None of which doesn’t make it stable… unless you would claim that the Soviet Union in the 1950’s wasn’t stable, as demonstrated when it collapsed 40 years later.
Saudi Arabia is a full formed and functioning society, not something in lawless flux.
Quakers aren’t Christians? Then the U.S. has had a nonChristian President.
No, it wouldn’t be a “wonderful and multiculturally ideal place.” It’d still be pretty fundamentally fucked up, because the things that make it fucked up do not descend from our religious beliefs, but from economic disparity, competing political imperatives, and naked self interest. If everyone in the world had exactly the same religious beliefs, or no religious beliefs at all, we’d still be slaughtering each other in job lots.
No need for the hypothetical. There are such religions, and I have no trouble judging those religions and their adherents as harshly as necessary. The thing is, you’re never going to get a billion-person-strong religion that is that ideologically consistent. Westboro Baptist is a diseased religion whose followers are hateful monsters. But there’s only about a hundred of them, and they’re all related to each other. The larger a group you found around any given idea, the more deviation from that idea you will find among members of that group. When you get to groups the size of the major world religions, the amount of coterminous attitudes amongst believers in that religion drops to virtually zero. There are a billion Muslims in the world. Simply human nature dictates that there must be a vast range of diversity in what those billion Muslims believe to be appropriate behavior.
Simple. Treat them as you’d treat anyone else, until they demonstrate that they deserve to be treated differently.
Let me ask you a question: it’s been demonstrated conclusively that American blacks commit crimes at a rate highly disproportionate to their population. Does that justify treating all black people as criminals? How is the attitude magellan and others in this thread are demonstrating towards Muslims substantially different?
Oh, those guys are just dicks.
True… but I’m not sure how relevant that is. Suppose (to vastly vastly oversimplify and exaggerate things) that Muslims can be divided into two separate groups, one of which consists of the same ratio of law-abiding people as people overall, and one of which has a high (but not 100%) rate of “badness”, say, 80%. So, Muslims on a whole are 40% bad. Further suppose that it’s hard if not impossible for a naive observer to tell members of these groups apart, particularly if they are trying to be deceptive.
So, from a security perspective, is there any difference between that case and the case where all Muslims fall into one unified undifferentiated whole with a 40% badness rate? If we established a policy where if a group is >30% bad, they get special screening at airports (and I’m not endorsing such a policy in any way), should it not apply to bifurcated Muslims, beacuse any individual member of the larger group might actually be a member of the 0% subgroup, not the 80% subgroup?
So you’re 100% against, say, profiling at airports for extra security checks, and would be until members of group reached some preposterously high and consistent level of all-being-terrorists?
I certainly don’t want to be guilty of holding any viewpoint that might lead to repeats of, say, Japanese-American internment camps. But (and again, I find this whole issue troubling and full of gray areas, and don’t know where I really stand) I don’t necessarily think that a more intrusive search before getting on an airplane is the first step down a slippery slope inevitably leading to all-Muslims-must-wear-armbands-with-crescent-moons.
I think the issue is, again, a teeny bit more complicated than you are suggesting. If you are a cop and arrive at what is clearly the scene of a recent murder, and see two people walking away in opposite directions, one black and one white, and you know that the murder rate is much higher among blacks than whites, and you only have time to chase one of these two people, aren’t you increasing your odds of apprehending the criminal increased by chasing the black person? Note that you don’t immediately say either “a-ha! a black person! he must be guilty! I will arrest him and he will be convicted due to his blackness!” or “that white person is clearly an innocent bystander. Why, I won’t bother reporting him in my report at all… how could a white person commit murder?”. BUT, at the moment when you must commit your resources (you) to only one or the other, shouldn’t you play the odds?
I can’t say that the above logic doesn’t trouble my basically pro-tolerance self, however. Nor is it anywhere near that clear in situations less contrived than the above hypothetical.
