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Probaly need to back off and rethink what you know is or makes an extremist.

At least try to make sense. Answer me one question, are you an extremist?

Nope. A 'realist'.

A realist can be the same as an extremist.

It can be. But at least there is evidence for their arguments, compared to zero for islamic extremists and tolerant moderates.

Not trying to highjack you both. Just that to me...that you both are defining "extremist" by definition.

 Jihadin wrote:
Probaly need to back off and rethink what you know is or makes an extremist.

An extremist is, I would argue, a person willing to impose extreme actions to further their cause, be it political or religious. Does anyone disagree with that definition?




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 Mr Hyena wrote:
It can be. But at least there is evidence for their arguments, compared to zero for islamic extremists and tolerant moderates.

Citation needed

So the school girl in Pakistan that was gunned down due to her views on women and education by "extremist" Does that not make her an extremist to by vocalizing her views? (I know I butcher the sentence) Teenager that being treated in UK.

 Jihadin wrote:
So the school girl in Pakistan that was gunned down due to her views on women and education by "extremist" Does that not make her an extremist to by vocalizing her views? (I know I butcher the sentence) Teenager that being treated in UK.

I know the girl you refer to, and its an interesting example. I would say that in her culture yes she is an extremist, in exactly the same way Emmeline Pankhurst was.

Perhaps an Extreme Reformist? In the sense that they didn't want a complete change, but an alteration to the existing system.

 Medium of Death wrote:
Perhaps an Extreme Reformist? In the sense that they didn't want a complete change, but an alteration to the existing system.

I would say the intention or cause is irrelevant, it is what degree of action the activist is willing to perform that defines an extremist. Being willing to visit violence upon the innocent or to effectively commit suicide for a cause are pretty extreme methods.

I found this interesting, not for the frankly dim presenter (although she demonstrates a girl next door view on what is happening), but for the interviews and the groundswell opinion among average working (and not working) populace.

And what was thoroughly clear was that moderate muslims were extremely reluctant to speak out against radical muslims, for whatever reason.

Those in this video that clearly state they want to bring about the downfall of democracy, those that say the nations laws, as non-muslim laws, are worthless and can be broken.

They must immediately be made happier, they must be immediately removed to a place where their belief system and loathing of democracy can flourish, I hear the Yemen is lovely this time of year. Somalia has some great beaches as well.

Immediately remove their citizenship and passport, put them into transport planes and get them off the streets and away from the rest of the moderate population they are infecting like a cancer.

Cut the infection from the body. They are increasing with every passing day, give them back to their violent desert hellholes, the rancid places ruled by their warped faith.



But they do have one thing right, one thing I actually share with this filth, bring our troops home, out of the islamic world, let them rise or fall as they wish, let them live in their paradise on earth of no books, no art, no thinking.

And then let us go back to working on integrating and sharing with the moderate community, in the hope they will adopt more western culture and especially gender equality in their daily lives. Once they are rid of this cancer from amid their ranks and can embrace liberty, intellectual freedom and tolerance.

 mwnciboo wrote:
You are right I should have caveated it with the limits, as you aggregate it over the other Tax bands...

Cool. And just to clarify, 45% is just the marginal rate, what you pay on the last pound earned. What you actually pay is the total tax bill divided by your total income for the year, which as you earn more will move towards but never reach 45%.

 Jihadin wrote:
So the school girl in Pakistan that was gunned down due to her views on women and education by "extremist" Does that not make her an extremist to by vocalizing her views? (I know I butcher the sentence) Teenager that being treated in UK.

Yes, but she was not the kind of extremeist that murders people because of their views.

To who's culture Relapse. Dael caught what I was saying.

 uk_crow wrote:
Could the overthrow of the Shah in Iran be a contributing factor? They overthrew a western-facing government and replaced it with a hard-line Islamic state? They're strategically placed and backed and still do terrorists organisations such as hezbollah and Hamas. Obviously beforehand the ideas were their, but maybe this has acted an accelerating factor given Iran's influence in the middle east?

