That'd look good on a business card:

   Shilling Actual Islam™ Since 2006!

I mean, sure, our President is wrong about this, but he's wrong about all the rest of it, too...

Sometimes when people say they are going to kill you, they mean it. Other times it's just noise. When someone says it, means it, and has the capability to do it, Obama golfs.

"Muhammad was a military leader, laying siege to towns, massacring the men, raping their women, enslaving their children, and taking the property of others as his own. On several occasions he rejected offers of surrender from the besieged inhabitants and even butchered captives. He actually inspired his followers to battle when they did not feel it was right to fight, promising them slaves and booty if they did and threatening them with Hell if they did not. Muhammad allowed his men to rape traumatized women captured in battle, usually on the very day their husbands and family members were slaughtered. "

Sounds just like:
Russian Army World War II
German Army World War II
Japanese Army World War II. But the Japanese were probably the best at it. Live vivisection of captured fliers, and cutting out hearts and livers of helpless captives and eating them.
Rape was just SOP.

From Todd Starnes today on that "Prayer Breakfast:"

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/02/05/obama-at-prayer-event-christians-did-terrible-things-too/

The president also issued a word of warning to Christians: “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place – remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” the president said. He also chided the United States, “our home country.” “Slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” he added.

This is from Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church in Dallas) to what Obama said: “When Christians act violently they are acting in opposition to the teachings of their founder, Jesus Christ,” Jeffress told me. “They cannot cite a single verse in the New Testament that calls for violence against unbelievers. On the other hand, radical Islamists can point to a number of verses in the Koran calling for Muslims to ‘crucify the infidels.’”

On Wednesday a United Nations watchdog group reported that Islamic militants were crucifying Iraqi children and burying them alive. Others had been sold as sex slaves and boys as young as 18 had been used as suicide bombers, Reuters reported.

Apparently the fallacy, "two wrongs make a right" is a new fad.

"And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place – remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," the president said.

So actions taken in Medieval times (centuries ago) are okay to use to paint modern Christians with the same brush as those who burn others alive or cut their heads off with pocket knives today?

Keep in mind, the Spanish (and Portugese) Inquisitions were more political instruments than religious ones (controlled by the king and not the Pope). With large populations of recently conquered peoples forced to convert from paganism, Islam, and Judaism, the Inquisition was established to make sure these recent "converts" didn't backslide into a religion or philosophy that might cause them to rebel against their often-outnumbered conquerors.

And, yes, in more recent times, the Bible has been used to justify slavery and segregation. However, at the very same time it inspired opposition to slavery and segregation.

The Bible wasn't the inspiration for slavery and desegregation; nobody read the Bible and said "Well, since Jesus said to, I'm gonna have to enslave that guy over there and force him to grow cotton."

> So actions taken in Medieval times
> (centuries ago) are okay to use to
> paint modern Christians with the same
> brush as those who burn others alive
> or cut their heads off with pocket
> knives today?

You're straw-manning. And you are not alone.

Nobody wants to look at the history of Christianity and recognize today's fractured and shallow faiths for what they are: The pummeled husks of formerly-dominant technocracies which civilization, at great cost, have beaten into submission. There's nothing left to "paint," so long as you acknowledge that truth.

For some reason, all these thoroughly Modern Millies want to pretend that Christianity is inherently cute n' cuddly and agreeable... Perhaps because they themselves made no sacrifices for it to appear that way. (And who gives a fuck about the Amalekites, anyway?)

> The Bible wasn't the inspiration
> for slavery

The fuck you say: http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm.

Slavery and religious command of secular life are similarly universal in primitive culture. This President may have neither the brains nor the integrity to consider such a thing on a conscious & verbal level, but we might at least be pleased that this indisputable truth is seeping into his understanding.

And if you can't, no more whining about the religious right, m'kay?

Crid I'm not gonna argue that Christianity has always been cute and cuddly. I don't have to click your link about slavery because I've been told what slave owners down here actually believed to be their rights to slaves because of the passage in Philemon. I'm quite used to uneducated people taking passages of scripture out of context to subvert it to their personal story. But the reality is that those Crusades happened 700 years ago. 700 years. And for some reason slavery and the crusades are being held up in comparison to the inhumane brutality of ISIS? By my President? Whuh? I don't comprehend his intention, unless he is trying to protect the religion of Islam itself, in doing this. I suppose it's like - Christians did it too, and we didn't chuck that religion out, so let's not brush all of Islam with this paint. But this today. This is 2015. Not 1860, not 1200.

My heart hurts for otherwise, innocent babies, who are born into this archaic terror.

