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Violent jihadists don't tend to be the ones who refer to Islam as a religion of peace. The Muslims who do call it that are usually the ones who are actually peaceful, and in most cases I don't see a particularly good reason to include them in criticism of the violent extremists.

Good to know the Pakistani Imam who stood up to a mob to protect a young girl from being stoned to death a couple years ago on the grounds that his faith did not give them the right to kill her isn't really a Muslim. I'm sure he'll be glad to- Wait no he won't.

 LordofHats wrote:
Good to know the Pakistani Imam who stood up to a mob to protect a young girl from being stoned to death a couple years ago on the grounds that his faith did not give them the right to kill her isn't really a Muslim. I'm sure he'll be glad to- Wait no he won't.

You're a religious man, I take it?

Don't have to be religious to find No True Muslim statements super generalizing an extremely large population to be idiotic. Especially when the country in question provides a few scant examples of the internal divisions within the religion. Just because we only hear about some parts of the world when terrible things happen doesn't mean terrible things are all that happens over there.

 LordofHats wrote:
Don't have to be religious to find No True Muslim statements super generalizing an extremely large population to be idiotic. Especially when the country in question provides a few scant examples of the internal divisions within the religion. Just because we only hear about some parts of the world when terrible things happen doesn't mean terrible things are all that happens over there.

Ah, I understand. So I wouldn't be able to find plenty of posts lumping all Christians together for the purposes of condemnation in your posting history.

No actually. At least I don't think so XD I post in religion threads all the time about silly statements lumping religious people together.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
It just blows my mind, to then go to the hospital and inflict further wickedness... They are not animals, animals would not do such a thing, they are devils, monsters, and should be wiped from the earth. So utterly vile and inhuman, all in the name of 'faith'.

I don't think demonising them helps anything. They're just people. Maybe in another life you would be one of them.

It might be more helpful to ask who they are and how they became that way. "Islam" on its own isn't an answer, because many people are exposed to Islam and don't do what they did.

If you understand why they acted that way, maybe you can take steps that will inspire fewer to choose that path in future.

But its so much easier to call them dragons, and make a map that notes their location.

 HiveFleetPlastic wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
It just blows my mind, to then go to the hospital and inflict further wickedness... They are not animals, animals would not do such a thing, they are devils, monsters, and should be wiped from the earth. So utterly vile and inhuman, all in the name of 'faith'.

I don't think demonising them helps anything. They're just people. Maybe in another life you would be one of them.

It might be more helpful to ask who they are and how they became that way. "Islam" on its own isn't an answer, because many people are exposed to Islam and don't do what they did.

If you understand why they acted that way, maybe you can take steps that will inspire fewer to choose that path in future.

I don't think the "why" is all that hard to see. They're humans existing in conditions that, although superior to our natural environment, place an extraordinary amount of stress upon their psyches, as human instinct doesn't properly line up with the environment, and they lack the additional conditioning we in first world countries often receive, which allows the mitigation of the unnatural stresses and provides the additional frameworks necessary to operate in the more complex environment.

Simply put, they're running on instinct in an environment that instinct is ill-suited to, and this results in the sort of tribalistic throwbacks and extreme brutality we see. Particularly because they're in what is basically a warzone, which provides ample triggers, motivations, and materiel for such brutal lashing out.

You see the makings of such behavior anywhere the requisite conditioning isn't applied to humans existing in such environments.

 dogma wrote:
But its so much easier to call them dragons, and make a map that notes their location.

I feel like I'm missing the joke (if there is one) here.

 asimo77 wrote:

I feel like I'm missing the joke (if there is one) here.

There is.

The old map trope was my first thought but I couldn't think of an immediate connection to Islam or Pakistan.

So, these peaceful muslims, the majority, do they treat women as equals, or is the horror of this attack the extreme end of an universal subjugation and degradation of women and their rights as equals to men?

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, these peaceful muslims, the majority, do they treat women as equals, or is the horror of this attack the extreme end of an universal subjugation and degradation of women and their rights as equals to men?

 Ardaric_Vaanes wrote:
Damn....they blow a bus full of them up in a bomb attack then murder their way through a hospital just to finish the job. I don't think even the word 'overkill' is enough to describe the severity of this attack. Saddest part is this won't be the last time something like this happens given the way things are in the middle east.

Its about negotiation. By doing this they will be feared and not attacked in the near future by security forces. If you attack us there will be no limit to how far we will go type of thing. Further, others of their ilk, who respect strength, may move to their banner.

When facing these threats, countries can either go berserk (Russia occasionally) or bend and become subservient and give them autonomy. Neither method is 100% successful. Even Saudi Arabia, which practices a very harsh brand, has its own groups attempting to destabilize it.

I mean think about this. You're the President of Pakistan. What do you do?

 dogma wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
So, these peaceful muslims, the majority, do they treat women as equals, or is the horror of this attack the extreme end of an universal subjugation and degradation of women and their rights as equals to men?

Nice, paint me a racist and ignore the suffering of women across the muslim world, sanctioned by religious leaders and religious courts, how terribly PC of you.

