One thing I have learned talking with my Muslim coworker is that, just like in Christianity, there are many divisions and sects within the religion. I am Atlantean and go to an Atlantean church. I would not want to be called a Phoenician or Liliputian christian (made up names cause I don't want to offend anyone this early in the morning).
Just as with anything else, the closer and more involved you are with something the more you see distinctions between different categories of that thing. As a total outsider your categories tend to be large, all encompassing and dominated by the loudest, most visible or most discussed sub category. For most westerners I think that sub category is, unfortunately radicalised Muslims.
I'm fortunate that my coworker has given me a different perspective. I never believed all Muslims were radicalised but the true revelation for me was that my Muslim coworker was more like me than most non-muslims. It saddens me to see states in my country rejecting refugees from Syria. They are depriving their residents of potential friends and coworkers, potential spouses, neighbors or playmates that can give them a new perspective and help make their world a little larger and more interesting.
Edit: I'd love to have a discussion with anyone who disagrees with me. (Not really making an argument but whatever) if you're down voting at least make a comment please.
If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam.
To me, that's a scary number.
Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends.
And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.
World's largest arms importer: Saudi Arabia ($4,243,000,000 in 2014)
To me, these are scary numbers.
> When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious. – Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...
Germany will spend at least 8000 million euros for refugees this year (2014 it were about 2400 million euros).
If there is any relation between exporting arms and the number of refugees, this is not only a humanitarian, but clearly a financial disaster.
DoD spent about $115B in 2013 and budgeted $100B in 2014 for procurement (PDF source: http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...)
That's a lot of weapons.
I wish Pew had interviewed Christians in the same countries at the same time and asked them what they thought should be done to homosexuals.
It would be interesting to see what we could glean about Christianity.
A bunch of Americans think you should be killed for being black; or gay; or trans.
A bunch of Americans don't think rape is actually rape - "s/he didn't fight back!", "s/he had a beer!"
Lots of people have wrong ideas.
> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that
> are incompatible with an open society.
For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. Sounds pretty progressive when you put it that way...
Of course you can. The issue is not that such generalizations are invalid, but what conclusions to draw from them and what actions to take in response.
Also note that I have a black friend^W^W Muslim roommate (in fact a Hafiz) I get along well with. That does not mean I don't consider Islam as it presents itself today on a global scale a dangerous ideology.
For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state.
And how many out gay politicians are there in such countries? And anecdotally speaking, remember what happened to Benazir Bhutto.
You could say the same about the followers of other religions. And of certain popular political persuasions. And of many economic belief systems.
Just because adherents don't usually make the news by indiscriminately shooting members of the public doesn't mean they don't do incredible damage in other ways.
A public massacre is a horror, for obvious reasons. But it's not truly more horrible than many other everyday outrages, some of which take place on much bigger and longer timescales.
I don't think there's anything particular to the Islamic faith that lends itself to this pattern, though. Charlatans and tyrants have effectively used religious beliefs for their own goals since the very beginnings of human civilization. I believe Islam faces a "perfect storm" now; it is immensely popular across the world, but a large number of its adherents are stuck in a region that has been dramatically destabilized by foreign influences. The Muslims there are able to use the shared elements of their religion as a way to reach out to Muslims outside of the region and incite them to revolution.
To paraphrase Dan Carlin of Hardcore History: it's not religion that's the problem, it's the tyrants that are the problem.
Of course, even if you (and I) are right in assuming that a (relatively) large percentage of Muslims are currently radicalized in comparison to other religions, this doesn't actually mean that there's any practical way to respond to that. The lazy answer is "stabilize the middle east at all costs" but that never seems to actually align with Western political and economic realities, so here we are...
How do these numbers compare to other religions?
For example, there is an unconfortable number of Christians who do have a fundamentalist mindset, too (although I didn't find any exact numbers). Probably similar issue for other religions and possibly also among non-religious people.
A significant number of adherents of Christianity also hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society.
The problem is that the term "open society" has no objective meaning, so you can use it to exclude any set of beliefs that you don't like, up to and including anarchists.
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_a...
Religious dogma is as much shaped by the current cultural norms as it shapes them, something that many religious leaders are loathe to admit.
Your statement reminds me scarily of something I read relatively recently in a book by a conservative Christian author. The sentence, to paraphrase, was along the lines of "I'm not saying all Muslims are extremists, but the threat of Islamic terrorism is so high we should kick them all out to be safe."
Not sure where you got that statistic, but the much better documented statistic are those of...say...US Republicans. An actual significant population (backed by polls) support outright genocide. Here is a Christian Pastor calling for genocide. Its not some conspiracy-esque statistic like yours, he does it out on the puplit. http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-...
And, if you actually read the study, you find this number is 28%, not 40%.
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-mu...
I know how to do maths, thank you very much.
There's a mosque around the corner from where I live, and a lot of people called Mohamed and Hilay and so on live in the area. Few of them visit that mosque, so if your extrapolation were right, there should be a considerable number of murdered apostates. Which there isn't.
Many countries also have hate-speech laws, including France, which would punish you for speaking out against protected groups.
Being vengeful against those that are disloyal to you is a common human ethos.
If you naively extrapolate, ...
1. Where is the boundary of your beliefs? I'm always trying to be polite with my dev co-workers, but for example if I write a flagged variable `$bible = false;` somewhere in my code, would you feel offended?
2. How do you mix the very science-based nature of IT with purely non-scientific phenomenon of religion?
3. Do you accept all scientifically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like evolution of homo-sapiens, big bang, etc.
4. Do you accept all historically proofed facts as true, that contradict ( might contradict ) your religious views? Like politics behind let's say writing the bible, purpose of the religion and use as a tool of manipulation.
Again really sorry if my questions sound offending not only to you, but to anyone else who reads this.
Ok I've got some time now for a brief response.
1. There are none. And where there are I try to push them. I don't really see your example as a boundary issue. If other people malign or ridicule my beliefs it doesn't really bother me except to feel sadness for those people.
2. Acts 17:11 says: Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.
It's out of context but basically its commending the Berean Jews for closely examining the teachings they were receiving from the apostles to verify that they were true. My faith demands rationality and my God is a rational God.
3. The Bible is not a science text book. The Bible is not a fairy tale either. I accept the bible as true understanding that it's purpose is not to teach me about scientific phenomenon. The travesty to me about evolution and the big bang is not that it is or isn't opposed to biblical teachings, it's that it is such a huge distraction from the true message of my faith.
4. No. This is the one I'm most likely to get into an argument about because history itself is subject to manipulation and interpretation. Has the bible been used to nefarious purpose? Yes. Is the bible's purpose nefarious? No.
I definitely have better understanding now.
This quote is attributed to F Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."
My grandmother was deeply religious (Catholic) and yet was very much down to earth and practical when it came to every day life. It never seemed as if she had any apparent problem with this. Religious people are not computer programs and do not need to pass some kind of unit test for consistency before they are allowed into production.
And plenty of so called rational people hold contradictory beliefs as well, in fact I'd be surprised if anybody had a completely consistent set of beliefs and facts that they subscribed to.
Case in point: I have a close family member that is extremely rational except for that one point where we are descended from primates, that's one step too far.
1. I love talking to people with different beliefs. If we have a respectful debate based on our best evidence I assume we will both learn something.
2. Facts are facts. However, I think all people build world views around those facts which interpret those facts in ways that are consistent with their non-scientific beliefs. The scientific method is just a important to me as an agnostic in terms of whether a medical procedure is safe.
3. See answer 2. Many Christians have no trouble with evolution. It was discovered by an Anglican after all. It's true that Darwin lost his faith over the discovery, but after a few years, many Christians just incorporated it into their faith.
4. It is very hard to prove historical facts, but there is good evidence for many arguments (like the resurrection for example; or that the King James Bible was developed by a committee). I think for many Christians, good historical scholarship is fundamental to the sorts of things that they now believe. This works both ways; however. For example, after the Divinci Code came out I was able to quickly discard the sorts of claims it made because the evidence was so bad. Similarly, Richard Dawkins should not give up his day job to become a biblical scholar since he doesn't seem to have the knack for it.
