I run into this argument every now and then, usually followed by "all religions have cooks, and you would be wrong to judge the religion by its fanatics
Not an expert on islam at all, but in this case wasn’t Islamic faith/politics imperative to the attacks?
Not true. Some religions have chefs.
If you follow the argument you have posed, you have no choice but to agree that Christian faith/politics is imperative to attacks on abortion clinics or doctors who carry out abortions. If you disagree, why on this point but not the other?
Anything I’ve ever seen on the subject indicates that the planners of the 9/11 attacks (and most other attacks claimed by radical Islamists) were using Islam as a fig leaf to legitimize, and convince others to carry out, wholesale slaughter for a primarily political, not religious end. Some of these people were in fact religious figures, most not. Furthermore, these people have worked out an interpretation of Islam that quite simply is not shared by mainstream muslims, xenophobic propaganda notwithstanding.
I have to wonder, as an aside, why so many people have such a difficult time understanding that Islam really not much less fragmented than Christianity. It is simply not monolithic and there is no single spokesperson or interpretive body for the entire faith.
It is, isn’t it? Almost everyone who attacks abortion clinics or doctors who carry out abortion is motivated by religious reasons, in that case a kind of militant Christianity. That doesn’t mean that Christians as a whole support attacks on abortion clinics or that Christianity inevitably leads to attacks on abortion clinics. I also don’t understand why you separate religion from politics? (saying that the 9/11 attackers “were using Islam as a fig leaf to legitimize, and convince others to carry out, wholesale slaughter for a primarily political, not religious end.”) Religion inevitably is political, even in those religious faiths that make a distinction between the religious and secular spheres.
If Islam were the main imperative behind 9/11, and given that there are a billion muslims in the world, then we should be getting millions of 9/11s per year. Clearly that is not the case, and so it seems silly to conclude that the 9/11 attacks were an act of Islam.
Going further, given how Christian this nation is, it’s amazing that abortion clinics even make it past the blueprint stage. That is, unless bombing abortion clinics is not a Christian thing to do, but just a crazy thing to do.
Sure, the hijackers were muslim, and may have rationalized their actions with interpretations of Islam, but that’s only part of it. They were also engineers; therefore should we expect engineers to routinely hijack planes and fly them into buildings? That we don’t routinely see engineers do such things leads us to conclude that the attack was not based on engineering ideals.
The only thing we can conclude about these people is that they were crazy, because hijacking planes and flying them into buildings is definitely a crazy thing to do.
All religions have maniacs and fanatics. I Have read Gabriel’s book and I am trying to figure out why I am afraid of Islam. She states very clearly why we should not burn the Koran but that every American needs to open one and read it. The answers are in the Koran. I don’t have the answer but I do think we have a lot of confusion about what Islam is. Is it a religion or is it a terrorist organization parading as a religion?
Keep an open mind and just listen to this audio. Two Muslim women are having a debate on Islam. I had to keep reminding myself that these are both Muslim women with two different points of view. It gets quite heated.
GabrielHarneyAudio
Religious faith was essential, but Islamic faith was not. At least not mainstream Islamic faith.
The problem with most religions is that their principles can be twisted to mean anything you want them to mean. So a guy like Osama Bin Laden can come along and say that Islam means we need to kill Americans, and we have to call believers of that faith Muslims, because what else are we going to call them? They get their beliefs from the Koran, and no one can definitively say what the Koran means. Therefore anyone who says they get their beliefs from the Koran is going to be called a Muslim.
The point is that the only thing Muslims have in common is that they say they get their beliefs from the Koran. That’s like believing everyone who read “The Catcher In the Rye” is a killer just because one guy says the book made him kill Lennon.
[/litella]
A brief warning to future viewers. This is a clip from Sean Hannity’s radio show and the woman defending Islam isn’t all that bright. She keeps using straw man arguments and Hannity easily takes them down.
To those particular attacks? Yes.
This is certainly the case as well.
They were both. There were indeed political motivations. But the piety, however misplaced and fanatical, was real. In fact the two were frequently intertwined.
I absolutely agree. But that has absolutely no bearing as to whether the whackadoos in al Qaeda are religiously motivated or not, at least in part. Most of them legitimately are - generally speaking they aren’t cynically dissembling. That’s why the word fanatic tends to have a negative connotation ;).
That argument makes absolutely no sense at all. The reason we don’t have millions of Muslim terrorist attacks, is that the vast majority of Muslims aren’t murderous whackadoos. It doesn’t mean that a small minority can’t be.
Yes? Far as I can tell that is all the OP was asking.
Sure it was. ObL wasn’t upset with U.S. troops being stationed in SA during the Gulf War because he was a Mennonite ;).
Agreed. But as you phrased it you are treading perilously close to a “No True Scotsman” argument. Jihadist fanatics are fanatics, but they’re still Muslims and derive their jihadism from Islam.