Re: Obama...I'm not yet informed enough to even give a valid opinion on him but thank you for the post nonetheless. Something to think about as a point of reference to research.

Further, if this happened today, and there were a band of idiots who were attempting to create their own perfect race, or enact slavery once more, or murder someone for being gay, then Christians would stand up and condemn them for who they are and blaspheme the radicals for being heretics and assholes and plain old murderers. They wouldn't be called Christians by anyone other than themselves and they would surely be imprisoned quicker than you can say Charles Manson. Somehow all this seems to be lost on my President, though.

What Christians, and other ethical people are willing to *stand up to, and for* has been quite different in constitutional democracies, than in totalitarian dictatorships.

If you have never lived in the later, you will probably find it difficult to understand the concept of *keeping your head down* , if not for your own safety, than for your children's.

> But the reality is that those Crusades
> happened 700 years ago. 700 years.

"The reality"!… Is that like "Actual Islam™"?

> Further, if this happened today…

Aiyiyiyiyi.... You cannot take the point!

You go to dinner at your friend's place in the Valley. Their teenager dribbles on his shirt, knocks his food to the ground, then takes a big stinkin' dump right when you're getting to the payoff of your story about the vacation in Alaska. The sound ruins your anecdote, and the odor ruins your meal.

Are you pissed off? Yes! You're pissed off.

Two blocks away is another couple you know. A month later you go to their house for dinner, and the same thing happens. Their son does all those same things… But the son is 11 months old.

Are you pissed off? Ye——

Uh, no, not really.

Well why NOT, Gooser? Goocybug? Goos-asaures?

Why DON'T you expect the child to behave as well as the teenager? It's 2015, fer cryin' out loud...




The taming of Christianity, concurrent will all the other developments in Western Civ, happened over centuries. The changes towards decency and secularism happened in human hearts over generations… Not instantly, as if upon the reading of a single email. Life in the places where militant Islam 'thrives' is very much like it was 700 or 1400 or 2100 years ago. Your sarcastic tone is not appropriate.

"But this is today." Well, no it's not. Not for something like a quarter to a third of the world… And for many others, it's just after dawn.

If you want to help bring those places into modernity, that would be great. (Americans never seem interested in doing that nowadays, but it's the only solution.)

But meanwhile, you kinda sound like a plantation owner's prissy niece, griping about how the slaves are always singing those silly songs... Why can't they learn the cotillion dances, like normal people?

Have you personally taken any steps to teach girls in Afghanistan to read?

The Bible wasn't the inspiration for slavery and desegregation;

Is "bullshit" one or two words?

I'll assume you mean "segregation," not "desegregation," which is generally considered a good thing.

The Levitical law gives detailed instructions for the owning of slaves, and the various acts of the ancient Jews made it abundantly clear that no one was to be left alive in their campaigns of exterminating all that were unlike them.

Yep. "Two wrongs" is the shizzle!

By the way, Patrick – "inspiration" is the wrong word, because slavery predates the Bible. "Justification" would be correct.

By the way, Patrick – "inspiration" is the wrong word, because slavery predates the Bible. "Justification" would be correct.

Posted by: Radwaste at February 6, 2015 5:37 AM

Yes, it really is amazing how all you atheists seem to think that religious texts appear out of thin air, to shape and mold a culture into what *God* thinks they should be as opposed to the reality.

Religious texts are written, and then interpreted and modified by the leaders and adherents to reflect the culture of the writers and the interpreters.

Anything a culture sees as good or just will be incorporated into their religious texts as a commandment or a sacrament.

It is the most basic form of affirmation of their *cultural* superiority, and the *rightness* of their morals and values.

I'll assume you mean "segregation," not "desegregation," which is generally considered a good thing. ~ Posted by: Patrick at February 6, 2015 3:15 AM

Yes. My bad.

==============================

Rad and Isab covered the inspiration vs. justification thing and religion as a trailing indicator of culture (not a leading one) pretty well.

==============================

We in the West owe a huge debt to the Greeks and philosophy for the many gifts they bestowed upon us - from the ability to reason to the willingness to accept natural cause-and-effect relationships.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, disease, etc. are not regarded as "God's will" in the West, but as natural events that have natural causes.

Islamic philosophers did not accept natural causation. Everything, absolutely everything, that happened was the will of God and only the will of God.

Islam ("submission") is living primarily in the primitive mindset in which natural disasters are viewed as God's vengeance or God's judgement on the victims and are not to be questioned or explained.

In a world in which one is subject to the whims of a capricious supreme being and allowed no self-determination, how can one help but to become angry?

Add illiteracy, poverty, disease, and near-constant warfare and you've got a seething cauldron of hate and violence.