I will give sufficient consideration to your opinion of me and weight it against the noses cut from women's faces, the corpses of women stoned to death and these women gunned down in hospital beds and consider it a fair trade to be found objectionable because I despise this.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Nice, paint me a racist

I didn't get that from the video so much as trying to show you that your emotions are getting the better of you, and you are going on an ignorant rant because of you anger. In your head it sounds perfectly reasonable, but your anger blinds you to how it makes you seem to others, same as the fellow in the video. That is what anger does.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
and ignore the suffering of women across the muslim world, sanctioned by religious leaders and religious courts

Oh please, now your just making a False Choice: either you hate muslims or you hate women!

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
how terribly PC of you.

If you don't want to be seen as racist, probably best not to use racist boilerplate responses to people who disagree.

Goood goooooood release your anger and your journey to the Dark Side shall be complete.

 Ahtman wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Nice, paint me a racist

I didn't get that from the video so much as trying to show you that your emotions are getting the better of you, and you are going on an ignorant rant because of you anger. In your head it sounds perfectly reasonable, but your anger blinds you to how it makes you seem to others, same as the fellow in the video. That is what anger does.

I become angry at injustice, persecution and bigotry, I get angry about the little girl I saw who was raped by the taliban when they took over the next door house as a base and I become entirely vengeful to the urge to throttle when I see her forced to live in a dog house in the yard because her parents, both her parents, despise her as she is now unclean and has no value as a marriage property. All I see of the muslim world is it's grotesque effects on it's womenfolk, it's repulsive misogeny and dehumanising, it's insistance on utter control, it's destruction of learning, art and culture that does not fit its singular borg like destruction of individuality and personal growth. I see those little lads in Pakistan, nodding back and forth, spouting text they don't even understand, it being the only education they are allowed, the programming of tomorrow's martyrs and it makes me so totally depressed, like watching little lights going out.

Show me what I'm missing out? What is it I fail to see, that could not be better if the entire theology was not utterly stamped out, wiped from the earth and forgotten.

I mostly enjoyed V for Vendetta as a movie, but the part where Stephen Fry shows Portman his hidden Quran made me sigh, it's a book that's been used to justify the murder of homosexuals across the earth, it should be put away, turned to compost and fed to trees so girls can pick apples on their way to school.

Angry mate? I'm furious, I'm alive with rage and seething with it, as this theology holds humankind back and makes monsters of men, or frees the monsters to be monsters. Instead of damning them, it damns their victims.

And then there is the quiet acceptance. In the West, when the terrorists and religious thugs lash out, there is the official 'we're not cool with it', but for a muslim, even living in the West, it is better to side with a fanatic than turn that fanatic over to a non-believer.

 Ahtman wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
and ignore the suffering of women across the muslim world, sanctioned by religious leaders and religious courts

Oh please, now your just making a False Choice: either you hate muslims or you hate women!

Why is that choice false? Islam is a hostile religion to women, it treats them poorly in every nation it has a foot hold and treats them worse in nations it is dominant in. If you afford it special privilege, say the request for Sharia in the UK, you are making the choice to see women treated less well.

See you have to be like Frazzled. He's not racist/sexist/'ist. he hates everybody. Or he would if he could get up the stregnth, but thats so much effort...

If it wouldn't get me in trouble I'd post my favorite line from Full Metal Jacket in response to that, Frazzled.

You know the one.

Something about a rifle and a gun or the one about how can someone shoot women and children?

Nah, the "To me, you are all equally worthless!" bit.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I become angry at injustice, persecution and bigotry

And that anger has made you into what you hate, it seems.

The thing to remember is that we're not talking about a "kook fringe" thing like the Westboro guys.

Militant Islamists are in nearly every Muslim dominated nation. They wage war on anyone they see as an enemy and conduct campaigns of terror on their own people who don't abide by the Islamists' interpretation of Islamic dogma. There are way too many Islamists far too many places around the world for this to be treated as some sort of aberrant interpretation of Islam.

It isn't just Al Qaeda. It's the Taliban. It's the Muslim Brotherhood. It's all sorts of splinter groups. It's the mothers who dance with joy in the streets when their child "martyrs" himself. And, ultimately, it's the rest of the civilized world who won't take any of this seriously because they consider Islamists to be a bunch of primitives.

 Ahtman wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
I become angry at injustice, persecution and bigotry

And that anger has made you into what you hate, it seems.

Excellent. We hav e now officially changed this thread to "what is MGS's Sith name?" competition.
I vote Darth Blessed.

Darth Brianicus gets my vote.

 Breotan wrote:
The thing to remember is that we're not talking about a "kook fringe" thing like the Westboro guys.

Militant Islamists are in nearly every Muslim dominated nation. They wage war on anyone they see as an enemy and conduct campaigns of terror on their own people who don't abide by the Islamists' interpretation of Islamic dogma. There are way too many Islamists far too many places around the world for this to be treated as some sort of aberrant interpretation of Islam.

It isn't just Al Qaeda. It's the Taliban. It's the Muslim Brotherhood. It's all sorts of splinter groups. It's the mothers who dance with joy in the streets when their child "martyrs" himself. And, ultimately, it's the rest of the civilized world who won't take any of this seriously because they consider Islamists to be a bunch of primitives.

And yet they still don't make up anything near the majority of Muslims. No one has come close to saying extremists don't exist, just that pretending that all Muslims are extremist is ignorant in the extreme. We should be angry about this, and should be outraged, but that doesn't excuse us becoming monsters ourselves and lashing out in such a reckless manner so that we start also targeting people that aren't involved in such evil.

Definitely Darth Britanicus

Edited.