Fighting Islamic Jihad or Islamophobia? A Matter of Perspective....

[critter]

Unlikely- We'd just have different kinds of terrorism.

Funny how 35 people got shot last weekend in Chicago and no one here is debating the motivations of criminal subculture- even though that's a threat much more likely to impact us as Americans.

Was this terrorism? And certainly we can deal with that problem too. The first step is to get rid of this human life is precious because its human life or 'everyone is equal' shit. here's the solution -- anyone who deliberately infringes upon the rights of another, whether theft, destruction of property, physical assault, murder, whatever it is -- a crime with a victim -- that individual is immediately shipped off to Fuckery Island to live in exile forever, or, immediately executed like a dog which attacks -- his/her choice. No second chances, no excuses-- gone. All we need is an infallible 'truth/lie' machine so no innocents will be falsely accused -- AND! anyone falsely accusing another of any crime receives immediate Hanged, drawn, quartered.and is then shipped off to Fuckery Island for good measure

Shitasses at 'protests' which begin setting property on fire, looting, or turning violent in any way? Open up with the 50 cals and mow the fuckers into nonexistence then exile the pieces left to Fuckery Island. Hey, they don't respect others then no need to respect them.

When I'm King of the Earth, this these policies will be implemented world-wide.. along with the decree that every firearm manufacturer must create every pistol model with options for BOTH button and lever mag release...

[Default.mp3]

The original article I cited was an opinion piece, as opposed to a "news" article.

Here's the point I believe the author is making: the most important, or at least one of the most important, roles of any government is to protect the homeland, and in this particular case of Manchester, it appears that the politicians and police authorities there are more concerned with promoting tolerance of Islam than acting in ways that promote the well being of the citizenry.

Recognizing that significant numbers of Muslims in the UK are committed to the destruction of the very foundations of British society is not being "anti-Islam." It's being realistic. Acting upon that recognition doesn't exclude being aware of how others think. In fact, it would be an important aspect of distinguishing between the dangerous and the benign.

Opinion pieces don't have to written like a rant.

I do not see a difference between promoting tolerance of Islam and promoting the well-being of the citizenry. Are there Muslims within the UK that seek to attack the West via acts of terrorism? Indisputably so. Is there a significant number? That's where it becomes a question of semantics. ~4.4% of the population of the UK were categorized as Muslim in the 2011 census, which was ~2.78 million people; that number is suspected to be over well 3.1 million today for Great Britain (not that North Ireland has a large Muslim population, comparatively speaking). What number becomes "significant"? To me, the statement "most contemporary terrorists attacking Western targets are Muslim" does not mean that there is any real meaningful reason to look at being Muslim in itself as a valid criterion for suspicion and/or anger, given that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the UK do not harbor extreme anti-Western sentiments.

[critter]

Opinion pieces don't have to written like a rant.

I do not see a difference between promoting tolerance of Islam and promoting the well-being of the citizenry. Are there Muslims within the UK that seek to attack the West via acts of terrorism? Indisputably so. Is there a significant number? That's where it becomes a question of semantics. ~4.4% of the population of the UK were categorized as Muslim in the 2011 census, which was ~2.78 million people; that number is suspected to be over well 3.1 million today for Great Britain (not that North Ireland has a large Muslim population, comparatively speaking). What number becomes "significant"? To me, the statement "most contemporary terrorists attacking Western targets are Muslim" does not mean that there is any real meaningful reason to look at being Muslim in itself as a valid criterion for suspicion and/or anger, given that the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the UK do not harbor extreme anti-Western sentiments.

One figure being tossed around often is 5% from analyzing those states which were not historically Islamic which became so within the last hundred years or so. When the Muslim population reaches 5%, real problems with jihadist terrorism begins and only worsens as the percentage grows. Which makes sense considering most revolutions, government overthrows are conducted by roughly 3%.

[TAZ]

Unlikely- We'd just have different kinds of terrorism.

Funny how 35 people got shot last weekend in Chicago and no one here is debating the motivations of criminal subculture- even though that's a threat much more likely to impact us as Americans.

The primary reason for a lack of Chicago interest in this thread isn't cause nobody perceives that violence as a threat, as gang violence is certainly more of a real threat in the USA than Aloha Snackbar violence, but because that's not the topic of discussion. Don't we have other threads discussing gang and inner city violence? If not we probably should.

QUOTE=Default.mp3;607554]It might have to do with consistent Western meddling in affairs of other states for the purpose of economic exploitation and geopolitical jockeying against rivals...[/QUOTE]

Pretty sure that the exact same argument can be made in the inverse. Europe grew tired of Muslims meddling in their affairs for the purposes of resource exploitation and empire expansion. Those repeated invasions and criminal abuses against Christian people drove them to violent responses.

