Charlie Hebdo under terrorist attack

[Ramsay Gimp]

Well the danger would depend on where one is located in the world yes? No amount of repetition on your part can change the fact that the issue is extremism not Islam.

Islam seems to lend itself to violent extremism today more than any other faith. So no, Islam is very much the problem. I'm sorry if that hurts the feelings of peaceful, tolerant Muslims (who certainly exist), but it's true.

EDIT: Perhaps a better way of putting it is that there is a huge problem within Islam. This problem exists within other faiths too but is not of the same scale or intensity

Saying the problem is "extremism" is about as useless as saying the problem is "violence"

[Fjordgazer]

Islam seems to lend itself to violent extremism today more than any other faith. So no, Islam is very much the problem. I'm sorry if that hurts the feelings of peaceful, tolerant Muslims (who certainly exist), but it's true.

This sums it up well.

Suttree, i've been here before, you're all over the place and can't form an intellectually honest argument, not even once. I'm no one to cure blindness and stubbornness, so have a nice day.

I will only add, that i sure as hell don't need to study the Qur'an to have my say in this matter. I'm happy to leave that to Hitchens and the like, have a field day reading their opinions on the book.

[Suttree]

i've been here before, you're all over the place and can't form an intellectually honest argument, not even once.

Nice dodge(bonus points for peevishness and the ad hominems). People can read how the conversation played out, you don't need to give us some revisionist version. Just do use a favor and keep your promise ok.

Islam seems to lend itself to violent extremism today more than any other faith. So no, Islam is very much the problem.

What lends itself to violent extremism is situations where "negative social, economic, and political situations converge." Making up nonsense about what mainstream Muslims believe or pretending as if Islam is some monolith isn't particularly useful when looking at the issue.

[dog-days]

Look, the point is, discrediting someone's entire argument on the grounds that he capitalizes all the letters in ocassional words is a preposterous way to try to "win" any discussion. Period. You were doing exactly that.

And I disagree. Quelle surprise. Or perhaps I should put it in the kind of language (a dialect of Late Modern Xenophobe?) you seem to think yourself clever for using. WHAT is LAUGHABLE is that you think you are making "relevant" points, when in fact you appear to be turning your FARTS into WORDS and hitting ENTER. Can you read your own posts?

[The Once and Future King]

Islam is a religion.

Many good men are muslims, and so are many bad ones. Many peace loving friendly and good hearted people worship Allah, and so do many evil scumsucking murderous cowardly dogs.

So it is absolutely wrong to say that all Muslims are evil or that all support the craven filth that happened today.

But to say that islam is a religion of peace, Muhammad was a man of peace and the Quran is a book of peace is ridiculous.

Muhammad was a illiterate shepherd who lead an army of his followers halfway across the known world slaughtering or forcing his laws on evreyone they met regardless of religious beliefs or any beliefs. They destoryed librarys, art and price lessons culture much like ISIS is attempting to due today.

This is a religion based in warfare whose original leader was a mass murderer. It has good aspects and evil elements like all religion. However in the last 50 years religious fanaticism has grown within Islam as an incredible rate and has become a threat to freedom everywhere. And while their are hundreds of millions of Muslims who find what happened this week deplorable, there are also hundreds of millions who support these action either in words and deeds or in silence and inaction.

I have friends of every belief and faith and friends who believe in nothing at all. Thank fully all of my friends give each other the basic respect to allow one another our beliefs.

May the families of the brave journalists be comforted.

May freedom ring forever. [emoji60]

[Fjordgazer]

And I disagree. Quelle surprise. Or perhaps I should put it in the kind of language (a dialect of Late Modern Xenophobe?) you seem to think yourself clever for using. WHAT is LAUGHABLE is that you think you are making "relevant" points, when in fact you appear to be turning your FARTS into WORDS and hitting ENTER. Can you read your own posts?

Woof, woof.

Nice dodge(bonus points for peevishness and the ad hominems). People can read how the conversation played out, you don't need to give us some revisionist version. Just do use a favor and keep your promise ok.

Pointing out faulty logic is not an ad hominem, sorry. I'll keep my promise of not engaging you, but you're certainly liable to read me answering others, sorry again.

[Wmarshal]

Islam seems to lend itself to violent extremism today more than any other faith. So no, Islam is very much the problem. I'm sorry if that hurts the feelings of peaceful, tolerant Muslims (who certainly exist), but it's true.

