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Sep 5, 2012
    To the rescue, all right. He systematically demolished each of the six points I explicitly noted I was waiting to be addressed.

    And really, his post only buttresses points I have been hammering on the for the entire discussion.

    The riots per se are not the sum of the problem, nor are they uniquely endemic to the Muslim world, which is one of the very first things I said in the discussion. You'll note, however, that all the examples of non-Muslim rioting he gives we look back on with scorn and contempt. We do not desperately seek mitigating rationale to exculpate the rioters' outrageous and destructive behavior. Second, the litany of causes you've listed for terrorism only drives home the fact that "terrorism" is just a tactic deployed to facilitate a certain goal. Well, some goals are more worthy than others. Soccer hooliganism has to be at the bottom of the barrel, but defending the dignity of a 7th century pedophile polygamist "prophet" doesn't seem to me too high a step above. Apropos the Gaza Strip, Israel is confronted there by a government that references The Protocols of the Elders of Zion(somebody please address this, if only so I know I haven't been hallucinating half of my adult life) in its charter, among other theological invective Is it any surprise that some Israelis might take offense and want to take up arms and defend themselves?

    The non-response by every single person to this thread to the ubiquity of the Protocols is quite telling. Here you have the magnum opus of hate literature against an ethnic/religious group being sold as history in virtually every Islamic country on Earth, and yet how many Jewish riots have you heard about in response to this? More to the point, how many of you would be rushing to condemn a group of Jews that simply rioted a bookstore that sold this book? Yet the Muslim world spontaneously combusts across the entire region in reaction to an atrociously produced film--killing diplomats that had nothing whatsoever to do with the film, trampling their own countrymen, and destroying private property--that and everyone is rushing to apologize for them. It's unbelievable.
     
  18. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    The Middle East is comprised of a bunch of Third World developing countries, do you expect liberal democratic values to take root overnight? As for Hamas, yeah they call for Israel's destruction and everyone goes hysterical about this, but they don't have the capacity to carry this out. More to the point, Hamas isn't doing anything right now...after the Gaza war they're mostly behaving themselves now and that cold peace suits me just fine. In any case, Hamas wasn't voted into power for its foreign policy proposals...in that Palestinian and American voters seem to have at least one thing in common.
     
  19. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    I can say something about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And about the Hamas charter. They're among the best pieces of propaganda the Israeli government has! It allows it to do this:

    [​IMG]

    And this.

    [​IMG]

    Or this (warning: unpleasant).

    ...

    Note that the people in these pictures aren't necessarily fundamendalists.

    So, yeah, I've heard of plenty riots against the charter and the hate literature. State-organized riots. War. All my life. It gets tiring. The treatment of Gaza is like Ruanda, like Srebrenica, like Hiroshima. And every country in the world outlawed it 65 years ago.

    I believe that if the Western world stops supporting this behavior, and actually starts practicing what it preaches, it will be more convincing in its preaching and thus will clear any moral high ground its enemies might claim.
     
    aPPmaSTer likes this.
  20. Piltdown

    Piltdown Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 3, 2002
    Third World developing countries? I can't help but point out that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are part of the "middle east". The Middle East is the source of some of the oldest civilized societies and is the birthplace of a whole slew of popular (and often conflicting) religions. They've had 1500 years to "develop" - this is the state in which these societies have chosen to exist.

    I wonder why blowing yourself (along with dozens of innocents) up isn't a common solution to problems in other cultures... maybe it is just too hot out there? I agree that Muslims shouldn't be "singled out", but if you seriously think religion isn't responsible for extremist actions, you really need to check yourself.
     
  21. ShaneP

    ShaneP Ex-Mod Officio star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 26, 2001
    Green and/or purple scarves(B5 fans know what's up with that)
     
  22. LostOnHoth

    LostOnHoth Chosen One star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 15, 2000
    I don't know, I personally approve of the rioting and protests that went on in the US during the civil rights era. The same goes for some of the rioting and protests that have gone on in response to Israel's numerous breaches of international law (regrettably I can't recount them all here in this post and be home for dinner). I also approve of protests and riots which have gone on in Israel in response to Hamas and the Islamic lunatic fringe. Protesting often descends into rioting and violence, it's a sad fact of life but I guess we can only opine as to the worthiness of the cause. Clearly you do not feel that protests and rioting are justified in relation to the youtube video, but clearly a large segment of Muslims around the world do feel that way. Unfortunately, a small minority of thugs have allowed the global media to effectively defame all Muslims by the actions of a relative few (and let's face it, there are always rent-a-crowd thugs in every 'mob' with a different agenda to the legitimate protestors).

