If only those Marines had been armed...
I think what nenjin was trying to say was that if it had been a white guy, we could all have rested easy in the knowledge that he was obviously a crazy lone wolf and definitely not a terrorist. But because he's a Muslim Arab-American, it's a reminder of the existential threat that all brown people pose to America. (note -- I am not saying nenjin thinks this way)
Redking, I'm pretty sure Nenjin remarked on that because if it had been a white guy there at least wouldn't be any blanket Muslim-shaming over this like every other goddamn shooting that happens in this country, since for some reason everyone here will blame the race, religion, and ethnic origin of every shooter unless they're white.
^
I'm just too tired of dealing with people who let scum off at best and at worse defend them just because they're diverse. Have we already forgotten that after the Church shooting there was a fucking gargantuan backlash against the confederate flag and such, because everyone was saying it was a part of what brought up the shooter up?! It's the exact same thing with Islam, only moreso, because the religion is far more integral to the identity of the muslim terrorist than the culture they were born in. It's what unites all the al-Britanis and al-Khorasanis together. Hell, I even fished out the 'Life of Muhammad' by one Hadrat Mirza Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad give to me for free by that one street preacher I talked to a while back, and began looking through it. Inside the book is a little slip with a thing saying:
For Acknolwedgement & Remarks
Please visit
www.ukmuslimsforpeace.com
Email: feedback@ukmuslimsforpeace.comGiven to me by the guy who was more than ok with ISIS. Though then again, within the book there is a nice bit on how Muslims should do two things in regards to fighting. One is to spare those who desist aggression, even if they are of a false religion, otherwise you are not fighting for God but are fighting for insular gain. This is a laudable and worthy sentiment everyone should carry. It even goes on to say that one shouldn't interfere with the practices of persons following heathen religions, and this is not just some empty moral, it is practiced in reality quite well by Muslim nations like Malaysia. I am most concerned with the sentiment that fighting should continue so long as religious freedom is impinged.
Of course to western-minded folk like us (I'm assuming the Atlantic gap here hasn't changed the definition too much), religious freedom = right to believe in what you want to believe. So yeah, that also seems reasonable. Yet more than a decade ago I was having banterous arguments with Creationist Murricans who believed that their right to belief guaranteed their religion supremacy in morals, and their morals above secular humanist morals. My conversations with Muslims in Britain, both moderate 'if one of my friends was gay, they'd be less of a don to me, but still a friend' to extreme 'decadent west must die' has really brought up the nostalgia with me. I think they're using the Creationist definition of religious freedom.
I find the comparison between Creationists and Islamists to be quite apt, because they're both fairly young and extreme offshoots of... I suppose, belief systems/values would be the term to use? Anyways, they're reactionary beliefs and offshoots of their parent religions, with their religions being a part of their core identity. They're modern reactions to modern progress. So you had your folk going against gay marriage, pro-choice and progressivism in America on the part of the Creationists, using their creed as justification. Then you have your European and American muslims going against gay marriage, women's rights and progressivism, using their creed as justification. Same goes with censorship, used to be that there'd be outrage over alcohol and sex and such in media with Creationists, now it's the SJWs and Islamists who have taken up the mantle in pushing for censorship. Only insulting Islam is not just a topic for censorship, it's culpable in shortening the life expectancy of your head and your neck, not even in the West are you safe any longer. Fucking hell, I'm talking all nice shit about Malaysia because I fucking love the country but their leader warned the Americans that a shitty $5 film about why beheading people was bad was 'a threat to world peace.'
I'm reminded too much of the people trying to say - even on Bay12 trying to say, that Adebolajo was acting on his own, or acting out quoting all the bits where he said he wanted the people to 'overthrow the government' as if this had nothing to do with Islam with all the mentions of him being a soldier of Allah redacted. I don't get today's media pussyfooting around Islam post-Hebdo after everyone said they wouldn't be afraid, then when the time came to test they were afraid. You've got half the people scared they'll die and the other half scared they'll offend someone therefore they must shut it all down and of all things, defend murderers.
