And to the rest of you who have brought up other terrorist groups, I did not say that other terrorist groups did not exist. I’m saying that in my opinion (and I would need a cite myself if I were to believe otherwise) all the terrorists in the world could be rounded up and that probably 90% of them would be Muslim. I could be wrong as to the actual numbers of course, but I’m sure the point is clear.
I am not going to be maneuvered into making my postings and postion an attack on Islam, or into defending myself as though it was. I’m saying that those who are so concerned with not making a bigoted statement or having a bigoted viewpoint that they accuse those who are leery of Muslims of bigoted stereotyping are silly and wrong.
It reminds me of the early period of women’s rights when you were a bigot if you dared to offer the observation that woment weren’t as strong as men. Or that it was bigoted behavior for a news broadcast to describe a robber as black in their description of him if he was. People in this country go to such ridiculous lengths to try to do the right thing that they lose credibility. I’m all for doing the right thing, but not with blinders on.
Starving Artist, you continue to claim that the vast majority of terrorists are muslim, even after being presented with evidence which indicates your claim is not likely to be true. Yet you present no evidence to support your claim.
From the State Department’s report on patterns of global terrorism in 2002:
I went through the acts of terrorism listed as “significant” and tallied up where they took place and where their perpetrators came from, if it’s from somewhere other than the same country. Attackers will be grouped as “Muslim” if responsibility was claimed by a Muslim group or, if no one claimed responsibility, if they took place in a primarily Muslim area and the description did not give reason to believe that a non-Muslim group or individual was responsible.
India: 67 (Almost all of them in Kashmir)
Israel, including the West Bank: 16
Misc. Arabs: 10
South America: 9
Pakistan: 6
Russia & the former Soviet Union: 5
African Muslims: 5
Indonesians: 3
African Non-Muslims:3
Basques: 2 (in France and Spain)
Philippines: 2 (1 possibly by Muslims)
Thailand: 1
Macedonia: 1
UK: 1 (perpetrator unknown, bombed Armenian embassy)
Germany: 1 (Iraqi group occupies Iraqi embassy)
Ok, totaling these up… 109 total acts of the ones that the US state department thinks are significant were committed by Muslims, assuming that all of the Indian ones were. 23 were not. That’s a bit over 80%.
However, looking at the statistics, India is really kind of an outlying data point, and I think it’d be interesting to see what the numbers are like if we don’t look at it.
42 acts were committed by Muslims outside of India. 23 were committed by non-Muslims. That’s a bit under 65%.
As long as we’re at it, we might as well see what happened in places OTHER than India and Israel. 26 acts were committed by Muslims outside of India and Israel. 23 were committed by non-Muslims. That’s around 53%.
Now, remember - this is what happened IN 2002, and what the US State Department considers to be significant. So keep those things in mind.
Thanks for bringing some real numbers into the debate, but I’d have to question your assumption that all terrorist attacks in India could be blamed on Muslims as the civil strife in that country primarily can be blamed on Muslims attacking Hindus and Hindus attacking Muslims. So many of the attacks there could be by Hindus, making that ratio lower.
Even if terrorist attacks by Muslims are disproportionably high (which isn’t something I necessarily believe), did it ever occur to you, Starving Artist, that it may have nothing to do with their religion and everything to do with the political situation in the Mid-East etc.?
Starving Artist, most often terrorism is a point of view. For the Irish Republican Army, the English were the terrorists. For the English and the Irish Protestants, the IRA were the terrorists. Who are the terrorists in Haiti? Lots of people the world over consider Americans to be terrorists. The Palestinians consider the Jews to be terrorists.
Christians have certainly been terrorists. I wonder what it was in their religion that caused the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
Your hyperbole serves no purpose in a thread which is about how ignorant hyberboles can become when repeated as if they were fact – especially when you have substituted one hyperbole for another hyperbole which you used to substitute for the originally challanged hyperbole. :rolleyes:
Monocracy, this one is just between you and me so everyone else should scroll through.
This was the second time today that I heard a reference like this. Someone else was talking about that dumb sign on a church in Colorado that said something like “Jews Killed Jesus.” The comment was “You could expect this in some place like Mississippi…”
Honest to goodness, Mono, we have never had a monopoly on stupidity and bigotry here in the South.
Yeah, I knew that some of them would be by Hindus, but I’m not familiar enough with the political situation to estimate a good percentage on that. (Part of why I kept India separate) I could go through and try to figure it based on the description of the event, but it was enough of a pain to count them up in the first place. Thank you for adding that.
