Yet another Islamic attack in London...

[Insomnia]

I'm looking through this thread and I don't see any specific examples. Was it in another thread?

I didn't specify scientists, I did specify academics/incredibly clever people though. Similar argument, really.

'I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that. There are countless numbers of incredibly clever people who believe irrational things like the fables of the Bible and the Qu'ran. All the other parts of their academic lives are filled with logic and reason, but when it comes to religion, they chuck it right out the window. The religious conviction that is felt in religion is absolutely enough to push rational people into doing irrational things.'

 

[tedtan]

OK, if the reform of Islam is to come from within, it might work, whereas if it were something the western governments attempted to imposed from the outside, it would only add further friction and lead to more conflict.

But I still don't think it would work for the reasons bostjan mentioned above. What would most likely happen is that Islam would split into yet another faction/denomination and we'd end up with equivalent or even more fighting.

In order to get the terrorist groups to stop employing terrorism against the west, we need to get them to stop hating us. If they merely hated us because we have different beliefs, then they would simply let us answer for our sins when we die as their beliefs indicate. The problem is that much of the reason they hate us is our our behaviors, past and present, such as

- Israel: both the creation of and our continued support for;
- US meddling in the ME to protect/control oil supplies;
- Active military action in the ME with civilian casualties;
- Etc.​

aren't things that the west will ever stop, at least not until we've used up all the oil the ME countries are willing to sell us cheaply.

So there is the conundrum: how do we get people in the ME to stop hating us if we are unwilling to stop shitting in their back yard? I don't have this one solved, so I'm all ears if anyone has any ideas.

 

[bostjan]

So here is our exchange

God and religion are ideological inventions. As such, you cannot motivate a rational person to do irrational things merely because of religion or God. Therefore, hatred, in the name of religion, the name of God, is still just hatred.

I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that. There are countless numbers of incredibly clever people who believe irrational things like the fables of the Bible and the Qu'ran. All the other parts of their academic lives are filled with logic and reason, but when it comes to religion, they chuck it right out the window. The religious conviction that is felt in religion is absolutely enough to push rational people into doing irrational things.

Also, what are you getting at? What irrational things do those rational people do?

I must be misunderstanding you because you were a little vague.

I already explained how rational people (established scientists) can be persuaded into the irrational (Biblical fables of unproven magic which they see as the absolute truth).

I'm looking through this thread and I don't see any specific examples. Was it in another thread?

I didn't specify scientists, I did specify academics/incredibly clever people though. Similar argument, really.

So...it sounds like you are saying that rational people are motivated to do Biblical fables by religion. I guess I don't quite follow your point.

I suppose I was too vague as well. My point was that hatred motivates people to violence and that they use religion to justify it, not that religion motivates people toward hatred and violence. Perhaps I am splitting hairs, though, since if the people motivated by hatred are the same ones who use religion to justify it...except that there are plenty of religious people who are non-violent, as well. But I'm not really certain why I should have to backtrack and clarify that anyway.

I may not agree with religion, but I'm not about to blame Islam as the primary motivator in the violence stemming from the Middle East. The Quran is violent, but honestly, no more violent than the Pentateuch, the Bible, the Vedas, etc. Atheists can be violent, too. What sets these really violent people apart from non-violent people, 10 times out of 10, is hatred.

 

[tedtan]

I don't want to put words in Insomnia's mouth, but I think he is saying that otherwise intelligent, educated, and rational people can do stupid, irrational things when motivated by deep seated religious convictions.

And I can see his point, especially at the level of the poor and uneducated that terrorist groups primarily prey upon, though I agree that religion is mostly used as a means of control and/or justification rather than the root cause of these types of incidents.