Modernity has, as crid likes to put it, "tamed" most of the religions it has encountered. Eventually, it destroys them, partly by rendering them ridiculous - try to find someone worshiping a jackal-headed god of the dead today.

Christianity has been remarkably flexible in adapting to changes in mankind's understanding of the world. It has split into so many varieties that it is becoming less a religion and more a philosophy buffet. Adherents find one that fits their existing outlook rather than adjusting their outlook to the tenets of the religion into which they were born.

Judaism left its desert roots with the diaspora and adapted, becoming more a culture than a religion. Its religious overtones are dying as its modern adherents decide that not operating machinery on the Sabbath is impractical and that bacon is delicious.

Islam, however, is struggling to adapt to the modern world; resisting the death sentence modernity imposes on all religions it encounters. With its willingness (even eagerness) to kill all who deviate from the party line, it is slow in producing its own Gallileos and Copernici to challenge the orthodoxy and drag it into the modern world. Instead, semi-literate thugs and barbarians have risen to the forefront of Islamic thought and practice.

That's the source of most of the conflict.

"Yes, it really is amazing how all you atheists seem to think that religious texts appear out of thin air, to shape and mold a culture into what *God* thinks they should be as opposed to the reality."

And all you beliebers think puppies should be squashed into jelly while still alive just to hear their screams.

Your turn.

Folks sometimes ask me if it's fun being right about everything. Courtesy compels me to confess that yes... Yes, it is. Yes, it's fun being right about everything.

And being such an attractive man, at the selfsame time, can be almost indescribably fulfilling!

You guys should try it.

To whine that 'Christianity is soft & fluffy but Islam is coarse & rooooooood!' means nothing.

It isn't a policy; it does not guide. But worse than that, neither is it an insight; it does not inform.

When you say 'Contemporary Christians are less troublesome than radical Muslims,' all you're saying is you prefer problems which have been solved by your great-great-grandfather to those which still burden us.

Well, who doesn't? So what?



This is the part where Amy says "But I've read more of the Quran than other people, so..."

…As if it mattered.

…As if that meant more than dealing with actual human beings, anywhere in the world.

…As if there were anything in there that humanity hasn't dealt with before.

…As if she knew anything about the forces which strengthen and drain radicalism, let alone radical Islam. (History; geography; economics; politics; demo-fucking-graphics.)

…As if most of the world's Muslims had read the Quran, or even COULD read the Quran... In any language, let alone Arabic.





It's pathetic.

In the past five years, in no small part because of the exchanges on this blog, I've come to recognize that most people select their political opinions to flatter themselves. Mere coherence and practicality and decency are petty considerations compared to that first purpose.

And that's what's happening with people here. Amy's only response is "But I know more about this than other people!"

She most demonstrably does not.

Balko agrees with me.

(On that part.)

Also, Burge.

I love, love, love being right. About everything.

Obama: "No God Condones Terror." (No, Allah Demands It.)
I love when people make proclamations about Islam that have little connection to actual Islam.

"No God Condones Terror" is, of course, is not true. The God in the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament didn't just slaughter all of humanity (except for Noah and a handful of his kin), but every living substance on earth (the cattle were especially wicked) and, for good measure, all flying creatures as well (I wouldn't mind if this was done today with starlings.)

Genesis 7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.

And the Allah in the Quran is probably equally violent. But what do you expect an American President -- whether it's Obama, Chris Christie or Rand Paul -- to say? That Allah is a bloodthirsty mofo?

The Crusades are not relevant examples of contemporary Christian brutality. Obama's use of them to balance out ISIS brutality was ridiculous.

However, the Crusades as exemplar of Christian (read: Western) brutality and imperialism against Islam resonates with one audience in particular, Middle Eastern Muslims.

Read into that what you will.

===================================

And no, I don't think Obama is a closet Muslim trying to conquer the US from the inside.

I do think, however, that he spends a great deal of effort trying to show himself to be a citizen of the world, balancing viewpoints and rarely advocating a US-centric position. It's an odd stance for a US president to take in world affairs.

Imagine Roosevelt making a speech balancing the Nazi Final Solution with the Spanish Inquisition, urging us to moderate our hatred for the Nazis with compassion since our ancestors struggled with the same hate-filled urges. How many US soldiers would have charged Nazi machine guns with that rallying cry in their heads? How many housewives would have cheerfully headed for the assembly lines, knowing their husbands were risking their lives fighting an enemy no more evil than their own great-grandfathers?

gooseegg: This is from Robert Jeffress (First Baptist Church in Dallas) to what Obama said: “When Christians act violently they are acting in opposition to the teachings of their founder, Jesus Christ,” Jeffress told me. “They cannot cite a single verse in the New Testament that calls for violence against unbelievers. On the other hand, radical Islamists can point to a number of verses in the Koran calling for Muslims to ‘crucify the infidels.’”

