I don’t know whether this should go into the Pit, or MPSIMS or here.
I don’t understand why we as a people or our government can think they can beat a closely held religious conviction out of existence. A person’s religious views is a very important part of their identity and is not something that can be battled with normal weapons. It seems we think that we can militarily force people to change their minds. All it really does is harden their resolve, play into their hands of being oppressed and attract more like minded people.
I saw this first with the Waco incident. Somehow, our govt was convinced all they had to do was knock the walls down of the complex and the ‘trapped, oppressed’ inhabitants would see the error of their ways or view the govt as liberators.
No, this is their religion…people are willing to die and kill for their religion. I’m sure many of you would do the same thing.
Simply ask yourself…If someone came to you and said your religion is now outlawed, wouldn’t you fight it with any means possible? Wouldn’t you be willing to die for your religious convictions?
You can’t stamp out religious convictions with military means.
Why does this seem to be so opaque to our govt and our people?
“Our Government”, whichever government you mean by that, is not telling ISIS to knock it off with the ridiculous religious crap. Nobody has officially challenged their religious views. Only their war crimes are being criticized.
On the other hand, ISIS seems to be doing a damn fine job of telling everyone else exactly what they think of their religious convictions. Perhaps this OP would best be directed at them.
Come on OP, give us some actual examples of, I guess, Western governments imposing religious beliefs on people in the ME. Western conceptions of human rights possibly, but religious beliefs? Not so much.
perhaps I’m not explaining correctly. The US govt is not imposing their religious views on people. That is NOT my contention. The govt. seems to not understand the power of religious conviction, and that religious conviction cannot be stopped militarily.
This is what I don’t understand. Religious extremism, be it Muslim or Christian or religious devotion to a dictator is not something that can be stopped easily with military action.
Yes, you can beat back a group who are holding hostages with enough firepower, but you cant stop the ideas and thoughts of religious convictions.
A minor thought on the war crimes comment from quicksilver. What we view as war crimes, they view as religious necessity. So by us ‘criticizing’ their war crimes, they view as an attack on their religion.
It just befuddles me why it isn’t so easily understood that the religiously convicted will kill and die for their beliefs…be it Muslims in the ME or Christians in the west
Because the US government is the most powerful force the world has ever seen, and if anyone can change people’s beliefs that’s us. More importantly, we don’t need to change anyone’s deeply held beliefs; we just need to kill them, and that’s easily within our grasp.
I’m sure someone could’ve said the same thing about the Nazis–it’d be too difficult to change deeply help convictions, we should just appease and placate them etc. Oh wait, we did do just that, and it didn’t work. But then we beat them down, killed millions of adherents, and changed hearts and minds permanently. If we can beat a first world country with millions of people, we can beat a few thousand terrorists running around in the desert.
The ISIS belief is that if they stay “pure” in their view of Islam, the Allah will deliver victory. This is not just a Muslim view. See Joshua’s conquest of Jericho in the OT. While it would be impossible to change their religious beliefs, it is possible to disprove their thesis. If all things are possible for Allah, and you are getting the crap beaten out of you, and you are constantly losing ground, than Allah must not be with you, and you must be a false caliphate. While we cannot change the minds of the current adherents, we can drastically reduce their recruitment by proving that they are beatable.
The analogy doesn’t hold. ISIS (and other terrorists groups like it) take hold in the Middle East pretty much wherever you have a failed state. That’s what happened in Syria due to the ongoing civil war and that’s what is happening in Iraq due to the breakdown of the political process. And, the same thing is now happening in Libya. Kill every member of ISIS and you just get another group that will spring up and fill the void.
I don’t know how you build a civil society in a country like Iraq or Syria, and I don’t know that we have the capability to do so. I fear that our choices are: Countries ruled with an iron fist (Assad, Saddam Hussein, Kaddafi, etc.) or failed states with active terror organizations running amok.
Is there an alternative to military force though? It’s not like IS have a diplomatic arm. We could try bombing them with instructional pamphlets, perhaps. I agree with the OP that people will die for their religious beliefs and relish martyrdom. That’s just another good reason to cure the human race of this ludicrous affliction, and grow up - none of the scriptures are the word of God because He is an obvious invention.
Then we can all go to war over land, water and oil a bit more honestly.
No, the government was convinced all they had to do was knock the walls down of the complex and the trapped, oppressed inhabitants would be taken into Federal custody.
This is probably a bad example to prove your point, as most of the Branch Dravidians are dead.
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John Mace** - I think there is also a third choice of an Islamic theocracy like Iran.
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.” - George S. Patton
I’m not really sure what the OP is trying to get at. ISIS has demonstrated that they are religious extremists who are completely intolerant of any beliefs besides their own. The purpose of these airstrikes is not to “change their way of thinking”. It is to kill them and destroy their equipment so as to degrade their military capabilities to threaten the region. I have no doubt that there is also a massive (albeit less visible) campaign by various countries law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to gather information on ISIS membership, funding and resources to further degrade their capabilities.