Look I often get cast ( or used to, when I bothered with those idiotic arguments ) as Mr. Apologist-Who-defends-Islam around here. And frankly I think casting aspersions on Muslims as a group because of the acts of a relative handful is misguided, illogical and frankly immoral.
But let’s call a spade a spade. The 9/11 attackers, whatever their hypocrisy and general lack of sanity, where at least in part motivated and energized by their religious zeal. The may have been bad Muslims, depending on your POV, but they were still Muslims, and more than that their faith was a major motivator.
I think Tamerlane may have won this thread.
What, Sean having someone on his show he can whomp on easily? Wow, imagine that. :dubious:
Hannity was great at keeping them both at bay! If they were in the same room there would have been a cat fight. The woman defending Islam is very good friends with the Imam so I would not say she is dumb. Crazy like a fox, but not dumb. If you would get killed for saying the wrong thing the only thing you can do is play coy or evade the answer. Notice what questions she would not answer? Notice how well she steered away from any questions that she could not answer?
Gabriel is brilliant and she knows the scoop. Hannity was very good at keeping them both on topic as much as was possible. Even if your not a Hannity fan you gotta give him credit for keeping two mad women on point during a heated discussion. I learned a lot.
I personally don’t feel at all safe with some Imam that refuses to answer any and all questions about terrorism building anything in my country. He either answers the questions or out he goes on the next flight to Bagdad. When did answering the question “Are you affiliated with terrorists” become something you don’t need to answer? It’s kind of important.
Once again some people refuse to look at the truth and make fun of the interviewer. At least Hannity had the courage to do the interview and you have to give him credit for that.
It’s really hard to look at the truth isn’t it? I find it disturbing myself but I keep looking and trying to learn all I can about what Islam and Muslims are all about and what they want from us. They are not here to spread good will or to be our friends no matter what they say. Fear says, don’t look" but courage tells me I must.
Thanks to the OP for a timely topic.
Or maybe the fundamentalist Christians who want to bomb abortion clinics are just too inbred and dumb to do it properly.
Here in St. Paul, MN, we had an attempt to bomb a Planned Parenthood clinic – but the bombers got the address wrong, and planted their bomb in back of the public library next door.
But do people suicide bomb abortion clinics? Because it’s that suicide thing that makes it so hard to fight in my opinion. What are you going to use as a deterrent if even dying doesn’t bother them?
“Them” being crazy people, I presume?
I’m pretty sure the majority of Muslim people who blow shit up (or attempt to) aren’t actually ‘suicide’ bombers. They just plant bombs. Sure, the *really *committed ones strap the bombs to themselves, but I’m pretty sure that goes more to ‘crazy’ than ‘Muslim’.
We have plenty of crazy people in the US willing to die for their cause, it’s just that their ‘cause’ is generally to shoot everyone who ever hurt their feelings (along with random passers-by), which makes perfect sense if we properly identify the prevailing philosophy of the US as not Christianity, but solipsism.
Do you have the courage to admit that you could be entirely wrong about Islam?
So you believe in sending people to places that they have no connection to? Imam Rauf was born in Kuwait, not Iraq. He also has worked with the FBI and the State Department to provide information and training on Islam.
What you seem to be doing, from the content of your posts on Islam, is cherry-picking, looking for information that confirms your pre-existing negative opinions of all Muslims, everywhere, for any reason. Only paying attention to information that supports an already-established belief is a type of cognitive bias called the confirmation bias.
You’ve been told, on a number of occasions, in a number of threads, that your opinions regarding Islam are not true of the majority of Muslims (and in many cases, are based on incorrect assumptions). You don’t care. So, you’re not “trying to learn all [you] can about what Islam and Muslims are all about.” You’re simply another person who has formed a belief that is based on biased information, and who refuses to consider the possibility that the real issue may be larger and more complex than “Muslims hate us.”
Am I the only one who flashed on Johnny Dangerously here?
Moderator Comment
Perciful, please bear in mind that links should be descriptive, and if the link is to an entire broadcast it’s helpful to specify where one should tune in. Some people have found the link misleading because they didn’t know it led to a Sean Hannity broadcast.
No warning, no note issued.
What do random acts of violence have to do with Christianity?
Where in the Koran does it say that you have to attack people who station troops outside Saudi Arabia?
I phrased it specifically to avoid that argument. The fact that an overwhelming majority of Muslims don’t believe in killing people is evidence that Islam isn’t responsible for people becoming killers.
Their Muslim fate only chose the theatrics behind the attack. It wasn’t fundamental to their decision to attack. That came from their own twisted minds.
Pretend two people look at a painting, and one of them decides that the painting told him to kill some people while the other decides that it says he needs to help some people. Is the painting responsible making that one guy decide to kill people? What if one billion people look at that painting and remain peaceful, while only a few thousand start killing people? Is the painting at fault?