Cheers
1. Offended no. I'll think you're rather rude, the same as if I wrote $manifestDestiny = false. If you know someone you can have banter with them.
2. IT has all sorts of articles of faith. vi versus emacs, I'm weird as I like nano. Religion is a way of living your life, my code is in no way affected by it. How I interact with my colleagues is, for instance I'd hope that having a nice easy rationale for being a good person makes me a decent co-worker. I'd rather not work with a hedonist who doesn't give a fig for anything other than their own happiness, and with the internet we're exposed to plenty of those.
3. I don't view evolution, the big bang etc as contradicting my religious views. Genesis has been viewed as a metaphor since the 4th century BC. Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions. It isn't about the "God of the gaps", it is about science revealing more of the complex creation we inhabit whilst being incapable of answering what the prime first mover was. That said science only shows us what we can measure from the construct of our own perspective. It cannot, and does not claim to be able, to answer everything.
4. Being a member of the Church of England you have to be pretty aware of the historical context of religion! I'm not a biblical literalist and my church is not solely guided by what is in the bible. One of the reasons theology exists is to take all that knowledge and use that context to look at what we can actually divine from the bible.
Being religious doesn't make you automatically not a jerk. Neither does being "scientific" provide an alternative, science isn't a set of ethics. Up until the 1970s academic philosophy was viciously atheist (the only thing worse than a theist was an agnostic). However since then theism has enjoyed a resurgence and disciplines like epistemology have taken on the challenges raised by atheist philosophers.
As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person, what makes an act good? Be wary of associating it with something which makes you feel "warm and fuzzy" about having done it, because then would you expect someone who did not get that same feeling to do it.
How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality (as most secularist do).
Seems to me, that the only thing 'being Christian' is (outside of the institution), is that you take some more of your morality from the Bible compared to all other books.
What is it that keeps you Christian? Why not just go all the way and look at all books and history to make up your own morality?
> As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person,
> what makes an act good?
It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence of a deity).
In essence it makes the point that the religious idea of morality driven by a god with a big stick in the sky who'll discipline you if you step out of line isn't moral at all, and neither do most religious people actually adhere to it in practice.
E.g. we're not stoning homosexuals or burning witches as we once were, and it's not because the scripture changed, but because of secular progress despite of scripture. How do you decide which instructions to cherry-pick from the Bible or whatever piece of scripture it is you believe in?
He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being. Burning people to death of persecuting homosexuals, not so much. Looking out for your fellow man so he'll look out for you. Note that this isn't the same thing as reducing morality to hedonism.
Anyway, I'm doing a poor job of paraphrasing the gist of that book so I'll stop. But if you're genuinely interested in what constitutes a good act or moral behavior in the secular sense there's a lot of well-researched and interesting works you can read on the subject.
Let me respond to your counter question.
I'm considering myself as an atheist. I graduated law and (but) I'm currently working in IT.
What I found about myself and my own beliefs ( good vs. bad ) is basically a consequence of thousands of years of human civilization absorbed and morally embeded in human beings and in logically written laws.
So basically what I believe doing is good or what I believe doing is bad is defined purely based on logical concepts, incorporated mostly in our legal systems. Yes there are different legal systems, there are different cultural standards, but if you take a look at it, I bet :
1. Every legal system punishes killing, stealing, frauds, etc.
2. Every legal system has an exclusion of the first rule : self-defense, non-voluntary ( accidental ) steal, etc.
3. Every legal system also regulate the civil rights of people agains other people. ( Continental Law states that for a divorce there is a blame that might lie in one of the partners, based on this the other claims compensation - imagine cheating ).
So yes. You can find multiple examples for the most of the actions and you will see that they are mostly regulated.
e.g.
1) You found a passport on the street - By law you are obliged to return it to police ( good deed )
2) You drink a beer on the street - Based on the law you can decide if this is well received or not ( In Berlin it's pretty much everywhere )
etc.
For all other actions, that have no consequence in society and which are not regulated. I choose based on my own opinion and mood.
e.g.
1) Should I give a penny to that homeless person? Well If I feel in the mood, I would, If I don't I probably won't do it today.
2) Should I talk back to a rude person? If I feel really offended, I will most certainly do, usually I don't give a F.
This isn't really true. You're right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones. The catholic church, who pioneered some great non-literalist interpretations, also used to excommunicate you if you didn't believe all of humanity shared a single male ancestor named Adam.
Pick a random medieval christian peasant, and ask him whether the Ark was a real boat, and let's place wagers on what his answer will be.
The genesis stories were literal before they were metaphorical, and opinions about the relative percentages of fact to metaphor have shifted wildly based on century, region, and denomination.
For example: Is IT/open source/tech/programming a meritocracy? If so, how do you explain the massive gender skew? How do you explain how there are scientific studies showing people can be sexist in science (which should be as 'science-based' as IT)?
Many people in tech, confronted with this, will double down. They'll claim tech is a total meritocracy, that women must just be studier at tech etc. etc.
Atheist IT people can be just as closed minded as some bible thumper.
And a lot of the gender skew starts real, real early. Anyone who took Computer Science in college could see the gender skew in action. I regularly had between 0 and 1 women in my 30+ student classes. They just weren't signing up for Computer Science classes.
And there used to be quite a few female computer scientists, but that trend changed in the 70s. There was probably a cultural aspect to this (i.e. parents or peers influencing their decisions away from computers because computers are for asocial nerds, and you don't want to be a nerd!).
It does appear that the cultural influence is shifting at least slightly in favor of women being programmers again, with nerd/geek culture becoming more fashionable and so many people using computers/smartphones all day long, so hopefully we will see more women pursuing computer science, but the root of the problem is mostly right at high school/college age, not nearly as much in the workforce.
1.) The boundary of my beliefs - in terms of people offending me by what they say or write - I really don't care and don't get offended. I have zero expectation for people who don't adhere to my beliefs to say things in line with them. If another person who is a Christian says things I think are really out of line, it wouldn't offend me but I'd try to engage them and work it out - but people who don't believe in it, I don't expect to act like they do. If a person who is of another faith or an atheist is interested in discussing something like the validity of the Bible, I'm happy to have that discussion as long as it is a real discussion. If it's a debate with us just mindlessly exchanging arguments, I have better things to do.
2) I don't think IT and religion are at odds in any way. The tension happens more at the level of your next question. IT is too far removed from those fundamental questions. In fact, as someone who's life is focused on sharing a message with as many people as possibe, IT is awesome.
3) This is trickier. If something is for sure a scientific fact and it conflicts with what I believe my faith teaches about the nature of the world then my assumption is that I've somehow misunderstood what my faith teaches. The only authority I recognize for this is the Bible - so to simplify the discussion - if a fact contradicts what I believe the Bible says then I assume my understanding of the Bible is wrong and I adjust. For your two examples - coming to understand evolution and fit it into my faith has been an on-going process for me over a lot of year. The Big Bang is something that fits my world view better than one that proposes God does not exist.
4) Same as above but I think that a lot of what people believe to be "historically proofed facts" about the Bible are in fact wrong and reflect a lack of information with regards to current knowledge on history. A lot of theories about when parts of the Bible were written and who wrote them rest on the bias of the theories authors rather than any facts. For instance I believe the New Testament was written by people who knew Jesus Christ, saw what he did in person or knew people from that group. I do not think it was written much later by people creating a religion.
If I were to find out something I believe to be true is absolutely false - I would evaluate and adjust. I've done it in my lifetime. It's something I do about more than just my faith. My politics have changed during my adult life and lots of beliefs I have, have moved as I experience more and learn more. I've been living in Europe for 4 years, for example, and in that time I've changed my mind about lots of things. It has been a real education. I don't cling blindly to any opinon. I don't mindlessly follow any 'leaders' teaching or instructions.