I'm all for exiting the area and leaving those folks to their own devices, but then they would be pissed at us for abandoning them.

Sadly, over the past thousand years or so both cultures have meddled in each other's affairs, so untangling who did what to who first ain't going to happen.

Over the last few hundred years, one culture has evolved beyond its base barbaric tendencies while another hasn't. The west is no longer forcing Muslims out of school, denying them access to education and advancement. They choose to burn down schools and western institutions that would allow them to improve their lives.

The message of acceptance is the beginning of understanding why others hate us, and thus potentially understanding what we need to do to stop creating reasons for others to resent us.

In what way has the west been un accepting of Muslims over the last say 20 years. Do we force them to abandon their religion and culture when they interact with the west? No we do not. We allow them all the freedoms they desire to run their lives as their God preaches. Do they do the same for us when we are in their lands? Can a woman go to school in Afghanistan without getting stoned? Can a woman walk around town unescorted or drive a car?? Unlike Islam's acceptance of the west, the west has done a lot to accept Islam into its community. Too much IMO. When you are creating unsafe living conditions for your citizens in order to make room for refugees (Sweden for example), I think you have gone too far.

The only accepting we need to do is accept the fact that a percentage of the Muslim population are barbarians who will never cooperate with the west and instead will do anything to kill it. Just like Hitler couldn't be appeased, this barbaric percentage will not be appeased. Just like Hitler needed to be confronted and crushed, this barbaric percentage will need to be confronted and crushed.

IMO the questions we face as a society aren't how much more and what more kinds of acceptance we need to exhibit, but rather who can be accepted and who needs to be crushed.

[Default.mp3]

Pretty sure that the exact same argument can be made in the inverse. Europe grew tired of Muslims meddling in their affairs for the purposes of resource exploitation and empire expansion. Those repeated invasions and criminal abuses against Christian people drove them to violent responses.

I have no idea what you're referring to here, unless it's about the Crusade-era stuff.

Sadly, over the past thousand years or so both cultures have meddled in each other's affairs, so untangling who did what to who first ain't going to happen.

Over the last few hundred years, one culture has evolved beyond its base barbaric tendencies while another hasn't. The west is no longer forcing Muslims out of school, denying them access to education and advancement. They choose to burn down schools and western institutions that would allow them to improve their lives.

And therein lies the problem. It's not about the West forcing anything on Muslims. It's about the West's interference in the Middle East, which happens to be Muslim majority; we seem to get along quite well with Indonesia, the most populous Muslim state in the world, and the other various SEA states that have large Muslim populations. To me, the issue of Islam is simply an artifact of geopolitics and history, and Islam in itself is nothing more than a common trait, rather than any motivating factor (though obviously there is bleed-through due to religious identity and general resentment of the West). And let's face it, it's not like the Christians in sub-Saharan Africa or SEA are noticeably more Westernized than their Islamic brethren, so again, it's an issue of culture, not religion.

In what way has the west been un accepting of Muslims over the last say 20 years. Do we force them to abandon their religion and culture when they interact with the west? No we do not. We allow them all the freedoms they desire to run their lives as their God preaches.

Actually, we do force them to abandon aspects of their culture. Which is fine, I'm all for a certain amount of integration, and let's not forget that religion is but a facet of culture; culturally, Muslims are just as diverse as Christians, after all, so it's not useful to conflate religion with culture. As for being unaccepting (which I already noted is not the term I should have used), I think it's quite obvious Islamophobia has risen in the post-9/11 period, and particularly with how Trump played on the fears of the electorate during his campaign. I have many Muslims friends who have corroborated this observation in their day-to-day life. Sure, it's nothing overt for the most part, and it's still far better to be a Muslim here than a Protestant in most Muslim majority states, but it's definitely noticeable, and a step back.

The only accepting we need to do is accept the fact that a percentage of the Muslim population are barbarians who will never cooperate with the west and instead will do anything to kill it. Just like Hitler couldn't be appeased, this barbaric percentage will not be appeased. Just like Hitler needed to be confronted and crushed, this barbaric percentage will need to be confronted and crushed.

IMO the questions we face as a society aren't how much more and what more kinds of acceptance we need to exhibit, but rather who can be accepted and who needs to be crushed.

Seriously, guys, enough with the Nationalist Socialist/Hitler comparisons. As I noted earlier, the USA was perfectly happy to sit around and provide only matériel until the Japanese bombed us, and then the Germans declared war on us. We were quite happy to ignore atrocities that occur if they weren't committed by someone who wasn't our enemy at the time, given how the Japanese, Germans, and Soviets were known to have committed egregious atrocities way before our entrance into the war.

