DrZoidberg
Contributor
He sounds just like conservatives everywhere. Anti-intellectual self-aggrandising and self-serving morons.
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"Almost all terrorists are Muslim" derail split from "Rants"
- Thread starter angelo
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He sounds just like conservatives everywhere. Anti-intellectual self-aggrandising and self-serving morons.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Correlation does not imply causation. You're making one of them most basic errors of inference. Isn't it more likely that it's religion that adapts to the needs of society? If we talk about religion in functional terms, it's main function is to give the believer the illusion of stability in an ever changing world. That's why all religions claim that it's always been the same, when we all know that religions evolve. They evolve really fast. 17'th Century European Christianity has almost nothing in common with modern Christianity. Today religious faith is a matter of opinion and personal beliefs. That's a modern invention. Four hundred years ago that way of thinking or religion did not exist. It was everybody else's beeswax what you believed, and if you deviated from the plan it was societies job to set you straight. That's a radically different type of Christianity. Back then, when both Europe and the Middle-East were primarily agrarian cultures they shared this aspect. It's just that the Middle-East hasn't caught up with us yet. Remember that industrialisation didn't really start in the Middle-East south of Turkey until the 1970'ies. Give the guys a break!!! I think Islam has developed super fast compared to Christianity. And now we are getting the emergence of liberal Islam, that exactly copies the development of liberal Christianity.
laughing dog
Contributor
Turkey is democratic Islamic state in peaceful co-existence with the western world. It rebuts your counterfactual claim.
In addition, there are other Islamic states that are in peaceful co-existence with the western world although they are not democratic: Oman and Kuwait come into mind, and one could reasonably include Indonesia. On the other hand, there are plenty of non-Islamic democracies that are not in peaceful co-existence with the western world: Ukraine and Russia come to mind right now. Furthermore, there are non-Islamic democratic states which are in the same co-existent state with the western world as Turkey: Israel is a good example.
All in all, your claims appears more ideologically and bias based than factually grounded.
dystopian
Veteran Member
Malasyia is another good example; a constitutional elective monarchy (ie; the monarch is elected) where islam is the state religion but which also guarantees freedom of religion. Not sure why you'd include Indonesia in non-democratic states; it is a republic and it's undergone a fair number of democratic reforms in recent decades.
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laughing dog
Contributor
It was a mistake on my part to include Indonesia with Kuwait and Oman.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
That's got nothing to do with Islam. It's got to do with Turkish nationalism. Kurdistan is the last little remnant of the Ottoman empire. No, it doesn't make any sense. But nationalism rarely does. Also a factor is the Armenian genocide which Turkey refuses to acknowledge for nationalistic reasons. It's complicated. But more importantly... got nothing to do with Islam.
You're forgetting that Turkey isn't really Islamist. They are heading that direction but that isn't enough to undo what has come before. Give them enough time and you'll likely see another mess.
angelo
Deleted
The latest piece of genius from Recep Tayyip Erdogan : "For many years in this country they have been committing betrayal with birth control and have put the generation on a path to trying out, one child would be estranged, two would be rivals, three would be balanced, four would be abundance, and more, god takes care."
Opponents say he is trying to impose islamists values into everyday life.
Opponents say he is trying to impose islamists values into everyday life.
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bilby
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How is this any different from Peter Costello saying "You should have one for the father, one for the mother and one for the country. If you want to fix the ageing demographic, that's what you do"; or from Tony Abbott's ingrained Roman Catholicism that colours his whole approach as Prime Minister?
Politicians often allow their religious beliefs to intrude on what should be secular government. US President G W Bush famously said "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God". I find that far more disturbing than your quote from Erdogan. Both men are supposed to be leading secular states; both are failing to keep their personal beliefs in check. But only one is directly denigrating a section of the citizenry he was elected to serve.
It seems truly strange to me that someone as apparently smart and rational as you are should show such complete and unalloyed bias on this one issue. Sure, Islam has some dangerous adherents, but it is not unique in this respect; I agree that, like all religions, it is stupid; Of course we should oppose attempts to impose Islam on society, as we also oppose similar impositions by other religions.
But at the end of the day, Islam is one amongst many stupid beliefs. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Shinto, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc., etc., are all stupid; Why do you take such a huge offence at Islam while cutting these others so much more slack?
And please don't say it's because they are the only ones who are violent - this is simply not true, as has been shown in this thread; and that claim seems to be a symptom of your irrational singling out of Islam, rather than support for your decision to do so.
angelo
Deleted
I must be reading and looking at different news sources than everyone else. It seems that every day there are news items about muslim atrocities but hardly any about all the religions mentioned like xtianity, hindu, buddhism etc., etc. Why, only this morning there was a report that some girls captured by extremist would rather commit suicide than be repeatedly raped and used as chattels by ISIS [islamic state] in Iraq. The genocide against Yazidi and other minorities is ongoing. Many of these are children, girls aged 14,15, or even younger that are held as sexual slaves. Amnesty International has claimed [for a change] that this is ethnic cleansing and is also carried on by supporters of the group.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Yes, maybe so. Perhaps, it's as simple as that. News is the telling of stories. Story telling has been the same since ancient times. Never forget that news is entertainment. If it wouldn't be entertaining people would get bored and look at something else. That's especially true for news on TV. It's not a medium that lends itself to in-depth analysis.