Hope that's the kind of feedback you are interested in - if you want to continue the discussion feel free to email me if that's easier than here - bittercode@gmail.com
They had the usual integration problems (veil at school), there were big problems with domestic violence (they're used to hitting women and children), and they complained about salaries (which, to be fair, are very bad for non-trained people), they said they wanted to go to Europe specifically.
http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/09/150908_refugiados_...
http://www.elpais.com.uy/que-pasa/refugiados-guerra-siria-de...
We definitely don't want guys from the 2 group, and probably don't want the ones form the 3rd (they can use a traditional application for visa or something like that).
Moreover the problem is that most of the fleeing are young, healthy males, which is quite suspicious, if you fear war you should get your wives, kids, parents out sooner than later.
On the other hand groups 2 and 3 will mostly contain young, healthy males.
That's why (probably most) people in EU would prefer the stance that Australia made to illegal immigrants (the "No Way" campaign).
Another point is, why they are fleeing to countries that have completely different culture, they could as well go to ones that have similar (middle east or african ones).
If they do have a family, many are trying to establish themselves before bringing a family over through safer means. I know if I'm relocating my family (even if just arriving at a train station on holiday and trying to find accommodation for the night), I'm the scouting party ahead of the rest. It is dozens of times harder doing that with a full family.
How do you argue which definition is more correct than the other? By Historical precedence? By how we interpret the teachings? By popularity? It just seems like the definition of the religion itself is so amorphous that it is very susceptible to terminology hijacking.
Would it do the Muslim population more practical good if they started distancing themselves away from the term "Muslim" and called themselves something different to make the distinction more impactful in the eyes of the public?
A huge part of the problem is that they're not hijacking anything. The jihadists are reading the plain text of the Koran and the Hadiths and following them literally. Moderate Muslims typically have very little scriptural text to stand upon when decrying ISIS and its treatment of infidels. ISIS can be more easily argued to be following the "most pure" form of Islam.
And the blend of eastern orthodoxy from my country has its own flavor, compared to the the general eastern orthodoxy branch, as we've also picked up a set of local customs and traditions along the way. Consequently I think this is why, even though atheism is on the rise and even though I'm what you could call an agnostic, I happen to believe that religion is ultimately good, as it's a part of the local culture, the local culture being a huge part of our identity.
But speaking of Christianity, our local christians tend to be a little xenophobe. And this I never understood why it happens, because you know, Christianity being about the teachings of Christ above all else, with those teaching inviting us first and foremost to love our peers and to be more tolerant. Skipping over the obvious that sometimes Christianity has nothing to do with the teaching of Christ, I personally think it's more about the true human nature. I believe that in essence a large part of the population is xenophobe, fearing and hating what is different and the material is always there to be exploited by a capable leader that can canalize all that potential hatred towards a common goal that can blur our ethics. After all, we should always remember the nazis, as that's the history that shows us how an otherwise civilized society can turn overnight if you press the right buttons, the anti-pattern we should steer away from.
Which brings me to the point that I wanted to make. I see a lack of tolerance and hatred even in many atheists, having the same potential for evil as everybody else, atheists who otherwise claim to be more enlightened. Not all of them of course, just like how not all Muslims are jihadists. And so I don't think changing the naming would make that much of a difference.
> We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.
> We are misled in a second way, by a well-intentioned but dishonest campaign to deny the Islamic State’s medieval religious nature.
http://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-discovered-from-inte...
We all had young kids at the time and the Brahmin folks were much more comfortable leaving their daughter with us than with the other couple. This was mostly because we were conservative just like them and so could appreciate how strictly they followed their own dietary laws and things like that. They also trusted us to follow the same with their daughter. They weren't so confident with the other couple.
Interacting with people in real life belonging to any group is very transformative and "online" relationships are not really a servicable substitute.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/16/paris-attac...
In another article I read this month (but can't seem to find right now) it was explained that "terrorism" was mostly... a social network -- and the article above agrees with that characterization, I think.
This whole mess doesn't have a lot to do with religion, Islam or otherwise; it's about young people trying to find meaning.
It may sound absurd, preposterous, ridiculous, despicable even, to compare today's terrorists to peaceniks from the 60s, but dismissing them as "crazies" is even more wrong, and less helpful.
(And I say this as a Frenchman having lived in Paris all my life).
This is often referred to as the narcissism of small differences. It's one of those terms I found had a lot of applications once I knew it so I thought I'd share.
Do you feel judgemental or upset when people exist that are very wrong according to your morality?
What is it like to be so drawn to God? Why God and no one else? How do you feel about people that don't perceive God or don't experience religious experiences that would point to God existing?
No. Something I stil haven't found a way to explain is that I can disagree with someone or even think that someone's very personal decision is not a good one without feeling ill will towards them.
One of the fundamental teachings of christianity that many non-christians (and some christians even) are not aware of is that a person does not need to be good to be a believer. A person who is convicted by god to believe in him IS good. So if every person on earth suddenly agreed with me and other christians on moral issues it would be a hollow victory without those people also understanding Gods love for them.
So I do not focus my efforts on moralizing the world or turning it into a theocracy. I focus my efforts on being an example of Gods love to those around me. I cannot fathom that someone who is truly gripped by their faith would wish death upon anyone. To me, whatever those people say, they need to be converted as much as anyone else.
I live in the deep south and have never heard such viewpoints from a Christian.
The problem with religion is that it isn't one thing. It's a general philosophy and creation myth to many, and to others it's day-to-day marching orders. That latter set is purely crazy - hearing voices, believing counterfactual things, and is often programmed to kill other groups or at least believe they need to die. If someone is a flat-earther in a battle with round-earthers you can take them up in an airplane high enough to see the curve of the Earth, or to space. But there's no counterproof that can be given to a religious killer.
I think the reason people tend to see Muslims as a single group is that both camps (not Sunni vs Shia, but Sane vs Crazy) share the same sets of religious leadership and respect the same historical figures. For example, a southern baptist and a russian orthodox member would have nothing (religiously) in common. If one sect started murdering others, or picking at a weak justification in the bible for slavery, the other sect would condemn them. But Muslims (through the seemingly accepted method of death-threats from priests) control their religious world more tightly. To be a member is to at least profess to, if not actually believe, a specific set of things.
There's no broad blanket condemnation for entire classes of horrible actions. The Saudis control Mecca and yet the "peaceful" muslims continue to travel there and enrich not only a kingdom but one that routinely executes people for rejecting minor religious traditions. It'd be like me saying I didn't support the Catholic molestation coverup and then going on a three-day Vatican tour and coming back with a pope hat.
So while it may be a stereotype, it is a deserved one (Ask Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) and Muslims should pay the price of changing it instead of insisting others simply trust them despite their memberships and alliances.
It's not that they like or support eachother, but knowing how the other thinks makes a difference. For them it's much more difficult to understand how moderate left or right works and can be influenced. There's a good chance that they fear "moderate" people more than those on the opposite end of their thinking, simply because they don't understand them.
I am ashamed to admit that I didn't realize until I was well after 25 that followers of the faith, some of them, really believed in such beings and that priests of the Christian faith have to at least pretend to do so as well.
I was raised catholic(I'm agnostic) and I always took "Adam and Eve" and Angels as tales and alegories, elements to tell a story.
I have had countless discussions (ok, arguments) with people who believe in the literal Biblical story of Creation, the talking Satan snake, and the flood that Noah endured.
They think that Evolutionary theory is a hoax and it's basically impossible to even get them to look carefully at convincing evidence like the fossil record, arctic ice samples, evolutionary history in DNA, or anything else that might point against their belief in the Creation myth.
I think that it's a weakness of the modern Westerner to disregard the depth of religious belief in fanatics.
Angels are like God's build tools. They are there. They may have a critical role but you don't have to understand them deeply or know too much about the intricate details to be a Christian or believe in God.
Still, there is quite the leap from one being to the other. I believe gravity is real, and its also a faith. There are different degrees of faith required for different elements.
More things point to God than to an Angel, since you could attribute existence or nature to something bigger. Where do angels actually fit there, the only thing to point to it is the bible.
