# The Fallen Blogger and the Spectre of Secularism **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 28, 2015, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827 "2015-02-28T03:21:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/101 "2015-03-31T17:16:30Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > Ah, another perfect opportunity to reflect on the injustice of the Crusades. Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s take a trip down memory lane… ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/102 "2015-03-31T17:46:26Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What is _Ikhouan_? Google is no help. I think **Ramira** was referring to what’s more commonly (at least in English) transliterated as the _Ikhwan_ or “Brethren”, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood movement. > [@Stringbean](#): > > Nothing to see here, folks. Let’s take a trip down memory lane… It must be a very sad thing to have such limited intellectual capacity that you’re unable to simultaneously combine sincere condemnation of an individual’s heinous criminal acts with a sincere wish to understand the historical influences shaping the radical ideology promoting such acts. Seriously, dude, you have my sympathy. But I don’t think that people who are capable of grown-up discussion of political and religious history should censor their remarks just to keep you from feeling bad about your limitations. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/103 "2015-03-31T17:50:55Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Islam is scared to look itself in the mirror because it sees Danny Trejo lurking in the back. To be fair, that would scare me, too. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/104 "2015-03-31T18:02:23Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > I think **Ramira** was referring to what’s more commonly (at least in English) transliterated as the _Ikhwan_ or “Brethren”, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Stringbean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Stringbean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stringbean)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/105 "2015-03-31T18:34:16Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > It must be a very sad thing to have such limited intellectual capacity that you’re unable to simultaneously combine sincere condemnation of an individual’s heinous criminal acts with a sincere wish to understand the historical influences shaping the radical ideology promoting such acts. > > Seriously, dude, you have my sympathy. But I don’t think that people who are capable of grown-up discussion of political and religious history should censor their remarks just to keep you from feeling bad about your limitations. Some might say the intellectual limitation exists in those who repeat sincere condemnation without grasping the wider trend before them. A priest may say a thousand last rites and never see the avalanche at his feet… As for my aspersions, well, here we sit again. Back in this forlorn thread and this forlorn roundabout of condemnation and apologism. It isn’t for the Crusades nor my own ignorance. The Machete won’t stop for my shortcomings. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/106 "2015-03-31T20:26:19Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Some might say the intellectual limitation exists in those who repeat sincere condemnation without grasping the wider trend before them. Exactly my point. You’re so obsessed with having noticed the “wider trend” of global Islamist-extremist ideology that you can’t understand why anybody would think it important to grasp the **even wider** trend of the historical roots and political development of global Islamist-extremist ideology. Consequently, your notion of an anti-Islamophobe is a cartoon strawman who always insists on criticizing non-Muslim entities **instead** of Muslim ones. But that’s bullshit: most of us real-life anti-Islamophobes are sentient human beings who are capable of objecting to different things in different ways at the same time. You don’t seem to grasp that it’s possible for the human brain to **simultaneously** abhor the murderous actions of individual extremist criminals, reject the hateful intolerance of modern Islamist-extremist fundamentalism in general, **and _also_** investigate and analyze the various political and cultural developments both within and outside historical Islam that gave rise to it. ---
**Author:** ![get\_lives](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecb155/32.png) [@get\_lives](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/get_lives)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2015, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/107 "2015-03-31T23:53:08Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > I can report that I was once the victim of what probably counts as a hate crime. A group of evangelical buddies started taunting me one evening for being a ‘liberal’. I asked them what that meant and what I had done to deserve the label- basically I was demanding to know what I was being accused of. These evangelicals were so fucking stupid they couldn’t answer the question, and instead went apeshit and attacked me in what I consider a potentially fatal way. I had to get a lot of stitches on my head, and I was abandoned to get help on my own. > > There was a large evangelical population in the place, so maybe that is why nobody was ever held accountable for the attack, I don’t know for sure. But personally, since this country is full of evangelicals and not especially populated by Muslims, I consider evangelicals to be a far greater threat. Not primarily as a physical threat, but mainly for the stupid direction they want to take government policy. But that is getting off topic… I’m an agnostic. If every religion ended tomorrow, I’d do a dance. On some religous leaders’ graves, ideally. But Islam currently is edging out all other religions in the “too crazy to be allowed in the modern world” competition. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/108 "2015-04-01T00:11:03Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’m an agnostic. If every religion ended tomorrow, I’d do a dance. […] But Islam currently is edging out all other religions in the “too crazy to be allowed in the modern world” competition. Just because some varieties of hardline-extremist Islamist fundamentalism are indeed dangerously crazy is no reason to disallow _all_ forms of Islam from the modern world. Funny how you can always spot the Islamophobes because they always insist on complaining about “Islam” instead of “Islamic fundamentalism” or “radical-Islamist extremism” or any other specific descriptor that’s actually accurate. If they really wanted to talk about the genuine dangers posed by militant Islamist extremist ideologies, they would have no problem with using accurate descriptors to refer to such ideologies. But all they actually want is to feed their sense of righteous outrage by trolling Muslims and anti-Islamophobes with bitter disparagement of Islam as a whole, and then calling the anti-Islamophobes cowardly appeasers for pointing out that militant Islamist extremist ideologies are not in fact co-extensive with Islam as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![Haberdash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Haberdash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Haberdash)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/109 "2015-04-01T05:54:17Z")
So as usual, the problem with Muslims murdering someone for writing a blog isn’t the murder, but that the horde of “Islamophobes” might erroneously conclude that there are some Muslims who will, under some circumstances, murder people. Have you considered just getting a robot to make this post for you? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/110 "2015-04-01T06:19:36Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > So as usual, the problem with Muslims murdering someone for writing a blog isn’t the murder, but that the horde of “Islamophobes” might erroneously conclude that there are some Muslims who will, under some circumstances, murder people. It’s amazing how many things you manage to get wrong in a single sentence. ---
**Author:** ![truthSeeker2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@truthSeeker2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthSeeker2)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/111 "2015-04-01T06:41:33Z")
> [@get\_lives](#): > > I’m an agnostic. If every religion ended tomorrow, I’d do a dance. On some religous leaders’ graves, ideally. But Islam currently is edging out all other religions in the “too crazy to be allowed in the modern world” competition. If people over here were aware of the language and context of bigoted poison that is allowed to run on media(even _main-stream_ media) for ex. of a few Muslim majority countries, they will understand the mentality a bit more. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/112 "2015-04-01T07:32:15Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > Even the non-extremists followers are far far less tolerant _on average_ than **kaffirs**. Bolding mine. You sure you’re not a racist? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![truthSeeker2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@truthSeeker2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthSeeker2)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/113 "2015-04-01T11:52:58Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Bolding mine. You sure you’re not a racist? :dubious: Yep. In fact I don’t think there are many people who are more tolerant than me, or people whose belief in equality of all ‘races’ is more firm than mine. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/114 "2015-04-01T14:34:25Z")
> [@Steken](#): > > Sigh. > > Secularism isn’t inevitable. True enough. Ignorance, superstition, and violent religious nut jobs may yet be insurmountable obstacles for humanity to overcome. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/115 "2015-04-01T18:43:13Z")
> [@Haberdash](#): > > So as usual, the problem with Muslims murdering someone for writing a blog isn’t the murder, but that the horde of “Islamophobes” might erroneously conclude that there are some Muslims who will, under some circumstances, murder people. Idiot troll is idiot. Difficult as it may be for you to grasp, the fact is that a particular incident can be indicative of _more than one problem_. And being justifiably outraged about _one_ of those problems does not excuse wilfully indulging your ignorance, stupidity or bigotry concerning the other problems. As I noted above, if Islamophobes really wanted to complain about the atrocious crimes committed by violent extremists in the name of fundamentalist Islam, they’d use accurate terms to refer to them, instead of relying on exaggerations and strawmen to shit-talk Islam and Muslims in general. The fact that trolls like **Haberdash** prefer to pretend that anti-Islamophobes are trying to deny that “there are some Muslims who will, under some circumstances, murder people” tells you all you need to know about the fundamental dishonesty and frivolity of their rantings. I always wish we could have just _one_ Pit thread where we could all join in _condemning the many atrocities and oppressions of radical-Islamist extremist ideologies that actually deserve condemnation_. The people who do those things are violent, intolerant criminal shitstains, and it would be great to see them getting an unbroken torrent of the Pitting they deserve, directed accurately and specifically at them and their tyrannical aims. Unfortunately, such cathartic invective-fests are always interrupted by the Islamophobe trolls trying to turn them into condemnations of Muslims and Islam as a whole. Here’s a thought, Islamophobe trolls: _if you really want the rest of us to talk about how much we hate Islamist-extremist violence, **don’t fucking keep trying to change the subject to how much you hate Islam and Muslims in general** _. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2015, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/116 "2015-04-01T19:04:40Z")