I probably would disagree with Jeffress on a lot of things but I agree with him on this and have pointed out the same distinction whenever someone has compared, say, a Christian killing a doctor who does abortions with a Muslim who has killed schoolgirls. While the Christian God in the Old Testament was definitely violent -- and Christians who act violently are not acting in opposition to that God (after all, if it's OK for that God to slaughter every living thing due to wickedness, it seems quite plausible that it's OK to kill a doctor who does abortions for his wickedness) -- Jesus Christ, who Christians take their name from, was most definitely not. There is no Christian justification for violence.

> The Crusades are not relevant examples of
> contemporary Christian brutality.

Guys, guys, guys... What does 'contemporary' have to do with it?

I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand the goofy thrill you get from muddying the waters this way. I don't understand what fulfillment you find in complicating the task before us. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand.

I don't understand.

If we do to Islam, and for Muslims, what we've done to Christianity and for Christians, this will be over.

Why are you pretending this is complicated?

This is like one Amy's old books about personal growth: The Cross-Foundational Substructures of Self-Esteem in a Delicately-Balanced Array of Codicils and Conditionals, by Dr. G. Sonny Mookilpitz of the Sarasota Clinic For Weepy Healing & Inner-Child Vivisection.

"Yes, it really is amazing how all you atheists seem to think that religious texts appear out of thin air, to shape and mold a culture into what *God* thinks they should be as opposed to the reality."

And all you beliebers think puppies should be squashed into jelly while still alive just to hear their screams.

Your turn.

Posted by: Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 6, 2015 9:13 AM

I'm not a believer, I am an atheist also. But I haven't replaced my religious magical unicorns with government approved pixie dust. ....like you socialist koolaid drinkers.

There is no Christian justification for violence.

Actually, there is. Or was.

Witches and heretics were burned at the stake to cleanse their souls so they could enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. It was deemed merciful to punish them in this world so that they would not be consigned to hell and burn for all eternity in the next one.

It was considered the "Christian" thing to do.

That Christians are not violent like that today is a result of the advance of civilization and not because Christianity has finally been followed properly.

=========================

What does 'contemporary' have to do with it?

'cause if you're gonna say we're no purer than they are, you should at least use an example relevant to your audience. Medieval examples of cruelty don't resonate with modern Americans as examples of behavior to which they may be susceptible. Especially when they're founded on a lie.

I'm tired of the canard that the Crusades were a cruelty inflicted by an ignorant Europe on a peace-loving Muslim world.

First, the Crusades were a war to recapture Byzantine Empire territory conquered by the Muslim Ayyubid dynasty.

Second, many of the atrocities of the Crusades (on both sides) were common practices of war back then. In the most infamous atrocity, Richard I executed 3,000 prisoners not in the name of religion, but in response to Saladin's delaying tactics (delaying negotiations for the prisoners' release in the hopes that his reinforcements would arrive in the meantime and attack).

(note: back then prisoners were either ransomed, slaughtered, or sold into slavery)

Third, the Crusades don't resonate in the West today. They only resonate in the Islamic portions of the Middle East, where the Crusades were resurrected in 1956 by Nasser to bolster his attempt to unify Arab resistance against Western imperialism. Later dictators used the specter of the Crusades to justify their own seizures of power. Finally, al Qaeda claimed to be resisting later-day Crusaders in order to provide itself legitimacy as the defender of Islam.

Fourth, he is furthering the revisionist version of history that the Crusades were a war of imperialistic Europeans against a peace-loving Muslim homeland. Conveniently left out of this narrative are the fact that both sides were imperial powers bent on conquest and power. The Crusades were not the first wave of European imperialism in the Arab world.

The slavery and Jim Crow analogies were better and more applicable to the current crisis. However, they're also more complicated since the same religious theology that "inspired" slavery and segregation "inspired" the opposition to them.

He's not a thoughtful guy. He grew up around assholes and became one himself... He thinks he's being humble, not destructive. Nuanced history and "relevant examples" are not what his life is about.

Dood.

Me: Jesus Christ, who Christians take their name from, was most definitely not [violent]. There is no Christian justification for violence.

Conan: Actually, there is. Or was. Witches and heretics were burned at the stake to cleanse their souls so they could enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. It was considered the "Christian" thing to do.