    In relation to the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which you seem fixated on, I can honestly say that I really don't know much about them nor do they seem to have much to do with the lives of the many Muslims I know (and I have spent time in Muslim countries and am related to Muslims through marriage). May I suggest that you perhaps overstate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as being the magnus opus of Muslim hate literature? In relation to the Hamas charter, have you ever read it? It is 35 articles and an epilogue filled with pure and utter crap. The fact that there is reference to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion buried deep in the nonsensical garabage which is Article 32 of the Charter doesn't surprise me in the least. What surprises me is that you do not see any problem with Israelis taking offence and taking up arms in relation to 'theological invective' but consider it an outrage if Muslims do the same. Seems like a double standard to me.

    Now, just to be clear on this, the reason you don't see many Jewish protests and riots or Christian protests or riots, is because an overwhelming majority of Jews and Christians live in social, political and economic stability. In those countries where there is very little social, political or economic stability you will see Jews and Christians protesting and rioting, a lot - see for example, Somalia, Israel, Africa, Northern Ireland, Lebanon. You won't see many affluent Muslims rioting and brandishing "Behead the Infidel" signs, but you are more likely to see that from the peasants and the economically and politically oppressed of which there are billions. Anyway, I can see why you are outraged by the riots but please just try and put it in some perspective.

    All I can suggest is that you read Robert Pape's excellent study entitled: "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" and then come back to me. Let me also suggest that suicide bombing is not a 'cultural' trait - Darwin would be aghast at the suggestion. The root cause of suicide terrorism is not religion. There is no religious directive to blow yourself up in Islam, Christianity or Judaism. If there were, Indonesia would be awash in blood. Extremist actions are largely driven by other matters. Religion simply makes it more tolerable to pull the pin on the suicide vest because the bombers believe they will earn a place in Paradise. It's not why they do it, but it makes doing it much more palatable.

    On a general note, I think it is a fairly wasted exercise examining scripture to find the smoking gun of religious motivation. It doesn't matter what the scripture says, its how that scripture is interpreted and how a school of thought is developed that matters. The bible could state clearly that it is a duty encumbant upon the faithful to sacrifice a teenage virgin to obtain the keys to heaven. The reality is that this scripture would then be interpreted to suit the needs of the faitful and a school of thought would develop which would interpret these words as a metaphor, not to be taken literally etc etc. You see this with every religion.
     
  23. Alpha-Red

    Alpha-Red Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Apr 25, 2004
    First of all, autocratic petrostates who use oil revenues to subsidize the population and keep a lid on dissent are hardly the same as liberal democracies who provide education to citizens and foster a sense of civic values. Secondly, in the past 1500 years Europe went through the Enlightenment and Renaissance, during which ideas were born which would contribute to the formation of liberal democracy. Meanwhile the Middle East was being ruled by the Ottoman Empire, then by the French and British, then abandoned to a bunch of local despots who ruled over arbitrarily-drawn fiefdoms.That's hardly an environment that fosters liberal democratic values, and if you think that it does then you may as well expect an autistic child to learn calculus and trigonometry overnight. Only now with the likes of Mubarak and Gadhafi gone, is democracy slowly being introduced to the region, but that's still going to take time.
     
  24. Piltdown

    Piltdown Jedi Master star 5

    Registered:
    May 3, 2002
    Interesting, isn't that the book where the author concluded nationalism, followed by religion, were the two main motivators for altruistic suicide?

    And then you yourself say religion makes suicide bombing more "palatable"? I recommend you streamline your posts and make your opinions clear. Let me help:

    I believe extreme - often violent - action is motivated almost entirely not by the "flawed" human race as you implied, but by differences in beliefs in certain societies and cultural circles. Because religion is such a clear source of difference between circles, it is often an important factor in the extremist action. Everyone is flawed, but not everyone has something they believe in enough to blow themselves up.

    Does religion play a non-negligible role in this type of chaos?

    Edit,
    I wasn't going to reply to this because it is so bizarre to interpret, but lets give it a go:

    It seems that you're implying a non-democratic nation is a Third World nation.
    True [ ]
    False [ ]
     
  25. Jedi Merkurian

    Jedi Merkurian Future Films Rumor Naysayer star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    May 25, 2000

    [​IMG]




    [​IMG][​IMG][​IMG]






    I'm sorry, you were saying?
     
    aPPmaSTer likes this.