Oh yay, another thread where the PC liberals stub their toes to prove a moral equivalence between Christian nations where “internet bullying” is a concern and Muslim nations where apostasy and showing one’s face in public is punishable by stoning to death.
Continue as you were.
Interesting that zero people in this thread have made that comparison.
Intellectually honest debaters would understand that the misuse of statistics does not offer a satisfactory explanation for the causes of terrorism. What is being suggested by this flibberty-gibbeted water-head is that Islam, and presumably its five pillars, cause terrorism. Well, that is bullshit. Far less than one-tenth of one percent of Muslims are terrorists out of the billion plus Muslims in the world. Moreover, what about the Catholic and Protestant terrorists in Northern Ireland? Or the Jewish terrorists in Israel? Did Islam cause them to be terrorists too?
Next, there is the definitional problem of terror, terrorism and terrorist. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. Is our idiot simply casting all the people she doesn’t want to include in her sample as mere criminals, or calling them freedom fighters?
As for the people that all here agree on are terrorists, perhaps they have other things in common other than a whacked out view of religion. Perhaps, as the 9/11 highjackers did, they hated the Saudi government and its policies? That might be a better correlative factor. Think Hamas are terrorists? Matter of where you stand (thanks Obi-Wan) I suppose, but if the people in Gaza were Sufis, rather than Muslims, I suspect that Hamas would be doing pretty much the same thing.
Our Queen of the Idiots Brigitte Gabriel seems to be digging only deep enough to find the conclusion she set out for. Terrorism and its methods date back long before the birth of Mohammed. Is Islam so evil that it reaches back in time before its birth to Terminator like, send Arnold Schwarzenegger look alikes to invent terrorism?
The fact is that violence as a method of achieving political ends, or blowing off steam or a diversion for bored people is as old as the human race. “They say that Cain caught Abel, throwing loaded dice, Ace of Spades behind his ear, and him not thinking twice.”
Every major religion in the world has some violent extremists. I seem to recall from history lessons the idiocy of The Crusades.
Does oppression cause violence? Yes it does. Both the oppressors and the oppressed. Does greed cause violence? Yes it can. Does ambition cause violence? Yes it can. Does hate of weaker groups cause violence? Yes it does. Does poor mental health cause violence? Why, yes it can. All of these are much more satisfactory causes of terrorism than religious faith.
Quick Quiz: Which of these five basic principles calls for violence in the name of God:
Shahadah: declaring there is no god except God, and Muhammad is God's Messenger
Salat: ritual prayer five times a day
Zakat: giving 2.5% of one’s savings to the poor and needy
Sawm: fasting and self-control during the holy month of Ramadan
Hajj: pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime[5][6] if one is able[7]Where & when were you in Jordan?
What were you doing every day?
How far did you travel?
Define what you mean by ‘got to know’ & how many of them you met & how you determined their actual opinions and how they have acted throughout their lives.
Can you read the native papers & understand the language?
Catholics are free to practice, and build churches? Mormons?
I did not know that the majority of people in Jordan were non Muslim, as you state in your last sentence. Seems kind of odd to me.
Well, let’s not confuse the issue with what constitutes terrorism. Let’s concentrate on “violence”. There are very few places in the world where Islam and not Islam mix where there isn’t quite a bit of violence. Thailand and China are fighting Muslim insurgencies. India of course is. Russia. Israel. Sudan’s Christians and Muslims have been at it for a long time.
Trying to figure out the causes of terrorism, which as has been pointed out by many opponents of the war on terror, is just a tactic, only serves to confuse the real issue. Might as well try to analyze the causes of drive-by shootings or tank battles. What we really need to know is why in most of the places Muslims and non-Muslims live cheek-to-jowl, there is violence. Sure, you can find A place where Protestants and Catholics are at war. You can also find ideological wars, like the Maoist guerillas still terrorizing Nepal and the countless Communist insurgencies we saw during the Cold War. What was the root cause of Communist violence? that one was easy. Follow the money. The Soviets paid good money to arm these groups. Once the Soviet Union fell, most of the Communist insurgencies died out. I think there’s a similar dynamic working with Islamic violence. A lot of very rich radicals with dreams of a new caliphate are funding a lot of extremist movements. I’ll bet if the oil money dried up we wouldn’t have a violence problem at all, much less a terrorism problem.