*

Just because Christians considered it to be the Christian thing to do, doesn't make it so. If there was scripture in the New Testament describing how Christ had personally killed people in order to cleanse their souls or that he had advocated such an action, then Christians who burned witches and heretics could legitimately claim their actions were Christian. But there is no such scripture. Therefore people who burned witches and heretics were acting a most un-Christlike, or un-Christian manner.

They could legitimately claim to be acting in a Godlike manner, since their God in the Old Testament slaughtered people who were wicked. But not in a Christian manner.

@Amy Alkon at February 6, 2015 5:29 AM:

The Crusades were not a response to 400 years of Islamic conquests of Christian land, because the Arabic conquests had stalled 350 years before the First Crusade. The border between Byzantium and the Caliphate was established within 30 years of Muhammed's death, and did not significantly move from about 660 until the 11th century. Expansion in the west continued through North Africa and Spain until 732, but then was halted at the Battle of Tours. Then the Islamic state fissioned in 750, with the remnants of the Umayyad's ruling Spain and western North Africa "from exile" in Cordoba, and the Abbassid Caliphs ruling the rest. That weakened the western branch so the Franks were able to drive out the last Muslim foothold north of the Pyrenees, and help get the Reconquista started in Spain.

After 750, Islam under Arab rule just held their borders with the Christian lands. There was a situation neither peace nor war; the remaining fighting was mostly raiding for loot and slaves. Only in Spain did Christian vie with Muslim over territory, and that is where the Christians were very slowly winning. A de-facto truce also grew up along the Christian pilgrimage routes. Islam did expand slowly to the east, gaining converts among Turkish-speaking nomads and gradually absorbing the tribal lands now called Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Caliphate basically snoozed for 300 years.

Then in the 11th Century, the Caliphate was challenged by some of those Turkish nomads, now converted to Islam and far more fanatic than the Caliphate's armies. The only solution to the Seljuk problem was to sic them on Byzantium. Nearly all of Asia Minor (the peninsula that is now the Asian part of Turkey was overrun within a few years. The Seljuks also penetrated to the lands around Jerusalem, and could not understand why infidels were allowed to travel there unmolested...

And so, at the end of the 11th Century, the Pope finally found two reasons to call western Christianity to war: pilgrims were calling for help, and Byzantium had swallowed their pride and asked for help. But this wasn't the product of centuries of continuous war, but of new attacks by a people who were previously unknown.

And so, at the end of the 11th Century, the Pope finally found two reasons to call western Christianity to war: pilgrims were calling for help, and Byzantium had swallowed their pride and asked for help. But this wasn't the product of centuries of continuous war, but of new attacks by a people who were previously unknown.

Posted by: markm at February 7, 2015 7:38 PM

Is there a new point here or is this just a quibble?

Artemis are you there???

> Just because Christians considered it
> to be the Christian thing to do, doesn't
> make it so.

Uh... Right. You're saying they're not observing the supernatural (yet invisible) forces in your life with proper respect.

So, in totally 1960's druggy-goofball style, everything is totally in flux all the time because, y'know, like, we're living in our own ('quote' fingers) perceptions ('close-quote' fingers) of what it all means, Man....

Amy, and a number of others here, are in my estimation being supremely silly when they explain how other people's religions are best, or most sincerely. practiced. It's fuckin' ludicrous. They're wasting their own time, and the Sweet Lord God in Heaven knows they're wasting mine.

But hearing religious people say shit like you've said about each other makes their goofiness seem forgivable.

You think your cosmological tastes should be important to me... More powerful, even, than the example of your life.

I think that's just darling! Ha! Yeah.

Crid, Readers' Digest version: beliefs don't matter.

One of those most fundamental tenants of liberty is *freedom of concience*

It really doesn't matter whether those beliefs are religious or secular.
@Jeff Guinness
Exactly

The only legitimate and effective method to stomp down terrorism, is to go after organizations and individuals who are *acting* on their radical beliefs.

You shouldnt want to know or care, where someone's belief system comes from.

What they *do* is what you go after them for.

When you kill enough of them, the rest of them either get out of Dodge, or have a change of heart.

And sometimes, you have to kill most of them, as we did with the Nazi's and the Saumari.

Obama seems quite comfortable with radical terrorism. So, expect to see a whole lot more of it....

Sorry Jeff. Autocorrect got me.

[Isab:] The only legitimate and effective method to stomp down terrorism, is to go after organizations and individuals who are *acting* on their radical beliefs.

That's good for combatting the effect, but it does nothing for the cause, which is where Obama (among many others) is going off the rails.

Muhammed's history (prophet, ruler, general, bigamist with children) is entirely different than Jesus's: there are no succession issues in Christianity. Islam holds the Quran to be directly and exactly revealed to Muhammed. The Bible is not unitary, it isn't the same from sect to sect, and hasn't been viewed as literally true by scarcely anyone for at least a century.

