I honestly think that a tree, regardless of what forest is in, is still a tree. I think people were looking at Islam as a culture and saying they were all savages, and I was simply pointing out to the pot that it is, in fact, black. But as long as we're going there: Sure, I do think so. The NRA, for example, has billions and is the most influential lobby group in America to keep the guns flowing, they have money comparable to Isis. Both political parties, too, who put forth propaganda painting the other side as horrible baby killers or bleeding heart criminal lovers or gun-toting yokels, all of whom deserve to die, until some "warrior for the babies" or psychopathic Guy named McVey takes it too the logical conclusion of that kind of rhetoric. I think, at the end of the day, we love to point at the other side as less than human, while we ourselves could be painted with the same broad brush, and that dehumanization of others is the exact reason violence is so prevalent.
We don't rape anymore? There isn't any more religion inspired violence? Well fuck me running... I didn't know. I was distracted by the god hates fags people and Bill Cosby and the warrior for babies, I didn't notice we evolved beyond violence recently.
There doesn't need to be an either/or dichotomy here. D26, you're right - people in general are fucked up. All people, everywhere. We are a violent, aggressive species given to impulsiveness and cruelty. And of all the major religions, Islam is by far the most twisted and violent, and it is codified in their religion. So - take the fucked up species of humanity, and overlay Islam on it, and you get the Middle East today.
Christianity is almost as fucked up and violent. See: the cruisades or the inquisition, or shit, their general treatment of women or homosexuals. How may LGBT people have been killed in the name of "God?" Because it is a "sin." How are Christians who shoot up planned parenthood any less savage than Muslims who kill women for cheating? How are Christians who kill gay people any less savage than Muslims who do the same? Look, my point is simple: stop dehumanizing others. That "us vs them" mentality is the reason all this shit happens, and it is because we view them as "less than" or as somehow below us, so when they die or atrocities happen to them, who give a fuck. When it happens to us, it's a fucking tragedy. But the reality of the situation is the same broad brush that labels all Muslims or all of Islam as violent radicals can be used on us, too, which is WHY THEY HATE US.
Can anyone name a single Western country that has allowed a large number of Muslims in that hasn't had a big problem with the Muslims they so tolerantly invited to their country?
There are shades of grey. ISIS and radical Islam is if Westboro Baptist and Planned Parenthood bombers/shooters had some sort of bastardized offspring that encapsulated the very worst Christianity tenants of the Old Testament. The difference is those people are shouted down and correctly written off as cherry-picking, fanatical assholes. While I hate to say it, I do give some credence to the idea that the poverty and instability for years in the Middle East has allowed those idiots to thrive and convert the restless and unhappy. If the US was constantly in strife and Westboro had a more all-encompassing, general enemy like Asia, they might see similar success over decades. My stance is somewhere between we really need to proceed with caution when it comes to refugees and the potential spread of radical Islam, and even though 10-20% of 1.5B Mulims is a HUGE number of people...that also leaves 1.2B peaceful Muslims in the crossfire. It goes both ways, you cant broad brush this shit.
Because said non western Muslims are part of the "not us," with "us" being anyone who believes that ISIS is good. Look, it's clear no one can change your minds that Islam is the source of all the world's ills, and honestly reminds me why I shouldn't post in this thread anyway. It's a circle jerk that accomplishes nothing because views are so entrenched that no one will change their minds, ever. It's basically "all Muslims are horrible savages!" Follows by posts of "yeah, fuck them!" And don't you dare oppose those viewed you bleeding heart liberal SJW! Psychologically, it is too painful to think "huh, maybe I'm wrong," and easier to think "no, FUCK them!" I'll go back to lurking and ignoring this thread. My bad.
D26 -- who in this thread is saying it's all Muslims? I keep seeing posts citing 10-20%. Poll after poll seems to back that number up, and even you aren't refuting (or acknowledging) it. Also don't see anyone writing that there aren't crazies everywhere. You reference the crusades, the inquisition, a single family that gets an inordinate amount of media attention and extremely rare abortion clinic attacks. Think I speak for everyone here when I say that's all horrible. But what is the reaction? Is there a huge amount of public support for the God Hates Fags people, or are they unanimously mocked? And since you're using them as an example of our crazy religious folk -- have any of them been violent? Ever? When a woman is suspected of cheating (even if her 'cheating' was actually being raped) do Christians -- or practicing Muslims living in a secular, pluralistic society -- bury her up to her chest and throw chunks of cement at her, in public, with many people watching and condoning...or not? You bring up Christians killing gay people because they're gay -- do you think the numbers today are roughly the same as in Muslim-dominant societies, or a fraction? Do we have laws punishing homosexuality, even to the point of death, or is gay marriage legal? When you see a headline saying an atheist blogger was punished or killed for being an atheist, or people are pushing for the age of marital 'consent' to be lowered to 9 years old (oddly specific number, no?), do you even wonder what religion dominates the country it took place in? Have you ever been wrong? You're right about a lot of things. All the Abrahamic religions, taken as a whole, are brutal and savage -- not a single one even got the issue of slavery right. That shows that -- duh -- our morality is human-based, not divine. The problem is that one of those religions makes claims the others do not -- the last and final word, non-believers and polytheists are to be punished here and now (not just in the afterlife), among others -- and is political in a way the others don't strive to be (I'm talking about the actual texts). There's also the example of that religion's founder, which is starkly (and by that I mean violently) different from pretty much all the other major religion's founders. History shows that a good indicator of which group of people is most dangerous, is whichever group hates Jews the most. Are there Nazis around today? No doubt. But there's a much bigger percentage of another group that makes cartoons for its children depicting why they should hate and how they should be violent towards Jews. The fact you can point out and repeat specific instances and people (McVeigh, Westboro) to cover the majority of modern Christian violence and hate shows how weak your argument is. Just because all societies are fucked up in their own way doesn't mean they're all equally fucked up. Moral relativism is as immoral as pacifism.