A brief clarification, if I may. In my original post I was talking about the total *number * of terrorists, not the number of bombings. I know I subsequently said approximately 9 out of 10 bombings were probably the work of Muslim extremists, and I think that’s why we’re into all of these statistics on bombings now.
What I would really be interested in learning is how many Muslim terrorists, as individuals, there are in the world as opposed other terrorist groups. It seems to me also that their targets are just about any country that isn’t Arab (and some even that are), as opposed to Irish, South American, Japanese, etc. terrorists who are mainly focused on a more specific enemy.
I believe that the sheer number of these individuals, as well as the broad spectrum of the world that they see as their targets, causes them to be perceived as a much greater threat than the other terrorist groups mentioned, thus the greater amount of suspicion and hatred directed toward them.
gobear, I’ve seen enough of your posts to know that you are an unusually intelligent and well educated person. I’ve also seen in your rants against “fundies” that bigoted, hateful comments made about those who are in the wrong, i.e. “fundies,” are perfectly justified because they would relegate you to second-class citizenship and deny you the rights accorded to all other members of society. They are in the wrong and are therefore fair game. I’ve also seen you lump pretty much all of them together without differentiating between those who would actively work against you and wish to harm you, and those who would take no particular position one way or the other. In other words, from what I’ve seen of these posts, your position is pretty much “you’re either for us or against us,” and if they are against you they are fair game for the most bigoted type of insult and regard.
Yet when other people become suspicious and distrustful of Muslims, or Islam itself, because they seem to foment so much hatred and violence against totally innocent people, violence that results in much greater damage than would ever result from second-class citizenship or denial of the right to marry (I’m talking about the deaths of perfectly innocent people, and also the impact their deaths have on their family and loved ones) you suddenly seem concerned about their being stereotyped.
I think terrorists are much more vile, and much more capable of unspeakably horrendous violence, than “fundies” could ever be. Given the huge threat they pose, it’s only natural people are going to be negative toward the religion that spawns them, justified or not. Such is likely the case with Severin’s listeners. I’m not one of them, by the way. I never heard of him prior to this thread. But it’s the behavior of the terrorists that is casting a cloud over Islam, not ignorant stereotyping.
I have addressed most of my comments to you because you seem to be at least willing to listen to someone you don’t agree with and to ask for explanations, rather than just rattling off some lame insult like some of the others on this thread.
The things I’ve said and the point of view I’ve expressed in this thread are only my opinion. It’s how things appear to me. I cannot offer cites to a point of view. To those of your asking for specifics, if you really want to know I would suggest you look them up for yourselves. My intention was merely to offer a point of view as to how people can feel the way they do in regard to Muslims and Islam without it being the result of ignorant stereotyping.
Zoe, I’m sorry. I know you said this one is just between you and Monocracy, but I can’t let this go by as it is so typical of a phenomenon I’ve seen countless times since I was a teenager: Most people behave just the same, only at different ends of the spectrum. Intolerance in the name of tolerance is the result of that. I have seen as much hatred, venom, biggotry and stereotyping going on on these forums than I have ever seen anywhere else. Only instead of it being directed toward gays, blacks, women, etc., it’s directed toward Republicans, Christians, the Bible Belt, the South, etc.
I will never forget the first time I discovered this. I came of age during the hippie era when everyone was dressing in bell-bottoms, smoking dope and wearing long hair. The big hue and cry in those days was “Don’t judge us by the way we look, but by the type of person we are.”
Because of my job I had to have a short, neat haircut. And boy, if I ever accompanied any of my hippie friends to see any of their other hippie friends, did I ever come in for some big-time judgementalism. They thought I was a narc; that I was a square; that I couldn’t be trusted; and that I certainly wasn’t one of them and wasn’t welcome in their world. I came away thinking “You people are no different than the ones you condemn. You’re just at the other end of the scale.” And I’ve seen this phenomenon countless times since. The freedom and tolerance crowd is just as hateful, spiteful and condemning as those on the other side. People are just people, I’m afraid, and essentially they all act the same regardless of their position.
Okay I was bored enough to wade through Google News, looking to find the last 100 reported terroristic bombings, but unfortunately it only seems to go back a couple of months (11 pages of results) and there were only 22 incidents that might reasonably fit the description:
I’m not sure that the Iraq bombings really qualify as Muslim Terrorism – it could just as easily be described as asymmetric warfare, but it seems best to leave it in. Ditto the Cambodian plot, details are very sketchy about that. Best to leave it in, though. Looking at it that way, we have 10 “Muslim” bombings – Less than 50%
If we get all crazy and leave Iraqi insurgents out of it, then we have three, or possibly four out of fifteen reported incidents perpetrated by Muslims.