Yeah, that was part of it. But more was linked to the rise of oil wealth - the path to economic propsperity in the region changed, and it became more important to attach yourself to the oil industry gravy train than to actually develop useful, productive skills, that might otherwise advance the economy.

And when Saudi Arabia happened to be the country who developed wealth the fastest, and just happened to be the one with a particularly nasty, very traditional brand of Islam, well the cultural impact through the region is still largely unrealised to this day.


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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Iran took out it's ruler all of its own volition and replaced his dictatorship with theological dictatorship, 'freedom loving' kuwait had, at the time of the iraq war, a worse human rights record than iraq. It is the medieval religion's behavior in the modern world that marks it as incompatible, regardless of which faction within it is currently in charge, it's just a sliding scale of intolerable misogynistic thugs, swap them out all you want, it's still crammed full of bad juju.

Jordan, at all? No, no mention of them?

And your summary of Iranian history, even for a half a sentence, is really, really gakky.


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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Radical, hard line islam has also flourished where we have not trampled the garden, I think it would have risen in many places anyway, I don't think we helped matters in certain nations, but I tend to think the movement was going to occur in several nations spontaneously, remember we've also been tinkering by keeping dictators and autocrats in place or implementing them, against these radicals. I think a great many of the nations that experienced increase in radicalization did so as a counter to the tyrants that existed or still exist.

Some groups turned to communism, but many turned to radical faith.

Yes, now that's a summary I can agree with.

Anyhow, as I linked to early in the thread, political instability produces radicalisation and terrorism. Whether that political instability is due to local tyrants or overseas adventurism from the West, it doesn't really matter (although it is worth pointing out that the former is lot more common in the world than the latter).

Money does seem to be a factor as well, but not in the way people would assume - there's no 'more poverty = more terrorism' correlation - the poorest countries in the world are not racked by that much terrorism. Instead the factor seems to be having a bit of money, just enough to enable and drive terrorism, but not enough to meaningfully reduce poverty and improve political conditions.


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 dæl wrote:
Radical Islam would have existed and would have had power in places, but the two largest attacks by Islamists were 9/11 and 7/7, one was caused by the failed state of Afghanistan and the other was caused by the radicalisation of young British Muslims. Without our tinkering extremism would be around, but international terrorism may well not.

I'm not so sure.

I mean, if the year is 2001 and the issue was about wrongs committed against Islam, then you don't fly planes in to the World Trade Centres, you fly them in to the Kremlin for retaliation against the atrocities of Chechnya. The Boston Bombers were of Chechnyan descent, who still decided to target the US.

Ultimately, I don't think it makes sense to see this as any kind of blowback or retaliation for what we've done over there. Not to minimise what we've done, but it isn't the issue. The real complaint against us was that every year millions of Muslims were taking on more moderate lives, seeing our wealth and freedoms and moving closer to that. The issue was that they were losing a cultural battle for their own people.

 sebster wrote:

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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Iran took out it's ruler all of its own volition and replaced his dictatorship with theological dictatorship, 'freedom loving' kuwait had, at the time of the iraq war, a worse human rights record than iraq. It is the medieval religion's behavior in the modern world that marks it as incompatible, regardless of which faction within it is currently in charge, it's just a sliding scale of intolerable misogynistic thugs, swap them out all you want, it's still crammed full of bad juju.

Jordan, at all? No, no mention of them?

And your summary of Iranian history, even for a half a sentence, is really, really gakky.

The better thing to have done, if you thought that my comment was gakky, was not to stand there fluttering your fan, powdering your wig and being catty, but provide a more comprehensive answer... So don't be a bitch, you usually post with more class than that.

 sebster wrote:

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 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Radical, hard line islam has also flourished where we have not trampled the garden, I think it would have risen in many places anyway, I don't think we helped matters in certain nations, but I tend to think the movement was going to occur in several nations spontaneously, remember we've also been tinkering by keeping dictators and autocrats in place or implementing them, against these radicals. I think a great many of the nations that experienced increase in radicalization did so as a counter to the tyrants that existed or still exist.