Whoa buddy. All I did was ask you to expand your point and reply based on your original post. I said nothing remotely close to the above nonsense nor did I criticize anything you said. I know playing the victim card has become the go-to strategy when people have their views questioned, but grow up. This thread is hardly a circle jerk in any regard. I hope this isn't the way you teach your classes. Good Lord. Okay sounds good.
For the sake of clarity, are there any actual sources for these "10-20%" figures or just anecdotes? What are the actual polls?
Nobody is saying that. Only you are taking it like that. Be a bit more reasonable in your discourse or fuck off.
Fine, so X% of muslims are violent. This is causing problems in countries that, I do want to point out, likely do not have as stringent a vetting process as the US. Have any of you been reading the stories by Humans of New York, about people waiting years to get here and many of them are rejected. Is it possible that some rapists will get through? Sure. Same with people to whom we give work visas, student visas, tourist visas, who marry our citizens, etc. Are we advocating that no muslims should be allowed in at all, simply because they are Muslim? As has been pointed out, we grow rapists over here all the time. And we deal with them by putting their asses in jail. If non-citizens go around raping people - we put their asses in jail and then we send them back where they came from. Who cares if some asshole wants to say "Hey, we're going to do whatever the hell we want and you should follow our laws" - the solution is to send their ass back to where they came from. People shake their heads over how our society has gotten so fear based over our kids, afraid to let them do anything for fear of them getting hurt and snatched - well the same thing is happening with our borders. We're helicopter parenting our common sense and freedom away.
I feel bad for Muslims. Christianity had their apparently slaked their bloodlust before the 24 hour news cycle. Now they just molest children or preach hate. Do you think in 300 years Muslims might feel the same way? Whatever, the only difference to me between Westboro and ISIS is the choice of weapon. One hoists signs at funerals. The other causes them. Everything else is the same. They are the flip side of the same fucked up coin of fanatical religious ideology. I don't paint all Christians as child abusers and all Muslims aren't bomb vest wearing psychopaths. I think if people focused less on trying to compare numbers, or dismissing possible solutions because they wouldn't fix 100% of the problem, we might get somewhere.
Not as far as I've seen in this thread, no. But feel free to quote someone if you see them doing so, instead of inferring things that were never implied. My personal opinion is that we absolutely should be taking them in (especially refugees), knowing full well we're taking on some small level of risk, because we're a better society, and it makes us even stronger in the long run. Note that nothing I've said implies they aren't free to do the same. If by "largely run by Sharia law" you mean one out of said country's 34 provinces (containing 4.7 million of the country's 250 million people) recently implementing it (despite it going against the country's own constitution), and by civilized you mean punishments (caning, flogging) for adultery, sex outside marriage, homosexuality, building churches instead of mosques, dress codes, having the wrong haircut, drinking alcohol or displaying improperly used Quranic inscriptions, then yeah, "more or less civilized" for sure (a high bar you're measuring them by, too). Clearly we're all racist idiots talking out our collective ass, but can you go down the list of Sharia-enforced countries and say the same? "I don't paint all Christians as child abusers and all Muslims aren't bomb vest wearing psychopaths." As far as I can tell, no one in this thread is doing that either. And I couldn't agree more with "...the only difference to me between Westboro and ISIS is the choice of weapon. One hoists signs at funerals. The other causes them," except I find that difference to be huge, and not something to brush off because, you know, if the worst thing any religious freak did was hold up a sign proclaiming their fucked up beliefs, we'd have a lot fewer deaths in the name of religion. Jesus Allah, dude.
Westboro Baptist Church has 40 members and is universally ridiculed for being pathetic idiots. ISIS has tens of thousands active members over running countries, murdering, torturing, raping and enslaving everyone who disagrees with them. They also have the financial backing and support of millions. (Source: http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/isis-has-least-42-million-supporters-arab-world ) Yeah, they're pretty much the same.
Well, when you see posts like this, you tend to follow it to its logical conclusion. Also, Hey look, it's that thing I posted about like two minutes ago!
Because no one is, but that's the function of that kind of argument. It's designed to put people who dare question the actions of a sect of a particular group on the defensive and change the entire framing of the discussion into one around faux intolerance, straw men, false equivalency, etc. It's nonsense meant to distract from an actual discussion.
Not being sarcastic at all: I don't see anything in what you quoted leading to the logical conclusion that the people you quoted are saying every Muslim is a bomb wearing psychopath. If you care to, please clarify. Or actually respond to any of my points. Whichevs.