I've asked my dad this before (Catholic), and his response was (paraphrasing):
Of course those stories are parables. There wasn't really a literal burning bush. But, whether the supernatural stuff is real, that's what faith is. Faith means that even when you can't see it, you know it's there because you can feel it. So you trust that what's there is what you think is there.
That's the supernatural parts of religion to my dad (I think he was in his 60s when I asked him about that.)
If you asked Pope Francis if angels are real, what would he answer?
http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/09/muhammad-isis-iraqs-full-story...
Follow this with an interview with Reza Aslan on CNN which the anchors fail repeatedly at trying to digest things down to a soundbite.
It's not uncommon after a number of phases, you start to relate on other planes of abstractions and not on first level constructs.
If I may, I've also felt this religiousness coming up pretty much everywhere. Even if it doesn't impact us as much, architectures, languages (pure vs impure;), project practices, all of them are subject to cause emotional splits between people. We have to accept and live in peace with how people feel about anything as long as they do the same. Although balance is fragile.
I wish more people reached that conclusion about thinking across groups and see what's beneath the surface of each person and community.
"When Jesus was born, it threatened the growing rule of the roman empire and catholic church"
This question is the root of many violent clashes, especially where a smaller group disagrees on a preemption ordering than the larger group. In the US the most obvious example is the assertion that the constitutional rights of privacy between a woman and her doctor trump (or supercede) the rights of a group to declare abortion as murder. While many people will have different opinions on whether it is right or wrong to abort a pregnancy, when you read about bombing of abortion clinics or killing of doctors who have performed abortions, those perpetrators have stated that they believe they are enforcing God's laws above the laws of the land.
The narrative is that God's laws are more important because they determine if you go to hell or heaven, whereas the laws of men merely incarcerate you.
The challenge is that in the Medieval period people figured out that having laws under the control of a small group of people who were not checked by "the governed" gave rise to a conflict of interest which inevitably resulted in the law makers crafting advantages for themselves and their friends and to the detriment of the people.
As a culture it is important to respect and have tolerance for people who choose to follow their own laws, and it is essential to protect those who would choose not to be bound by a "cultural law" because they have come to disagree with that group. If you decide you want to leave the Catholic church because you feel their strictures on divorce or birth control do not align with your own values, then it is the responsibility of the society you live in to protect your ability to leave such an organization on your terms.
It is that last bit, letting people say "You know, I don't believe this is the right way to do things, I'm out of here." which is the essence of the rule of law having supremacy over the "laws" that a particular organization or group subscribe to. It makes those cultural laws voluntary rather than mandatory. And that undermines the authority of a religious figure to command your behavior and punish you for disobeying.
We call it Freedom of Religion but really it is Freedom from Religion. The right to choose to participate in a religious group, and to stop participating if you feel that is the right thing. Sure the group can excommunicate you but that is the limit of their "right" to retaliate, basically to not let you back into their organization.
There is nothing specific about this conflict of values. We have extremist Christian, extremist Jewish, and extremist Islamic groups. I would expect there are extremist Hindu and Buddhist groups as well although I don't know of any. But I do believe the battle here, both in the US with Christians and abroad with other religions, is about the idea that people should have the right to choose their own religion, and the right to choose no religion, and that the only laws which are mandatory to follow are the ones that we have arrived at collectively through a system where the government answers to the governed.
The current thread is managing to stay surprisingly less hostile than it could have been. Let's keep it that way.
They are Abrahamic (along with Judaism) religions and both feature the exact same God and many of the same practices and beliefs.
Besides, the hits were driven by politics, religion is just a facade.
Another example is the Heaven's Gate suicide cult. Instead of being based on Islam they were based on Christianity. They though that Jesus was an alien and you can reach their UFO (= heaven) by committing suicide. And they did.
The way I see it is that using the "Islam" brand is great way to have funds and international support/appeal.
In the same way, in the sixties, you had plenty of nationalist movements all over the world that were claiming to be Communist. Sure it was also the hand of Moscow at work, but for local people, that was also a great way to secure some funding/weapons/etc from USSR.
Also some of the bomber have allegedly married in Syria, possibly with children, I am not sure what would happen to their family if they defected.
1. Religion
2. Politics
3. Personal gain
For instance the politics around hating the west and hating Israel, and personal gain in sex deprived young men getting to rape women in Syria and getting a salary that's 5x as much as the average Syrian. These three parts are intertwined and can't be separated from each other. Most media focuses solely on #2, but a theory built solely around #2 does not explain the behaviour of ISIS very well, whereas a theory built around all 3 aspects fits the data very well.
As for the idea that high ranking members of ISIS do not truly believe in the ideology, and they are just manipulating everyone for personal gain, it is possible but I consider it unlikely. The leader of the Heaven's Gate suicide cult also committed suicide himself along with the others. And George Bush is himself a true Christian believer. I consider it unlikely that ISIS is an exception.
It is interesting that the only people equipped to intuitively understand the sincerity of the metaphysical beliefs of a suicide bomber are those who are or were in a cult or fundamentalist religion. For instance Megan Phelps-Roper who left the Westboro Baptist Church does understand this.
Do not give them death them. Give them suffering for years and years without the release of death. Let's see how they enjoy that.
Just a nitpick, but Catholic church did apologize to muslims killed by the crusaders[0].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apologies_made_by_Pope...
Does this mean that there's no good Muslims out there?
Of course not, there's plenty of them but the underlying problem is that the contemporary mainstream Sunni Islam has shifted from left to right by the early 70s thanks to the increasing influence of the Saudi petrodollar and the relentless exporting of the wahabist cultural product to predominantly Sunni Muslim countries and thus hard-line teachings of Sunni Islam became the norm and dominated the public sphere and one of its poisonous fruits sadly infected Paris over the weekend.
I don't see anti-immigration people and Christians being asked to apologize for Breivik, nor all catholic priests being asked to distance themselves from the catholic scandal of the last decade.
Seriously, you don't? I've seen lots of comments where this and that politician or Christian leader is required to apologize "for their involvement" in the Breivik mass murder, which is nuts. All they've done is doubt whether the removal of border controls in Europe is a good idea. That's supposed to be enough for a guilt-by-association to Breivik's crimes as "incitement".
Catholics absolutely take heat for the various scandals over the years. It's just easier for most of them to distance themselves since few actually practice the faith...
Or like Americans having to apologise for drone stikes, for Iraq and Afghanistan, and specific attacks like the MSF hospital in Kunduz.
At least for Kunduz hospital, it has happened too[0]. Not downplaying other mentioned cases, just straightening some facts up.
0. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/us-afghanistan-att...
I wonder how can you call the main motivation of these jihadists 'just a facade'?
Terrorist attacks aren't about defeating the enemy, they're about terrorizing the enemy and inciting them to make the wrong decisions -- like mistreating peaceful Muslims and thereby supporting the Islamists' propaganda that this is a jihad in defence of Islam.
The easiest way to gain sympathy is to portray yourself as the victim and your attacks as righteous self-defence.
Never mind.
Politics, markets and religion are greatly overlapping concepts!
For example, an anthropologist points out that markets and major religions formed at the same time, and are frenemies. "Nowadays, the work of destroying such ways of life is still often done by missionaries–representatives of those very world religions that originally sprang up in reaction to the market long ago. Missionaries, of course, are out to save souls; but they rarely interpret this to mean their role is simply to teach people to accept God and be more altruistic. Almost invariably, they end up trying to convince people to be more selfish and more altruistic at the same time. On the one hand, they set out to teach the “natives” proper work discipline, and try to get them involved with buying and rolling products on the market, so as to better their material lot. At the same time, they explain to them that ultimately, material things are unimportant, and lecture on the value of the higher things, such as selfless devotion to others." (Originally from Harper’s Magazine, reprinted here: https://libcom.org/library/army-altruists-alienated-right-do...)
Note these inversions:
- ISIS is Muslim. Sharia law economics is free market. (Adam Smith apparently cribbed many of his most famous arguments from medieval Persan free market theorists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_economics#Markets)
- The US is capitalist. It's among the most fundamentalist religious. (About 40% believe Earth was created less than 10k years ago.)