[QUOTE=truthSeeker2 on 03-31-2015, 08:50 AM] Majority of Muslims may well be fine, but 99% of extremists also happen to be followers. [/QUOTE] Islamophobe troll repeats idiotic overgeneralization without ever having addressed earlier reasoned challenge to it: > [@truthSeeker2 on 02-28-2015](#): > > Religion of peace is the cancer for 21st century. 99% of extremists happen to be followers. > [@Kimstu on 02-28-2015](#): > > Cite? That’s a ridiculously unrealistic number. You can’t just throw around specific quantitative estimates like that when what you actually mean is “yeah I think probably a lot but I don’t really know”. > > Even if as many as one in a thousand of all the world’s Muslims were actual violent Islamist extremists (an absurd overestimate), those 1.6 million people still wouldn’t constitute anything like 99% of all the world’s violent extremists. Hell, there are estimated to be 20 thousand armed cadres of the Naxali-Maoist insurgency in eastern India alone; and that’s not counting Sikh separatist terror groups, Corsican separatist terror groups, Sendero Luminoso in Peru, Colombian terror groups, and hundreds of others. > > I’m not claiming, and I never have claimed, that the nexus of radical Islamism and violent terrorism isn’t a unique and high-priority problem in the current global historical moment. But people who try to claim that radical Islamists are the world’s only significant group of violent terrorists, or that their common factor of Muslim religion is somehow the only thing that really matters about them, are just exposing their own ignorance and shallow understanding. Actual information or thoughtful response posted by **truthSeeker2** in response to **Kimstu** ’s rebuttal: fucking cricket-chirping nada zip zilch _sifr_. ---
**Author:** ![truthSeeker2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@truthSeeker2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/truthSeeker2)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2015, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/117 "2015-04-02T01:07:07Z")
99% is a conservative number that I put, it could be up to 99.9%. Naxali-Maoist insurgency has nothing to do with any religious agenda. They think govt. exploits natural resources and human resources of those areas, and they continue to live in dire poverty. Where as Isis, alqaeda , Taliban, Lashkar e toiba, boko haram, all shabab, and plenty others are hardcore religious groups all thinking they all upholding the RoP I am pretty sure you are unaware of the mentality prevailing in several non extremist Muslims as you don’t understand any of the languages spoken in the region. Ur only help is maybe some of the pew poll results regarding blasphemy sharia etc ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2015, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/118 "2015-04-02T02:21:00Z")
> [@truthSeeker2](#): > > I am pretty sure you are unaware of the mentality prevailing in several non extremist Muslims as you don’t understand any of the languages spoken in the region. Ur only help is maybe some of the pew poll results regarding blasphemy sharia etc And you claim you do? Based on your posts, it is unclear that you even understand English, so I am hardly going to credit your libels about other peoples whom you clearly do not know. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2015, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/119 "2015-04-02T03:03:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What do you think is mostly responsible for the existence of radical Islamism? I won’t speak for Ramira, but I would say it depends on the region. It’s ridiculous and somewhat simplistic to assume that radical Islam in say Pakistan and Egypt(two countries that are about as different as France and Brazil) came about for the same reason, but in general I would say that the growth of radical Islam was due to the failures and the social engineering of various ostensibly “secular” governments which were backed either by the Soviets, the west, or both and that such failures caused many, particularly amongst the struggling educated middle class(radical Islam is not a movement of illiterate peasants pissed off at modernity, but western-educated, middle class intellectuals who feel betrayed or who have rejected western secularism after seeing it in action). If you really want, but I suspect you won’t bother, I’d recommend reading the Prophet and the Pharaoh to compare and contrast the rises and interactions Nasser and Sayyid Qutb. Also, I’d recommend, though it’s been a while since I’ve read it, Emmanuel Sivan’s Radical Islam. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2015, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827/120 "2015-04-02T03:16:44Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Bolding mine. You sure you’re not a racist? :dubious: He’s not using the Afrikaans word “Kaffir” which is the South African equivalent of “nigger”, but he’s using the Arab term “Kaffir”(unbeliever) though he’s apparently too dumb to realize that Muslims who use the term “unbeliever” would never says “Kaffirs” but “Kuffar”(sometimes transliterated differently). It is an extremely nasty word. Ironically enough, the Quran and various Hadiths(or ahadith if you want to be technical) make it clear that Jews and Christians aren’t “unbelievers” and claiming they are so is blasphemy since they do believe in and worship Allah. They just, from the Muslim POV, don’t realize their religions have been abrogated. Despite this, Muslims who still use the term today, regularly use it to refer to Jews and Christians. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fallen-blogger-and-the-spectre-of-secularism/713827.md?page=7)