The Muslims who escaped the insanity are not part of the problem. But the fact they needed to escape shows the insanity is pretty normal over there.
You just can’t say with a straight face that mainstream Islam is just like any other religion when whole nations are governed according to the same rules that ISIS and Al Qaeda follow. And in every nation that isn’t governed that way, there’s a sizeable violent minority(not a “tiny” minority") that is fighting to see their countries governed that way.
Now I suppose we could tell the truth in a way that wouldn’t offend liberals: The Middle East is really, really FUBAR’d and has been for a long time. And our allies are just as FUBAR’d as our enemies. Is that better?
But why is that “mainstream Islam”? Mainstream Islam in America is pretty fantastic. In parts of Europe it might be more problematic. Even more so in many MENA and Af/Pak countries. In Indonesia, Malaysia, and Turkey it’s relatively good, though far from perfect.
We can see a correlation there – in the poorest and most troubled countries, “mainstream Islam” is more troubled, while in wealthier and more stable countries, it’s less so. I think any causal relationship between these two is more likely to be that poverty and chaos empower radicals rather than the reverse, so the explanations of why there is so much trouble and violence associated with Islam in many parts of the world are probably circumstances other than the specific nature of Islam.
No. Saudi Arabia is a pretty fucked up nation, but they have actual rules and laws, and more importantly, they are a nation. Da’esh and al Qaeda are not nation type things, they are a bunch of guys sowing discord and really not following any actual rules. They have yet to establish any nation-like thing and show that they can make it work.
There was that Taliban thing in Afghanistan, but that lasted little more than a decade, an eyeblink in the scope of history. So far, radicals of any religious stripe have not been hugely successful at establishing actual stable nations.
I don’t disagree with the nation building thing, but it wasn’t my argument. My argument was that there isn’t any daylight in religious practice between Saudi Arabia, Al Qaeda, or ISIS. Which shouldn’t be surprising, since Saudi Arabia funds madrassas all over the world that preach that message of hate.
When you try to blame Islam for the problem, you run up against a wholly different issue. You probably hated the ending part of Charlie Wilson’s War for all the wrong reasons.
“Now”? I had a friend from High School pointlessly gunned down by illegally-financed US-aligned radicals (who were not religious, per se) nearly three decades ago, and even before that I thought it was bad shit. The US has so fucked so many nations and nationlettes around the globe, none of the hate directed toward it is undeserved. Average Americans may be innocent in the strictest sense, but that is because most of them are simply too stupid to realize that the glorious US is the ultimate source of its problems, both internal and external.
That’s not my goal here. My goal is simply to rebut the simplistic, unnuanced talking points our leaders put out. Islam is not evil, but the Middle East is seriously screwed and Islam, especially the Islam promoted by the Sauds, is at the center of those ills.
What I want is for us to recognize that our allies are part of the problem. The only solution is to back real liberals in the Islamic world, even though they have no power and even though this makes people like the Sauds very angry. This is a lot like our alliance with Stalin, except in this case we’re agreeing to give Stalin ALL of Europe rather than just half of it. Our allies would happily place the entire Arab world under their strict version of Islam. Which would in turn create more terrorism, since the logical extension of that violent ideology is to kill people who don’t believe. The Sauds and our “allies” are fine with that, as long as it doesn’t affect their economic interests.
Not every single one, but in the part of the world we’re talking about(Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Palestinian territories, Gulf States), those nations are either under a radical interpretation of Islamic rule right now, or at war trying to prevent that from being imposed. Wars are not waged against “tiny minorities”, at least not wars that last very long. These movements are large, and they are very dangerous, and they can win.
We can also add PAkistan and Afghanistan to that list, since Pakistan’s ISI is in the radicals’ camp, and Afghanistan is always just a short distance away from radical rule without our troops present.
But sure, Turkey, Malaysia, and Brunei are just fine.
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Something like 50% of Americans want Creationism taught in a science class but it’s still dumb-ass. Anti-GMO feelings are just as dumb-ass.
But it gets worse. According to the NPR report I heard the other day, Vermont’s GMO labeling is only applied to products if scientists insert a specific gene into the DNA. If scientists bombard the DNA with radiation to foster random genetic mutation then it doesn’t require GMO labeling. This means that two products can sit on the shelf with the exact same genetics but be labeled differently. It’s dumb-ass.
The fear of GMO is based strictly on unscientific worries and blurbs like “Frankenfood”. If one understands the science then the fears go away.
There’s a group in Massachusetts trying to enact a similar dumb-ass law. Hopefully Bay State liberals are smarter than Vermont liberals.
If that’s your example of liberal then you’ve lost the argument.
Liberal is Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Liberal are the gay imams in the Middle East who can’t be outed because it will mean their deaths. Liberal is Salman Rushdie.
But we, we won’t back those Muslims, because the resultant backlash would prove how far gone a large part of the Muslim world has become.
Iran has the best potential to be a positive force in the region. We should not be fighting them, we should be figuring out ways to get them on our side. Da’esh has, as far as I know, not made any significant efforts against Iran because they fear them. The US is stupid to portray Iran as an enemy, one of W’s worst assertions. The US fucked Iran over, the US should now try to fix the damage, rather than make more.
A relatively wealthy and well educated population in the following ‘bad neighborhood’ (counterclockwise from the North): Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkey, Iraq, Persian Gulf (states), Pakistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan.
Burden? Pretty damned light one, if any. 80% of Americans want it, but $226 million of Monsanto lobbying probably will censure the GMO labeling movement.
Given that Monsanto GMO’d corn has been sprayed like crazy with Round Up, a persistent pesticide, I’d say GMO’d corn and corn products would be good things to avoid.