I honestly have no idea what you’re point is here. We could divide Muslims into two groups, one of which supports terrorism 100% (We’ll call this group, "Muslims who support terrorism) and the other of which has 0% support for terrorism. (We’ll call these guys, “Muslims who don’t support terrorism.”) And we’ll agree to your stipulation and say that there’s no way to tell which branch of Islam any individual belongs to just by looking at him. Hell, I’ll go you one further and say that there’s no way to tell if the individual is even a Muslim at all.
Now, what’s all this supposed to prove?
Yes, I am opposed to racial profiling. If there were a race out there that had 100% support for terrorism, I suppose I’d change my mind. But then, if there were a race that 100% supported terrorism, you could probably get me to change my mind on genocide, as well, which probably gives you an idea how absurd I find this argument.
I don’t think racial and religious intolerance is a slippery slope. I think it’s a fucking mineshaft. It’s been a twenty thousand year climb out of barbarism and tribalism to our current height of civilization, and we must be on constant guard against anything that might loosen our grip.
I like how you say that the issue is a “teeny” more complicated than how I presented it, then follow it up with a massively oversimplified hypothetical to prove it.
However, I realize that I mispoke in my last post, because I know that many people do support racial profiling, so my point was likely to be lost by using that analogy. What I meant to say was, “Does that mean there is something intrinsic to being black that makes one a criminal?”
Which, obviously, is a different kettle of fish entirely, but one more germane to the discussion going on in this thread, which is more about the value of Islam versus other religions, and not so much about specific security procedures for screening Muslims.
Then perhaps you should abandon that train of logic. Let me offer you a ticket for this one: The perceived problem with Islam today is, essentially, a lack of religious tolerance. The proposed solution is to adopt a measure of religious intolerance ourselves. How is that supposed to convince Muslims of the value of religious tolerance?
The word “perceived” in the above seems to indicate that you see no actual problem with Islam today. That it’s all just a matter of incorrect perceptions by non-Muslims?
100% of Muslims don’t agree with terrorism, but that doesn’t mean that Islam doesn’t have a terrorism problem right now. It does.
There is a middle ground between all Muslims are terrorists and Islam is a perfect religion of peace.
First, I’d like to commend you on awell-crafted, thoughtful post. Now let me clarify a few things.
If you take my comments in the post in their totality I think you’ll see that my arguement is not causitive, but correlative. The link may, in fact, be causitive, but since I am not an expert on Islam I have no way of knowing. As religion is largely a matter of interpretation, I’d say that Islam can most probably be a reliogion if peace. It could be that 100 years from now it is just that. But right now, it is intgerpreted by much more than a handful to condone the atrocities mentioned earlier.
If 40% of Muslims were committing acts of violence or oppression, I doubt civilization would even exist at this point. Using the lowest possible estimate of the number of Muslims in the world, that would be 400 million people. If every man, woman, and child in North America became a terrorist tomorrow, that still wouldn’t be as many as in your hypothetical.
I mean dang, dude - is that really how you feel about Muslims? I’m starting to get a scope of how big people’s misconception really is. :eek:
Well, I’m a Quaker (unprogrammed). And certainly I’m Christian in significant ways. But Quakerism goes much deeper than the typical Christian attitude that Jesus is the Team Captain, and all who reject Him play for the losing team. See parts of this FAQ:
Are Quakers Christians?
Not all of them. Quakerism has deep Christian roots, and most Quakers consider themselves Christian, but many do not. Quakers have always held that Christ as spirit is universally available, and has been at work since the beginning of creation. This “universalist” perspective is especially strong in the unprogrammed branch of Quakerism. Unprogrammed meetings are often characterized by great theological diversity, while still experiencing profound spiritual community.
How do Quakers view Christ?
Many Quakers see Jesus Christ as a great religious teacher, or someone inspired by God to live an exemplary life. Others see Christ as a source of salvation, although in a different sense than most other Christian churches. Quakerism is concerned with life in this world rather than the next, and has no theology of heaven and hell. George Fox taught that redemption through Christ and the Second Coming should not to be thought of as past and future events. Both can only be experienced in the present, as spiritual truth, independent of history. He believed that “Christ has come to teach his people himself,” and that we can be as Adam was before the Fall if we open our hearts to the Inward Teacher.
That would be an incorrect interpretation of my post.