The Bible has plenty of violent passages (search on [skeptics annotated bible]). But the vast majority of them are either historically bound, or provided the New Testament waiver.

In contrast, most of the Quran's violent injunctions are not bound to a time and place, nor reserved to Allah.

So when Obama makes a moral equivalency between Christianity and Islam, he is failing to address the real problem: a great many of Islam's beliefs are, to non-Muslims, so morally repugnant as to give Mein Kampf a run for its money.

Unfortunately, the belief in Quranic inerrancy leaves no escape route. The Quran is quite clear on what must happen to apostates, unbelievers, etc.

Of course, most Muslims benignly neglect the abhorrent parts of their religion. But when others demand moderates repudiate Islamist claims, that in effect requires Muslims to declare Islam itself a fabrication.

But the rest, the true believers, are on very firm Islamic ground in hoping to kill unbelievers, Jews, apostates, and spread Sharia, by violence if necessary, throughout the world.

So saying the ISISholes are perverting Islam requires a willful disregard for what Islam itself demands.

Belief matters (Sam Harris nailed it in End of Faith). The only way to get at the roots of Islamic violence is to destroy faith in Islam itself.

Hand waving in the direction of moral equivalency isn't going to hack it.

"[Isab:] The only legitimate and effective method to stomp down terrorism, is to go after organizations and individuals who are *acting* on their radical beliefs.
That's good for combatting the effect, but it does nothing for the cause, which is where Obama (among many others) is going off the rails.

"Muhammed's history (prophet, ruler, general, bigamist with children) is entirely different than Jesus's: there are no succession issues in Christianity.

So saying the ISISholes are perverting Islam requires a willful disregard for what Islam itself demands"

Who cares what Islam "demands"?

99 percent of the world's Muslims are not terrorists so either they are all apostate, or those *demands* are not being followed by most Muslims.
When you have a house payment and orthodontist bills, it is tough to get caught up in the whole Jihad thing.

And Islam isn't the cause of terroism. It is just a banner to rally the semi literate thugs.

Perhaps you would like to wipe out the Catholic Church in order to eliminate the IRA? That would make about as much sense.

"Hand waving in the direction of moral equivalency isn't going to hack it.

Posted by: Jeff Guinn at February 8, 2015 11:14 AM"

Agreed. Hand waving never cuts it. But if you think getting rid of Islam or seriously reforming it, it going to be cheaper or easier than decimating terrorist organizations in the Middle East I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

And Islam isn't the cause of terrorism. It is just a banner to rally the semi literate thugs.

In order for that to be true, then beliefs have no bearing on conduct.

That's what you are saying, right?

That Mein Kampf had no bearing on conduct. Or Das Kapital. Nor does the Declaration of Independence. Or the belief that homosexuality is a moral choice.

Of course Islamic beliefs are the cause of contemporary Islamic terrorism, and I'll bet those thugs are far more literate than you give them credit for.

Bin Laden certainly was.

You are avoiding looking at what is staring us in the face: terroristic and sectarian violence is nearly an Islamic monopoly. And where ever Islam holds sway, it strives for political domination. (NB: that Christian thing, render unto God that which is God's and unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's -- there is nothing like that in Islam. That is why Islam is uniquely incompatible with a modern, pluralistic, society.)

And I don't know where you are getting that 99% number. If by that you mean only 1% have engaged in, plan to, or materially support Islamic terrorism, then that might be true.

But in large parts of the Islamic world, the percentage of Muslims who approve of Islamic terrorism approaches 25%.

Regardless, when Muslims claim Islamic justification for their barbarity, they are on firmer theological ground than Muslims who go along to get along.

Perhaps you would like to wipe out the Catholic Church in order to eliminate the IRA? That would make about as much sense.

Given your apparent lack of understanding, yes. Otherwise, no.

Find out what the conflict was about, and you can answer the question yourself.

(Clue: how far beyond Ireland and Britain did IRA violence extend? How much sectarian Christian violence has there been in, oh, the last 300 years?)

[Me:] Crid, Readers' Digest version: beliefs don't matter.

Imagine struck through text, on account of incomprehensibly superficial reading.

(Hangs head in shame.)

And Islam isn't the cause of terroism. It is just a banner to rally the semi literate thugs.

