Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sergarr]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

The "Islamist radicals" that you see today are a result of trying to adapt the Quran for easier understanding of nomadic tribes. Thus, the shift to violence and murder of unbelievers.

The Arabia was a center of knowledge at the time of Crusades, you know. Much more civilized than Europe at that time. Shame the Mongols wrecked the regional trade and plunged them into poverty.

[Ai Shizuka]

...

These are your words: islamic terror existed since the inception of islam.
You are saying there has always been a terroristic component in islam.
Basically Islam is born with in-built terror cells? Out of nowhere, they founded a religion with an innately violent component?
Probably I should ask something about your background at this point, but I suspect it would be pretty predictable.
And the resulting debate would be even more predictable.

About ISIS I'm not contradicting myself at all.
The west (wich doesn't equate to the US) is contradicting itself. I've been saying the same thing since my first reply in this thread. We think we are fixing things, but we are doing an half-assed job of it, wich is invariably making everything worse.

Syrian civil war starts: ignore it do something about it?
We took our sweet time, then decided to give some kind of support to the rebels. Why? Who knows. Oh right, because Assad is a barbaric tyrant. Are we doing anything about the various barbaric tyrants in, say, central Africa?

No matter the reasons, the west decided to do something. Here are the mistakes.
First mistake: we expected our weapon shipments to somehow stay strictly under the control of the moderate component of the rebels. Because this kind of intervention always worked wonderfully in that area, right?
Second mistake: while ISIS has been a reality since the mid 2000s, it wasn't as strong and cohesive as it is now. And we somehow expected them to not take advantage of the syrian civil war.
Third mistake: despite our intervention (wich may or may not have been the right thing to do), we didn't accomplish anything. Assad is still there, nothing changed. But hey, we took some chemical weapons from him. Because OMG CHEMICAL WEAPONS, now feel free to keep killing each others with bombs, pointy sticks or whatever you prefer.

Fast forward to the current Iraq situation.
Surprise, the same ISIS guys. Now stronger and more organized than ever. I NEVER said the sole reason behind ISIS' rise to power is our idiotic policy in that area, but it certainly contributed.
And now we are doing it again, this time with way more US bullshit on the side.
First: let's do nothing.
Later: maybe we should do something or, even better, we could make it look like we are doing something.
Then, OMG those are christians. Totally unacceptable. Let's pretend we are going to do something. For real, this time. But without risking soldiers.
Finally, holy shit they beheaded some random asshole. Now we totally mean business, because, you know, a western journalist.

How many times did the west change stance in the past few weeks? We are going back and forth from not doing anything to shipping weapons to bombing ISIS to sending soldiers on the ground and back all over again.
To make things even more pathetic, there's the constant US propaganda bullshit, with daily resounding problaims from your president or some random redneck with an important chair under his ass.

Now, maybe I've not been trying hard enough to get my point across.
I think there are two options for the west at this point.
First option: what about we start fucking ignoring the area and let it follow its course? It worked fine for Europe, after all. We slaughtered ourselves for centuries and now live in our peaceful and democratic western states.

Second option about ISIS. They really are the ultimate evil and something should be done.
Go there. Invade. Bomb the shit out of them.
Same thing about Assad. He's evil.
Except this never worked. Literally. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Lybia and so on.
So why should it work this time?
If real armed invasions never accomplished anything, do we really think weapon shipments and a few drones are going to magically stabilize the area?

When I say "the west made a mistake" I don't mean "let's cover it with an even bigger mistake".
Why is it so hard to admit we will never be able to accomplish anything in that area?
Why is it so hard to accept they'll have to slaughter themselves for a while before reaching some kind of stability?

I'm so fucking sick of people taking "black or white" stances about the matter and expecting the entire world to do the same.

[smjjames]

Um, I don't know of any 'bomb the shit out of them' operations in Somalia? I know there was that black hawk down incident, but not sure what you're referring to specifically with Somalia.

Unless you mean drone strikes?

And yes I agree that waiting until Christians were in danger to REALLY get into action on ISIS is hypocritical and kind of sending the wrong message. I get trying not to take sides with the Sunni-Shiia conflict, but waiting until non-muslims were in danger is the wrong tactic to deal with the problem. Especially when the Iraq army was clearly losing it.

[burningpet]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

The "Islamist radicals" that you see today are a result of trying to adapt the Quran for easier understanding of nomadic tribes. Thus, the shift to violence and murder of unbelievers.