Granted bay12 tends to be more reasonable in this but seriously? The whole 'I wish the killer was white' thing is exactly as horrible as it sounds, and it is just participating in the silence against criticizing Islamism. The marine killer bloke, Muhammed Youssef Abdulazeez? Yeah he'd been talking about how life is a test to 'separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire.' And yet you can find all these people from the Guardian and Tumblr saying religion has nothing to do with it.
...
You know what, I wish Islam had conquered Europe way back in Charlemagne's time, because it seems Islam being the religion of the white man is what it'd take to get people to criticize it. Or at least, intellectually competent people. I.e. the educated persons who are the spokespeople for the West. There has been for the past century an endless effort through globalization to destroy all the old values and leave a great big unified cosmopolitan world in its place, but all that did was leave a vacuous void of philosophy ready to be replaced by whoever preached the strongest message. The moderates of the world from Russia to America are increasingly being replaced by extremists, in everything from ideology, politics and of course - religion. Yet only the most powerful religion on the planet is given immunity to criticism in progressive circles, and I find this completely in contrary to progressive ideals. So while Danish cartoonists are hacked with hatchets and Pakistani reporters mauled with machetes, dying for the right to speak out against Islam - when students protest in Turkey, Muslim students no less to keep Universities secular, we as a whole people seem apathetic and turn a blind eye, rushing to support the crazy fuckers because they're the Muslims with the loudest voices and the sharpest blades.
Quite frankly I think a lot of this could be solved with some new term, akin to how Creationism separates normal Christians from the crazies, and allows people to freely criticize them without slagging off Christianity. In this way people could freely discourse about the perils of Islam's own "creationism" that is making these crazy fuckers go around killing their neighbours without creating a backlash against Muslims have no part in the fuck ups their retarded offshoots are making. And then we could criticize those ones for their own values with added fedora tipping, but it'd be a conversation that does not have to share the same scummy breath as the crazy ones. The media is picking up on Islamism and Fundamentalism to use for this, and I suppose that comes close.
Anyways, I'm done ranting. I still can't see why people on bay12 genuinely couldn't understand why normal Muslims, completely apart from ISIS "behead everything that moves" Islam, using Shariah courts instead of British courts in Britain is a bad thing. Today you could get everyone to accept a dictatorship if you rebranded it as friendlyism.
I remember a while back in an argument in the Europol thread where I posted the poll where it showed that amongst British Muslims it was a minority of Muslims that wanted Shariah law, the killing of Apostates or the stoning of gays - but the minority was not like 0.01%, but actually just under 40%. There was something very interesting in that there was a generation gap. The older muslims, amongst them it was more of a minority (as in, actually quite small and fringe, and not just small
er) and their views were more in line with the west's modern ideals of tolerance and generally, not being a dick. I can't remember who it was, but someone on bay12 posited that the 1st gen Muslims chose to go to the West from their homeland because they wanted to, and they loved it - so they fit right in and there was never really a problem. Then their kids grew up as Muslims and Muslims first, distinctly apart from the rest of the nation their parents moved to, and feeling ostracized began murdering people for slights upon them as a conflation with slights upon their religion.
Since then I've been thinking about this much and I've come up with another idea, that the generation gap is not a result of the generation of people, but the birth of Islamism or Islam's own Creationism, a crazy offshoot that embraces a fundamentalist, militant and hardline approach to Islam. I was only more convinced when I looked into this further, and at least in Britain - some of these killers, the most extreme of the extreme, they were born in
Christian families or
Atheist families. And far from being apart from Britain, many of the fighters who have gone abroad to fight for ISIS style themselves still as al-Britani, and someone in that Europol thread also said there was a poll saying that British muslims identified as British often more than British Christians - couple that with the fact that it's the natives that are in the minority in London, and that even in London muslims are concentrated in the southeast - in the schools, in the houses and markets and workplaces, the muslims are in the majority on the local and urban level and there is no one to ostracize them.
