We Are at War with Islam

[Vyn]

This topic that Elves brought up seems to deserve its own thread in a part of the forum other than General Daily Thoughts.

So, I'll start that which has already begun:

The comment is "We are at war with Islam"

Could someone define "we"?

Also, define "war" in this context. An ideological war? A "shove a bomb up their ass" war (hat tip to Accept)?

Finally, define Islam. Islam as laid out in the Koran? Islam as laid out in the Koran and Hadith? All Hadith or just some of them? Islam as interpreted by various sects within "Islam"?

I'll share my thoughts later - have to go get down on it.

[Charger]

Well we (christian faith) have ALWAYS been at war with Islam.

The thing is though we don't want to be but they do. Christianity has evolved (or should I say the western world) a lot where as Islam has not. It is still the same medival black and white religion it always was. In Islam women are trash, other faiths are infidels that can (and in minds of some SHOULD) be eradicated.

Some might say that it's just the radical side but it honestly is not. If the massive part of Islamic people would really stand up against the radicalism and if they really would want to eradicate radicalism they would...but they honestly have no interest in that as deep down most of them do share if not all atleast some parts of that more radical ideology.

Now ofcourse the western world isn't completely without blame though but in the grand scheme of things the scales do tip the other way.

Lets remember we aren't the ones fighting a "holy war" against all western infidels and enjoy and encourage killing of innocent people including women and children.

[Zzzptm]

I'll be taking a view opposite the one expressed in the title. There are nations in conflict with other nations, yes. There are places where cultures collide, sometimes sadly resulting in violence. But I do reject the idea that Western Civilization is locked in a life or death struggle with global Islam.

I consider such an idea to be born out of fear, fear of an unknown.

It's also telling that it focuses on what is seen and reported as news events. More people die in Mexican drug cartel violence every year, but that is old news, it doesn't carry the same shock as an infrequent terror event. There are multiple mass shootings in the USA every year, with a higher death toll than what is lost due to terrorism, but the reporting on those is (sadly) treating them more and more like everyday, old news. When Notre Dame caught fire, people rushed to judgment and wanted to point a finger at Islam, even before any investigation of the cause had begun.

I work in IT security, and I can attest that there is far, far more damage being done to Western Civilization by Chinese state-sponsored cyberattacks than any Islamic Jihad. Yet, it is not reported, so we don't talk about any sort of "war" with Confucianism, Taoism, or even China or Communism.

[Tyr66]

 

[Tyr66]

I'm tired of seeing the inexorable progress of Islam in France and in the Western world for the past 30 years and with its procession of assassination, decapitation  (Hervé Gourdel, I'll never forget this atrocious killing that I I saw it because these bearish rots wanted it),  disrespect towards the women, destruction of the social relations because of an openly assumed proselyness, to see whole areas to become small Algeria or Morocco or Tunisia to a few hundred meters from my house, sitting on the terrace of their cafes doing nothing all day.
All of this will end very badly in 5, 10 or 20 years but it will be too late. We had to act for a generation.
Those last days , some negative comments coming from this community, being satisfied with the fire of Notre Dame, have not been very well relayed by medias  to, once again, preserve the famous Social Peace that the coward local politicians buy with very generous subsidies.

Bin Laden had said that this cancer of humanity, this plague called Islam would colonize our World by the very prolific uterus of muslim women: this asshole was right.
Here, a veiled woman in street stump always a baby in a stroller.
A French family has, on average, 1.9 children vs a Muslim family has 5 or 6. A simple calculation over 25 years can be scary ...

[Zzzptm]

^ Birthrates drop as economic conditions improve.

France itself has a difficult history with this regard - it created a Francophone world through colonization and imperialism, but has never seemed to have the intention of allowing its colonial subjects to be fully "French". After WW2, for example, it cut the pensions of all soldiers that had served in colonial units - even if they were French citizens.

Improve economic chances, work at assimilation and integration, the veils drop and the birth rates decline. Build walls, and the radicals on the other side will have more power.

[Charger]

Here's a small video from few years ago (the numbers would look a hell of a lot bigger nowadays) talking about radical muslim population in the world.

This guy knows what he's talking about.

[Zzzptm]

This guy knows what he's talking about.

Shapiro is making some wild exaggerations, and equates supporting *any* form of Sharia law as radicalism, which would be like saying anyone from Scandinavia that's coughed supports Black Metal. It's a massive leap of logic, and doesn't land on solid ground.

Most Muslims that want Sharia would only have that law apply to Muslims. That's not radicalism, but more on the lines of what a religious community expects of its believers. Now, there can be argument on whether or not an application of Sharia to Muslims is itself allowing civil rights, and so forth, but that kind of nuance isn't in Shapiro's blanket statements.