Anyway, like I stated earlier, I'm fine with integration, and rejection of those that do not share our common values. The problem is, there are many Muslims that do share these values, and yet are often binned into the same category as the radical Islamists whose views and actions are anathema to the moderates. It's not hard to find many examples on this forum alone in which sweeping negative generalizations are applied to Muslims as a whole, let alone on the Facebook, Twitter, etc.

[OlongJohnson]

One figure being tossed around often is 5% from analyzing those states which were not historically Islamic which became so within the last hundred years or so. When the Muslim population reaches 5%, real problems with jihadist terrorism begins and only worsens as the percentage grows. Which makes sense considering most revolutions, government overthrows are conducted by roughly 3%.

Interesting that those figures line up so well with these thoughts.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-...y-3f1f83ce4e15

[BillSWPA]

it's still far better to be a Muslim here than a Protestant in most Muslim majority states

As we are deciding how tolerant we are willing to be of Islam, let's keep the above in mind. In fact, anyone would find themselves VERY hard pressed to name even a single predominantly Muslim country in which Christians are not subjected to violent, government sactioned (or at least tolerated) persecution. Islam also specifies a death penalty for leaving that military cult posing as a religion. Conversely, in this country, Christians doing so much as handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside an Islamic event in Detroit has resulted in repeated police harassment.

I have read the entire Bible and portions of the Koran - at least enough to see the portions advocating violence against nonbelievers in their full context. There is simply no comparison between the two books.

Looking at Saudi Arabia is a good example of "mainstream" Islam. That country has religious police that, on one occasion, when schoolgirls fled a burning school without their headscarves, beat the schoolgirls back into the burning schoolbuilding and to their deaths. That's right: government-sanctioned actors were happier to see fellow Muslim girls die than to be seen in public without their headscarves. We have some very valid reasons for "meddling" in these countries. We also need to realize when we deal with them that their basic value system is very different from ours.

The San Bernardino shooter killed the very people who had thrown a baby shower for him and his wife a few weeks ago. He was viewed as a peaceful Muslim, right up until the time he wasn't.

I fully recognize that the extreme portions of Islam is about 10-15% of Muslims, with the remaining 85%-90% being peaceful. Although I strongly believe in freedom of religion - including religions with which I disagree - that tolerance cannot be carried to the point of blind ignorance of a serious threat,

[GardoneVT]

As we are deciding how tolerant we are willing to be of Islam, let's keep the above in mind. In fact, anyone would find themselves VERY hard pressed to name even a single predominantly Muslim country in which Christians are not subjected to violent, government sactioned (or at least tolerated) persecution. Islam also specifies a death penalty for leaving that military cult posing as a religion. Conversely, in this country, Christians doing so much as handing out flyers on a public sidewalk outside an Islamic event in Detroit has resulted in repeated police harassment.

I have read the entire Bible and portions of the Koran - at least enough to see the portions advocating violence against nonbelievers in their full context. There is simply no comparison between the two books.

Looking at Saudi Arabia is a good example of "mainstream" Islam. That country has religious police that, on one occasion, when schoolgirls fled a burning school without their headscarves, beat the schoolgirls back into the burning schoolbuilding and to their deaths. That's right: government-sanctioned actors were happier to see fellow Muslim girls die than to be seen in public without their headscarves. We have some very valid reasons for "meddling" in these countries. We also need to realize when we deal with them that their basic value system is very different from ours.

The San Bernardino shooter killed the very people who had thrown a baby shower for him and his wife a few weeks ago. He was viewed as a peaceful Muslim, right up until the time he wasn't.

I fully recognize that the extreme portions of Islam is about 10-15% of Muslims, with the remaining 85%-90% being peaceful. Although I strongly believe in freedom of religion - including religions with which I disagree - that tolerance cannot be carried to the point of blind ignorance of a serious threat,

Careful. This is a line of thinking antis use to justify gun control.It is no less false here.

[41magfan]

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurt...anger-n2331247

[critter]

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurt...anger-n2331247

The entire piece is excellent, but this quote sums up my thoughts pretty well.

The only appropriate reaction is righteous fury that turns into a grim determination to exact a retribution upon the bomber’s bros so thorough and so comprehensive that in a thousand years the few descendants of the survivors will still terrify their children with the story of the vengeance exacted by the avengers of the West.


And then our enemies would fear us. Which they don’t today. Today, they laugh at us. And they should, because we are ridiculous.

They laugh at us for being fools who think that with just a little more submission, just a wee bit more self-abasement, our enemies will accept us as friends.