I don’t think anyone posting on this message board (with a few exceptions confirming the rule) needs to make a post like you just made, to make it clear that they do not “support” the strange views of this member.
Salaam. A
And nor do we require you to explicitly declare that you do not support Binladen, friend. Salaam aleikum.
By reading his “EGG” rants, I can’t help but picturing an old Laurel & Hardy style scene with the USA as the fat guy and the pooooooor Arabs as the skinny one.
Salaam. A
As an other member came to reveal in an other thread, you should be warned that I am only here for recruting potential terrorists adhering the Islamic religion.
As such undercover recruter I now feel compelled to tell you that I specifically target the SDMB because this board has the largest concentration of active Muslim members on the entire World Wide Web.
Salaam. A
From everything I’ve read, Bin Laden doesn’t care too much for money (except to fund his murderous schemes).
I think he’d like that. Bin Laden’s messed-up version of Islam demands asceticism and austerity, not ostentation and prosperity.
No, really?
When you claim that “the Muslim world” is tarnished by Bin Laden, do you know exactly how many people, from how many countries, in what regions of the world, you’re talking about? Or do you actually just mean “Arabs”? And do you realise that’s precisely the lazy thinking that allows mad Jihadists to condemn “the Western world” based on the shitty things that some of our people have done.
Moderator’s Note: This is more of a rant than a debate, so I’m moving it to the Pit.
The OP assumes that Osama and the boys seek the collapse of the West. I’m not at all sure that is true. Osama does not hate the United States because it is free (as some simple and simplistic leaders of the free world would have us think). Osama and the Boys hate the West because in is in the Middle East, and in the Near East. The ME and the NE is his sandbox and he doesn’t want Aramco hogging all the toy trucks. If the West indeed pulls out of the ME, if the ME restores a 15th Century strain of fundamental and isolationist Islam, there will still be a demand for Light Arab Crude. The plain fact is that the West and its petroleum powered economies need the ME. Osama can well figure that need is urgent enough that the precarious Arab economy will thrive on Western money no matter who is running the show, weather it is the House of Saud or Osama.
What may well be a bigger threat to the United States than any thing Osama ever conceived is the possibility that the Arab oil producing states will want to be paid in Euros instead of dollars. Then the invasion and occupation of Iraq starts to make sense in a 18th Century mercantile sort of way.
There are indications that this was one of the factors behind the US rush to take over the Iraq oil industry at all costs.
Salaam. A
Exactly, with himself as a member of the ruling class. The Arab/Muslim cultures existed in more-or-less stable hierarchies for centuries (with only the occasional assassination to shake things up), long before the internal-combustion engine. The main threat to an Islamic theocracy (or any theocracy, for that matter) is freedom of communication. Western-style capitalism requires free movement of information to work most efficiently. Naturally, the two are in conflict. I suppose Bin Laden’s ideal would be a Saudi Arabia as culturally isolated as North Korea, with the peasants kept ignorant and in line (for their own good, no doubt), himself in a position of power, and the only Western contact being the occasional luxury import for his own comfort and convenience. It’s not really any more farfetched then Americans who want to restore their society to some idealized Leave it to Beaver model; relying on nostalagia to a past that never really existed.
I don’t know that I’d call it an Achilles’ Heel, though. Frankly, Jinx shows a rather astonishing and (in light of his other, similar threads) I suspect wilfull ignorance.
Well since demand for the “black gold” is at an all time high due to demand and Iraq… I guess Osama and Bush are their heros.
I disagree with this. Yes, he would seek to be a leader, but unlike other tyrants and wannabe tyrants, I really don’t think this is his style. He is a multi-millionaire who imposed on his very rich self a life of deprivation. There was a fascinating report - have looked for it online but can’t find the archive - by a (London) Sunday Times reporter who met Bin Laden a few months before 9/11, and the lifestyle he was leading was sparse to say the least. Even in Afghanistan he could have lived like a king, but he chose not to. I’d say that’s something of a strength, rather than a weakness.
Astronomy. Algebra. Chemistry.
Not to mention most of our surviving ancient Greeks literature.
Posted by Jinx:
Pre-industrial America didn’t have 300 million people who are pretty darned used to having cars and electric power.
Right. Thanks.
And, as pointed out, Arab men do not commonly wear turbans. Perhaps you mean a shemagh.
YES. They don’t give a camel’s rear end either. Bin Laden et al are engaged in a winner take all attempt to overpower and subdue every human being on the face of the earth. It is more a theological, sociological, and societal struggle than political. Terrorism is merely a tool, a means to the end, than and end initself. Europe is being overrun already. Guess who may be next!
Don’t worry. It’s not stereotyping. It’s just racism.
Timothy McVeigh.
Time to give yourself a good ZAP between the eyes.
…well, you do know McVeigh was not a Christian, right? He was an agnostic and registered as such when he joined the Army (your religion is on your dogtags so they can bury your corpse properly). He was raised officially Catholic and had Last Rites in the Church to please his father, but he wasn’t a Christian, even though most of the groups that he got his philosophy from are.
And clairobscur, in America most of us don’t consider Arabs a race. They’re Caucausians with skin often darker than Swedes or something but they’re as ‘white’ as Dubya or Britney Spears.
BOOOOOOMMMMM!!!..
“Now look what you made me do!”
My, what fine distinctions we are capable of drawing when it suits us.
Uh, what? Often I’ve seen Muslims, including on this board, counterclaim the fact that almost every terrorist act committed in recent decades has been committed by Muslims with the “fact” that Tim McVeigh was an American terrorist who was a Christian.
Only he wasn’t, and if that was the road you were going down it was pertinent to speak up and set the record straight. If I misunderstood you, my apologies.