But what if it 90% supported terrorism? 50%? Even 10%?
This reminds me of the old joke about “now we’re just haggling over the price”.
To continue to disclaim, I’m not certain exactly where I stand on racial profiling. But many of the arguments against it are a boldfaced proclamation of something like “oh, it wouldn’t work at all, if they knew there was racial profiling they’d just get old white grandmothers to carry their bombs”. And I find this argument (which, granted, I have no idea if you would make) utterly specious. Most people aren’t willing to blow up planes. Most people CERTAINLY aren’t willing to blow up planes with themselves aboard. Thus, if terrorists have to either beat increased profiled security or recruit rare willing-to-die non-profiled people, then that makes their job difficult. And anything that makes their life difficult makes their plans less likely to succeed, and makes us safer. Now, is that increase in safety worth the decrease in civility and tolerance that would result? Beats me, but I don’t think it’s prima facie preposterous to claim that it would.
But that doesn’t mean we should be blind to the realities of the world we live in. If it’s the case that a higher proportion of Muslims are terrorists than other groups right now, we should acknowledge that, discuss it, and see if it has ramifications we should deal with one way or the other. We shouldn’t deny or ignore it simply because of our commitment to religious tolerance.
I think this thread is about various things. magellan01, the primary antagonist, has been fairly clear that at some point it doesn’t matter to him whether the relationship he sees between Islam and terrorism is causative or just coincidental, as long as it’s real. Certainly, part of the thread has discussed potential causation, but some of it has discussed how to react to a correlation regardless of its cause.
(And no, I certainly don’t think there’s anything intrinsic to being black that makes one a criminal, although I can’t prove my position in any rigorous fashion.)
No, the perceived problem with Islam today is an over-willingness to use violence. There are plenty of right wing Christian churches which are pretty damn intolerant, BUT as long as they just hate me for being an agnostic and don’t blow me up, then I’m not losing any sleep over it.
I did not intend my comment to be taken at all that way, and apologize.
No, I’d hold the line at 100% The whole point of my argument is holding people responsible for what they’ve done, not for what people who share one or two attributes in common with them might have done.
That’s not a very honest presentation against the argument against racial profiling. Yes, if you screen everyone who looks like an Arab, forcing terrorists to recruit non-Arabs for their suicide missions, then you’ve made the terrorist’s job harder. However, you’ve also devoted so many of your resources to looking at Arabs that you’re more likely to miss non-Arab terrorists. The ground gained by making Arabs work harder to find suicide bombers is lost by your decreased ability to detect non-Arab bombers. Plus, you’ve just ceded the moral high ground by violating our much touted value of diversity and equality by treating members of one race worse than we treat members of other races. Aside from the generally scummy feeling that should engender in all of us, it also serves as a propaganda coup for our enemies.
I don’t think anyone is denying or ignoring that. The question is, are we so afraid of terrorism that we’re going to abandon our principles to fight it?
Let’s turn the tables. What percentage of Muslims supporting terrorism would be low enough for you not to endorse profiling? Would it have to be zero? Less than one percent?
And do we profile everyone with brown skin, or do we ask them their religious affiliation first? Or do we profile everyone with what some poorly-trained TSA boob thinks is “Muslim-looking” garb?
exactly. Don’t forget brown haired caucasians, as well (remember the “American Taliban”).
Oh, and I forgot the Nation of Islam. Since we’re including all Muslims indiscriminately, we’ll have to profile all black people as well.
And, of course, there’s the huge Muslim population (the majority of Muslims worldwide, IIRC) in Southeast Asia, so we’ve got to profile all the Asians, as well.
Damn. That means all asians, all blacks, hispanics, well, anyone tanner than Britney Spears on her way out of rehab, plus all brown haired caucasians.
(sounds of adding machine in background, let’s see, that’s 1 billion, carry the 2…)
By my calculations, what you’re left **not ** profiling are the Swedish Bikini Team and ABBA.
:eek:
(edited to fix coding tag)
I don’t endorse profiling. As I’ve said many times in this thread. I find it a thorny issue and have not come up with a firm position I’m happy with.