So-called "economics" and religion are duals. Very hard for those enmeshed in them to see.
The way our mind works, associations need to be strengthened for permanence (which is an extra-weird process because it can apparently modify memories).
More importantly, he needs to get this off his chest. You find people to talk to in the msot unlikely places.
Both language as encoding of thought and transmission are lossy. Rule of thumb: A sentence contains four different things: what I mean, what I say, what you hear and what you understand.
Putting things into words already is an important part of how we for ourselves deal with the incomprehensible, the disturbing and revolting.
Finding agreement, or at least getting feedback form others that our words form a comprehensible sentiment, heck - just knowing that we ended up with a gramatically well-formed sentence comforts us that the abyss between you and me, between you and everyone else can be bridged.
tl;dr: it's great that it can be said.
The fact that this was said by someone who has faced such horrors on a daily basis before is extremely respectful.
Though It's probably something Western Christians should still bear in mind when talking to or about muslims.
That is, currently - historically, Caliphs have been religious and political leaders. ISIS claims to take up that throne now, but...
Salah-Eddin's condolences mean a lot to me and I wish him all the best. It's my sincerest hope that French troops will be deployed to Syria in the near future, and that such an action will prove useful in protecting him, his family, his neighbors and his culture.
For what it's worth, I've submitted an application to be a reservist in the French army. It's one month of training and 30 days of active duty per year. I sincerely hope my small effort will be helpful not only because it puts another man in the Parisian battlefield (yes... that's sadly what it has become), but also because it allows a better-qualified soldier to (hopefully) deploy to the Middle East.
I don't presume to know whether or not my action is helpful, but I sincerely hope it is. I'm already quite busy with my dissertation defense coming up in a few short months, but this can do, so I will.
I suppose I needed to get that off my chest as well...
This kind of thinking is exactly why Mid-east is in its current state and that is exactly the reason why ISIS was born.
ISIS high command mainly consists of Iraqi ex-officers, who were rendered jobless and aimless by USA's 'liberation' attempt. Al-Qaida was a result of a 'liberation' attempt by Soviets and then consequently another 'liberation' attempt by USA. Guess how the French 'liberation' will result at the end.
The invasion of Iraq was stupid, reckless and selfish. It was a for-profit war that destabilized the region and allowed ISIS to take on its present form.
I'll have you remember that France staunchly opposed this war.
Now the US and the brits have left us with a veritable cesspool, and we're bearing the brunt of the consequences.
This isn't a liberation attempt or a preemptive strike. This is responding to an immediate threat. And again, it would be foolish and disastrous to only respond militarily, but it's just as foolish not to protect ourselves from immediate threats while we counter persistent threats through non-military action.
Yours is a false dichotomy.
You made a strong point without being harsh, and answered a more heated rebuttal with an even stronger but nevertheless respectful comment.
I'm not sure I agree with you, but thanks sincerely for contributing a point of view in this manner.
USA can pull off its invasive politics via a) pouring insane amount of resources both militarily and politically b) by getting along pretty good with other Muslims while bombing some (like Saudis, Turks, etc.) c) by being an ocean distance away from the very people they drop bombs on.
How will France do all of that with a) much more limited resources b) while being uniformly disliked by almost all Muslim nations due to historical reasons and c) while being a boat ride away from tens of millions of agitated Muslims?
I believe, with this attack, France is pulled into this already extremely messy situation by the powers that be. And I am afraid things will escalate to a much worse situation.
As person who LIVES in heart of middle east (Iran) and I have seen shia militant from very close(I know people who works in IRGC),You are completely and pure wrong , do you know what would generate another generation of terrorist ? another invasion. I am atheist and liberal with a little being gay,I am not gay , but sometime things go wrong - and believe me these are pretty dangerous thing to be in Iran and would get me killed, without doubt - but I can realize the only thing will give terrorist another opportunity is invasion of a country in middle east. This is not your fucking war.This was not west fucking war at all. They shouldn't come here in any circumstance.You know what ? because Paris like terrorism act will happen again and again and again. West should understand they were wrong all the time. What the fuck are you doing in middle east ? You know what ? no body more than me would be glad to live in secular community with secular government, but it seems politician in west do not realize , being in middle east is equal to raising radical movement against them. YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND , MIDDLE EAST SHOULD FIGHT FOR ITSELF, EVEN IF ISIS KILL ALL OF US, this is not your fucking war.I do not remember reading if any alien did help west during the renaissance. Society should grow.
PLEASE , do for humanity a favor , understand militarism is equal to terrorism. I was talking with one idiot yesterday , and he mentioned I do not believe France invade Iraq. Yes your are right idiot . France did not . but west did . These fucking killers in middle east , do not see countries , they see Islam against West.
Do you know who fights in Iran against mullah's ? Christians ? Are you kidding me, mojahidin ? Those fucking traitors, no way.
Academia fights against mullah's, science fights, liberal people fighting against mullah's more effective than any other person in whole revolution history.This regime is almost unbeatable in political sense- because they have money and manpower and oil- but do you know they are seeing liberals in their nightmare. They even don't care about West invasion against Iran(some stupid person like G.W Bush may even consider that option).Because at the end they know the can manage harm West military pretty badly. Worse than maybe Vietnam war.BUT THEY CANNOT FIGHT WITH INTERNET, WITH TOR, WITH STUDENTS who USE TOR.
Give them internet , provide them satellite , facebook/twitter/youtube/porn , Show them fucking beautiful women in Texas(with respect to women, I just want show sexual incentives), show them there is no need to kill so many people to get those woman , you can fuck like heaven in earth without killing people. And BOOOOOM this is the sound of explosion of foundation of religion.
Ruin their stupid culture , and then you are going to see middle is will revive. and turn to into secular place.
and Do you know who is supporting ISIS ? Which countries? I would suspect Saudi Arabia ( the US closest ally after Israel in middle east).Can you fucking believe it ? This is not double standard. This is fucking fraud against humanity.At the end we all know , non of the west's politician's give fucking flying shit about terrorism in middle east. If they did , They weren't this double standard'ed against corrupted (I would say most corrupted regime in whole world) regime in Saudi Arabia.What was last time you checked women condition in Saudi Arabia.And why the hell us have this much relation ship with country which behead people like candy. This is what I mean when I am saying double standard.
p.s. if you felt I insult you , I am so sorry , I was talking broadly than talking with you.I hope respectively, you understand there was something HUGE wrong with west policy in middle east.
ISIS was born out of the Salafist/Wahhabi ideology that the Saudi state has been exporting from the beginning of its existence. This is why terrorism is almost the exclusive domain of this one sect.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism...
As another poster said, if every disenfranchised person in the world turned to terrorism, we'd have complete and utter chaos. But most don't.
As for you argument, Mali was in the grips of an Islamist army. They aren't any more. Thanks to French intervention.
Intervening and waging proxy wars in the middle-east sent the message that sovereignty is relative and only applies to countries with "appropriate" views, hence the hate against west.
Still I wouldn't call Mali a stable country as they are constantly plagued by terrorist attacks.
I think the point you and @chappi42 miss is that being a jobless individual with no prospects in a war torn country with no end in sight is a whole different psychology than just being a jobless guy. Add this mix some religious agitation and you have the easiest job of all times as the HR manager of ISIS. I think this is the biggest contributing factor. Not the religion itself.
If you read e.g. what happened in Palmyra, the (sometimes foreign) radical muslim terrorists attacked/killed the citizians and a liberation is very much needed.
'Only' maybe the 'state-building' has to be done longer than before in Afghanistan, Irak... And a UN administratered government is needed for some time. I don't talk about 'the west' but also about the 'moderate muslim community'.
It's no good now to stand on the side and watch the atrocities. If I read correctly also countries like the Lebanon suffer from the influx of radical maslims foreigners.
Well, the problem is that according to his post, he lives "in the western part of the city [Aleppo] still under the control of the Syrian government[Under the "presidency" of Bashar al-Assad]" and the French Government has been on the side of the rebels. Which means, that if the French army is deployed, and there is no agreement between France (and the rest of the allies (mainly the US, UK and the Arab League) and Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, the French army may end up bombing Salah-Eddin's house instead of helping him.