No. That was a list of non-Muslim countries with serious human rights problems. The point was that if you compare Muslim countries to Western Europe–the home of the industrial revolution, democracy, civil rights, and colonial domination of everyone else–then it’s no particular shock that Western Europe is going to come out on top of a test of human rights. The much more interesting comparison would be among countries, say, in the global south. Even then, of course, the comparison would be extremely rudimentary. But it would be marginally more fair.
And still make them look bad. To reiterate the cite earlier in this thread:
**Of the states with an Islamic majority, only one, Mali, is rated Free. Eighteen are rated Partly Free, and 28 are considered Not Free. By contrast, in the non-Islamic world, 85 countries are Free, 40 are Partly Free, and 20 are Not Free. **
There are more not free Muslim states than in the rest of the world combined. 28 vs. 20.
How did I KNOW something like that would come up?
Tell you what- find me ANY Christians who danced in the street when Eric Rudolph committed a terrorist act, and I’ll take you seriously.
When I say that Muslims tend to ignore or downplay atrocities committed by the coreligionists, I am not saying they’re unique in that respect. I grew up in a heavily Italian neighborhood. Almost all of my Italian neighbors were honest, hardworking people who’d never commit a crime. But if anyone criticized the Mafia, those same Italians would either:
Insist there was no such thing as the Mafia (as Mario Cuomo did), and that bigoted Americans made the whole thing up
Insist that the Mafia were actually GOOD guys (“You know, Gambino does a lot of nice things for peoiple that you never read about in the newspapers”)
Say, “Yeah, well what about (Jewish) Dutch Schultz and (Irish) Bugsy Malone?”
The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists and the vast majority of Italians have no Mafia ties. But in both cases, the vast majority of decent people will deny that their group has any genuine bad guys, or will play the *Tu Quoque *game.
Rudy Giuliani was an Italian who prosecuted Mafiosi. In my opinion, HE was doing what was best for his people, NOT the people who tried to ignore or deny the problem.
I wish more of the decent, honest Muslims who (like the rest of us) just want to work hard, make a decent living and take care of their families, would follow Rudy’s example rather than Cuomo’s.
Rated free, or partly free by whom? Freedom House? They are mostly funded by the Government of the United States so so please excuse me if I take their claims with a few truckfuls of salt.
The Koran encourages violence in Muslims, so the fact that most are not violent is surprising. These days though when one hears about all the violence in the Islamic world one could easily decide that they all are violent.
Once could decide potatoes are mammals. Doesn’t make it remotely true.
Yes, the U.S. government’s study into the extent of the adoption of western cultural ideas of freedom of the press and judiciaries that are independent from the executive, and conducted two months after 9/11, painted a bleak picture of the Islamic world. That should come as a shock to exactly no one.
Once again, the point here is simple: picking two variables (religious majority and human rights record) and comparing absolute number is a terrible way to get to knowledge. It doesn’t control for other very plausible variables. It doesn’t rigorously define human rights, which for Freedom House is essentially the extent to which countries have adopted the American system. It doesn’t use any of the dozens of handy statistical techniques we have for checking whether the selected variable is actually plausibly causing the outcome we’re looking it. Etc. etc. It is a tool of people who have an ideological point to make and want to throw around some numbers to make themselves seem more credible.
True enough, but do you really disagree with any of their ratings? They have been perfectly willing to give US allies really poor ratings, which shows they are probably not biased.
It could also show that the Saudi regime (for example) is so vile that Freedom House really has no choice but to label it as unfree.
I would instead seek to prove/demonstrate a moral equivalence by using examples of Christianity in action in numerous parts of Africa, among other places. Also, I’m very thankful to those who point out that such violence is not a perversion or misinterpretation, it’s what happens when one takes the religion (whichever one it may be) at face value.