 

[partialdeafness]

Rational critique of islam can appear like bigotry if you want to believe that all religion is equal. The worst way of thinking is simply to hate the "other." A little bit better way of thinking is that any religion can be bad, and it's bad to be a bigot, so don't single any religion out. Although this feels good to think, it does not match reality very well-it is too post-modern "everything is relative," "there is no truth", etc.
The truth is that there is a link between belief and action. Most of the 9/11 hijackers where actually very well educated, apparently intelligent people. What could make a normal, moral person behave in suck a way? Where they all sadistic sociopaths who wanted to cause pain?
Only a twisted system of belief could make an otherwise rational person act so badly, because in their twisted frame of reference, they are doing something good. Not just ok, but highly honorable. They believe that any muslims they kill in the process will go to paradise, and that even those deaths are a positive thing.

There's a proportionate increase in "small" attacks on muslims and refugees too though. Far-right parties are growing in practically every european country, and the US, well let's not even talk about it. In Sweden, something like 90 buildings meant for housing refugees burned last year. Such crimes are rarely solved while refugees and immigrants are kicked out of european countries in increasing numbers. A guy drove a truck into a crowd in Stockholm recently, he had just found out he was getting kicked out of Sweden. To me there's no doubt in my mind that the increasing hatred and hostility towards muslims in Europe and the US is fanning the flames and creating more terrorism. You can't let a guy like Trump become president and expect everyone he's villainizing to just sit quiet and take it.

This is one particular argument that to me highlights the problem we are dealing with. Islam is peaceful, but if you insult it, you are subject to violence because you insulted it? Seems to prove the opposite.

It's not that when the west makes it's plans, it shouldn't include blowback in the calculus. Quite the opposite. I think a good place to start would be to not support the saudi regime, since they are very similar to isis. They murder gays, but the u.s. government is just fine selling them F-16's. Absolutely infuriating.
Of course, if we stopped supporting them, they would probably just move towards russian influence which would not be any better. And if we removed them by force, we could have another iraq(or worse.)
...

My point is not that we should hate muslims, but that if you look at polls for what muslims believe, you will find shocking percentages support death for leaving islam, persecuting homosexuals, and forcing women to live in subjugation, and so on. Reform is the only good way forward.

 

[vilk]

I've never understood the frequent Islam-apologist comment: 500 years ago Christianity was doing the same thing. What is that an appeal to? Why is it relevant? What does relative "age" of a religion have to do with a proclivity for violence?


I think we need to promote the idea that Islam =/= Muslim. Islam is a religious philosophy--that is particularly violent and socially backwards. Muslims aren't. Usually. Like, how many people you know that believe in Jesus but wouldn't be caught dead at a prayer group? How many Christians do you know that actually waited till marriage for sex? If I believed that all Muslims were by the book, well I would actually be a little worried about them. If I believed that all Jews were by the book, I might be just as worried. But they aren't, just like almost no one is. Religion =/= Human.

Wanna know how to neuter some radical Islam? Expose them to other sh/t. These people are from homogeneous societies. My forecast is that the future of Islam in countries outside the ME (as in, Europe or USA) is that it will look quite a lot like that line graph of Christianity, going down, down, down.

If you ask me outright: Yeah, I'm anti-Islam. The tenets of that religion in every variety I'm aware of are totally heinous. But am I anti-Muslim? Of course not. That would mean being anti-human.

 

[Drew]

The IRA were different though. They were a political independence movement. They were generally confined to a geographical area. Islam, however, breeds terrorism throughout the world.

Not to nit-pick (though, then again, I'm not sure this IS nit-picking, since it kind of cuts to the crux of this), but considering the stated goal of ISIS is after all to set up an Islamic State, I'd say that ISIS IS a political independence movement, too. They've just decided that it's a politically expedient strategy to launch terrorist attacks overseas to fan anti-Islamic sentiment abroad, so that they can better paint the conflict as an "Islam against godless heathens who hate us" conflict and shore up domestic support for what is an insanely fundamentalist, radical interpretation of Islam, as well as better justify their methods.

If the IRA thought domestic belief in a global war on Catholicism would have gotten them a free Northern Ireland, we'd absolutely have seen suicide bombers at the door of the All Saint's Church in Wittenberg.

 

[AngstRiddenDreams]

Abolishing religious ties to governments would be a good first step.

