Did you see the link in my post 858? Jews seem to rank quite highly on the violence scale they put together.
And I think you missed the point of the post you are responding to. I was referring to the good and bad of ‘books’, not people. The question is what influence does a particular ‘holy book’ have on its followers?
Oh, totally huge! Absitively, posolutely! Not a day goes by, I don’t see some Christian selling everything he owns to give it to the poor!
The Sufis are following the book, just as are the other hundreds of millions of Muslims who are not fanatics. I know that you are a good little Hitchens disciple, but his claim that the moderates make the fanatics poissible works for every type of thought. That is why good citizens of “democracies” have been willing to murder people in authoritarian countries “for their own good.” Rather than rail at religion, you would be more honest just joining Ted Kaczynski out in the woods and avoiding people. In the real world, picking fights with people to make a philosophical point–one that is probably wrong, anyway–is pretty silly.
I’ve pointed out that all religions have varying degrees of fanaticism. The difference in this country is Fred Phelps versus the Ft Hood Shooter. The difference worldwide is talk of burning a koran and the actual burning of 6 people.
Yes, so where are the Christians yelling “Jesus is supper great” just before they kill a bunch of people? Could it be that even the majority of fanatical Christians understand that murder is wrong because of the example of their leader?
Yes, you’re stuck in history. Moving on.
Here’s a novel thought. Maybe Muslims should start considering how WE feel. If you’re worried how Muslims feel about cartoons maybe you should consider how we feel about terrorist acts. It’s not up to us to convince the religion of peace that it’s fanatical side needs to mellow. That has to come from within.
You can’t answer the question without stepping in it.
It is unlikely that fanatical Christians think of any such thing, otherwise we would not see any examples of murderous Christians at any time. Christians simply happen to live in more prosperous and more developed countries at the moment, where murderous rage has more immendiate consequences. (In fact, in poorer and less developed places today, Christians have been quite happy to riot and murder Muslims (as in Nigeria) or each other (as in Rwanda and Congo).)
And you’re stuck in an ignorance of history and even of current affairs. So?
The point is not whether Islam is necessarily an evil or violent religion. Or that at some other place or time other religions may have been as bad. The point is that in the reality in which we live a large number of Muslims have decided that the U.S. and The West is their enemy and that they deem it fit to engage in murder and barbarism against us. In times past or in times future Islam may indeed be THE religion of peace. But right now, in the west, it is not. Have all Muslims sworn us as their enemies. No. But there are enough of them (I remind you of the poll that asked the degree to which they condone the killing of innocents) trying to kill us, in the name of Islam, that only a fool can ignore it.
You go through impressive contortions to point to things that would either lessen the role that Islam plays in their barbarism or to point to other times and places where other religions might have acted as badly. While this is a fine intellectual exercise, when it gets in the way of you being able to call a spade a spade in the here and now in a way that it allows useful action, you need to back off the endless excuse-finding and rationalizing. It’s getting tough to even read. Really.
Actually, as expressed by several other posters, that is exactly the issue. And it is the only issue that I have addressed.
And the posters against whom I have argued continue to pretend that it is the religfion, and not simply a large number of its adherents, that is responsible for this situation.
I don’t go through any contortions to point out facts that the various posters and media demagogues ignore. The facts are out there and they need no contortions. Telling the Muslim world, at large, that their religion is hateful is more likely to encourage fence-sitters to oppose us than to join us against the fanatics. Blaming the religion for riots when the participants are not religious and when the violence was opposed by the religious leaders is nothing more than ignorant bigotry. Calling a Muslim who has battled intolerance inside Islam for twenty years a “radical Islamist” for wanting to build a community center in his old neighborhood does nothing to give Muslims who hear the fanatics’ cries any reason to believe us over them.
I have never opposed any attack on Wahhabism or its cousin beliefs. But, then, I am not the one who goes through contortions to link all Muslims to violence even when Islam plays no part in the violence.
We don’t have to pretend. If the people in question were not Muslim there would be no conflict. When India and Pakistan separated it was not because of some deep political issue, it was because Muslims didn’t want to be a minority in a largely Hindu country. Maybe they were worried they’d be treated like they normally treat others when they are in charge? If they weren’t Muslims there would be no political divide nor continued violence. It is you who don’t see that a large portion of these issues are directly related to a particular religion that a person belongs to.
Btw, I’d much rather be a Muslim living in India than a Hindu living in Pakistan. And I’d very much like living in a nominally Christian West than one where the majority were Muslim, too.
So, if I tell you that your holy book has passages in it that are hateful to others not in your religion are you going to join the fanatics? So, why do you think that Muslims are any different than you? Is there something about their religion that worries you in how the followers might react that you’d make such a comment?
We call that “collateral damage”. How many Americans, do you suppose, support the necessity of collateral damage? There are upwards of 100,000 casualties of our adventure in Iraq, Muslims, for the most part. Puts us in a very awkward position, when it comes to criticizing their savagery.
Getting right to the point, now. What is to be done?