EDIT: Perhaps a better way of putting it is that there is a huge problem within Islam. This problem exists within other faiths tooo but is not the same scale or intensity

Saying the problem is "extremism" is about as useless as saying the problem is "violence"

This would make sense, save Islam doesn't actually preach "murder someone if they draw a prophet". It is a sin to draw any prophet, yet dozens do it to Jesus with no huge murder Family Guy cast. Why? Because the people who did this cherry picked what to believe and took it to the extreme.

[Ramsay Gimp]

This would make sense, save Islam doesn't actually preach "murder someone if they draw a prophet". It is a sin to draw any prophet, yet dozens do it to Jesus with no huge murder Family Guy cast. Why? Because the people who did this cherry picked what to believe and took it to the extreme.

I'm not an expert on theology, so I won't say whether the Jihadists are "cherry-picking" Islamic doctrine or not. But there is only one religion that reacts with unhinged violence (sometimes bringing entire countries to heel) to cartoons today.

[Fjordgazer]

I'm not an expert on theology, so I won't say whether the Jihadists are "cherry-picking" Islamic doctrine or not. But there is only one religion that reacts with unhinged violence (sometimes bringing entire countries to heel) to cartoons today.

It's as simple as this. We'd be better off proposing solutions, not trying to deny the obvious with the excuse of hurt feelings.

[Wmarshal]

I'm not an expert on theology, so I won't say whether the Jihadists are "cherry-picking" Islamic doctrine or not. But there is only one religion that reacts with unhinged violence (sometimes bringing entire countries to heel) to cartoons today.

They are, your suppose to care for those who family you murder, yet this people do not, your suppose to fight tyranny, do you see any terrorist attacking the president of Syria who gases his own people? Religion has always been a tool used and abused for men's greed. As to the one religion, that is more to do with those that follow it,abuse it, and twist and turn what they want to here. I have yet to meet a Iman that preached stoning people for anything.

[Ramsay Gimp]

They are, your suppose to care for those who family you murder, yet this people do not, your suppose to fight tyranny, do you see any terrorist attacking the president of Syria who gases his own people? Religion has always been a tool used and abused for men's greed. As to the one religion, that is more to do with those that follow it,abuse it, and twist and turn what they want to here. I have yet to meet a Iman that preached stoning people for anything.

To be fair, jihadists have actually been on the front lines against Assad. They are consistent enemies of secular dictators in the middle east

[Suttree]

Pointing out faulty logic is not an ad hominem, sorry.

The disconnect between how the conversation has played out verse this fantasy sequence of events you keep talking about is frankly bizarre. You mentioned "moving of goal posts as if we can't just go back and copy/paste:

Suttree, on 08 Jan 2015 - 1:30 PM, said:

I've stated it a number of times but if you want to make the case that Islam is uniquely violent by all means do so.

Fjordgazer

In the name of what other religion are there cartoonists being assassinated? Is that "unique" enough for you?

I'll keep my promise of not engaging you, but you're certainly liable to read me answering others, sorry again.

Well that certainly lasted. Man of your word I see.

Is this where you continue to repeat "hurr durr Islam bad" ad nauseam? It's kind of funny that you aren't even bothering to camouflage the deflection at this point. Look I'll give you one last chance. Do you want to discuss some of the root causes of extremism or are you holding to this overly simplistic angle?

[Wmarshal]

To be fair, jihadists have actually been on the front lines against Assad. They are consistent enemies of secular dictators in the middle east

My mistake.

Edit: Still, these men do keep out what they will, as drawings, torture, blatant murder, because they are not the face of god, but mere men. I am sick to my stomach of Muslim pointing and calling Christians for the crusade, when Muslim invaded much of Europe before that, or calling Jews out for the bombing in the long past, or what the Israels are doing, or Americans blaming Muslim for bombings, because these men are not those that have murdered.

[The Once and Future King]

My mistake.

Jihadist are also on the frontline defending him

[Ramsay Gimp]

Jihadist are also on the frontline defending him

Err, kinda. Hezbollah doesn't go around slaughtering people just for belonging to a different sect like ISIS or Al Qaeda do, though

[Suttree]

Dug around through some old threads to find this. Solid post in response to a Bill Maher debate on whether Islam is uniquely violent.

Falsehood #2: "Islam is uniquely violent." Maher and every other person who believes this is true should probably take a history class and write a series of mea culpae on the blackboard. There is nothing more problematic about Islam as a religion more than any other when viewed in historical context. Even ignoring ancient times, the history of the Christian era alone should be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that Islam is somehow more inherently violent than other religions.

