What I want to know is this: When Anders Bering Brevik and Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph killed all those people, where was the official outrage from the Christian movement? Where was the official condemnation of Radical Christianity? Why didn’t any churches turn themselves inside-out to root out Radical Christians in their midst? Why isn’t anyone asking the question, “Is there something inherent in Christianity that makes people like Randy Weaver happen?”
How about the Lord’s Resistance Army? Do we really want them on our doorsteps? We need to look long and hard at Christians who propose to migrate, and make sure they’re not affiliated with groups like the IRA or the Hammerskins or the Ustasi. That’s just common sense.
Obviously, when someone kills a whole lot of kids for absolutely no comprehensible reason, you don’t look for underlying causes. You just exercise a reasonable level of care about making sure there are none of them near you, and if there are, you maintain constant vigilance around them, like you would around a coiled rattlesnake, simply out of a healthy understanding of the dangers of the world. Immigration and weapons restrictions fall directly in line with this, as does restrictions about who can be a preacher and who can join a sect which may become violent.
According to my analogy, my role here is that of someone in a discussion of whether you need to carry an umbrella today, where one side is pretending for rhetorical purposes that the other side has made some sort of easily-rebuttable statement about the physics of the low pressure system causing the rain, and pointing out that no, all they’re really saying is that as a practical matter you need to bring an umbrella.
I see that the line - which is about being willfully obtuse - continues to apply.
If you ignore “underlying causes”, then how can you even figure out whether there are any of “them” near you, much less strategies for having fewer of “them” to deal with in the future?
Sure, if somebody’s walking around with a forehead tattoo that says “RADICAL TERRORIST”, or an equivalent warning evident in their criminal history or professed views, you don’t need to delve deeply into their psyche to figure out how to deal with them. But do you imagine that merely avoiding and/or containing the obvious, identified bad guys is all that terrorism-fighting is about?
The epigram “You can lead a horticulture but you can’t make her think” is about a whore being willfully obtuse. When you apply that epigram to somebody, you are calling them a whore.
There’s nothing against Board rules in calling somebody a whore in a Pit thread, but you don’t get to pretend after the fact that that wasn’t what you did.
Hey look, it was a famous cute line about being wilfully obtuse and you were being willfully obtuse so I used it. You can’t calibrate these things too closely.
But if you feel like you were called a whore in the process I’m not going to sweat it either. Whatever.
If there’s something about the Southern United States that makes people predisposed to being racist, then yes. If if just happens to be that way at this time, then no. (Which, as it happens, precisely parallels the Islam question.)
Uh, no. The discussion, before you sidetracked it, was about why Muslim extremists are doing what they do, and “getting a grip on their mindset” and figuring out “What the Fuck are they Thinking?”, to quote an earlier poster.
In your analogy, that would be discussing the causes of the rain. Not just the superficial question of whether or not you need to carry an umbrella today.
The discussion was about whether it’s connected to the Islamic religion, not about whether it’s inherent to the Islamic religion. The one who introduced the idea of it being inherent was you yourself, and my point was that this distinction was not important to the discussion of whether, as a practical matter, it’s connected.
Then this should be in GQ, because these Muslim extremists have told us flat out why they do what they do, and all of them are based on their religion.
Yes, in all cases (GOP, NRA and Islam) there are official positions that I object to that all three now hold that I want them to reform. Hence the analogy.
Haven’t seen anybody here change their mind about either of our “positions” in this thread. In fact, as I noted, your remark was basically irrelevant to the gist of the discussion.
In the case of the GOP and NRA, that’s pretty straightforward: the Republican Party has its official platform, and the NRA has its official lobbying issues and official president and board of directors. It’s not difficult to identify numerous “official positions” that they hold.
But what are the “official positions” in the case of Islam that you want to see changed? Who determines those official positions, and whose authority would you accept as confirmation that they have changed?
You’ve already stated that “I don’t care what principles they were founded on, or what their ancient texts are stating.” So I presume you’re not looking for a rewrite of original organizational charters or the text of the Qur’an, etc. You want to see certain present-day official positions officially changed.
Fine, but in the case of Islam as a whole, what are those positions, what makes them official, and what would count as officially changing them?
First of all, citing yourself as corroboration for your opinion is embarrassing.
Second of all, your response is nonsensical. They aren’t using their faith to justify crimes, their crimes come directly from their faith. Their faith that the Koran is 100% accurate (and to believe otherwise is apostasy).
I left Christianity behind, and all I had was an uncomfortable conversation with my mom about why my kids aren’t baptized. If I lived in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan or Nigeria, greater than half of the Muslim population would think that I should be killed for leaving my religion. Even in Turkey, 13% of the population would see me dead for that.
Actions aren’t justified by religion, religion is the starting point.
The Koran. Which is 100% accurate, and to believe otherwise is apostasy.
“Muslims can say that slavery is not legitimate now, and that crucifixion is wrong at this historical juncture. Many say precisely this. But they cannot condemn slavery or crucifixion outright without contradicting the Koran and the example of the Prophet. “The only principled ground that the Islamic State’s opponents could take is to say that certain core texts and traditional teachings of Islam are no longer valid,” Bernard Haykel says. That really would be an act of apostasy.”
I think the non-extremist Muslim world needs to as one declare that the Koran is not 100% accurate. Listen, I know the Bible is violent, but the priests told us growing up that some of it was wrong and that was fine. It would help if Islam had a Pope (or someone with an equally silly hat) that could wave his hands and say, hey, poof, turns out god just talked to me, and boy, we were way off! But, it doesn’t. So, there has to be some overarching reformation that happens. But, it starts with admission that the Koran is inaccurate.