What is “useful action”? So far, it appears to be insulting those who don’t already hate us and enraging those who do. Is there some benefit to recruiting more enemies, some subtlety there that I’m missing?
Maybe. But I do seem to recall you playing your game of excusing and rationalizing Sharia. That aside, please explain what you mean by your last line above. Please point to this (these?) instance of violence in which Muslims were blamed but "Islam play[ed] no part in the violence:.
Not in the least. The two acts are morally in different universes. Really. Anyone who does not acknowledge that is not being honest with themselves. And I wouldn’t say they “support the necessity” of collateral damage, I’d say they accept the reality of collateral damage.
Step 1 is one that Obama has yet to take: understand that radical Islam has declared war on us. And subsequently, we are at war with radical Islam. Simply calling these people terrorists, generically, is both childish and unhelpful.
Demonstrating a lack of awareness that is common to the hate-Islam side of the argument, you appear to be unaware of the anti-Muslim riots that took place at that time.
And further diplaying your lack of awareness, you appear to be ignorant of the anti-Muslim riots and attacks that continue, today, within India. (The Indian Muslims also have their violent faction, of course, but it is hardly a one-sided issue.) Beyond that, the Hindus who remained in Pakistan did not have serious problems for over twenty years after the partition, until political changes brought a Wahhabist-influenced faction of Muslims to power. Today, it is probably a bit easier to be a Muslim in India than a Hindu in Pakistan, but in either case there is persecution and the threat of violence.
“Muslims” are not different than I.
People who live in developing countries with less social cohesion are different than I. Even in the U.S. there are idiots who have chosen to destroy mosques of innocent Muslims because they are “insulted” about the WTC/Pentagon attacks. In an even less developed country, they are more likely to take greater offense at lesser perceived insults.
If by “excusing and rationalizing” Sharia you mean that I have corrected the lies posted about it, noting that the word is used to mean “philosophy of law” and that there are multiple disciplines of Sharia and that only a few of them express the misogynistic and violent rules that are so often played up by the Islam haters, then I would plead guilty. But then, since the Straight Dope is supposed to be about fighting ignorance, allowing the more simple minded and ignorant claims that Sharia is a monolithic set of violent and oppressive laws would be the wrong thing to do.
The youth riots in France included the children of both Muslims and Christians, but it was claimed to be “Muslim” violence. The kids who were rioting were universally recognized to be non-observant in their parents’ religions, but Sarkozy and others claimed that there was “Muslim” agitation behind the riots. When Muslim leaders spoke out against the violence, that was used as a claim that “Islam” really was “connected” to the riots–riots that had everything to do with the unemployment, poverty, and harrassment of the kids and nothing to do with their religious beliefs.
Living in a prosperous country doesn’t explain the Ft hood Shooter or the DC sniper and all the other attacks that have been thwarted.
You’re the one making excuses for Islamic terrorist acts. It’s political, it’s poverty, the sun is in their eyes, somebody drew a cartoon. WAAAAH
You are right that Major Hasan had no excuse of living in an underdeveloped country. Of course, he also did not act out of anger at perceived insults to Islam. Intead, he bought into the extremist rhetoric of the Wahhabists after coming into contact with an explicit proponent of such beliefs. He did not go into a rage over an insult to Islam; he nursed his extremist hatred until he acted.
Your twisting of my words does not really work. I have never excused any of the violence. I have noted that there are underlying factors in the overall violence of various places in the world and that where there is social disruption religion has been used as an organizing force, while you pretend that Christians and Hindus and Buddhists are not engaged in similar violence when their social infrastructures are similarly disrupted. (Actually, based on most of your posts, you seem to be pretending that no one besides Muslims are ever violent.)
You know, if we banned all religions these problems would go away.
And the boys who shot up Columbine and Virginia Tech weren’t Muslims. Nuts with guns happen, is my point. In my opinion, a guy unhinged enough to take random pot shots at people doesn’t really need a strong scriptural backing to do so.
No twisting of words. You claim you don’t excuse any of the violence and then you excuse the violence. It’s always some other factor as if there is a vacuum where only Muslims experience these other factors. There is religious fanaticism in every religion and in every corner of the world. We have plenty of wack-job Christians in the US yet terrorism is predominately linked to a minority religion. It is logical that the most fanatical will emulate their leader and in the case of Islam that is not a pretty picture. I’m happy as all get out that the majority of his followers aren’t fanatics in the United States. However, just like other religions, there are fanatics and they are far more likely to do something violent. It may only be a fraction of a fraction but it is a deadly one.
Actually I don’t, but don’t let your zeal get in the way of the facts.
And there is violence in every one of those corners of the world when the religion is available to be used as an organizing factor in the face of social disruption. Thus, in Nigeria, Christians riot and murder Muslims. In Serbia, Christians organize armies to murder Muslims. In Sri Lanka, Buddhists force Hindus to the margins of society until the Hindus organize a separatist movement and begin waging a war of terror. In India, Hindus and Muslims riot and attack each other. In Congo, Christians wage war on animists and other Christians. For some reason, you can only see the violence when a Muslim is the agent and you excuse or ignore any other violence by all other groups.