 

[Insomnia]

OK, if the reform of Islam is to come from within, it might work, whereas if it were something the western governments attempted to imposed from the outside, it would only add further friction and lead to more conflict.

But I still don't think it would work for the reasons bostjan mentioned above. What would most likely happen is that Islam would split into yet another faction/denomination and we'd end up with equivalent or even more fighting.

In order to get the terrorist groups to stop employing terrorism against the west, we need to get them to stop hating us. If they merely hated us because we have different beliefs, then they would simply let us answer for our sins when we die as their beliefs indicate. The problem is that much of the reason they hate us is our our behaviors, past and present, such as

- Israel: both the creation of and our continued support for;
- US meddling in the ME to protect/control oil supplies;
- Active military action in the ME with civilian casualties;
- Etc.​

aren't things that the west will ever stop, at least not until we've used up all the oil the ME countries are willing to sell us cheaply.

So there is the conundrum: how do we get people in the ME to stop hating us if we are unwilling to stop shitting in their back yard? I don't have this one solved, so I'm all ears if anyone has any ideas.

I've asked this point already, I didn't receive an answer. Let's forget Islam entirely for the moment, because despite the fact I think it is the primary factor for the hatred I am about to describe, it is not a necessary argument in this debate.

Muslim extremists (whether you think they are guided by Islam or not) are killing Christians. They are killing gays. They are killing non-Muslims. Why on Earth would our stopping any meddling in the ME solve those problems, exactly? Genuinely, how would use taking a non-interventionist policy stop their bigotry which is clearly not motivated by the West, but by some other factor.

 

[Insomnia]

Not to nit-pick (though, then again, I'm not sure this IS nit-picking, since it kind of cuts to the crux of this), but considering the stated goal of ISIS is after all to set up an Islamic State, I'd say that ISIS IS a political independence movement, too. They've just decided that it's a politically expedient strategy to launch terrorist attacks overseas to fan anti-Islamic sentiment abroad, so that they can better paint the conflict as an "Islam against godless heathens who hate us" conflict and shore up domestic support for what is an insanely fundamentalist, radical interpretation of Islam, as well as better justify their methods.

If the IRA thought domestic belief in a global war on Catholicism would have gotten them a free Northern Ireland, we'd absolutely have seen suicide bombers at the door of the All Saint's Church in Wittenberg.

I'm talking about all Islamic terrorism, though.

 

[Insomnia]

I don't want to put words in Insomnia's mouth, but I think he is saying that otherwise intelligent, educated, and rational people can do stupid, irrational things when motivated by deep seated religious convictions.

And I can see his point, especially at the level of the poor and uneducated that terrorist groups primarily prey upon, though I agree that religion is mostly used as a means of control and/or justification rather than the root cause of these types of incidents.

I am saying that, yes, I am. Not just do stupid, irrational things, but also believe stupid, irrational things.

 

[JohnIce]

I've asked this point already, I didn't receive an answer. Let's forget Islam entirely for the moment, because despite the fact I think it is the primary factor for the hatred I am about to describe, it is not a necessary argument in this debate.

Muslim extremists (whether you think they are guided by Islam or not) are killing Christians. They are killing gays. They are killing non-Muslims. Why on Earth would our stopping any meddling in the ME solve those problems, exactly? Genuinely, how would use taking a non-interventionist policy stop their bigotry which is clearly not motivated by the West, but by some other factor.

If those christians, gays and non-muslims could unite with the peaceful muslims, we'd be a few billion strong having each others' backs and the extremists would be reduced and contained like any other sect or political group of nuts. And that's the best we've ever had or ever will have, because extremism has never in the history of the world not been a threat. I mean, Breivik killed a hundred children at a socialist youth camp in Norway a few years back, how can we ever be safe from a nut with an automatic rifle? We won't. But we can stop confusing terrorists with muslims and treat innocent people with decency.

 

[Insomnia]

I should clarify my belief.

I maintain that terrorism (and hatred and intolerance) in the Islamic world stems from two places: interventionism and Islam.