I wholeheartedly recommend you to read the wikipedia article on the foreign involvement in the Syrian Civil War [1], to see how fucked up the situation is over there. And also, take a look at this map [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_involvement_in_the_Syr...
[1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/09/ec...
Could you expand on that? I live in Paris too and I don’t feel it has anything different from another city like London or New-York regarding security.
We've had two gunfights in the middle of Paris in two years. If you don't see how this is different from previous terrorism, then respectfully, there's really no point in discussing any of this with you.
The point isn't that things are different from a security-state point of view. The point is instead that we're facing something whose scope and scale we underestimated.
This was a terrorist attack on French soil - in Paris, the thought has weight-enough on its own, there is no need to frame it as a battle.
Maybe you should join the counter-terrorism forces or intelligence community instead to help your country, if that what you're actually after, not just blind revenge because you have to admit that these attacks were a big SNAFUS on the French security apparatus part and some heads got to roll over this but I was amazed to see that Hollande is going to raise their compensation and reward them even more for their incompetence.
I REALLY REALLY wish I had a job like this where they pay me more every time I fuck up and make a total mess of a situation. I really picked the wrong field and career here.
Also, I find it really amusing that the general sentiment in France towards guns and a 2nd amendment style right is negative when it is not a stretch to say that some lives could have been saved if armed persons of the populace came to the rescue and took out the terrorists instead of filming the massacre as it was unfolding helplessly.
It proved beyond doubt now that security forces can be overwhelmed when faced with ops of such scale & magnitude and it would very imprudent to have just a single line of defense to protect people, when two or three backup could make wonders and end the situation in a matter of minutes and save the lives of a lot of people.
So, maybe you should petition your government to relax the laws concerning purchasing and carrying guns to avoid such a disaster from occurring on this scale in the future and leave the ME to its people to sort out the mess.
Please, no. Liberalization of guns (that is, a tool for hurting and killing living beings) doesn't solve terrorism. It doesn't make people safe. It doesn't help.
People in USA don't understand why guns aren't sold freely in Europe just as we do not understand how guns are available to everybody in the States. Unfortunately I can't express that other than "it just feels wrong."
Don't be naive and think that making everybody a vigilante is going to solve terrorism and Middle East crisis. It goes much deeper than that.
EDIT: don't you have crazy people shooting around over there? I would argue that it's much easier given how available guns are to the populace, but the point is: gun liberalization has nothing to do with keeping citizens safe.
Here's the answer to your doubts. You know that my argument makes sense but you let your ideology and emotions get in the way of making meaningful policy adjustments.
First, I am not American and I live in a country that restricts the lawful acquisition of guns for legitimate reasons but I can see that arguments put forward by gun rights advocates make sense from a defense point of view. I think that imposing reasonable restrictions on guns is a very good position to take that strikes a good balance between ensuring national security on one hand and individual security on the other.
I must say that I find it interesting that left-wing people are spearheading the fight against gun rights given that weapons were a central theme in the French Revolution, October Revolution and other emancipating movements in the 20th century when they're supposed to be the ones championing the cause and fight the encroachment of the state on the people's rights.
Please note that guns are not available to everyone in the US. There are still regulations in place and also not everyone would like to be a vigilante but if people would love to volunteer to defend themselves, their family or community, we should not get in their way for the illusion of security that proved very non-existent over and over again.
ps: I'm not even against there policy, I'm just following the simple engineering rule that errors happen, and having lots of weapon everywhere are more opportunities for things to go wrong. So far nobody has the solution against violence.
I posted it further below, but the reserve corps are not what you seem to think they are. Reservists patrol cities, especially airports and train stations.
I'm not going to war; I just want to be on the front lines when the war comes to me, because someone has to be the trigger-man and I'm capable of doing it. I should add that I have no desire to kill another human being, even a daesh soldier. From what I've heard it's a burden you carry for the rest of your life. But, I'd rather do that then do nothing for a third time.
At the end of the day, someone needs to pull the trigger, sickening though this thought may be. I hope I won't have to, but I'd rather do that than watch my compatriots get butchered in their own streets. I'd rather do that then weep in my apartment like I did last Friday. I'm a few years shy of 30, I'm in good shape... if not me, then who?
I mention this in case any other Frenchmen are lurking around. I know the army doesn't have a great reputation here, but this is a way to help out that doesn't even need to interfere with your work schedule. Your employer is required by law to allow you to pursue your missions, and you're paid a small amount during your active-duty days (though this is hardly the point). I can think of no clearer example of self-defense.
>Last I checked they are begging for armor and winter gear.
I wonder how difficult it would be to collect old winter clothes and send them over...
Then again, I doubt they would accept me, given I have an arm injury that prevents a bit of motion above shoulder height.. (I'm 6'5" or ~2m tall)
That's one of those things where we could make a fairly immediate change in policy, it would come at a cost, definitely but it would change the situation for IS for the worse far more effectively than any number of bombs dropped would do.
It's very likely that these "rich oil-producing countries" are made up of fragmented power centres and viewpoints, just like everywhere else in the world.
Painting these countries all with one brush is about as foolish as painting Christianity (or Islam) with one brush too.
Banks are liable to states about where money goes or come from, so yes I think you can brush some countries with a level of control on money flow. Some with really strict control and some less strict or even tolerant in some cases.
* http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/inside-assads-syria/
The folks interviewed in the video reflect many of the opinions wrote about by Salah-Eddin Shaban in the VLC email.
I consider Muslim Brotherhood with Khorasan group far more dangerous than ISIS and I recall reading that some where else, but can't find the source now.
Fun Fact: The spokes person for Sweden funded Islamic Union is quite proud having his father happily punishing infidels in Idlib. Lovely guy.
But don't worry, when they say Death to America. They don't mean you ;-)
Not sure if Saudi leadership is behind funding ISIS, but yeah a lot of Saudis involved.
P.S: I'm from Iran.
Iran, as a declared nation state with fairly well defined borders, a seat at the table and a lot of connections with the rest of the world is also in a position of having more to lose, so sanctions against Iran have a much higher chance of being effective.
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/11/14/how-does-isis-fund-its-re...
It's from 2014 but still a good read on the subject.
Glenn Greenwald provides further documentation that the various Middle Eastern and North African wars were planned before 9/11 [1]
"General Wesley Clark … said the aim of this plot [to “destroy the governments in … Iraq, … Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran”] was this: “They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East, turn it upside down, make it under our control.” He then recounted a conversation he had had ten years earlier with Paul Wolfowitz — back in 1991 — in which the then-number-3-Pentagon-official, after criticizing Bush 41 for not toppling Saddam, told Clark: “But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet regimes – Syria, Iran [sic], Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” Clark said he was shocked by Wolfowitz’s desires because, as Clark put it: “the purpose of the military is to start wars and change governments? It’s not to deter conflicts?”
[I]n the aftermath of military-caused regime change in Iraq and Libya … with concerted regime change efforts now underway aimed at Syria and Iran, with active and escalating proxy fighting in Somalia, with a modest military deployment to South Sudan, and the active use of drones in six — count ‘em: six — different Muslim countries, it is worth asking whether the neocon dream as laid out by Clark is dead or is being actively pursued and fulfilled, albeit with means more subtle and multilateral than full-on military invasions (it’s worth remembering that neocons specialized in dressing up their wars in humanitarian packaging: Saddam’s rape rooms! Gassed his own people!). As Jonathan Schwarz … put it about the supposedly contentious national security factions:
As far as I can tell, there’s barely any difference in goals within the foreign policy establishment. They just disagree on the best methods to achieve the goals. My guess is that everyone agrees we have to continue defending the mideast from outside interference (I love that Hillary line), and the [Democrats] just think that best path is four overt wars and three covert actions, while the neocons want to jump straight to seven wars. The neocon end as Clark reported them — regime change in those seven countries — seems as vibrant as ever. It’s just striking to listen to Clark describe those 7 countries in which the neocons plotted to have regime change back in 2001, and then compare that to what the U.S. Government did and continues to do since then with regard to those precise countries. "
0: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/57-years-ago-u-s-brit... 1: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/26/wes_clark_and_the_neocon_dre...
edit: 2: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/11/neoconservatives-plan...
from [2]: "Found actual video clips of Clarke explaining the long-standing plans for regime change … In the following clip, Clarke says
I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September.
