The Islamic Extremist view of the role of females in their society differ greatly from the role women actually play in the religion of islam. Now we are not talking about practitioners of the islamic faith, we are talking about absolutists and extremists of the islamic religion. Terrorist groups like the Taliban, Al Qaida, Hezbollah - do you think if we elect a female POTUS their views of Americans will change or stay exactly the same?
Listening to NPR “On Point” just now people were talking about Clinton and her campaign. Supporters and opponants alike are talking about her electability - stating republicans and independants who would vote republican simply to avoid Clinton getting into office. One call in asked the question about Islamic Extremists and their view of women in society, and if we were to elect Clinton would their fire for the US be fueled even more or quelled in some way.
So I thought this should go in GD because people may wish to discuss this topic.
Do you think electing a female POTUS would change in anyway the views islamic extremists have of the US? If so what do you think would be the change?
A female POTUS wont fuel Islamic extremists any more then they are fired up now.
Their declared intention is to carry on killing,maiming and torturing until the entire population of the world is their particular brand of muslim and everyone is under Sharia law.
No, it isn’t. They just want the US out of the Middle East, particularly out of Saudi Arabia, since that is their holy land, and they consider the presence of our troops an abomination. They also resent our intrusion in the Israel/Palestine situation. Basically, they want the US to stop interfering in their countries and respect their sovereignty.
As to the OP, I’m sure it would bug them on a personal level, but I don’t think it would actually hinder the way they deal with our country. Maybe, though. I have a hard time seeing Ahmadinejad being respectful to President Clinton. We don’t get along with him very well NOW, though, so it might not make a huge difference.
How much did Margaret Thatcher disturb them as British Prime Minister?
I don’t see how Clinton would be any worse than Bush to them. They might consider it an improvement. They know he has zero respect for their sovereignty.
Won’t make any difference at all. They’re not attacking Germany because of Merkel, or going after any countries solely because they have a female head of government. They’re going after the U.S. as it is. (And the U.S. has a female Secretary of State, if that matters.) Things could change based on what Clinton does, but who she is won’t matter.
As for the OP, I’d have to say that it’s doubtful that a woman, a gay man, or a six armed circus juggler would lessen fundamentalists’ belief that they’re at war with the west. We’re dealing with religious fanatics, the actual facts of the world play secondary importance, if that, in their worldview. I don’t see much we could do having all that big an effect upon the nutter-branch of Islam. Except, perhaps, electing a Jew. Man oh man, we’d get some good conspiracy theories out of that one!
Mainstream Islam wouldn’t have a problem with a female President. Women have led four Islamic countries already: Turkey Pakistan Indonesia and Bangladesh.
The loonies couldn’t get more pissed off at us than they already are.
Of course some Islamic fundamentalists want to see America turn to Islam and adopt Sharia as our own laws. Just as some people in the US want to forcibly convert all Muslims to Christianity and nuke Mecca. But to say thiat is the reason they attacked us, and is the reason they continue to fight us, is wrong. They want us out of the Middle East. It’s been stated hundreds of times, by their own leaders, including Bin Laden. It’s not a myth, its a fact.
Are we supposed to read this large article and guess what part of it you’re trying to point out? Jesus Christ, at least you can provide a quote or two.
One that focuses on one single Islamic extremist, yet you clearly were responding to a quote about “Islamic extremists” in general. Fallacy of composition or bait and switch?
Simply for the record, you seem to honestly be claiming that there is a fairly massive movement of people who believe they are at war with the west, that they have to destroy our governments, institute a global system of Sharia and who believe that secularism itself constitutes an attack upon Islam… but it’s only our presence in the middle east that drives attacks.
You are deliberately ignoring the constellation of their beliefs in order to focus on one, tiny, subset of them. It’s a cartoon caricature of fundamentalist Islam that, interestingly enough, places the lion’s share of the blame on us instead of them, for their own actions.
I don’t really know, but it was the country that had controlled large parts of the Middle-East. I would think the UK would be as important to their sensibilities then as the US is now.
I imagine that, wherever this line of thought is presented (not as a question, but as fact), they’d be behind most of the fear-mongering– ‘If we elect a woman, she’ll get us attacked again!’
Actually, I did end up reading most of it, but I think it is extremely poor form to think that others are obliged to read a long article that you use as a cite just because you threw it out there. And frankly, your cite would be better if 90% of that long article had anything to do with the point you’re trying to make. At least BG’s long citation is actually on point to his argument.
But anyways, you seem to be committing the same fallacy that you accuse miss elizabeth of committing. She provides a cite that Osama bin Laden offered a truce to Western governments willing to quit the Arab world, and you say he’s just a subset of a movement. Then you provide your own cite and say that your cite is an authoritative summary of that movement. Then you make a strawman of miss elizabeth’s argument just for good measure.
I will also point out that your cite seems to be a discussion of the context of different views within political Islam, so there are also statements that contradict your point: “Still, Islamic fundamentalists are not traditionalists; their ideal is the selectively perceived and arbitrarily purified state of seventh-century Islam. . . . Aside from these references to the debate on the caliphate we can conclude from the study of Islamic fundamentalist literature that the caliphate and its restoration are no longer pivotal issues in contemporary political Islam. The focus now is on another concept, the nizam Is/ami—the formula of the search for a divine Islamic order in the age of fundamentalism. Within Islam there is considerable dissent on the authenticity of the concept of nizam in Islamic sources.”