Some groups turned to communism, but many turned to radical faith.

Yes, now that's a summary I can agree with.

Anyhow, as I linked to early in the thread, political instability produces radicalisation and terrorism. Whether that political instability is due to local tyrants or overseas adventurism from the West, it doesn't really matter (although it is worth pointing out that the former is lot more common in the world than the latter).

Money does seem to be a factor as well, but not in the way people would assume - there's no 'more poverty = more terrorism' correlation - the poorest countries in the world are not racked by that much terrorism. Instead the factor seems to be having a bit of money, just enough to enable and drive terrorism, but not enough to meaningfully reduce poverty and improve political conditions.

Yeah, people in Malawi are too busy trying to eat and pray to god for safe water to give to their children to go looking for a fight. The correlation instead seems to be, from where I'm looking, influence of hardline islam taking root in proximity to chaos and conflict and then not dying off or becoming moderate again after the chaos has died down as might be expected. That and the underlying and oft avoided topic that islam is, at it's heart, a more aggressive religion than Christianity or Judaism. More aggressive Christianity can be combated with lots of 'turn the other cheek' or 'love thy neighbor' but islam doesn't have a whole lot of that, it's more about smiting and being right and doing what the prophet tells you, Christ was a hippy, Mohammed was a conquering warlord, the rhetoric is therefore different and more easily turned to aggression and domination.

 sebster wrote:

 dæl wrote:
Radical Islam would have existed and would have had power in places, but the two largest attacks by Islamists were 9/11 and 7/7, one was caused by the failed state of Afghanistan and the other was caused by the radicalisation of young British Muslims. Without our tinkering extremism would be around, but international terrorism may well not.

I'm not so sure.

I mean, if the year is 2001 and the issue was about wrongs committed against Islam, then you don't fly planes in to the World Trade Centres, you fly them in to the Kremlin for retaliation against the atrocities of Chechnya. The Boston Bombers were of Chechnyan descent, who still decided to target the US.

Ultimately, I don't think it makes sense to see this as any kind of blowback or retaliation for what we've done over there. Not to minimise what we've done, but it isn't the issue. The real complaint against us was that every year millions of Muslims were taking on more moderate lives, seeing our wealth and freedoms and moving closer to that. The issue was that they were losing a cultural battle for their own people.

I agree, especially the enthusiasm for radical protest and demonstration in the UK and Europe, it's done out of fear of the inevitable (and beautiful) integration of islamic people into the great mixing bowl of the UK. It's why the religiously adherent among the 'moderates' are quiet about the extremists, they quietly back them in the hopes it will prevent the inevitable decay of faith and their powerbase. It will certainly slow it, but you can't stop the signal whilst you live in the west, coke and nike and beyonce and dr who and nightclubs and big macs are all calling louder than the call to prayer and they can rail against it, but more will integrate each year than will go hardline. Once our troops are home from Afghanistan and as long as we no longer indulge in any more foreign adventures for a while, I hope the fanaticism will fall away at a far more rapid rate, their power base in the western cities should dry up fairly rapidly. They fear this and I cannot wait for it.

 uk_crow wrote:
Completely agree with you Stompa on this, what I find most frustrating is if anyone airs this view in public you're called a ignorant bigot, but this quote somes up my view on the subject:

Stop playing the victim. There's one post between your statement and my post where I explicitly say that I didn't think it was a bigoted point of view, and I certainly haven't seen anyone else call someone a bigot. In fact, your post is the only one in the last four pages, other than this very post, that is angry about what people say.

Back on topic, ignoring the atrocities committed by both sides in Northern Ireland is a little dishonest. Similarly, the atrocities committed in the Israel/Palestinian conflict (again, by both sides) seems to indicate that Islam isn't a uniquely violent religion.