The only thing that links all of these people, from the moderates who politely oppose progressivism, to the extremists who go out to kill, to the preachers who spread fundamentalism, to the facebook activists who shill for ISIS, to the people in between who practice Shariah law, to the white English and Scottish converts, to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th gen of immigrants all the way down from Arabia to India - the only thing they share in common is Islam. And when Muslims speak out against the violence, when they speak out against leftists trying to ban Islamophobia, when they try to get their brethren to stop trying to fight a warlord's fight that is not theirs to fight - these are older Muslims.
If the generational gap was merely a result of 2nd gen immigrants not realizing what their parents left behind, then there would be no converts trying to establish no-music no-alcohol shariah zones. I am beginning to see this generational gap as proof of the birth of some new fundamentalist Islam, just as Creationism was birthed. It is the strongest philosophy in the West, has no opposition and a very active defence on behalf of the West itself. And as it grows more extreme, it grows more popular - as it grows more popular, it grows more extreme.
Is there a solution? Probably not, in all likelihood it's too late, mass immigration has permanently changed the religious makeup of the West to the point where closing the gates is like closing the gate after horses have all bolted. And even if you did close the gates and kicked out the hardline elements, that higher birthrate + free flow of information is impossible to stop. And if you did? Even if you managed to wipe out the religion, you can wipe out all religion but you can never stamp out humanity's desire to believe in something higher. Atheism will never truly succeed above all other beliefs because in the end, most people are just not born cynical, they only become cynical after decades of hardship until they're old bastards, and old bastards are rarely in the majority - it's usually the young. The way I see it, it is a fight that cannot be done by Christians, Jews, Atheists, Progressives, Conservatives or whatever. It can only be done by Muslims, just as the Middle East can never be fixed by having foreign boots patrol its sands - it must be done by soldiers of the Middle East for there to be peace. As for what Muslims can themselves do? Well shit, I don't know either. I'd say moderate because someone who hates gays is still preferable to someone who hates them with a vengeance; but how do you keep those people in the majority? How do you reverse the flow down the extreme?
I can think of only one thing - offering an ideology even stronger, Western Islam vs Creationism 2: Beheaded on the Loo. Something like Islam packaged with Nationalism, akin to Malaysia (I'll stop shilling for the nation now), sans the part where you become a Muslim nation. I would say also that the West needs to just stop with the fervent protection of Islam, quite frankly Muslims have been the only ones opposing this new hardline brand of Islam and the West has been ignoring them whilst helping their enemies. I made this point before, in the Europol thread, where if you compare muslim news like Al Jazeera with Western news like the Guardian or MSNBC, the former is far more scathing of tribalism and fundamentalism spreading through Islam whilst the latter will use euphemisms to avoid even mentioning Islam and will go so far as to blame the West for the attacks on the West. Muslims are fighting to save the West whilst the West fights to protect their killers. What a world we live in, sort of reminds me when someone was joking about how an American was being given asylum by Russia after Snowden tried blowing the whistle on a vast and overreaching US government national security bureau.
_________________________________________________________
I derailed incredibly heavily off of my original point, so I will restate it separate from the whole issue of Islamism, Islam and Fundamentalist/Moderate Islam. The notion of hoping that headline killers and terrorists being white Christians so as to avoid backlash, is part of another thing I have found, and others found before me - since antiquity. Not the specifics mind you, no, the idea of keeping our flock safe and keeping the out-groups as the exemplars of immorality. You got your decadent westerners and straight white shitlords, people easy to criticize for being. It is one of those things that I don't doubt will always come back for as long as the people who remembered the lessons hard learned keep dying or keep forgetting, as has happened now. People will instinctively rush to defend those they see as a part of their group vs those they see as without, and will attack those they see as without if they attack those they see in their group. This is not unique to progressivism, by any stretch of measure, the only reason I mention this in relation to progressivism is that right now progressivism has finally become the dominant force in every facet of Western society; even today, the conservatives of today spout beliefs that would have been progressivism decades ago. It is reaching a level of power that its followers must wield with grace, we cannot tell the Muslims to police their own faith if we then run around abusing our own.