*
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
And in this clip, Clarke says
It came back to me … a 1991 meeting I had with Paul Wolfowitz.
*
In 1991, he was the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy – the number 3 position at the Pentagon. And I had gone to see him when I was a 1-Star General commanding the National Training Center.
*
And I said, “Mr. Secretary, you must be pretty happy with the performance of the troops in Desert Storm.”
And he said: “Yeah, but not really, because the truth is we should have gotten rid of Saddam Hussein, and we didn’t … But one thing we did learn [from the Persian Gulf War] is that we can use our military in the region – in the Middle East – and the Soviets won’t stop us. And we’ve got about 5 or 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.”
About that time, US on international scale went from "good guys" to... well nothing that could be written here, let's say "necessary evil". It's still there and will remain for quite some time.
I wonder, if all direct and indirect deaths and misery caused by US politics from 50s would be accounted, if Hitler & Stalin regimes would still be such badasses. But real numbers are probably unreachable. (uncomparable datasets, i know, just out of curiosity... deaths in millions become statistics as we know).
The problem is the culture as a whole. Does it work? Or does it not work?
The way to know if a culture works is to look at migration patterns. People leave cultures that don't work and go to better cultures.
But people from shitty cultures are still people, so this obvious enormous fact goes completely unnoticed. They are not going to accept so easily that their culture is not good. It takes generations.
Or it _took_ generations. Now it may not happen at all, because some people pride themselves on respecting and _preserving_ other people's silly cultures, instead of just respecting the people.
You can't actually reliably say this without first going through every religion and telling us how ridiculous you find it.
But I'm not really bothered about every religion. Out of interest, what's ridiculous about Buddhism, and how are you going to quantify the ridiculousness?
Your argument doesn't work as well with Buddhism. It works to an extent (there are repressive Buddhist monks etc.) If I lived near a Buddhist (or Christian) monastery, chances are that I'd respect it, and I would wish to preserve it. I'd even offer up for an alms round. After all, they do no harm to me.
Note that I'm only picking Buddhism because it's a religion I'm relatively familiar with. I don't know enough about Christianity (the largest religion in the world, which doesn't even advocate circumcision) to argue the point on Christianity.
Buddhism? Yes. Silly, ridiculous relic.
Please don't bore us with the usual equivocating about how Buddhism is different, and complex, highly personal, etc.
Are there helpful aspects to Buddhist beliefs? Maybe. But it's still Bronze Age philosophy with plenty of supernatural claptrap mixed in. I'm not aware of any useful aspects of Buddhism that don't have a purely secular equivalent.
Not everyone views the world from an empiricist or materialist atheistic viewpoint. I don't think it's nice to say something is ridiculous simply because you don't see it that way. Further, many followers of religion wouldn't say it's supernatural at all - it's part of nature that hasn't been uncovered, or it can't be uncovered.
>Please don't bore us with the usual equivocating about how Buddhism is different, and complex, highly personal, etc.
Buddhism is largely different from other religions, first and foremost that it doesn't mandate the worship of a god, and further can be interpreted in such a way that can dispense with most of what you see as supernatural. Secondly, for it's "find out yourself" nature that encourages questioning and going beyond the realm of logical thinking.
And it is highly personal - it's got the idea that you have to be the one to set yourself on the path. You can't be saved by someone simply by praying etc.
>I'm not aware of any useful aspects of Buddhism that don't have a purely secular equivalent.
Buddhists are aware of one - it's called Nibbana - and it can only be realized by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which I will say relies heavily on the idea of kamma and "supernatural" ideas.
Please do not be so dismissive.
Because the core ideas of Buddhism are the only ones that can be applied directly to your behavioural patterns. They are practical, they are purely logic. I don't know what's the "supernatural claptrap" you're talking about, probably you picked the wrong school to study it and got distracted.
In my opinion other philosophies (especially European schools) are mostly a wordplay without an applied part.
The solution is, as you say, to stop talking about them.
Why generalize? How about the core parts of Buddhism that are literally a checklist on how to calm your mind. And the same methods are used by modern psychotherapy as "cognitive behavioural therapy" and "mindfulness".
Meditation has empirical benefits. Meditation is good. If you believe you have to meditate to not go to flaming eternal hell, that's religion.
So I'd argue, keep the logic, drop the religion.
Buddhist "hell" is purely logical, there're no concepts in vanilla Buddhism that are not logical. You're not getting to hell for "not meditating".
The hell is not eternal and you will go out of it eventually when you'll get better understanding of the universe. You're going to hell not because some god or Buddha say so but because the universe works that way: angry and violent mindstreams flow into worse states until they realize they should stop behave like they do.
For people who're opposite to the idea of any other worlds but their own, there's a view that "hell" is just a state of unbalanced mind and not some kind of dimension for your afterlife.
People have been migrating from everywhere even from the west to the Gulf countries for quite some time now. Does this make their culture any better than any of the migrants'?
Of course not as national wealth and net immigration numbers are not relevant in this discussion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Syria
The reason we (i.e. "The West") left Saddam in place until the US needed an easy target after 9/11 is that despite being a dictator and mass-murderer, his reign kept Iraq relatively stable. As soon as he was taken out of the equation other forces began to fight for dominance and now we have a huge mess on our hands that's arguably worse than where we started.
The same is true for most of the dictatorships toppled during the "Arab Spring". This is partially why Russia was against intervening in Syria from day one and why nobody seems to think Saudi Arabia or Qatar or any of the other bloody dictatorships in that region are worth disrupting.
In many cases the actual borders of these countries are pretty arbitrary and split up various ethno-religious groups (that often historically hate each others' guts) in weird ways. As soon as you tell them to self-govern and dispose of the dictators you end up with all these directly opposing interest groups suddenly being able to get at each others' throats.
It's not that Assad is a nice person or that it's more ethical to leave an evil person in place than to dispose of him, it's just that mindlessly handing out guns and expecting an oppressed people to be rational is pretty much the worst thing you can do.
Look at WW2 Germany. Sure, we got rid of Hitler, but in order to prevent Germany from blowing up again (exactly what had happened after WW1) the Allies actually had to work out long-term plans for the occupation of Germany to make sure the citizens were educated enough to understand how messed up their world view used to be and that the country was re-integrated into world economy and politics.
We need a Marshall Plan for Syria with buy-in from several major influencers. THEN we can talk about disposing of Assad.
The idea that these people should be propped up because they are "lesser evil" has no experimental basis. Reminds me of WW2 "appeasement" honestly. It only makes the problem worse in the long run.
"Look at the West, they claim to be democracies and defend human rights, but they are supporting mass-murders here"
...which makes the West looks like a bunch of hypocrites. And this is an argument that is factually hard to counter.
Frankly, I don't know what we should be doing. I don't see a solution without a long political roadmap with likely a partition of Syria & Irak, to have an Alawite state, next to a Sunni state, next to a Shia Iraq.
I must admit that the US and allies abandoned Libya after toppling Ghaddafi and not helping Libyans with nation rebuilding after that. Add to that, the intervention by regional players in Libya complicated the situation and made things worse for the ordinary people.
We were too afraid to risk our own soldiers or pissing off the wrong people. Now we have Islamist extremists everywhere and a self-proclaimed Caliphate is trying to establish a permanent Islamic state.
The biggest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Hama_massacre happened during a fight between government forces and islamists which had taken over a city and started an uprising, so I wouldn't really call them civilians; civilians with guns maybe.
I don't know much about the history of Syria, just saying the link you posted doesn't really show the picture you want.
Better to continue life as you normally would, be alert, and to not give in to fear.
