ugh

ugh

http://www.faisalalmutar.com/2015/11/16/i-am-a-jihadist-and-i-am-t ired-of-not-being-given-credit/

i want to hear more about these unique properties of islam and how they differ from, say,

"I will render vengeance on My adversaries, And I will repay those who hate Me. I will make My arrows drunk with blood, And My sword will devour flesh, With the blood of the slain and the captives, From the long-haired leaders of the enemy."

And by conflating radical Islam with Islam in general, you hope to accomplish what, exactly? That would seem like a propaganda coup for jihadist recruitment. When radical Christians bomb abortion clinics, I don't say that that's what all Christianity is, because I really want Christians to not bomb abortion clinics. Terrorists, generally speaking, want their ideologies conflated with the broader religion, because that is useful to them.

If your goal is accuracy then conflating ISIS with Islam in general still wouldn't be useful, because most religions have violent extremists, and generally their prevalence is a result of geopolitical and socioeconomic factors, not from the religion itself, which can be and has been interpreted in a million different ways. Atrocities have been committed in the name of Buddhism. It's not Islam that's the problem, and in general it isn't the broader religion that's the problem. The problem is terrorism and radical interpretations of religion, and confusing that with Islam generally isn't going to help anybody but terrorists.

Also who the hell cares about political correctness? Political correctness is what it's okay for politicians to say, and politicians say shitty things all the time. The "PC crowd" pretty entirely doesn't care in the slightest about following that particular standard.

ugh

Stanley, that was a heartfelt and honestly-meant reply and I'm disappointed that others trivialize it with "ugh". That doesn't mean I agree with you. Let me set it out like this:

a) There are properties unique of parts of Islamic culture as it exists today that are encouraging this kind of violence and leading some people to engage in atrocities like we saw in Paris.

b) There's a lot of mental gymnastics going on to act as if A has nothing to do with Islam. Thus Shanghai Tippytap quoting the Bible as if to suggest that ISIS could just as well be Quakers (and in some alternate reality they could have been - just not most of this one today).

c) An autist or purist might object to B. But the thing is there are a BILLION Muslims in the world and you're not going to talk them out of it or exterminate them (the latter approach would also, by the way, be too unspeakably horrific to contemplate). So it's very very important that we make clear a non-violent Islam is both *possible* (which is true) and *preferable* (which is also true). I think this is basically Yhanthlei's point.

So really I agree with everything everyone wrote above except the "ugh" line which is beneath their dignity. Personally, I would like everyone in the world to give up their religion voluntarily. But since that's not going to happen the next best thing is to see how we can all accommodate each other, and the best near term way to do that is to keep banging the drum that fundamentalism isn't "real" Islam.

Muslims don't have to take responsibility for anything because there's an army of limp-dick Western SJWs like John Oliver who would happily take a bomb blast to the face to prove how tolerant they are.

Go fuck a pig void

Personally. I don't find it a great inconvenience to be very clear about the distinction between violent Muslims and Muslims who just want to go about their business and make a good life for themselves and their families.

And, there are no unique properties to Islam that make it any more violent than any other religion or ideology. People who want to practice violence will always find or invent justifications. Christians ought to be the most peaceful people on earth if theology really drove human behavior; can you think of any instances of Christians acting in warlike, even brutal fashion?

I agree that "ugh" is both unhelpful and kinda unfair.

Stanley, my instinctive reaction is similar to yours: "Identify the terrorists as Muslims, but make sure you indicate that they're not representative of Muslims as a whole." Lord knows ISIS itself takes great pains to find passages within the Qur'an and the hadiths to justify their actions. And I *strongly* disagree with the view that the ISIS leaders are exploiting the teachings of Islam to justify their geopolitical goals. No, I'm pretty sure they're sincere in their professions of belief.

But against all that, there are a couple good arguments in favor of describing them as "not Islamic":

1) The obvious reason is to head off yahoos who will conflate ISIS with all Muslims. As you point out, this reason alone isn't good enough; ISIS itself repeatedly cites holy scripture as justification. There's obviously some connection between ISIS & Islam, so claiming ISIS isn't Muslim seems kinda self-defeating. Except for:

2) 99% of the world's Muslim scholars say that ISIS is un-Islamic. That matters. These scholars aren't just covering their own asses; they're experts on *all* the holy scriptures, and they say that when you look at everything (rather than cherry-picking certain passages you like) ISIS's actions appear un-Islamic. If 99% of the world's experts on a topic agree on something, we should probably listen to them.

3) Contrary to Hazelnut's post, studies in Britain have shown that the best defense against radicalization is *more* religion, not less. When you teach people susceptible to radicalization what the Qur'an & hadiths really say, their rate of radicalization goes *way* down. That would indicate that ISIS is probably not terribly well rooted in actual Islamic traditions & texts.

4) Finally, calling ISIS "Islamic" plays into their propaganda goals. They're basically a bizarro apocalyptic Islamic sect, and identifying them as legitimately Islamic helps validate them.

Oh hey. And while I was typing that out, Void proved #1 for me. Still, the other three reasons are the main reason we shouldn't call ISIS Islamic.

Kind of depressing that Yhanthlei gets glossed over. Goes extremely well with Anaxogoras comment.

You can replace ISIS with Westboro Baptist Church or creationism. They're not concerned about scriptures and how they correlate with advances in society. They're fear mongering pulpits with an us versus them mentality no matter what explanation they give.

Pretending Islam is a disease is as much nationalistic radicalism as ISIS itself. And it does nothing but help promote terrorism and advertises ISIS's cause, not through debate and exposition, but through social conflict.