Isab, I'm curious what makes you so certain of this? Perhaps, just perhaps, you'll feel a little less certain after reading this March 2003 article by Paul Berman on Sayyid Qutb: The Philosopher of Islamic Terror

But Al Qaeda has broader roots. The organization was created in the late 1980's by an affiliation of three armed factions -- bin Laden's circle of ''Afghan'' Arabs, together with two factions from Egypt, the Islamic Group and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the latter led by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's top theoretician. The Egyptian factions emerged from an older current, a school of thought from within Egypt's fundamentalist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, in the 1950's and 60's. And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb -- the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, their Karl Marx (to put it that way), their guide.

...

But [Qutb] intended his theology to be practical too -- to offer a revolutionary program to save mankind. The first step was to open people's eyes. He wanted Muslims to recognize the nature of the danger -- to recognize that Islam had come under assault from outside the Muslim world and also from inside the Muslim world. The assault from outside was led by Crusaders and world Zionism (though sometimes he also mentioned Communism).

But the assault from inside was conducted by Muslims themselves -- that is, by people who called themselves Muslims but who polluted the Muslim world with incompatible ideas derived from elsewhere. These several enemies, internal and external, the false Muslims together with the Crusaders and Zionists, ruled the earth. But Qutb considered that Islam's strength was, even so, huger yet. ''We are certain,'' he wrote, ''that this religion of Islam is so intrinsically genuine, so colossal and deeply rooted that all such efforts and brutal concussions will avail nothing.''

Islam's apparent weakness was mere appearance. Islam's true champions seemed to be few, but numbers meant nothing. The few had to gather themselves together into what Qutb in ''Milestones'' called a vanguard -- a term that he must have borrowed from Lenin, though Qutb had in mind a tiny group animated by the spirit of Muhammad and his Companions from the dawn of Islam. This vanguard of true Muslims was going to undertake the renovation of Islam and of civilization all over the world. The vanguard was going to turn against the false Muslims and ''hypocrites'' and do as Muhammad had done, which was to found a new state, based on the Koran. And from there, the vanguard was going to resurrect the caliphate and take Islam to all the world, just as Muhammad had done.

One more excerpt from Berman's piece:

In the period before [Qutb's] final arrest and execution, diplomats from Iraq and Libya offered him the chance to flee to safety in their countries. But he declined to go, on the ground that 3,000 young men and women in Egypt were his followers, and he did not want to undo a lifetime of teaching by refusing to give those 3,000 people an example of true martyrdom. And, in fact, some of those followers went on to form the Egyptian terrorist movement in the next decade, the 1970's -- the groups that massacred tourists and Coptic Christians and that assassinated Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, after he made peace with Israel; the groups that, in still later years, ended up merging with bin Laden's group and supplying Al Qaeda with its fundamental doctrines. The people in those groups were not stupid or lacking in education.

On the contrary, we keep learning how well educated these people are, how many of them come from the upper class, how wealthy they are. And there is no reason for us to be surprised. These people are in possession of a powerful philosophy, which is Sayyid Qutb's. They are in possession of a gigantic work of literature, which is his In the Shade of the Qur'an. These people feel that, by consulting their own doctrines, they can explain the unhappiness of the world. They feel that, with an intense study of the Koran, as directed by Qutb and his fellow thinkers, they can make sense of thousands of years of theological error. They feel that, in Qutb's notion of shariah, they command the principles of a perfect society.

"And Islam isn't the cause of terroism. It is just a banner to rally the semi literate thugs.

Isab, I'm curious what makes you so certain of this? Perhaps, just perhaps, you'll feel a little less certain after reading this March 2003 article by Paul Berman on Sayyid Qutb:

@JD no number of articles written by people who can't distinguish causation from effect, and who also don't understand that war and aggression against "the other" is the natural state of mankind,

is going to change my mind.

Anymore than reading a religious text is going to make me *see the light* of whatever hocus pocus any particular group is peddling.

Islam does nothing more than unite the disaffected under a common banner. Once that group has been formed, anyone who opposes them, Muslim or not, is the enemy.

People with an average IQ under 90 (radical Islamists) don't have the intellectual capacity to parse Islam.
Anymore than an American soldier, can refer to the constitution every day and check his every act in a war against those core beliefs.

(My father certainly didn't do so in World War II, and killed hundreds of Japanese just to stay alive).

So hence, we have the very un-Islamic immolation of a fellow Muslim who happens to be a Jordanian pilot and countess other acts of terror against anyone Muslim or not, who stands in their way.

Don't expect logical consistency or any sort of *grand Islamic unification theory* You aren't going to find any.

Were you perhaps brainwashed by the *root causes* bullshit so common in colleges these days?

This constant human warfare for the last 20 thousand years has been punctuated by brief periods of relative peace when some aggressive group has been totally defeated, and is sitting back licking their wounds till the next generation when they forget why they got their asses kicked, and they get cocky again.

