I could spend the entire week finding translations of sermons in Arabic, declarations by various Islamists, YouTube videos etc. etc. and even if I found 300 citations on the internet, and listed them all in a posting as long as your arm, you would point out that 300 people is a tiny minority of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.
Where do you get off deciding that a Muslim who wants to reconquer Spain for Islam is a “nutcase and a zealot?” With the obvious growth of Islamist extremism in the Muslim world, perhaps the idea gains more adherents every day.
Where do you get off claiming the zealots and nutcases are anything more than zealots and nutcases? You seem to need to make every Muslim an enemy and I am sure, with that attitude, that you may well succeed.
I don’t share your desire.
The Islamists are growing in number–with the help of Westerners who buy into their goals. We can try to hold the attention of the moderates by rational discourse and measured responses to terrorism or we can buy into the terrorists dreams and overreact to every event and expression. I am not sure why you support the terrorists’ plans, but I refuse to join you or them.
Given that right wingers have been known to do things like buy in bulk books of right wing favorites to boost their apparent popularity (Ann Coulter got that treatment a lot as I recall), I don’t know that I’d trust a figure like that anyway without a lot more context than just sales numbers. Some rich fundie Christian might well pull off something like buying Arabic copies of Mein Kampf in bulk, then start spreading a slander using those sales figures to vilify Muslims. It would fit in with the past behavior of such rightwingers.
The talk about the film and the mohammed cartoons are all a smoke screen-basically, there is NO dialog possible with a fanatical muslim-you either “submit” or die.
The proof of this was the rage a few years ago, by the muslims about a statement made by Pope Benedict. Benedict quoted a statement by a 10th century Byzantine emperor-even that was enough to set the muslims off.
All of this seems to indicate a dialogue is impossible.
It can get as many adherents as it likes but that does not alter the fact that ‘the reconquest of spain’ ranks just below ‘me having sex with Halle Berry’ in the world league table of ‘realistic goals’.
I yield to no one in my dislike of Islam but I’m not going to wet myself over made up hypotheticals. They aren’t James Bond super-villians.
While during the same period, Muslims and Jews living in Christian countries were treated with perfect equality and tolerance :rolleyes:
Your prejudices are well known, but at least stay coherent and don’t refuse to compare Islam today with Christianism in the past while comparing Christianism today and Islam in the past.
While would they resettle the Palestinians? There are many political reasons why they wouldn’t (for instance, that would be a recognition of a “fait accompli”) and besides why would they take this burden. Tiny Lebanon had been stuck with large numbers of Palestinian refugees for decades, now. And it didn’t exactly turn out for the better for it.
If you want refugees to be resettled to solve (part of) the issue, why don’t you advocate for them to resettle in your own country? There certainly would be takers (it’s not like living for 50 years in a refugee camp is a great life) and Western countries being large and wealthy and certainly could handle some newcomers. Especially since they seem to be sooo concerned about the Israel/Palestine issue. But somehow this doesn’t seem to ever be on the table(*).
(*) Note that this apply to other refugees. Sudanese refugees ended up being the problem of one of the most impoverished nation on the face of Earth (and war torn too), Chad. Someone mentioned the war in Yugoslavia, and despite it happening in Europe, Western European nations, with the notable exception of Germany, weren’t that welcoming to Yugoslavian refugees, either (with some media-covered shows about a small number being allowed in for a short time once in a while). Neighboring Italy didn’t exactly open its borders and welcome them with open arms. The other neighboring EU member, Greece…hmmm…well, let’s just forget about Greece, they were probably throwing parties to celebrate (OK, I’m a bit harsh with Greece, generally speaking. Sue me.)
As many posters have noted, radical-Islamist fundamentalist extremists have no interest in rationally persuading the people who oppose them, and no need to use rational persuasion to appeal to their followers. So why would they want a debate?
The key messages that radical-Islamist fundamentalist extremists want to spread to the non-Muslim world are the following:
The essential nature of Islam as a whole is intrinsically radical, repressive and violent towards unbelievers. Only militant-extremist fundamentalist Muslims are “true” Muslims. (This message discourages interfaith dialogue and non-Muslim awareness of or support for more moderate interpretations of Islam, which the radical mullahs fear might undermine the hatred and conflict on which they depend.)
Radical violent Islam poses an extremely dangerous and immediate threat to the very survival of non-Muslim civilizations, and therefore Western societies should be taking far more aggressive and hostile measures to attack and oppress Muslim-majority countries, as well as Muslims in non-Muslim-majority countries. (This message inflames Westerners’ hatred and fear of Muslims in general and increases the likelihood of the West using unjust, disproportionate and/or indiscriminate violence against Muslims, which the radical mullahs can use to whip up Muslim outrage and attract more supporters.)
But the radical mullahs don’t need to get on a debating platform and make any of these arguments themselves: they’ve got thousands of inadvertent allies among Western Islamophobes who are happy to do it for them.
When anti-Muslim advocates like Valteron go around playing “junior mullah” to spread these radical-Islamist messages to their fellow non-Muslims, they probably don’t realize they’re supporting the radical-Islamists’ agenda. But they’re doing a far better job of it than the radical Islamists themselves could hope to accomplish.
So naturally the fundamentalist-Islamist leaders are just going to let them get on with it, rather than spending any of their own time and effort “debating” with Westerners.
(And Learjeff, I think “AAs” means African-Americans.)
Sorry if I was unclear at all. I figured that anyone with even the vaguest idea of my posting history in these threads would be pretty sure that I didn’t mean the italicized parts to be taken as a statement of my own opinions.
It’s funny to me how people who get all emotional/hostile/paranoid about something do more harm than good. In a similar vein, I always thought that those burning flags (and being allowed to) made a more powerful statement than the one they intended. And yet their polar opposites felt it necessary to outlaw flag burning. Oh Irony!
I never said the Islamic reconquest of Spain was imminent, realistic or possible. I just said it was an example of the thinking of ***some (pace Tomndebb) ***Muslims who believe that land controlled by Islam can never be allowed to return to infidel control and must someday be reconquered for Islam. Indeed, these probably believe in the future “world-wide caliphate” when everyone shall have reverted (not converted) to Islam or have had it forced upon them by conquest.
Aw shoot, you have discovered my secret. I am in the pay of radical Islamists!:rolleyes:
By the same token, people like Churchill, and anti-fascists in democratic countries who tried to spread the alarm about the Nazis in the 1930s could be seen as playing into the hands of Hitler. After all, Hitler was telling Germans they must arm and be ready to defend themselves, that Germany was threatened.
In 1933, brave people in the Jewish communities and their non-Jewish supporters saw the Nazi danger and as early as 1933 organized a boycott of German goods and a rally of 40,000 at Madison Square Gardens.
And then the media began running articles on US boycotts of German goods, and it was obvious that these boycotts had support among Jews and leftists.
But what is most interesting is the degree to which the people organizing the 1933 boycott were seen as shit-disturbers, anti-German bigots and agressors BY THEIR OWN COUNTRYMEN. The UK newspaper Daily Express went so far as to run a headline: “Judea Declares War on Germany”.
The same headline appeared in the New York Times after Samuel Untermeyer made a radio broadcast rousing American Jews to action.
I am sure that Joseph Göbbels and his boys in the propaganda ministry considered all of this pure gold for their propaganda machine.
So if you want to accuse crazy old Valteron of playing into the hands of Islamists, go ahead. Better people than me have been called worse things because they sounded an alarm others did not want to hear.
Sorry if I was unclear at all. I figured that anyone with even the vaguest idea of my posting history in these threads would be pretty sure that I didn’t mean the italicized parts to be taken as a statement of my own opinions.