Either way, 90% is an indefensible claim. (Yeah, I slogged though all that before your last couple of posts, SA)
Dear, sweet Jesus. Let’s just try this once more: Christians gots terrorists, Muslims gots terrorists, Hindus got terrorists, Sikhs gots terrorists, all God’s Sects gots terrorists. Atheists got terrorists. If your perception of Islam is that it is a faith that produces more terrorists than other faiths can lay claim too, your perception is based on ignorant stereotyping. Your “opinon” or “perception” is an unreasonable one. You need to ask yourself “What brings a terrorist into being?” Hint: It ain’t their faith. What we have here is one of those correlation/causality confuzzlements.
Yes, a lot of people think that most terrorists are Muslim. A lot of people think that most bankers are Jewish, too. There really ain’t much difference in the mechanisms that lead to such a belief in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
Well, I’ll give you my idea as to what brings them into being: Powerlessness! They aren’t strong enough to take on their enemies face to face, so they sneak around killing innocent people in the hope that they can bring about through extortion what they can’t acheive by force.
And with all due respect (and I mean it LM) I reject the implication that it’s our (the U.S.'s) fault. Islamic fundamentalists hate our way of life. They want to keep their women covered up so no other men will hit on them; they want to keep their women uneducated so they can have power over them; they abhor everything about Western culture – the clothing, the cars, the houses, the dancing, the partying, the money, the freedom! Freedom isn’t allowed in their way of life and they are scared to death that Western influence will spell the end of it.
Secondarily, they want us the hell out of all Arab countries. (For the reasons mentioned above.)
Yes, but I think we’re going to have to be in disagreement as to the causality.
What evidence to the contrary? The Irish Sinn Fein (sp?) isn’t active in the Orient, the Mideast, South America, North America, France, Germany, Great Britton, the Phillipines, Africa, etc. Neither are any of the other terrorist organizations I’ve seen mentioned in this thread. Only Islamic terrorists are.
Most bankers may not be Jewish, but if they were, I’d say so and not pretend otherwise so no one would accuse me of propagating an ignorant stereotype.
Slightly irrelevant nitpick: there’s no way this would be assumed to be the IRA, since they’re meant to be on ceasefire, and if it had been, there would have been an almighty political row. This would probably be the ‘Real IRA’, a dissident group.
Carry on with educating the silly people, and don’t forget to include all the acts of terror that are perpetrated by non-Muslims across Africa, but don’t get included in the stats because the terrorists are in uniform.
Sorry, another nitpick: Sinn Féin is a legitimate political party with seats in Westminster and the Irish Dáil, that has an affiliation with the IRA.
Move along now, nothing more to see.
Addressing the points made: yes, the network of international Islamist terrorists is huge, widespread and terrifying, but the hyperbole is also silly. There seems to be a trend amongst some in the US to define “terrorism” only as anti US terror, of which the predominant grouping is indeed Islamist. But that ain’t the whole picture worldwide. And Jay Severin is a dildo.
It would also depend upon whether you count recognised governments as terrorists.
One also has to recognise that the difference between civil war and terrorism is just one of degree. Groups with overlapping or partly coincident aims will use each other’s operatives or provide training and support one example might be the arrest of three known Irish terrorists in Columbia who were training FARC terrorists.
This can blur the distinctions between groups, the groups operating in Chechnya are another case, they have their own beef with Russia but have been able to acquire the services of Islamist terrorists who have a completely different beef with Russia.
Robert Mugabes Zanu PF party would qualify as terrorist, and religion itself is neither an issue nor a driving force.
How about the RPF in Rwanda? Many looked them upon as insurgent groups, but they replaced the absolutely evil government that tried to murder an entire ethnic group WHERE UP TO ONE MILLION DIED. Even now groups that are still loyal to the former Hutu regime are still murdering large numbers of civilians, up to 50000 a year.
Read those numbers again, and then tell me that Muslim terrorists are the main problem. Those murders are so common they do not even get reported as separate incidents any more, but in one small nation alone, the terrorism is many, many times greater than the total of the international Muslim terrorists groups.
Lets look at Congo, this situation has not settled peaceably, there are still continuing attacks on civilians of all ethnic groups by so called peacekeepers from many neighbouring African states, and from organised terror groups, it is hard to know which is a genuine terror group and which are recognisable armies, the distinction is irrelevant to the victims anyway, they are all terrorists, and they make Al Qaeda and others seem like kindergarten supervisors in comparison.
Sierra Leone, is another case, where the line between terrorism and civil war has disappeared, but this kind of terrorism is only a matter of scale and organisation, none of the participants, including the government, are anything more than thugs with guns intent on killing anyone getting in their way, and they all use horrific mutilations and killing to intimidate and enforce.
