Read something other than leftist sources.
-
Features
What should Israel do?
- Thread starter steve_bnk
- Start date
Read something other than leftist sources.
arkirk
Veteran Member
How is it you hate Islam more than any other religion? I have no use for any of these theistic religions and regard them as essentially the same in regard to how their adherents apply them. There is a wide range of interpretations of all religions including Islam. Some of them are quite acceptable and can fit into a social fabric without too much friction...others cannot. When I point out the carnage of the IDF in Gaza, I am not hating Jews. I am just saying somebody has to change their ways...very likely for THEIR OWN GOOD.
Every religion has its uncivil outliers. As an atheist it is neither my place nor my desire to give any special license to any of these patently untrue religions. That means Jews have no preference with me over Muslims. Their crimes remain crimes and I do not excuse any of them because THEY ARE NOT MUSLIMS, like you do. Would it be fair to say you are a pro Jewish muslim hating atheist...or are you a Zionist Jew posting here? Your agenda is unclear. It certainly doesn't seem to be to make peace if possible.
untermensche
Contributor
What are these sources?
angelo
Deleted
No other group of followers of any religion live and breath it as does the followers of islam. The horror most westerners are expressing about ISIS and it's actions should come as no surprise. It's islam in it's purest form.
6 out 10 muslims are illiterate, and kept that way deliberately. Islam is a facist/political system and much more than just a religion. The 1 billion people mentioned who are followers of this death cult are mostly living in a backward poverty stricken Middle eastern countries. [excepting oil rich Saudi Arabia, Dubai etc] With no idea of and are actually hostile to Western democracy style governments. Their long term charter is to replace Western democracy with sharia laws and a single world wide caliphate. They will go to any length to achieve it, including deceiving naive westerners who are bending over backwards to appease these zealots. Freedom of speech appears to be one of a long line of grievances they wish to curb and are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. [Danish cartoons ] The other that's having spectacular success is getting Westerners to feel guilty for some perceived wrong they've done, to blame Westerners for their own atrocities.
How many [Noam Chomsky's] actually blamed the West for 9/11 and the London bombings, the Spanish bombing, etc, etc. Their takeover of the UN as a block is another example of the influence this 1 billion people have over the other 6 billion people!
6 out 10 muslims are illiterate, and kept that way deliberately. Islam is a facist/political system and much more than just a religion. The 1 billion people mentioned who are followers of this death cult are mostly living in a backward poverty stricken Middle eastern countries. [excepting oil rich Saudi Arabia, Dubai etc] With no idea of and are actually hostile to Western democracy style governments. Their long term charter is to replace Western democracy with sharia laws and a single world wide caliphate. They will go to any length to achieve it, including deceiving naive westerners who are bending over backwards to appease these zealots. Freedom of speech appears to be one of a long line of grievances they wish to curb and are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. [Danish cartoons ] The other that's having spectacular success is getting Westerners to feel guilty for some perceived wrong they've done, to blame Westerners for their own atrocities.
How many [Noam Chomsky's] actually blamed the West for 9/11 and the London bombings, the Spanish bombing, etc, etc. Their takeover of the UN as a block is another example of the influence this 1 billion people have over the other 6 billion people!
Yeah they do. I have a Calvinist aunt who lived and breathed her religion so much it made her life a misery. I've got a Christian fundamentalist girlfriend who spent her entire life organising Christian cells. I've got an Anglican Chinese university student who literally shook with the fervour of his belief in each of his 5 prayers a day, and a guy in Camden with six black hooded robes and a big mystic circle that's pretty much consumed his entire life.
You just don't like Islam.
Which is disappointing. Every time we try and get to the basis of disagreement with a supporter of Israel, it turns out they just have a garden-variety hatred for a particular race or religion. There's got to be someone out there who supports Israel for reasons that actually stand up to scrutiny.
angelo
Deleted
Israel is an oasis of democracy in the middle of facist/islamic/despot ruled region. If that's not worth trying to preserve I don't know what is.