In order to analyze this argument, I’d need to understand what a non-Western understanding of freedom would look like. Because it’s hard for me to look at the Islamic world and see any kind of freedom flourishing.
If your issue is with blaming Islam for it, then yeah, that’s something we can’t prove. We can only observe that Islamic nations are the most likely to be oppressive. And furthermore, this doesn’t appear to be a transient thing. As Latin American and black African nations have progressed economically, they have tended to become more free. This link between development and democracy hasn’t really taken place in the Muslim world, although things might be changing now given the Arab spring.
To name one example, Freedom House measures whether private entities discourage practices such as same-sex marriage. Maybe if Texas alone were rated it would also be rated not free. I’m fine with that being a measure of freedom, but it is a very western, secular concept.
What I would be more interested in as a global measure of human rights are things like whether prisoners are given due process of the law before imprisonment, whether you can be arrested for speaking out against the ruling party, etc. Freedom House includes some of that, but it’s mixed in with a lot of stuff that is much more debateable as a global measure of freedom.
It is absolutely something we can make reasoned arguments about. I’m just saying that the scope of reasoned arguments does not include the extremely crude method displayed here, which makes no effort at all to untangle the variables.
I think it is very difficult to untangle religious influences from the other known variables relating to protection of human rights, including economic development, adoption of western values concerning individual freedom, etc. Some of what I consider lack of freedom–such as having no real separation of religion from governance–stems from many factors, including the history of Islam.
But I think saying Islamic countries are less free because of Islam is like saying African-Americans are poor because of fathers leaving mothers. It has some grains of truth, but it is so incredibly reductionist and ignorant of larger and more explanatory factors that it bespeaks an agenda rather than an effort at understanding.
They are not the most likely to be oppressive. Pretty clearly secular communist nations fit that description much better. Nor do I agree that freedom in Islamic countries is disconnected from economic development.
Don’t come into threads just to drop turds like this. We’ve got a name for it and it’s not allowed.
I hate this whole argument and should probably just stay out of it.
But here goes, just to play devil’s advocate:
I have seen pictures on TV of Americans cheering the burning of a mosque in Kentucky. I have seen TV reports of crowds of people protesting mosques being built all over the United States. I have seen TV reports of Sikhs (who are not Muslim) in the United States being harassed, assaulted and even killed because they looked like Muslims. I have seen TV footage of American Christians burning Korans. I have seen TV footage of American Christians saying things like “nuke em till they glow and shoot them in the dark” many times using terms like camel jockeys, towel heads, and sand niggers, etc…
If I was a Muslim living in Jordan, the West Bank, Egypt, or wherever and somebody showed me all this footage (which, let’s face it, somebody probably would make sure I saw it there for propaganda purposes) and then showed me footage and figures on how many Muslims have died because of American bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya, I might not speak up either about some terrorists blowing a western embassy or something. Just like, as an American, I don’t really speak up too much when some right wing christian nut job goes on a killing spree off his base in Afghanistan or some preacher in Florida burns a pile of Korans because I have seen lots of videos of them Muslims stoning women, bombing peaceful people, and basically being barbarians. They kind of deserve it, right?
The fact is that most Muslims are peaceful people who just want to live their lives just like most Americans want the same thing. Sure we have people here that burn down mosques and pilot smart bombs into wedding parties, but most of us are just want to live and let live. Sure we imprison more of our population, mostly our black population, than any other country on earth, but we are pretty much a decent society. It might be hard to convince your average Pakistani or Yemeni that this is true however.
Just playing devil’s advocate.
This is exactly the point I come to to when I think about this sort of question. While it may be true that the crazies within the Muslim world are more prone to violence than those of other stripes, it can’t possibly be that they are, as a whole, violent people. The world would indeed be a very different place than we currently see. I mean… 1.6 billion? They can’t ALL be out to get us.
That they may not be advocating sufficiently against violent acts is another matter. But it’s obvious to me that the vast, vast majority are either uninclined or unable to behave violently.