Regarding the comparison to Nazism earlier, if anything that proves that this isn't about religion. Similarly, the Soviet Union and China committed lots of rather nasty things in the name of communism, as did post-Soviet Russia in Chechnya.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Back on topic, ignoring the atrocities committed by both sides in Northern Ireland is a little dishonest. Similarly, the atrocities committed in the Israel/Palestinian conflict (again, by both sides) seems to indicate that Islam isn't a uniquely violent religion.

Except for the fact that almost all the terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland were not done in the name of religion. I lived there most of my life and I cannot recall a single one were religion was invoked. So no, it is not dishonest. The Troubles were fuelled by political grevience, not by religion.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Back on topic, ignoring the atrocities committed by both sides in Northern Ireland is a little dishonest. Similarly, the atrocities committed in the Israel/Palestinian conflict (again, by both sides) seems to indicate that Islam isn't a uniquely violent religion.

Except for the fact that almost all the terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland were not done in the name of religion. I lived there most of my life and I cannot recall a single one were religion was invoked. So no, it is not dishonest. The Troubles were fuelled by political grevience, not by religion.

Do you not think there is political grievance behind the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shai Muslims also?

 dæl wrote:
Do you not think there is political grievance behind the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shai Muslims also?

I'm sure that some other motives have come into play since 632. But seeing as a lot of the strife between the factions is across the globe, and not just local, it's hard to pinpoint what political grievence is influencing the long standing schism. Especially when both sides are crying "Allah akbar" it makes their issues seem much more theologically based.

My point about Northern Ireland still stands though.

seems to indicate that Islam isn't a uniquely violent religion.

Only one religion is currently in a Crusade-like religious war though.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Stop playing the victim. There's one post between your statement and my post where I explicitly say that I didn't think it was a bigoted point of view, and I certainly haven't seen anyone else call someone a bigot. In fact, your post is the only one in the last four pages, other than this very post, that is angry about what people say.

I wasn't talking about the context of this thread or this forum at all, i was talking in the wider world. The press seems to have an aversion to a balanced debate in this country, they rightly or wrongly seem to try their best to placate and fawn over any religious debate with a particular aversion to Islam due to the hair-triggered nature of a small yet extremely vocal, unpleasant proportion of the religion.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

Except for the fact that almost all the terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland were not done in the name of religion. I lived there most of my life and I cannot recall a single one were religion was invoked. So no, it is not dishonest. The Troubles were fuelled by political grevience, not by religion.

While not done in the name of religion, religion actually had quite a bit to do with it. As an example, just being a Catholic could make you target for Loyalist Protestant paramilitaries (and vice-versa). One of the main divides between the Irish and Northern Irish is down to religion, even today.

 Azenine wrote:
While not done in the name of religion, religion actually had quite a bit to do with it. As an example, just being a Catholic could make you target for Loyalist Protestant paramilitaries (and vice-versa). One of the main divides between the Irish and Northern Irish is down to religion, even today.

I get what you're trying to say. But you are putting far too much emphasis on the religious aspect. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were fueled by political grievances, not religious grievances. The only part that religion played was to help identify each community (the mainly Catholic Irish, and the mainly Protestant naturalised settlers from England and Scotland).

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
The better thing to have done, if you thought that my comment was gakky, was not to stand there fluttering your fan, powdering your wig and being catty, but provide a more comprehensive answer... So don't be a bitch, you usually post with more class than that.

That's fair. Alright, the problem with your answer is 'took out it's ruler all of its own volition and replaced his dictatorship with a theological dictatorship' is that it leaves out how that leader got there in the first place. A more complete summary would be "In the wake of WWII Iran made rapid steps towards democracy, with the Shah quickly losing influence to the democratically elected Dr Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh used his new influence to nationalise the oil industry. The US put in place Operation Ajax, a coup in which Mosaddegh was deposed and arrested. After this the Shah re-assumed complete power, and put in place a far more oppressive regime, which was eventually overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979."