Arctish
Centimillionaire
The Israeli version of democracy is not worth preserving if the cost of maintaining it is the human rights of the Palestinian people. It's not worth preserving if the only arguments in favor of it are rooted in racism and religious bigotry. It's not worth preserving if it does not allow the governed to participate in their government, which is the entire point of having a democracy.
IMO, it should be improved, and the sooner the better.
Any of those people beheading people and posting the results on Youtube?
angelo
Deleted
The Palestinian people have no one but themselves to blame for the plight they are in. Last I looked, Israel was the only country in the region that has democratic elections with multi party choices. The government there does not execute it's own citizens if they dare utter any criticism of their government. The only country in the region to have free speech. Very much like the Western world.
Sarpedon
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2002
- Messages
- 2,976
- Location
- MN, US
- Basic Beliefs
- the Philosophy of Not Giving a Damn
Blaming the victims now, are we?
It seems to me there are lots of people to blame besides the Palestinians. Hitler, for example. But you'd rather blame the Palestinians, because you hate them. Worse than Hitler apparently.
It seems to me there are lots of people to blame besides the Palestinians. Hitler, for example. But you'd rather blame the Palestinians, because you hate them. Worse than Hitler apparently.
Sabine Grant
Member
Non. It is Islam interpreted by extremists branches of Islam while millions of other Muslims do not interpret it that way. What type of scholarly credentials do you hold allowing you to declare that the brand of Islam represented by extremist groups like Isis is "Islam in its purest form"?
Any religion who promotes a theocratic government promotes a fascist/political system. In such manner, extremist branches of Christianity (such as reconstructionalists in the US) support a theocratic government. Whereas the majority of mainstream denominations do not. As a result the majority of American Skeptics are not polarizing on Muslims being a threat in the US, but the undeniable penetration into American politics of the Christian Right Wing as they have already influenced several legislators into laws which undeniably intend to reflect Biblical tenets.
You have just portrayed 1 billion of Muslims as supporting the replacement of Western democracies with Shariah laws and a single world wide caliphate. Are you that unfamiliar with the diversity of schools of thoughts within Islam? Are you not aware of the profound divisions and disparity of beliefs and resulting aspirations/goals which separate Sufi from Salafi as one example? I actually do not expect you to be aware of them as you have a history of portraying Muslims as an homogeneous group, dumping them all in the same bag.
So now, Westerners who ,contrary to you, are well informed about the diversity of schools of thoughts within Islam, and do not view 1 billion of Muslims as an homogeneous group following a uniform aspiration/goal of eliminating Western democracies and establish a worldwide caliphate, are "naive"? How about if I label Westerners who ignore the fact that 1 billion of Muslims are far from being an homogeneous group all pursuing the same political/social goal to be ignorant? To be plagued by paranoia while the actual threat is not Islam but the persistent and unfortunately successful penetration of Christian right wing groups into the political realm?
Which religion do you think has been fueling political mouthpieces in the US like Governor Rick Perry in Texas? Resulting in legislation obstructing women from accessing Women's Health care Clinics? Need I to document for you the list of legislation per State which can be demonstrated as being the direct product of Christian influence?
"spectacular success" ????? Are you once more kidding me? There is only an extreme minority of Westerners who "feel guilty" for the uprising of extremists factions like Isis and the atrocities they commit.
As to freedom of speech, the 14 year old who is now facing charges based on "desecrating" a statue of Jesus and that happening in the leading First World Nation (the US) and that despite of the First Amendment, such incident ought to tell us that once more the Christian Right Wing is capable of theocratizing the US Justice system. While being cheered by Christians who react to the so called "desecration" of their religious symbols and hoping this kid will be sent to juvenile detention.
Take over of the UN as a block? Care to expand on which 5 permanent member nations of the UN Security Council have a veto power? Hint : none of them are Muslim nations.
Sabine Grant
Member
Angelo's remark,
begs for a correction based on the documented history of the Palestinian people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Palestinian_people.
