Nice to meet you too. How many people have to be terrorists or support them before we can agree that it is no longer a small minority. The muslim terrorists are not Ted Kaczynski, and they aren’t Tim McVeigh, and they aren’t some wacked out woman who is hearing voices who kills her kid. They are a large group of people, often well educated, who draw aid and comfort from a substantial portion of the population. Call it what you will, but the Muslim world has serious internal problems.
What goes on in Ireland is an ethnic conflict with religious overtones, as was Bosnia. “Protestant” and “Catholic” are a sort of shorthand for the Anglo settlers and the Gaelic “indigenous” people. People like Rev. Ian Paisley aside, I am pretty sure there are atheists or nonreligious on both sides - especially as many IRA groups are Marxist.
I would not point the finger at Islam so much as I would at Wahabbism and the other fundamentalist sects.
Thank you. You phrased that SO much better than I could have. I’ve been holding a small girl for the last hour or so. She’s asleep in my lap right now, dressed in one of my old T-shirts because they didn’t have time to dress when they fled. Her mother is taking care of her other (younger) children. They escaped one of the compounds just after the first explosion. She’s skinned up a bit, not really hurt, but she’s terrified, won’t let go of me. She’s maybe three or four years old. I don’t know exactly.
Her father is out looking for some of our other workers right now. It’ll be my turn next. Religion sucks. Drives people to do insane acts that they are completely un-apologetic for.
All the best.
Testy
Are you seriously saying that the historical reasons for the Northern Ireland conflict don’t have anything to do with religion? The fighting sides just “happened” to be of different Christian persuasions, and were fighting for independence only?
No, really. Answer it. Yes or no.
Clearly, we are blaming the wrong group here. This was just another Zionist plot to incite the infidels to steal the oil from the holy land. Come on people, don’t you know? the real evil is in Israel! Muslims are a peacful people, who just want to be left alone, so they can kill the Jews.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Aum Shinrikyo was run by a madman, not a religious figure, and Kahane isn’t really a “Jewish” movement, and Christian Identity is really racism, not Christianity, and the Sinhalese aren’t really Buddhists. Only Islamic religious violence is religious. Gotcha.
gobear, surely you are not comparing local millitant political groups such as the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis to an entire religion, spanning many nations and millions of people across the globe?
No one is defending terrorism here. Some people seem to be suggesting that being a Muslim does not equal being a terrorist, though. To use your analogy, it would be akin to calling all Cambodians subhuman terrorists.
Like the one who threw grenades into the tents of his commanding officers?
I’m not on the side of “all muslims are ignorant savages.” But cut the OP a little slack–he just lived through (well, next to) a terrorist attack. I have my moments when I wonder if Islam isn’t a general threat for having failed to go through yet the political defanging that Christianity did centuries ago.
Coldfire. Yes. REligion may have intensified the animosity but it was never the cause of it and, most importantly, religion was never at any time the primary motivations for the actions of terrorists on either side. The opposite is true of the Islamist fanatics who could have killed testy today.
Well there’s more than a billion and a half Muslims worldwide (actually closer to 2 billion). Let’s say over 5% of that population would represent more than a small minority. You’d better hope you’re wrong, cause if there really are 75 million Muslim terrorists bent on destroying the US, I’d say we’re in a spot of trouble.
Ben Hicks: you have just disqualified yourself from any rational discussion on this matter. Have a nice day.
So let’s see… out of a billion or so Muslims, a couple of thousand are murderous assholes.
That’s enough proof for me. Nuke the sand niggers! Every last one!
Or not.
Color me surprised that gobear thinks it’s all right to extrapolate the twisted, fucked up actions of a relative handful to justify the persecution of a larger group of people.
I’m sorry for the unthinkable pain you’re suffering right now, Testy, and I hope that time will quell the rage you feel at the millions of innocent Muslims who have caused you no harm.
But Ben Hicks can go fuck hisself, fo sho.
(I just linked to Newsmax. I feel so dirty.)
Been there, thanks. And I’ve got nothing but sympathy for what he’s going through. But it’s exactly at times like that when it’s important to remember who the real bad guys are. There are, what, a billion or so Muslims? Some entire sects, like the taliban, ought to be eradicated wholesale. There are other individuals and groups, spread across sects, who need to be killed. But seriously – a billion. Add up all the bad guys in the world and you won’t make a tiny dent in the total number of Muslims. Just like other religions.
You can all be angry at Testy for overgeneralizing, and to a large extent you’re right. Except from now on I don’t want to hear any arguments about how going after Islamic terrorists or overthrowing dictators in the Islamic world will make them all angry and “create new terrorists” (you know, what with them not behaving as a group and all) from any of you.
we have a housing compound for a military maintenance company known locally as Vinnell and three large compounds that have been bombed. The unarmed security guards were shot dead and then the car bombs were brought in. Lots of small arms and grenades being used as well. The Vinnell bomb is expected to have caused heavy casualties. The folks visiting me came from Al-Hamra, they got away in time. Saudi security (think of a cross between Poncho Villa and the Marx Brothers) have now sealed Al-Hamra and won’t let the remainder of my people off there. Shit. What a mess.
Testy
Yeah, because it’s all better now that we invaded Iraq, innit?
OMG, Testy, just reading about it now on the news sites. You holding up ok? How’s the little girl.
Fang, do you have a brain? If we come to the conclusion that some millitants cannot be seen as representative for an entire religion, we can in the same vein come to the conclusion that a foreign policy that, no matter how you look at it, attacks predominantly Muslim nations can result in some millitants -not an entire religion- taking to (terrorist) arms. Muslims don’t behave like a group, and that’s the whole fucking point.
Think before you post, please.
To the two major assholes in this thread–Testy and Rhum Runner:
You two are hateful, intolerant, ignorant, bigoted, callous, and blinded jerks.
For one thing, nothing excuses the bombing. Nobody said it did. You will notice (once you pull your heads out) that Testy decided to blame the entire religion of Islam for the murderous acts of a very few. It was then pointed out to you, by an adult acting like an adult–a concept you two jerks should learn–that there is no difference in blaming Islam for that killing than in blaming Christianity for the murders perpetrated by a Christian.
Finally, You two are hateful, intolerant, ignorant, bigoted, callous, and blinded jerks.
gobear: Nobody’s defending the ideology of murder; they’re pointing out that Islam is not such an ideology.
My wife is howling for my blood because one of the children is puking all over her and I’m “playng on that damn computer again.” S
Besides, I’ve gotta get down to the hospital and as close as I can get to the compounds. We’re still missing some people.
Regards.
Testy