For Christ sake JD, read some real history and some books about Arab culture. (Conan linked to a lot of good ones in another thread)

Instead of this half baked crap by pseudo intellectuals that you seem to find so compelling.

Also, if I read Berman correctly. He is in favor of a wider war on terror (and I assume terrorists) as am I.

I am in agreement that Middle East terror is more of a political movement than a religious one, and has a lot in common with fascism in the 1930's and the 1940's.

Mein Kampf didn't motive anyone, other than Hitler. By the time Germany was a totalitarian dictatorship in the late 30's most of the high command of the Germany army was trying to figure out how to stay alive, and keep their families alive (or was actively trying to assassinate Hitler)

The book was superfluous. If it had never been written, there still would have been death camps, and a Nazi Germany.

Philosophical and religious texts do not* mold* human character, they expose it.

[that's not] going to change my mind.

Well, I figured as much, since you appear to be one of those people who has all the answers, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.

Isab, let me get this straight: you are asserting beliefs do not have consequences?

Philosophical and religious texts do not *mold* human character, they expose it.

Clearly, they expose different parts of it, to different degrees.

Jains, despite having the same human character as the rest of us, seem not particularly interested in car-bombing marketplaces.

Unlike, say, Islamists.

Why?

He's not a thoughtful guy. He grew up around assholes and became one himself... He thinks he's being humble, not destructive. Nuanced history and "relevant examples" are not what his life is about. ~ Posted by: Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at February 7, 2015 10:43 AM

Exactly. And his eagerness to scold the rest of us is grating, and undignified in a president.

@Jeff Guinn

Absolutely, beliefs CAN have consequences when you let them drive your behavior.

But for example, there are a lot of Misogonists out there who are not going around murdering women.

Then you have to ask yourself why? Why haven't they taken up the banner of exterminating everyone not male?

The answer is always, because the consequences of doing so would be unpleasent enough in a civilized country, that they restrain themselves.

But when a group of Misognists get together in agreement that their cause is just, and they are in a part of the world where law and order has broken down, guess what happens?

Then they write a document they call "justifications for Misogony'. And start rallying people to their cause.

You understand how this works? People want to believe because they want to be part of the group, or for the excitement, or for their fifteen minutes of fame.

But * the book* made me do it is just stupid.

Remember back when you were in the first grade, and you got in trouble, and the teacher said: "Why did you do that?"

And you said "Jonny told me to ".

And the teacher replies "If Jonny told you to go jump off a bridge, would you do that too?"

This is the level of thought that goes into terrorism.

As Crid pointed out, most of the radical Islamists are illiterate. So there must be something else motivating them, rather than their Koran study.

If radical Islam didn't already exist, they would have to invent it. It is a virulent form of Arab nationalism.

It isn't the driver here, and the 99 percent of Muslims who are not terrorists is my solid evidence for that claim.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/02/11/butcherrapper-isis-german-jihadist-became-terrorists-bloody-poster-boy/

"before Cuspert became a killer for the cause of radical Islam, he was a petty criminal whose rap lyrics revealed a dark and twisted mind. The son of a Ghanian father who left Cuspert’s German mother, he recorded three albums for a Berlin-based gangsta rap label, toured with American rapper DMX and scored a minor hit with "Willkommen in meiner Welt" (Welcome to my World) in 2010.

“Welcome to my world full of hate and blood,” went part of the song. “Children’s souls weep softly when the black angels sing.”

But his career was interspersed with short jail stints and squabbles with promoters. According to a report in Vice.com, he converted to Islam in 2010 following a near-fatal car accident. It was then that his music began advocating violent jihad."

See which came first?

> Readers' Digest version: beliefs
> don't matter.

I never said that. Which is why you had to "digest" it before saying I did.

Now, why do people do this?

What was the last thing I even said about "beliefs"?

You guys are so horny to believe this is something new.

I figure there are two main reasons for your bogus urgency.

First, you get to shout Wake Up Sheeple, which is rollicking good fun. (That's the Amy version.)

Second, the whole thicket of interlocked considerations is too mundane to pay attention to unless you pretend there's something new and exotic happening. I mean, mostly it's about grim detachment by geography, history, illiteracy and a few other cultural trinkets... It's dull.

So you need a caffeinating jolt of fear to remember to pay attention. Because, I mean, that's the problem. The Middle East (and Nigeria and Indonesia etc etc etc) are boring.

So it's circuitous.

Oh, Jeff took it back anyway. I feel bad now.

Thing is, all religions are about splintering and sectarianism and false prophets...

Consider Sunni vs. Shia. Consider it for as long as you possibly can before deciding it doesn't much matter....