I am not sure how anyone could have made the claim Angelo made if aware of the impact the British Mandate had on Palestinian Arabs. I guess to some their history is just chopped liver. Let's just disconnect the plight of Palestinians today from their history.
arkirk
Veteran Member
Or....simply stick with the principle of human rights for all and START MAKING A RESPECTABLE HISTORY. All this talk about the relative goodness or badness of a religion has nothing to do with the people involved here. Whenever there is a conflict (this one is no exception), for peace to follow, there has to be a mutual effort...a genuine desire for peace on both sides.
There is a highly asymmetrical nature to this conflict and the Israelis are clearly the aggressors, using worn out talking points to justify itself. Sometimes it seems hopeless that this slow grinding down of more than a million people in an open air prison will never end. It has not ended...just taken a slight rest. We need to find a way to redefine the Palestinian people in many Israeli minds as human beings. That is really at the crux of this issue....crooked politicians and war profiteers ...using racism to keep the pot boiling...mindless of the human tragedies created by this handy road to profit.
Arctish
Centimillionaire
Tu Quoque fallacy. Whatever poor choices the Palestinians have made do not make Israel exempt from criticism for the choices it has made.
Have you ever looked into the actual founding of the State of Israel? Have you read what the founders had to say about what they were doing and why? Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes and communities because Zionists didn't want them living within their planned Jewish State and participating in the government. Palestinian refugees are still being denied their rights under international law even though many of them are Jewish by matrilineal descent, and would therefore be allowed to live in Israel if they were white Europeans.
David Ben Gurion and the Jewish Agency laid plans to relocate the Palestinians from the land they wanted to claim back in the 1930s, before the Holocaust even started. Josef Weitz and the Transfer Committee came up with various plans, including one in which Palestinians would be shipped (in cattle cars perhaps?) to Iraq. Plan Dalet, implemented by Zionist forces before the establishment of the State of Israel, was a campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to put the maximum amount of valuable land and property in the hands of Jews and to clear out the Palestinian population. The ethnic cleansing of Israeli territory continued for years after Israel was established. And all of this was designed to create a Jewish majority so that Israel could have it's cake and eat it, too: a democracy infused with theocracy, while keeping the indigenous population powerless and under control.
Like I said, the Israeli version of democracy is not worth preserving if the cost of maintaining it is the human rights of the Palestinian people, and the only arguments in favor of it are rooted in racism and religious bigotry. It does not allow the governed to participate in their government, which is the entire point of having a democracy.
untermensche
Contributor
True it is very much like the West.
Like how the US treated it's natives. How the British treated China and India. How the Portuguese treated the Congo. And the list goes on and on.
And all Muslims are Palestinians??
Lets start with a chart of literacy rates from Nationmaster:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Literacy/Adult-literacy
Looking at the bottom of this:
Mali: 23.3%. From the CIA world factbook: 94.8% Muslim.
Chad: 25.7%, 50.3% Muslim
Afghanistan: 28%, 99% Muslim. (And that literacy rate is very old, I rather suspect the current number is even worse. When things go to shit the more intelligent tend to get out.)
Burkina Faso: 28.7%, 60.5% Muslim.
Guinea: 29.5%, 85% Muslim.
See a pattern?
untermensche
Contributor
Extreme poverty?
The pattern I was referring to is the countries with the lowest literacy rates are mostly Muslim.
Whether the low literacy rate is a result of poverty is irrelevant to whether they exist in the first place. And note that those aren't the poorest places on Earth, either.
I just pulled lists off Nationmaster of literacy and % Muslim, filling in blanks from the CIA factbook--and I get a -.41 correlation from admittedly poor data. The odds of that being chance are less than 1 in a million.
arkirk
Veteran Member
You have a CIA factbook? Isn't that classified? Why was the U.S. and Canada not compared on the listing of Nationmaster? Did you note how well the communist countries did? And Cuba right on the top. There is no doubt that Muslim countries have a late start on literacy. Many also have a late start on being a Muslim country. As usual, your information seems to come from questionable sources. Just saying a lot of your bogeyman countries scored very high on the literacy scale.