I suppose the LRA has little to no actual support by any local of international forces (beyond the occasional government using then for proxy warfare.)
The parallels I see are the ways that religion and charismatic leaders can become an organizing force in ungoverned spaces.
I suppose Boko Haram would be a better analog.
Well, for one thing, the LRA is tiny compared to ISIL. For another the LRA doesn’t recruit internationally and is forced to fill its ranks with abducted child soldiers. It does not espouse a transnational ideology. It is unique, whereas ISIL is only one of many militant Jihadi groups in the world. Christians aren’t coming from Europe or, say, Latin America to join the LRA. It’s message isn’t being preached in sympathetic churches worldwide. It is really a bizarre anomaly, and isn’t so much Christian as a cult of personality based on its leader.
It doesn’t have much in common with ISIL or any Jihadi group. It’s main purpose in these conversations is to be brought up as an example of Christians being just as bad as jihadis, but it fails at this.
You mean existed outside of Islam, like, a handful of centuries ago. And even then, Jesus was never off-limits, honor killings are not a tradition of Christianity, societies were rarely organized to the letter of New Testament law (i.e. the Holy Roman Imperial Army), and one of the central and sanctified characters in Christian doctrine is a woman.
Of course, this doesn’t mean Christianity didn’t fuck up a lot, as did all religions. The point, again, is that swathes of Muslims in 2014 still support these ass-backwards policies explicitly in the name of their religion. And rather than call them out on it, liberals cower and equivocate very unconvincingly.
It’s okay to have balls folks. Call it what it is. You wouldn’t put up with any of that shit in America but it’s okay to allow it elsewhere under the guise of “cultural differences?” In southern America, black parents often hit their children to discipline them. Does that give Adrian Peterson a free pass? He was hit as a child, why doesn’t his culture get a free pass?
Oh, because he’s not a Muslim.
Yanno, I can easily find modern-day examples of honor killings across a number of different religions. Doesn’t take much effort. Jes’ sayin…
You’re a dumbfuck. You say liberals cower and equivocate, when really all they do is tell you you’re painting with too broad a brush and/or don’t have a basic grasp of statistics (and possibly basic math). If I started a thread because I’d seen stories on the news about black gang members being shot over a period of time and said “I pit African Americans” based on that, I’d get called out on it not because of imaginary political correctness but because I, too, was being a dumbfuck. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. If you’ve got evidence a majority of them act in despicable ways, please offer it. Hint: you don’t, no matter what Fox News headlines might have you believe. Since I have seen absolutely zero support for ISIL or other Islamic terrorists on this board, it would appear your entire thesis about liberals is off the mark, as well.
ISIS didn’t just pop out of the chaos of the ongoing Syrian crisis. The modern Jihadist movement - of which it is a part and is now trying to lead - organized, developed and diversified in authoritarian settings. It is a response to governance that claims to be fulfilling/compatible with Islam but that they judge to not be, for reasons that range from moral puritanism to social justice concerns to theological disputes to personal failure and everything in between.
I mean, yes, ISIS’s use of religion and media is being put to organizational use now that they actually are in a position to seize power, but the appeal of this strategy and its current successes are products of how modern governments have engaged with and tried to control Islam.
The case of Boko Haram and some of the other African groups is an interesting one. I feel reminded of how nascent communist groups would quickly find themselves subject to review by the USSR during the Cold War; there is no Jihadi equivalent to the USSR but globalization allows for influence to spread on the basis of the claimed identity.
Link?
And you didn’t address any of my points. Despicable things still allowed in many modern Islamic nations. You just called me a bunch of nasty names.
Try again please.
Today’s Republican party? The Christian militants in the Central African Republic, Christian regimes elsewhere in Africa enacting vicious homophobic laws, and such?
I’m curious if there’s an organized movement in Jamaica with the same goals, or if the violent homophobia there is more ad hoc.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually agree with Stringbean that Islam is backwards (like all religion, but more so) and the refusal to confront this dangerous backwardness is very frustrating for me. Religion is not race, it’s a choice.
My problem is with extremism. Moderate churches (of all faiths) need to do more to reject the extremists who are of (approximately) the same faith. As long as there is religious extremism, especially powerful expressions, then religious moderates aren’t doing enough to oppose it.
Obviously, many, many Islamic religious leaders are speaking out against such things as the beheading of journalists. But we haven’t seen a specific spokesman, a “celebrity” figurehead, a “Mother Theresa” making this cause widely and popularly known and heard.
In “Western Culture,” we’d have a big name out there as the face of the issue.
I suppose I should be happy, though, that the extremists don’t currently have a “big name” leader – an Osama Bin Laden – to figurehead their publicity machine. So, if we aren’t as far ahead as I’d like us to be…we aren’t so very far behind as we used to be.
Oh! When did you get some of those? I must have missed it.
Ooooo! Good one! More insults with no rebuttal!
Smeghead 1, Stringbean 0.
In fairness, you only respond to the posts with the insults. When people address your “points,” you ignore them. So you’re rather incentivizing the insults, there.
Honor killings aren’t a tradition of Islam either. It’s a tradition of a some societies, some of which, like the Kurds and Punjabi, are largely Muslim, some of which, like the Rajasthani, aren’t. And a lot of Muslim countries, like Indonesia and Bangladesh, don’t have any honor killing tradition. And, in fact, there was a fairly infamous honor killing a few years back, of a 22 year old Palestinian woman named Faten Habash, who was a Christian woman murdered by her father for marrying a Muslim.
I addressed your entire dumb thesis. Despicable things are allowed in every country on the planet. As I said, there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. You’re using a broad brush even though, as has been pointed out to you a number of times in this thread, you don’t really know much about how Muslims actually live. Nobody thinks beheadings or honor killings are OK because of cultural relativism. Your premise is flawed. When you take the extreme elements to represent the whole, you’re not using reason.
There is, effectively, no such thing as “Muslims”, a grouping that large loses all specificity, it is not a thing. Pretending that there is such a discrete entity as “Muslims” is too stupid to be taken seriously.
Except that we have to, because the kinds of morons who actually believe crap like this stand a fair chance of getting the rest of us killed. Please don’t. OK? Tx, bye.
Groupings don’t have to be monolithic to be meaningful.
What “monolithic”? Had the first major schism in 632 c.e. and have been spawning variations ever since. Doesn’t monolithic imply that your major components aren’t frequently at war with each other? Recognize some central authority? True, they most all believe they are doing what God wants them do do, but have very different ideas as to what that might be!
And not to forget that my secular and civilized country recently killed somewhere north of a hundred thousand Muslims. And they are the one’s who are barbarous? Why, are our victims any less dead?
That was what I said. People who call themselves “Muslim” are not all the same. That doesn’t mean there is effectively no such thing as “Muslims.”
The range of acceptable values, beliefs and behaviors in most Islamic communities and in most western communities are not perfectly overlapping sets in either direction. It’s not ‘clash of civilizations’ exactly, but it’s something that needs to be considered.