Moreover, Muslims in Western nations have much much lower rates of wanting any sort of Sharia law. Rates so low, that one of them making such a declaration is newsworthy for its shock value. But, again, not even that is radicalization.

Shapiro mentions honor killings - those are facets not of Islam, but of societies that had those practices long before Islam appeared on the scene. Same thing with the hijab, chadri, and other forms of female coverings.

Other things he mentions - 9/11 conspiracies: there are a ton of conservative Americans that fall into that category. Not a good criteria.

Support for Hamas - that's an Arab Nationalism thing, not a Muslim thing. Not even all Arab Nationalists support Hamas. Just ask the supporters of the PLO or the few remaining Ba'athists out there. There are Christian Palestinians that support Hamas. Not a good criteria.

Prosecution for those who depict Mohammed - Prosecution ain't the same as beheading or murdering. Not a good criteria.

Justification of attacks against civilians - here is where Shapiro himself is on record as supporting. So I suppose that with Shapiro's loose criteria, that makes him a radical Muslim. What a hypocrite! No, not a good criteria.

Do Muslims in some countries hold illiberal, backward views? Yes. So do people of other faiths as well as atheists. (I'm looking at former Soviet Union nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus when I say that.) So what?

I've been in the heart of the Muslim Quarter of Hyderabad. I'm a tall, very white, very foreign person. I felt no danger whatsoever and was free to walk through Chaminar and Makkah Masjid. I moved freely through the shops, alongside some Hindus and my co-worker from the USA, who was equally tall and white. We were easy targets to anyone that wanted to take a shot, physically or verbally. No such things happened.

And, for the record, I know enough Urdu to know when I'm being insulted. Nobody around me knew that I spoke Urdu, yet I heard only talk of business or comments about "look at the big white guy!" If there were a huge percentage of radicals, as that shill Shapiro claims, I would have at least heard something on the lines of "saleh gorra!" - "Damn whitey!" Didn't even happen.

Ben Shapiro is either lying, pulling facts out of his butt, or both.

[Zzzptm]

And though I hate to give fuel to Typhon's fire about all religion being bad, I'll note that Uganda has been ravaged by Christian terrorists, that my first reaction to the Sri Lanka bombings was that they were the product of Tamil Tigers, a Hindu terrorist group, and that mostly-Buddhist Thailand and Myanmar have been engaged in ethnic cleansing actions against their Muslim minorities.

In the USA, whenever an abortion clinic is bombed, you can bet your bottom dollar that it's a Christian fundamentalist group behind it.

The violence in Ireland that had a recent flare-up has zero to do with Islam. Any religious connection to it goes straight to Christianity's various forms.

That guy in Norway that killed 69? He did it in the name of a Christian God. Most anti-gay violence in the USA is done by Christians. Antisemitism? Look at the Christians... The Christchurch Mosque shootings? Christian terrorism.

Hindu terrorism has been a huge issue in India, with Hindu nationalists targeting Muslim and Christian communities. That Makkah Masjid I visited? 8 years previous, it was a target of Hindu terrorism.

By no means is this an exhaustive list of sources of terrorism - I don't even mention anti-religious Communist / Fascist / Nationalist terrorism - but it's to show that there's no way we can blame Islam for all the violence born of an intolerant religious view.

[Charger]

Well the thing is Sharia law IS radical...there really is no way of sugar coating that...or I suppose there is but well that'll fall under the category of pulling facts out of one's butt.

Also if anyone wants to prosecute people for making fun of a prophet that too falls straight into radicalism...again no other way to explain that.

Supporting Hamas...that's supporting a terrorist organization...if that is NOT radicalism I don't know what is. And yes HAMAS openly supports terrorists so in my book that makes them a terrorist organization.

But the point here that mr. Shapiro was making is that it is NOT a tiny minority of muslims that are radical.

Naturally there is still a leap from just being a radical to being a terrorist but again that was NOT the point here.


Also like I said earlier...if Islam would be so against killing westeners they'd stop the terrorists themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as invaders and enemies. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a world wide problem.

[Zzzptm]

Sharia Law - there is much in Sharia that details daily religious practice, beyond jurisprudence. It's like the Talmudic Law in Judaism. And, like Talmudic Law, there are multiple interpretations of it, including modernizing views that cut out the really Medieval stuff while preserving the core of the rules on religious practice. The same thing happened to Catholicism as it lost its hold on the governments of Europe.

Prosecuting those who make caricatures of Mohammed - this also includes people that see such things as the caricatures as "hate speech" directed against Islam. I'm not in that group, but that's not radical violence. Call 'em snowflakes if you want, but not terrorists. Absolutely another way to explain it, as you see here. And, again, prosecuting is not equivalent to calling for their death.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. But supporting it is not a religious position. It is a political one. BIG difference. If you want to make the same blanket statement, then you'd also have to say that every supporter of Trump is a fundamentalist Christian. Typhon will bust that mold with a quickness!