Yeah, people in Malawi are too busy trying to eat and pray to god for safe water to give to their children to go looking for a fight. The correlation instead seems to be, from where I'm looking, influence of hardline islam taking root in proximity to chaos and conflict and then not dying off or becoming moderate again after the chaos has died down as might be expected. That and the underlying and oft avoided topic that islam is, at it's heart, a more aggressive religion than Christianity or Judaism. More aggressive Christianity can be combated with lots of 'turn the other cheek' or 'love thy neighbor' but islam doesn't have a whole lot of that, it's more about smiting and being right and doing what the prophet tells you, Christ was a hippy, Mohammed was a conquering warlord, the rhetoric is therefore different and more easily turned to aggression and domination.

There's still Maoists blowing stuff up in Northern India. Malaysia still has problems with it's own communists. I think any kind of terrorist movement hangs around a really long time. Perhaps the thing that's really noticeable about AQ and its various offshoots is how quickly, once cracked down on, their operations dry up. That might be more due to the capabilities of the US and other country's security services, though.

And I agree that Mohammed was a conquering warlord and Jesus was a hippy, but I think it's a bit simplistic to conclude therefore Islam is more prone to war. I mean, when the politics are in place no-one struggled to make Christianity fit their war needs. And at the same time there's parts of Sufism that'd make a hippy think they've gone too far.

And if we're going to talk about about the nature of the book, it's also worth pointing out Christianity is a highly individual religion, many of its best lessons make no sense at all when attempted at the state level, while Islam is far more a book about how a society should be. If the content of the book really impacted the society that embraced it, we'd see very organised and effective Islamic states, and chaotic Christian states, and yet the opposite is largely true.

This is because, and it might be my atheist roots showing, but ultimately I just don't think the book matters that much. They're all complex and sophisticated enough that you'll find whatever you want in them, what matters is the political and economic situation you're in, leading you to find something or another in whatever religious book you happen to read.

I agree, especially the enthusiasm for radical protest and demonstration in the UK and Europe, it's done out of fear of the inevitable (and beautiful) integration of islamic people into the great mixing bowl of the UK. It's why the religiously adherent among the 'moderates' are quiet about the extremists, they quietly back them in the hopes it will prevent the inevitable decay of faith and their powerbase. It will certainly slow it, but you can't stop the signal whilst you live in the west, coke and nike and beyonce and dr who and nightclubs and big macs are all calling louder than the call to prayer and they can rail against it, but more will integrate each year than will go hardline. Once our troops are home from Afghanistan and as long as we no longer indulge in any more foreign adventures for a while, I hope the fanaticism will fall away at a far more rapid rate, their power base in the western cities should dry up fairly rapidly. They fear this and I cannot wait for it.

Absolutely. And that's the thing about terrorism - it's a symptom of the strongly religious losing the cultural struggle.

Thanks for the fuller explanation, sebster, you're right, I did gloss over the full story in Iran, it was part of a whole statement so going into it would have led to a loss of impetus, but the history and tinkering in Iran can certainly be said to have been an influence, although I wonder if the ayatollah would have overthrown Mossaddegh instead, if he'd still been in power, or his government.


In other news...

Even Pat Condell has finally lost his temper in light of this murder. I cannot help but find myself in agreement with this, as I've been saying from the start, there must be a movement within the muslim community to oust these incendiary preachers and radicals and to identify radical mosques to the police and to actively demonstrate against them and loudly and continually denounce and remove affiliation to them.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:


Even Pat Condell has finally lost his temper in light of this murder. I cannot help but find myself in agreement with this, as I've been saying from the start, there must be a movement within the muslim community to oust these incendiary preachers and radicals and to identify radical mosques to the police and to actively demonstrate against them and loudly and continually denounce and remove affiliation to them.

Yep. The Muslim community at large needs to denounce these fethers, complete with fatwas from non-radical clerics. I really do not get the absolute silence from most of the Islamic world on this issue. Silence is consent I suppose though.

Maybe silence is avoiding being a target themselves........no idea why that popped in my head....

Possible but improbable given the scale of of the Muslim population, if everyone told these nutters to beat feet and they decided to fight it out they could literally zerg rush them out of existence.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=171331263031427 Just saw this, it made my blood boooooiiiiiiiillll!