I also think that the organisation called ISIS isn’t actually fundamentally Islamic. They worship Baghdadi like a demigod, consistently rape women, they kill their fellow Muslims, they often are found taking drugs and drinking alcohol. There are numerous other Islamic terror groups and fundamentalist groups that I do in fact see as fundamentally Islamic, however, ISIS is most certainly not one of them.

I believe that ISIS are recruiting these young men through two ways: obviously, like a gang, they have power and influence, and these generally poor and uneducated disaffected young men are drawn into it.

However, that’s where the second problem lies: they cherry-pick fundamentalist Islamic teachings to draw religious conviction on these young men. It is still the fault of Islam that it allows for such an interpretation to be put upon these young men.

Islam can be interpreted as incredibly peaceful, it can be interpreted as horrifically violent. I don’t think one interpretation makes more sense than the other, considering the numerous verses each side just brushes off as ‘incorrect’ or ‘irrelevant’.

However, in terms of governments like Saudi Arabia and UAE, and in terms of the countless Islamic hate preachers across the Western World (and the mainstream Islamic world), I believe those people are legitimate Muslims who are preaching these things as they read them in the Qu’ran.

I also think it’s silly to say ‘religion is only ever a factor of control, not of original influence in attacks, Western Interventionism is’.

Western interventionism (like I’ve said) doesn’t explain theocratic governments. It doesn’t explain attacks on non-interventionist countries (like we are seeing across Asia, and in countries like Sweden). It doesn’t explain the hatred of non-Muslims in the ME, it doesn't explain the mass-oppression of women, it doesn’t explain the calls to violence from people like Charlie Hebdo or Salman Rushdie, it doesn’t explain how these people’s root influence of such extremism came about.

 

[Insomnia]

If those christians, gays and non-muslims could unite with the peaceful muslims, we'd be a few billion strong having each others' backs and the extremists would be reduced and contained like any other sect or political group of nuts. And that's the best we've ever had or ever will have, because extremism has never in the history of the world not been a threat. I mean, Breivik killed a hundred children at a socialist youth camp in Norway a few years back, how can we ever be safe from a nut with an automatic rifle? We won't. But we can stop confusing terrorists with muslims and treat innocent people with decency.

We should not conflate liberal Muslims with fundamentalist Muslims, no, you're absolutely correct. Well said.

 

[Explorer]

I agree that some embrace whatever justification they can to do violence to those they perceive as "other."

https://theintercept.com/2017/05/31...ght-terrorists-pose-a-clear-danger-to-us-all/

Despite Trump deciding to ignore homegrown terrorists, for whatever unspoken reason, right-wing terrorists kill more people than Islamic terrorists in the US since 9/11.

Specifically in the UK, I was there during the years of IRA and National Front violence.

In fact, the horrible practice of "cracking," practiced by National Front terrorists, could reaonably be considered one of the factors leading citizens of the Empire to perceive that Empire as their enemy. It doesn't even require explanations implicating Islam or western interventionism, just horrible racism against people with dark skin.

Wasn't a NHS doctor, after spending 48 hours helping victims of a recent terrorist attack, the subject of a racist tirade in Manchester because of his dark skin? Yelling at a doctor and citizen that he's a "Paki bas***d" doesn't seem like anything but horrible racism, and definitely points out a more local reason for the alienation which might lead to radicalization.

Remember, it'a not like that racist insult just emerged from the recent attacks. This is a systemic racism which has been part of the Empire for longer than our lifetimes.

 

[Drew]

I'm talking about all Islamic terrorism, though.

I'm perfectly aware. And I'm saying that it absolutely has a political independence objective to it, considering that IS is, after all, trying to found a state in the Middle East. Let's not pretend that they don't have pragmatic goals and the extremism isn't a means to an end.

 

[EdgeC]

Interesting graph of terrorist related attacks in the UK in the past ~50 years. Supports the point I made earlier about media sensationalism. It also suggests the bulk of terrorist related activity in the UK happened before 'Islam' became synonymous with terrorism.

It's not Islam, it's people with an agenda. Any agenda, religious or otherwise. And as Drew rightly pointed out, if the IRA thought they'd gain an independent Northern Ireland by shooting up a concert hall in France, I dare say they would have.