We like good guys and bad guys. But there are no obvious bad guys, or obvious good guys in any conflict. It's mostly good against good. We all like to have our preconceptions validated. We like being able to feel that we understand the world. News reporting always caters to these needs in some way. All news is biased in some way. That isn't to say they're lying. There are always a multitude of ways to tell the truth, that will produce different stories. Well... except FOX News. They seem to have no problems with bold faced lying. And then you've got the left-liberal press. Who accurately spot the bias, but then procede to skew the bias too far in the opposite direction, effectively making them as bad as the mainstream media.
In any age each culture has had a bad guy. A character that lazy reporters always can pin all evils on and few people will question it. If you're unsure Just watch Hollywood movies. They'll tell you which are the bad guys at any given time. But we only have one group that is the paramount bad guys. Post 9/11 it was Muslims. Before that Communists (mostly Russian). Before that Nazis. Before that French.
So whatever anybody from that group does it'll be reported, because it validates the consensus. But whenever terrorist acts are carried out by any other group it isn't reported. Because it's not news. It's just a random weird event that doesn't really fit into the big picture. Terrorism has always been a rare event. It's always been so rare that most people might as well just ignore it. They're more likely to die in a thousand other ways before getting killed by an act of terrorism. Islamic terrorism is no different in that regard.
But on your specifics. Any and all wars always have wide spread rape of the conquered population. That's just the reality of war. It always happens. In most armed conflicts that drag on young women are often taken and kept as sex slaves. It's horrible. But it's a fact of war. When "our" boys do it, it isn't reported, or we won't believe it. But we'll get horrified when "they" do it. Also... genocide. The clue is in the name. Genocide is always based on ethnicity. Not on beliefs. If there was some hope that the Yazidis would convert they wouldn't get killed.... of course!!! Religion is irrelevant for genocide. So we can safely say that the genocide of Yazidis isn't about religion at all. You're getting suckered into accepting simplistic explanations for complicated political issues. In any religious conflict, you don't need to dig deep to learn that it's not really about religion. It never is. Never. And the same obviously also applies for the Yazidi genocide. That doesn't make it ok. But please try leaving religion out of your analysis of it.
You just need to look far and wide when you read the news. Read in depth articles from as many and as varied sources as possible. With any luck you will get enough information to stitch together a version of reality that matches as closely as possible to what really happened. It's tiring and often boring. And that's why so few do it, and why news reporting mostly is shallow and dumb.
Nobody really knows what ever happened anywhere. The people on site barely knows. It's not until an event has passed into history that we will be able to look at any news story with sober eyes and evaluate it properly.
Jokodo
Veteran Member
No-one in this thread has denied those atrocities. But they do not and cannot serve as evidence for your claim that "almost all terrorists are Muslim", nor even to the claim that Islam is inherently prone to turn believers into terrorists.
Since you're apparently happy to attribute all acts committed by Muslims regardless of context to Islam, the following two from the last 2-3 years have to be counted as acts of Buddhist and Christian violence if you want to keep pretending to be consistent, even though arguably the root cause is ethnic conflict and/or debates over resources):
Buddhist mob violence against Muslim minorities..
Christian violence against other Christian/or animist groups.
laughing dog
Contributor
What does this have to do with the notion that Islamists are terrorists?
Crazy Eddie
Veteran Member
You're not. It's just that "news sources" is not the same thing as "data on what is actually happening in the world."
Going by those same "news sources" one would also be forced to conclude that while not all female high school teachers have sex with their students, almost all students who have sex are doing their teachers.
And it's been that way since 9/11, when American media suddenly became VERY interested in Islamic extremism. They weren't particularly interested in it beforehand, despite the fact that the 4 of the 7 most heinous terrorist attacks against American citizens BEFORE 9/11 were carried out by non-Muslims.
Muslims do not make up "nearly all" terrorists; they're a narrow majority at best, and then only because Muslim terrorist organizations are simply more successful than their counterparts in non-Muslim countries. This has less to do with the terrorists themselves than it does with the stupendous incompetence of their host governments.
bilby
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Rupert Murdoch makes a lot of money stoking fear of Muslims, which sells newspapers and grabs viewers for his TV stations.
Murdoch dominates Australian news outlets; you would be wise to take anything you see in the news with a very large grain of salt - and to assume that it is massively biased towards appealing to the lowest common denominator of public opinion.
Fascism is very popular, and Murdoch is happy to cynically exploit this fact, developing a viscous circle in which he creates the attitudes that then help him sell more newspapers that pander to those attitudes.
Murdoch dominates Australian news outlets; you would be wise to take anything you see in the news with a very large grain of salt - and to assume that it is massively biased towards appealing to the lowest common denominator of public opinion.
Fascism is very popular, and Murdoch is happy to cynically exploit this fact, developing a viscous circle in which he creates the attitudes that then help him sell more newspapers that pander to those attitudes.
DrZoidberg
Contributor
Thanks for that visual. I'm now picturing a nude Rupert Murdoch swimming in some sort of reddish slime in circular pool. It's not a pretty sight.
There is a scene in one of the Blade movies where the ancient head vampire is bathing in a pool of blood. I am wondering if the character was based off of Murdoch; it would explain quite a lot of things, actually.
untermensche
Contributor
The largest group of terrorists wear suits and ties and they operate out of Washington DC.
They have terrorized far more people than anybody else over the last decade.
And these people are not Muslim.
To look at the world and see Muslims as the largest problem is really to be blind.
They have terrorized far more people than anybody else over the last decade.
And these people are not Muslim.
To look at the world and see Muslims as the largest problem is really to be blind.
Tristan Scott
Senior Member
Almost all, if not all Jihadists are Muslim. Terrorism is not so narrowly defined. There are many actions taking place in the world that would be considered terrorist acts, but aren't reported as such.