Not to mention that depending when said episode was filmed, there was not much to go by on which organization is behind it., so there's a legitimate reason for the broad lay out and support.

I kinda skipped over Thanthlei's comment because my response to him (or her) might be viewed as confrontational, which I was trying to avoid. But... *shrug*

"And by conflating radical Islam with Islam in general, you hope to accomplish what, exactly?"

I'm pretty sure Stanley doesn't want to conflate the two. He just wanted to call a thing by its proper name. And ISIS *does* have roots in Islam. Calling them Islamic isn't insane. I just suspect that Stanley didn't realize how they are, in many ways, genuinely un-Islamic. (And not just in a #notAllMuslims kind of way.)

counterpoint; this line of thinking is childish and simplistic and explaining the nuances of religious and political extremism is a complete waste of time and effort

so, ugh is appropriate

I don't disagree with Stanley, but I also know that if you want to be a radicalized militant belief and morality at the end of a barrel spouting bastard, you have to share that shit with your enemy.

I don't see America as any way ethically or morally superior to ISIS, and nothing Stanley said doesn't apply to this country. If you want to look at what the world sees as a clear and present threat to all free humanity, and you happen to be American, look in a mirror.

There is no shortage of Americans telling Americans how terrible they are, and it will never once work. Don't insist on lopsided standards for humans, always seek the lowest bar.

And to head off the obvious, no, I don't see ISIS as moral or ethical.

i dunno memedumpster, there certainly is such a thing as 'less worse than'. americans certainly can and have done some cold-ass shit, but the thing that makes ISIS really fuckin crazy is that the inhuman shit they do is a matter of social policy

Stars for Hazel trying to elevate the conversation and all of you following suit.

Are we sure ISIS had revealed itself with 100% certainty in time for Oliver's segment? It's possible to interpret this bit as, "Whoever these people are, whatever their beliefs might be, fuck 'em." He might have been giving them the benefit of the doubt.

(Which, to be sure, is maybe not something you should give ISIS.)

Anaxagoras, I agree that StanleyPain wasn't deliberately conflating the two. I was being deliberately confrontational, admittedly.

I hope this is helpful putting your statement in perspective, but think how it would sound if you said the same thing about American blacks and the disproportionate crime rate they face or riots instigated their neighborhoods.

Rather than examining what's likely a result of economic conditions and the boiling over of chronic marginalization, someone came out and said, "Why are we not allowed to address this as a race problem? The PC crowd is too afraid to examine the unique racial properties of blacks. 'Not all blacks' will never ring true with me until all moderate, law-abiding blacks step up to take responsibility for their brothers and do a better job vocally condemning them."


but double U tee ef @"Islam is connected to some of the most powerful governments of the world"

Would you care to take a guess of the predominate religions of the G7 nations?

and realize that, at that point, you're sounding exactly like Ed Norton from American History X.

And speaking of the Westboro Baptist Church, that's an excellent microcosm to put this all into perspective.

Do you realize what their goals are when they their stage funeral protests? Besides inviting violence to fuel their lawsuits, it cements the elders' control over the rest of the family, younger members who might otherwise start thinking, "Why am I doing this instead of watching cartoons, playing video games, or going out to get laid?"

When they go out to these protests, any doubt they might have is sidelined when they're confronted with screaming mobs of counter protesters who hate them. Instantly, Fred Phelp's "us vs them" narrative is validated. They now see the rest of the world as nothing but hatred, reinforcing the cult mentality that the family is their only refuge. Any thought of leaving the church is quashed by being more afraid of the outside world.

With that being the case, don't you think the better approach to shouting and throwing things at the WBC would be to try and approach some and appeal to them as humans?

Allahu akbar, guys.

ugh

American liberal atheists--and I count myself in all three of those camps--give Islam way, way too much leeway. We have no problem condemning a southern Christian redneck judge as a backwards idiot when he persecutes gay people, but if the Islamic equivalent of a hick does the same thing (only, you know, with decapitation), liberals will trip over themselves to justify an obvious problem.

We have no problem stereotyping the South. So either

A) Stereotyping is fine
B) There's a double standard at play
C) We're being hypocriticial (hahahahahahaha jk that's impossible)
Or D) There is something systemically wrong with Islam that needs to be addressed, because for a "religion of peace" it has a pretty fucking poor track record

ICase in point: This thread.

"Oh look, a systemic problem is clearly emerging! And there's a very, very obvious pattern emerging! Welp, better ignore it!"

Again, I'm an athiest. I have no horse in this race. But viewing things objectively, Islam has a pretty fucking terrible score on the "don't be the worst person ever" card.

Sexy Duck Cop, why do you even think this? The problem I have with what you're saying is that condemning Southern Christians is a lot easier because there's a lot more familiarity with Christian culture and how it's shaped our society and how it's affected the media in terms of conflict of interest with business. We have a view that has profound nuances whether the problem can be the concept of religion itself or the theocratic remnants of Christianity itself.

Pretending any one is giving lee way to Islam is stupid because either

A) You spend time around shitty people
B) You need to get out more
C) Stop trying to swing around that socio-political dick of yours (take a vacation in a sense) because it's starting to smell and reek of the same, bland, generic philosophy you've stated earlier of internet culture being a ouroboros of condemnation and sneering
D) Or you just suck in general and need to inflect more.

Well, I mean, if you want an honest answer, I am severely depressed and don't know who to turn to and my life is a relentless hellscape and I really, really wish I could talk to someone, but I can't so instead I drink, HOWEVER my opinion would still probably be the same on this issue, because at the end of the day some books are good and some books are bad, and the Koran is like the Godfather III of monotheism.