ISIS changing their beliefs is largely irrelevant to the overall strategy. No one expects religious extremists to become more moderate.
Since all the points I’d make have mostly been made already:
Um, no. I wouldn’t hack the heads off of people who were in my power because I disagreed with them on something as stupid and silly as religion, and I seriously doubt anyone else on this board would either. Nor would I or most other people on this board (hell, most other rational and non-fucking crazy) do most of the other horrendous stuff ISIS/ISIL has done or probably will do in the near future.
You SHOULD have put this in the Pit. You didn’t, so I’ll just say ‘horseshit’. No one is outlawing Islam or telling the folks at ISIS/ISIL how or what to worship. The actual issue is, you know, all the fucking war crimes and attempts to conquer territory in sovereign states, stamp out OTHER religions with extreme prejudice and, you know, those war crime thingies. Did I mention war crimes? Crimes against humanity? That sort of thing?
When and if we ever get around to killing the ISIS/ISIL folks in job lots, it won’t be because of their religious convictions…at least not from OUR perspective. It will be because they are bat shit crazy motherfuckers who are bent on causing the maximum amount of carnage and destruction they can and causing a shit load of misery whereever they go, especially against those who don’t have their same bat shit crazy ideas. THAT would be why we might bomb the crap out of them down the road, not because of their beliefs in Islam.
Unless you think that hacking folks heads off (raping, pillaging and generally causing as much hate and discontent as they can) is a perfectly acceptable expression of religion that we should just be ok with…
This. They can believe whatever the hell they want, but the rest of the world should continue to shoot and bomb and kill them for as long as they continue to actually behead individuals and exterminate religious minorities and violate widely respected standards of human rights on a massive scale,
It’s not really about religion. From the New Republic:
These particular disaffected men are mostly Muslims. But some of them converted just for the purpose of joining the fight, and most of the others aren’t especially devout. When people say these guys have hijacked Islam the way they hijacked airplanes, it’s not a bad analogy.
The fact of the matter is that most people will not kill and/or die willingly in oppressive situations, regardless of what they are being oppressed for. However, most people are willing to stand by while others do it, and otherwise perpetuate oppressive and violent social norms.
The idea of stopping ‘religious extremism’ is studied and explored primarily with anti-establishment groups in mind. Traditionally devout people and religious leaders have avenues for committing oppression that are normalized and accepted in their societies. This is why the whole debate of whether extremist groups are hijacking religion or not is unhelpful. Groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are natural enemies of most Islamic scholars today and the establishments they support and represent. They see them as complicit in the subjugation and oppression of Muslims. Similarly, the scholars see terrorists as threats to their religious authority and perhaps more immediately to their safety. The research cited in the article linked to by Richard Parker is solid and important but as the article itself demonstrates, the implications of that research are consistently misinterpreted. To put it simply, violent religious extremism in the IS mode is a symptom of ongoing religiously themed oppressive status quos. The War on Terror as it has been carried out has only exacerbated this situation by privileging ‘well-established’ Islamic identities and leaders who are typically still quite oppressive, just in ways that do not noticeably destabilize their societies. In many ways American efforts has marginalized the disaffected even further.
The violent religious extremism that is the subject of this thread is absolutely about religion, but not in the way most people think. It can’t be bombed away, that is true. There have to be major changes across communities (including in the west) in how religion is approached, understood and related to in order to be able to eliminate this problem without falling back on authoritarianism and oppression from state or communal actors.
In Iraq, it’s about disaffected Sunnis willing to make a deal with the devil (ISIL) in order to try and militarily overthrow the Shiite government. The paring of ISIL nut-jobs with well trained, military experts (ex-SH military types) is what makes them such a formidable force in Iraq. But then you have the added “bonus” that ISIL can retreat into Syria if they feel they need to, and you have a problem that does not lend itself to conventional solutions. This is not something we can bomb our way out of.
Nobody gives a rats ass what these bat shit crazy monsters believe in. It doesn’t matter if it’s Jesus, Mohammad, or flying turtles. Nobody cares. We do care if they declare themselves supreme rulers based on their fantasy world. fighting them is a fight to stop crazy people from committing mass murder just as it was to fight the Nazis.
Um… WHAT? Korresh was under arrest for breaking laws. His religion had nothing to do with that. Again, nobody cared if he believed in Jesus, Mohammad or flying turtles and his followers continued to believe in whatever struck their fancy after the event.
I would fight anyone who decides that my freedoms belong to them. And like the Nazis they can be stamped out without stamping out a religion.
The most telling descriptor in Richard Parker’s site, for me, is underemployed. While there will always be individuals who are religious fanatics and probably dangerous, when you’re looking at an entire demographic, economic forces are a huge factor. People who feel successful and invested in their quality of life and secure about their economic situation, no matter how devout they are personally, are a lot less likely to rise up in a religious war. If you have nice things, you’re going to be more inclined to stick with the status quo.