As for stopping the terrorists themselves, they do. The worst casualties of Islamic terrorism are among the Muslims themselves. The vast majority of Muslims are decent people and they're dealing with the radicals that target *everyone* outside of their group, including co-religionists.

Now, the fact that these groups get funding from Saudi Arabia is something that no national leader wants to call out - but it's that Saudi money that buys plane tickets to enable these guys to go international. And, in the Muslim world, there is a lot of anger that gets directed at the Saudis for what they enable as part of their foreign policy.

Again, if there was a Muslim population with over 50% radicalization - not just general negative views of the West, but full-on radicalization - my travel to India would have been with company-provided bodyguards and motorcades to and from the work sites. Instead, it was a free and open place where people of all faiths were able to walk side by side - in spite of what a relative handful of radicals would have us do.

There was zero edginess in the bazaars. In fact, at one point I got people besides my co-workers to sing along with "Yeh Dosti". We were having *fun*, not terror.

Again, Shapiro is the kind of propagandist that nobody should give 20 seconds to listen to. He's full of lies and bent truths. The straight dope is this: the vast majority of all kinds of people pretty much want to be left the hell alone to do what they want to do. Their rule is simple: they won't bother you if you don't bother them.

Would I walk boldly down the streets of Kabul in Afghanistan? Hell no, the place is a war zone.

Would I walk boldly down the streets of Richardson, Texas? Yeah. And there's a massive Muslim community there. I've taught many of their children when I was a teacher and they were pretty much like kids everywhere.

I've already mentioned the total lack of problems walking around a massive Muslim community in India, full of total strangers that nevertheless treated me with the same courtesy and respect that they showed each other.

[Zzzptm]

Also like I said earlier...if Islam would be so against killing westeners they'd stop the terrorists themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as invaders and enemies. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a world wide problem.

Let me re-word that... I'll put my changes in bold and see if it still sounds true...

Also like I said earlier...if American gun owners would be so against killing American children they'd stop the mass murderers themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as liberals and socialists. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a national problem.

If it doesn't sound true to you - and it doesn't sound true to me - then the statement it came from must itself be questioned closely before we can accept it as truthful (which I do not).

[AnnoMundi]

This topic that Elves brought up seems to deserve its own thread in a part of the forum other than General Daily Thoughts.

So, I'll start that which has already begun:

The comment is "We are at war with Islam"

Could someone define "we"?

Also, define "war" in this context. An ideological war? A "shove a bomb up their ass" war (hat tip to Accept)?

Finally, define Islam. Islam as laid out in the Koran? Islam as laid out in the Koran and Hadith? All Hadith or just some of them? Islam as interpreted by various sects within "Islam"?

I'll share my thoughts later - have to go get down on it.

I define we as anyone who isn’t Muslim or even the wrong kind Muslim, after all they were killing Shiites because they weren’t Sunni, for Christ sakes.

[Charger]

Also like I said earlier...if Islam would be so against killing westeners they'd stop the terrorists themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as invaders and enemies. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a world wide problem.

Let me re-word that... I'll put my changes in bold and see if it still sounds true...

Also like I said earlier...if American gun owners would be so against killing American children they'd stop the mass murderers themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as liberals and socialists. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a national problem.

If it doesn't sound true to you - and it doesn't sound true to me - then the statement it came from must itself be questioned closely before we can accept it as truthful (which I do not).

Okay I don't even understand this anymore...what the heck does any of those changes you made to my original post have anything to do with it?

That's not even remotely the same issue nor does one have anything to do with the other...you're just confusing the issue now.

[Typhon]

Also like I said earlier...if Islam would be so against killing westeners they'd stop the terrorists themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as invaders and enemies. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a world wide problem.

Let me re-word that... I'll put my changes in bold and see if it still sounds true...

Also like I said earlier...if American gun owners would be so against killing American children they'd stop the mass murderers themselves and change their ways...but do they? No...they don't even try to. And when other try they are branded as liberals and socialists. To me that again screams more radicalism than anything else. And again it's not a tiny majority. If it would be a tiny majory it would NOT be a national problem.

If it doesn't sound true to you - and it doesn't sound true to me - then the statement it came from must itself be questioned closely before we can accept it as truthful (which I do not).

Okay I don't even understand this anymore...what the heck does any of those changes you made to my original post have anything to do with it?

That's not even remotely the same issue nor does one have anything to do with the other...you're just confusing the issue now.

And you don't understand it, because it doesn't make any sense.  Zzz's comparison is worse than apples and oranges.  It is apples and rocks.