Justice is blind and you are innocent until proven guilty, at least in an ideal justice system. I'll argue about the erosion of presumed innocence later, for now I focus on justice being blind. The punishment should be the same for two different people who have conducted the same crime under the same circumstances. But then you have cases where the people in power, and their ilk - they defend those from their flock who do wrong because it makes them look bad. Justice stops being blind, and becomes injustice when the flock tries to defend the black sheep.
When an officer rapes his subordinate soldier and the whole military stands with the officer and discharges the raped subordinate if he tries to speak out against his officer, that is a clear injustice. When the Catholic Papacy tries to hide its pedophile priests under the rug, it is no less wrong than when the LGBT Lobby tries to hide its Larry Brinkins under the rug (for fucks sakes, he only got 6 months prison). Shit, I Still recall on this forum no less, when I posted video proof that Sarkeesian was a conman that people were denying the video proof with the same fervour that creationists had denied me when I posted proof that Kent Hovind was a Fraud. The whole Zimmerman trial, god fucking hell, that whole god damn trial, news stations were doctoring evidence just to fit their worldview and Americans everywhere lapped up their favourite news stations' milk because it fit in with their worldview. To link it to the above, the whole silence and suppression of the Muslim rape gangs, the Trojan Horse plot, the Shariah Marriages - the above 'I wish it were a white guy' mentality, it starts with the best of intentions and ends up with this. It has ended with this. Swedish people saying that it's understandable that Somalians rape and Europe should be tolerant - in response to Somalians raping a woman to death, and brought up again after a Somalian was acquitted for raping a 13 year old Swedish girl. Fucking hell Sweden. I was watching a BBC talkshow where some transwoman was saying that during her time as a man she felt straight white men could get away with murder. And here we are now, where as long as you're suitably diverse; you may not get away with murder every time, but either way the public will mourn for you and hush it up. How many thousands of English girls and boys were raped for
this? You can understand my revulsion then, to 'I wish it were a white guy' - because it is far too close to this horrible position where people are apologetic for pedophiles, rapists, murderers and frauds - if they are one of them, for my liking.
And quite frankly - forget the moral argument. Some people are moral relativists and believe that they should defend horrible people who are good spokespeople if it ultimately ends up benefiting the greater good. If light is shone on dirty laundry it makes progressivism look bad, so that's bad right? Well, the only thing that could possibly make progressivism look worse than this is if the people it fought for did these things, then progressivists
defended these people instead of attacking them. On all accounts this simply cannot continue.
I suppose this also ties in with bad science.
People getting angry when some science shows variance between gender, race or whatever sounds politically correct and edgier than bismuth. Nobel Laureates have been fucked for less. There are Universities that want to put trigger warnings in textbooks and literature. And I'm not even going to bring up censorship; Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard - adding safe spaces with crayons, kittens and pillows, banning 'triggering' speakers and attacking people based off of the stupidest shit... The elite, of the elite, of the elite of the West's innovative educational centres is falling into ignorance, hijacked by the ignorant. That isn't the same as defending someone because they are part of the flock, that is more in line with defending stupidity because it is your brand of stupidity. I call it 'bad science' merely because of the connotations to the science wars, where there were these completely fucking mental people saying that the speed of light was sexist and that chemistry was racist, way before the SJWs term was even coined - but really the problem is with the entirety of academia. These are supposed to be the free markets of ideas, the most intellectually challenging places in Western Civilization where the brightest and most accomplished go to butt heads and intellect actually challenge themselves. Yet with the best of intentions, we come to this.
We should be progressing into the right side of history, not the end of it.
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1285750 times)