Maybe if something is dangerous, it is better to avoid it. In this day and age whatever you say online can be read by billions. There are bound to be some nutjobs among them. So maybe it is just prudent to try to remain anonymous, as there are not only terrorists to fear.
The problem with irrational belief systems is that you have no rational basis for calling one version legit and one version "barbaric". Who's to say your interpretation is correct? Maybe theirs is.
Better to recognize irrational beliefs for what they are and discard them entirely (to the degree that's possible).
'Normal countries' should help. I.e. fight a war against ISIS, kill them and rebuild Syria. Including new government (under UN stewardship).
Because that has worked so well in the (recent) past?
The millions of refugees, spread of lunatic but well funded fundamentalism and the scope of terrorizing local neighborhoods hasn't been happened in the (recent) past.
What else do you propose?
I don't agree to the We Must Do Something, This Is Something sentiment.
Clearly we have to get our arms around the situation. We UN should actually coordinate a plan to figure what we can do. Rushing to put soldiers on the ground always ends up complicating the situation further and it's a choice you cannot take back (seeing how we're still stuck in many places) years after.
(Warning: It's really long, but answers a whole lot of questions that a whole lot of westerners, outsiders have about that group, the region, their funding, recruiting, idealogy and why they still haven't been defeated. Well worth a read.)
Democracy or staying-politically-correct or show-mercy-to-the-murder are all useless to combat this level of violence, the only way to really fix it, is either they evolve and modernize quickly, or get erased by a war at a large scale. It seems more likely the latter will be the case as they're turning everyone against them quickly.
There are no good Muslim or bad Muslim, Muslim itself indeed is the root cause here.
Who is "them"? ISIS or Muslims in general? It's absurd to think that there aren't "modernized" Muslims in the US.
edit: ok, let me explain: putting the USA and ISIS into the same bucket "terrorist states" is just moronic, that's why. happy downvoting.
Its time to get our heads out of the sand. Religion is part of the problem whether its Islam or Christianity etc. I agree other factors play a role too.
Religion is the best tool to brainwash people.
Right wing extremists don't use religion.
Left wing extremists didn't use religion.
Radicalisation does not need religion.
Perhaps it doesn't really matter to most westerners, but we shouldn't blame a billion people for the insanity of a small part of them.
It's a crazy situation, for sure...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/isis-caliphate-...
http://www.vox.com/2015/11/14/9735102/syria-isis-history-vid...
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
Another piece of the puzzle: https://theintercept.com/2015/11/16/stock-prices-of-weapons-...
I am not sure how valid these translations are, but there seem to be a lot of incendiary passages in the Quran, how do we reconcile these view points with modern society.
I also understand that old testament (I am not christian) is just as bad but I was under assumption that the old testament was a carry over from Christianities Jewish roots, and the new testament supersedes it?
Christian differ on the effect of the NT on the OT, since the NT contains both material that seems on the simplest reading to endorse the OT law in full, material which seems on the simplest reading to provide different and simpler rules than those in the OT law, and material which seems on the simplest reading to explicitly limit the application of most OT laws.
In practice, you end up with a whole spectrum of ideologies among Christians (and the same is true of Muslims.)
Stay safe Salah-Eddin and thank you for your words.
I will add something though. Why the apologies? The people apologizing have nothing to do with these acts and are pointless. Plus, why did all these barbarians start all this crap so recently ? Like after the 90's ?
I assume the author is alluding to Saudi Arabia here.
How absurd is it not of the West to
* on one hand is claim to oppose Islamic terrorism, while
* on the other hand having among the closest allies in the region what probably amounts to the most radical, fundamentalist, human-rights abusing and not the least culturally and religiously influential states there, preaching religious intolerance to a world-wide audience of susceptible followers.
Recently, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of Black Swan, wrote[1] a thoughtful commentary on the situation:
> Since 2001 our policy for fighting Islamic terrorists has been, to put it politely, missing the elephant in the room, sort of like treating symptoms and completely missing the disease.
> Policymakers and slow-thinking bureaucrats stupidly let terrorism grow by ignoring the roots. So we lost a generation: Someone who went to grammar school in Saudi Arabia (our “ally”) after September 11 is now an adult, indoctrinated into believing and supporting Salafi violence, hence encouraged to finance it — while we got distracted by the use of complicated weapons and machinery.
> Even worse, the Wahhabis have accelerated their brainwashing of East and West Asians with their madrassas, thanks to high oil revenues.
> * * *
> So instead of invading Iraq, blowing up Jihadi John and individual terrorists, thus causing a multiplication of these agents, it would have been be easier to focus on the source of all problems: the Wahhabi/Salafi education and the promotion of intolerance by which a Shiite or a Yazidi or a Christian are deviant people.
> If we absolutely need to put people in Guantanamo, it would be far more effective to ship the Salafi preachers and Wahhabi clerics over there, not just the people swayed by their teaching. And if we need to correct the profound Saudi problem, we need to start by sending to them our preachers, educating them into tolerance, explaining the very concept of the separation of church and state. Or, better even, encourage Muslim preachers who promote religious tolerance (“laka dinak wa li dini“) — instead of seeing them ostracized.
> And if you find violence unavoidable, it should be directed at the Saudi and Qatari funders of violence, as well as the Salafi theorists, rather than the young performers.
> P.S. Beware the usual ISIL crypto-sympathizer who sort of “explains” (that is, justifies) what happened (the intentional targeting of civilians) with some other Western event that can hark all the way to the Crusades… Otherwise it is presented as “biased.” You can spot such people from a mile away. For them, you cannot condemn ISIL without at the same time trying to be “balanced.” Who are they fooling? This is the technique of bundling together problems that should be treated independently, and you need to learn to deal with such people by forcing them to discuss the problem of ISIL on its own.
[1] http://www.politico.eu/article/the-saudi-wahhabis-are-the-re...
(edited for formatting)
Great way of robbing the people who put their lives to save you of their contribution.
Thanking god for a series of events is nothing more than ignoring reality. A series of events happened, and that's that.
- Bomb the oil fields, forget about politics/economics , don't let IS grow. Just take away their primary income so they'll internally bleed out... The people who come from Europe woudn't like it there if they don't receive any money.
- Track down the big import behaviour of Western Products ( Red Bull, Nutella, Hummers, ... ) that IS terrorists love. Elimnate the import of it. They don't want Western products, no problem. Cut them off the economy and black market as quick as possible.
- Make it illegal to buy black market oil from IS, track down people who want to have some quick money.
- Invest in rebels that attack IS on the ground ( some people from France and the UK voluntarely go there)
- If there is any proof of Middle East supports IS. Then take economic sanctions. Work together with Russia, America, Europe and China. Invest in oil alternatives FAST
- Put a website online www.worldagainstterrorisme.com where there are a couple of big sections:
- SnitchTerrrorists, to report abnormal behaviour. Make it so that you can see which ethicity/religion has reported them. So people would realize that muslims don't support extremist behaviour
- LiveTarget, witch the cooperation of America, an online live sattelite map that limits to Syria and the part that IS controls. Limit the visibility of known friendly groups ( eg. masking / using older images when a friendly plane crosses the land). So people in the world can unite and track down extremist behaviour in the IS country. Make it easy to report suspicious behaviour and you can bomb the hell out of them as soon as they get out of their building with the help of the community.
- The media should make fun with IS instead of addressing them as the big enemy. Make fun with the people who go there, target them as dumb ( if they had bad grades, ...) and change the public perspective for people who are compelled to go there because they hate where they live / feel discriminated because of social community problems
- I have another idea, but that is morely to protect western nations. That should be hidden from public eye ;) - contact me if you would like to know :P
Edit: If you're down voting at least make a comment please, Eg. how you think states/nations can handle it "better"
My proposition are for the following intentions: less generalisation and less racisme ( not every muslim is IS! ), more public effort to help ( snitching extremists, finding IS members in their home country, ...), lessen the media appeal of IS for people with non-western feelings - living in Europe because of social problems in a country / community / city, ...