 

[Dredg]

It is impossible to "reform" Islam without gutting the bedrock of its belief system and dismantling entire sects, cultures, and governments.

What most people don't understand, is the importance of the hadith (the prophet Muhammad's sayings) in relation to the Qur'an. Some sects place it second to the Qur'an, yet many more view it as equal in importance and message (as well as some who place it above the Qur'an). One of the most apparent examples lies in the grooming and dress habits of men; trimming the mustache while keeping the beard, not allowing clothing to fall below the ankle or above the knee, eschewing silk garments and golden finery... all this (and more!) in order to differentiate oneself from the non-believers. This is further expounded with moronic knee-jerk advice, such as dying one's hair because the Jews and Christians do not (tons of references to do the exact opposite of what non-believers do... take your pick).

While the above example is rather tame, it is the philosophy of standing apart from non-muslims that will continue to alienate the Muslim world from the secular world. Countries that demand cultural assimilation (such as the Euro and Nordic shelter countries) are experiencing pushback because Islam quite simply forbids it. A simple reading of even the most well-known collection of hadith, Sahih Bukhari, will also show plenty of anti-semitism and archaic commands that reflect 6th and 7th century beliefs. Ludicrous statements such as flies carrying disease on one wing and the cure for that disease on the other wing, or that looking at your partner's genitals/talking excessively during intercourse will result in birth defects. Again, a plethora of silliness to choose from.

And yes, this is where it clearly states that apostates should be put to death. Devout, by-the-books Muslims will never accept cultural assimilation unless you assimilate into their culture. After you say your shahadah (affirmation of faith), there is a MASSIVE push for westerners to change their name, learn arabic, dress differently, and to adopt "Islamic" mannerisms, such as sitting like the prophet did, eating with two fingers and a thumb like the prophet did, sleeping on one side like the prophet did, ritual washing like the like the prophet did, praying like the prophet did... you get the picture.

The divide begins within Islam itself.

Fun fact: different sects revere different collections of hadith.

 

[Insomnia]

So here is our exchange













So...it sounds like you are saying that rational people are motivated to do Biblical fables by religion. I guess I don't quite follow your point.

I suppose I was too vague as well. My point was that hatred motivates people to violence and that they use religion to justify it, not that religion motivates people toward hatred and violence. Perhaps I am splitting hairs, though, since if the people motivated by hatred are the same ones who use religion to justify it...except that there are plenty of religious people who are non-violent, as well. But I'm not really certain why I should have to backtrack and clarify that anyway.

I may not agree with religion, but I'm not about to blame Islam as the primary motivator in the violence stemming from the Middle East. The Quran is violent, but honestly, no more violent than the Pentateuch, the Bible, the Vedas, etc. Atheists can be violent, too. What sets these really violent people apart from non-violent people, 10 times out of 10, is hatred.

And where does that hatred stem from? In terms of Islamic fundamentalists, surprise surprise, it stems from Islamic texts and preachers!

 

[chopeth]

We could try that, but it would involve the western world embargoing all Middle Eastern countries, including allies such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait,and we would all pay A LOT more for gas/petrol, diesel, heating fuel, etc. Then, after five or ten or twenty years, we may have made a point or we may have merely added fuel to the already burning fire. Given the tensions in the area, I tend to lean towards the latter.

We shouldn't be interested in those allies if they don't respect human rights, let alone if they ideologically support the movements that threaten our countries with trucks and weapons. We can't have all. Developing new and clean energy sources (and stopping oligopolies) to avoid fossile fuels is a must, not only for anti-terrorist fight, but for the sake of our planet which isn't something important for Trump and the like as it seems.

But we need a lot more of work. F.e., we need more education and integration of the 2nd or 3rd generation of inmmigrants in our countries to prevent this new form of terrorism, the solution should be an effort in a lot of parts involved. We must understand why these generations of new citicens in our countries are loosing touch and obviously "reforming Q'ran" or whatever the simplistic stupid solution is out of question here.