Islam has a long and proud history going back well over a millennium. Islamic scholars have been responsible for countless advances in the sciences and in philosophy, including at a time when most of Christian Europe was busy burning as much of its intellectual heritage as it could. That the same Christian world that perpetrated the Crusades and the Wars of Reformation would dare imply that Islam is somehow intrinsically belligerent is ludicrous. It was Christians who fought the American Civil War, Christians who perpetrated many of the awful evils of World Wars I and II. It was a born-again Christian President who lied an entire country into an illegal and immoral war against a majority Muslim country that had done nothing to us.

Nor do non-Christians get off easy. The worst crimes against humanity in history were perpetrated by Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung, neither of them Christian or Muslim. Pol Pot deserves an honorable mention, as does Ataturk.

If there is anything uniquely problematic about Islam versus other cultures and religions, it somehow didn't seem to manifest until the last century when the Middle East suddenly became hot property for imperialistic, oil-centered conquests. Which in turn means that the problem isn't Islam. It's something else. Imperialism is, of course, the easy target. But we've already covered why that explanation is wholly inadequate.

So what is going on?

Well, it turns out that it's not that complicated. Maher and Greenwald are both right, and they're both wrong. Yes, the problem has much to do with oil, imperialism and oppression. But it's not quite as simple moral relativist academics might like it to be. And yes, the problem is religion--but not in the way that Maher thinks it is.

The problem, as it is everywhere, is fundamentalism. The problem that causes anti-choice terrorists to bomb abortion clinics, Timothy McVeigh to blow up a federal building or Eric Rudolph to bomb innocents at the Olympics, is the same problem that causes so many Muslims to become entrapped in terrorism and anti-progressive movements. It's a struggle against modernity and against progressivism that occurs :

1) whenever religion of any kind is allowed to be the sole driving force of organizational activity in resistance to oppression, and

2) when people are free enough to congregate and resist without being enslaved or mass murdered, but not free enough to hope for true social advancement.

This is true in many parts of conservative America, just as it is true in Sri Lanka where the Tamil Tigers emerged. It is also true in much of the oil-producing world, where vast oil wealth mingles with massive inequality and exploitation. The ease of financing a government with oil money tempts elites into creating an economy without a substantial middle-class tax base, and without a voice of the people in government. The people are free enough to be angry and act on that anger, but not free enough to succeed or create real change. This is when fundamentalist religion is most dangerous.

This is true everywhere, regardless of whether the people in question are Christian or Muslim.

[dog-days]

Islam is what its followers believe it to be. My Iraqi teacher believed strongly that Islam was a religion of peace. He was open-minded, gentle and said that the challenge of Ramadan was trying to be extra-nice to everyone, since that was part of what Islam meant to him.

At the moment in the world, there are unfortunately far too many people who take a different view. Quite why this is has been the subject of several truckloads of academic publications, and will no doubt continue to be so for some time to come.

All of the books from the Abrahamic tradition contain a mixture of materials both beautiful and horrific. Through the ages, they have been interpreted by their followers in a variety of ways, and associated themselves with a diversity of cultural practices and attitudes. I don't believe that Islam is inherently more violent, since if it were, its followers would surely have shown themselves to be more violent throughout all of their history.

Historically, plenty of Muslims have no doubt been vicious, brutal and mindlessly violent, but then so has almost every one else.

(The 'almost' is there to cover my back in case someone locates a minor Buddhist sect on Wikipedia that drank dew, ate grass, never harmed a fly and eventually died out due to indigestion.)

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Err, kinda. Hezbollah doesn't go around slaughtering people just for belonging to a different sect like ISIS or Al Qaeda do, though

Still a hate filled group bent on murder

[theprincethatwasntpromised]

Dug around through some old threads to find this. Solid post in response to a Bill Maher debate on whether Islam is uniquely violent.

Dude, there is no equivalency between Christian extremism and Islamic extremism... And your attempts to claim such are laughable at best. Please Suttree, tell me...where in the world tonight are Christian extremists threatening anyone? I'll wait...

[Suttree]

1. It was called out by others earlier in thread but epic reading comprehension fail...again. Are you going to address the deeper points made or are you falling back on your past gems like "which Muslims? ALL OF THEM!!! "

2. Christian extremists specially? Northern India for one.