So the article you cite seems to say that radical political Islam is split on the fundamental (hee-hee) issue of what precisely they are struggling for.
There are a number (even a sizable number) of people within this country that would like to force the people of the Middle East to convert to Christianity, but they are not the people driving the war in Iraq (directly). In a similar way, there are a number of people in the Middle East who would like to see America convert to Islam, but that is not the reason they fight us. They want to see the whole world become Islamic, just as Christians want to see the whole world convert to their religion. So what?
For the record, I am absolutely not claiming that “there is a fairly massive movement of people who believe they are at war with the west, that they have to destroy our governments, institute a global system of Sharia and who believe that secularism itself constitutes an attack upon Islam… but it’s only our presence in the middle east that drives attacks.” For the record, I am saying there is a relatively small movement of people who want to use terror tactics in order to force us out of that part of the world. I am also saying there are religious people who believe they possess the Ultimate Truth, and want to see everyone recognize that. A very very small number of those might even consider using force, and some of those may have hooked up with the earlier alluded to group using terror tactics, thinking that was a good way to achieve these ends. There is absolutely overlap between these different groups, and I never said their wasn’t. But, primary agenda of the groups attacking the US is that we leave that part of the world alone. This is evidenced by their own words.
The “one single Islamic extremist” I focused on happens to be the primary leader of the group responsible for attacking the US. It is you who are engaging in “bait and switch” when we are talking about groups that are fighting the US and you bring up every Muslim with a grudge against America.
If you view a discussion of the history, ideology, and goals of Islamic fundamentalism to be off point to a discussion of what the ideology and goals of Islamic fundamentalism are, that’s your call. I would hope, though, that the reason for citing the nature of Islamic fundamentalism would be obvious and not ‘poor form’ for most people interested in learning if it was hostile to the west “just” because we were in the ME or not.
By definition, Islamic fundamentalism believes that Sharia law is the only correct path to governance. No fallacy.
That’s absurd. There was no strawman. I assumed that she was talking about radical Islam, which is a substantial movement: the “Islamic extremists” who were the subject of the OP. In fact, she was specifically responding to a quote about what Islamic extremists’ declared intention is and attempted to specifically rebut it. When she responded to a specific quote, she specifically used the pronoun “they”, indicating that she was responding the quote, not the subset of Islamic extremists represented by Bin Laden’s group.
Thinking that she was addressing the topic wasn’t a strawman, because she hadn’t yet made clear that when she was talking about Islamic extremists, she wasn’t really talking about them, just Bin Laden’s group.
Further, talking about the visible outcroppings of Islamist ideology (eg. theocrats like the Taliban and terror groups like Hezbollah) without looking at the underlying agenda gives a drastically oversimplified picture.
Nothing there contradicts my point. The Caliphate is not synonymous with Sharia law.
But agrees that they take a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and the importance of Islamic (ie. Sharia) law.
Your tu quoque fallacy aside, and ignoring that the scope and nature of Christian fundamentalism is nothing like Islamic fundamentalism… you honestly need to ask the question “So what?”
So there are people dedicated to the destruction of western society and replacing it with a global Islamist rule… and the response to that is so what? The ‘so what’ dynamic is, as the OP asked, whether or not having Hillary as president would change how Islamic fundamentalists would look at us.
The fact that there is a massive movement is beyond question. They are the “Islamic extremists” referenced in the OP. I had assumed you were actually talking about them. I seem to have been mistaken.
So, then, to reformulate:
There is a fairly massive movement of people who believe they are at war with the west, that they have to destroy our governments, institute a global system of Sharia and who believe that secularism itself constitutes an attack upon Islam… but it’s only our presence in the middle east that drives attacks and you refuse to admit that the movement is not small.
In general, when faced with fundamentalists themselves who cast their view of the world world as a struggle for Islamic supremacy, and you telling me that’s not the issue, I’ll trust their own descriptions of their own positions.
What the OP actually said was:
You specifically responded to a correct statement that fundamentalists justified violence in the name of Islamic supremicism. In response to that, a statement of “Islamic extremism” in general, you responded by saying that “they just want the US out of the middle east.” That was, you were directly responding to the correct assertion that Islamic fundamentalism is typified by the desire to institute global Sharia with the incorrect assertion that “they” (ie. Islamic extremists) “just” want the US out of the ME. This is false to facts.
Which is the bait and switch.
The was referring to “Islamic extremists”. You responded directly to that, used a specific pronoun “they” which made it look as if you were referring to the people the OP was talking about, but instead you are talking about only a small subset of all Islamic extremists. (You’re still wrong about Al Quaeda, which I’ll get to)
The thread is about “The Islamic Extremist view”, “absolutists and extremists of the islamic religion” and/or “Terrorist groups like the Taliban, Al Qaida, Hezbollah”.
Some facts for the peanut gallery. Radical Islamic factions, like some in the Muslim Brotherhood, are not motivated by a desire to get the US out of the ME. In fact, recent documents show that members of the MB planned a violent movement in America in order to institute Sharia.
The MB itself, those trained/indoctrinated by it and its ideology itself has had direct impact upon terrorists and theocrats the world over. Again, towards the aim of Sharia, not “just” getting the US out of the ME.
Further, elizabeth, if you want to fight your ignorance, you might be interested that you are profoundly wrong about even Al Quaeda.