Again, the methods and numbers of killings employed by all parties make Hamas seem like day care helpers.
This is a heavily biased source, however the actual methods used by the Contras are well known and documented by Human Rights groups such as Amnesty.
This lot have killed more in one year than Muslims have done in the last several.
How about Turkey?
The PKK whilst being Muslim, are not campaigning or operating in a religious theme. Nevertheless they are a very significant terrorist group and have been very active.
One also ought to add, that there is a certain lumping together of some groups because they have an argument with the same parties, but to define them by religion and not by aims and intentions is misplaced.
There are several significant Palestinian terror groups, who are not seen as Islamist, and their goals are different to the Islamists too, however those goals coincide partly with those of some Islamist groups.
The Palestinians want the Israelis out of Palestine, and some Islamists want that plus the destruction of the Israeli state.
One can understand why these groups might be lumped together as ‘Islamic terrorists’, but those that do so are displaying a certain ignorance of affairs in that region.
Palestinian terrorists are often reported in the same manner as Islamic ones, and it would appear that the distinction is too fine a point for the Western public in general to comprehend, certainly ** Starving Artist ** does not seem able to do so.
This difference between Palestinian terrorists and Islamic ones is important to understand and the reason is that a great deal of the most publicised incidents which are apt to form public opinion in the West are by Palestinians, not Islamists, and the Palestinian issue itself is a relatively common theme around the world in that they would be regarded as separatists, like the Basque group ETTA, or the Turkish PKK, or the Tamil Tigers.
Take a look at this link, you will see that Islamic terrorism is neither the most murderously active, nor the most numerous in terms of membership, and remember, that to paint all Islamic groups as one is to homogenise a wide spectrum of intentions and opinions, which is mistaken, and probably racist too.
I love your justification about Islamists hating our way of life, for the most part Islam has been far more tolerant of other religious values than Christian nations have.
It seems you consider that a terrorist is just someone who appears to threaten the US, but your values are rather myopic, since the US uses its economic muscle to drive the nations that are in unrest further into debt and stoke up the fires that poverty lights.
If you truly wish to fight terrorism, perhaps the US should pay more attention to addressing the issues that are the breeding ground for discontent, support for little tin-pot distators - including Saddam Hussain himself would be a good start.
Maybe it could look at the behaviour of its companies in other nations, the Bhopal incident is a case in point, where Union Carbide has dragged out its compensation payments in the hope that the deaths of many claimants will reduce payouts and the company seems to have completely run away from its responsibility over poisoning the local water table which now claims lives in disability illness and death.
Maybe we could look at the industrial diamonds market, it is this that fuels the horrific violence in Sierra Leone, perhaps the US should look at the way it uses economic imperialism to subjugate third world peoples.
If you really wish to protect US apple pie virtues, maybe you campaign for the US and its mega corporations to behave in a manner that is not likely to cause poverty, then perhaps terrorism will have no fertile soil of discontent within which take root and thrive.
The US is a great nation - so are many of its values, but I wish that in its international dealings it would behave so.
Look, sir*, first of all, it’s “Great Britain”. Second, you’re doing the exact same thing the twit on the radio show is doing – redefining your terms as you’re called on them.
I am amazed Severin’s getting away with this in Boston. Granted Sinn Fein (I don’t know how to spell it, either) died down rather quickly after the attacks on the World Trade Center, but their activities weren’t exactly unknown before then, not with Boston’s Irish population! Now, I realize that there’s some disagreement as to whether the English or the Irish were the terrorists, but I can just picture some Muslim sitting in Belfast watching the Catholics and Protestants trying to kill each other asking himself what it is in Christianity which promotes such violence and hatred.
I’m also not buying Starving Artist’s contention that only Islamic terrorists are active outside the geographic regions they live in. Off the top of my head, the only Muslim terrorist act on a country which didn’t have a significant Islamic population was the bombings on September 11th. If we’re using that against Islamic terrorists, then I’d say we count the IRA’s blowing up of a flight from London to the US back in the 1980’s as an act of Christian terrorism.
Damn it, stuff like Severin’s pulling only makes things worse! Hatred and intolerance have an unfortunate habit of creeping beyond their intended targets to the point where anyone who doesn’t say the right things or have the right accent becomes a target, or so my youth taught me. Yes, there are people in the Middle East who teach that Americans hate Islam and want to destroy it, therefore it’s all right to kill them. So, what do we do? Encourage people to hate Islam and want to destroy it. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves everyone blind and toothless.”
CJ
*replaces something else I came all too close to typing.
Thank you for adding that.