The Arabia was a center of knowledge at the time of Crusades, you know. Much more civilized than Europe at that time. Shame the Mongols wrecked the regional trade and plunged them into poverty.

You have to go to extreme lengths to twist The new testament and most buddhist scriptures into a violent agenda, while you have to go to extreme lengths to twist the Quran into a peaceful agenda. that's the difference.

And since the Quran was originally preached to nomadic tribes and propagated through violence and murder of unbelievers, the adaptations, if anything, were made to make Islam and the Quran appear peaceful. which ultimately fails because the extreme groups will always want to get back to muhammad's core message and actions.

Um, I don't know of any 'bomb the shit out of them' operations in Somalia? I know there was that black hawk down incident, but not sure what you're referring to specifically with Somalia.

Unless you mean drone strikes?

Somalia as an example of what happens when the central regime falls and leave the country for countless rivaling organizations that battle each other for power.

[smjjames]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_war

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_violence

The "Islamist radicals" that you see today are a result of trying to adapt the Quran for easier understanding of nomadic tribes. Thus, the shift to violence and murder of unbelievers.

The Arabia was a center of knowledge at the time of Crusades, you know. Much more civilized than Europe at that time. Shame the Mongols wrecked the regional trade and plunged them into poverty.

You have to go to extreme lengths to twist The new testament and most buddhist scriptures into a violent agenda, while you have to go to extreme lengths to twist the Quran into a peaceful agenda. that's the difference.

Pfft, look at Europe and it's religious wars and the way that the spread of Christianity often involved violent eradication or conversions (which weren't always willing conversions) of pagans. Plenty of wars have been waged in the name of god too. Christianity isn't exactly that peaceful either.

They didn't have to twist it very far either.

[martinuzz]

The Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the (Western) literary canon. - Noam Chomsky.

Then again, islam was founded by a warlord, while christianity was founded by some odd jewish hippie.

[Frumple]

Really, you can just assume most anything BP says about islam is islamophobic nonsense to some degree or another. Critter's been drinking the israeli koolaid very deeply in regards to anti-arab sentiment. Nothing of value is going to be said, and there's not going to be any enlightenment regarding the islamic people on the other end of the conversation, so just... leave it as a loss, and maybe go on to talking about something of actual import.

[Criptfeind]

That's actually super ironic, cuz from my prospective a lot of (not all of it mind, but a lot of) the defense of Islam seems to actually use the exact same tactic that Burning Pet uses to justify Israels actions in Palestine. I mean, it's not always the same. But there are a lot of cases where they are the same. And it's sorta been funny. (Also actually in some cases it's the way some people have been justifying Russias actions in Ukraine, although in that case I don't think it's the same people do do that justification and then also attack islam/israel. So at least it's not ironic/hypocritical)

Specifically, because I've realized I was a bit unclear in that paragraph, it's the justification by comparison to another group being bad. Saying Islams not bad because Christians kill people. Saying Israel is not bad because Hamas kills people. Saying Russia is not bad because America kills people. I mean, to be clear, in these cases that's not always the only argument being brought to bear, and I'm not saying that any of these groups are good or bad, just that I find it very funny that there are people who will both reject this logic and use this logic, only because the topic has switched.

[Veylon]

OT: This could lead to another interesting, but irrelevant, topic: why are 2 thousands dead a big deal in Gaza, but no fucks were given about 150 thousands in Syria? Until chemical weapons, obviously. Because, you know, CHEMICAL WEAPONS OMG. Dead people aren't as dead when killed by mere bombs or bullets. /OT

I'd like to touch on this. The reason is very simple: More Westerners are emotionally invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have been for years or even decades. We measure ourselves, in part, by how well "our" side does. So naturally, we're always looking for find ways to score points on the subject in order to increase our relative social standing and self-worth.

Conversely, we haven't gotten likewise invested in any of the sides in the Syria conflict. Assad was either demonized or ignored, so he's got no cheerleaders. The other groups were either extremely obscure or non-existent until recently. Since it doesn't really produce any points for us to score against one another, it doesn't matter how many people are getting killed.

That's why it's a big deal.

[burningpet]

Really, you can just assume most anything BP says about islam is islamophobic nonsense to some degree or another. Critter's been drinking the israeli koolaid very deeply in regards to anti-arab sentiment. Nothing of value is going to be said, and there's not going to be any enlightenment regarding the islamic people on the other end of the conversation, so just... leave it as a loss, and maybe go on to talking about something of actual import.

Or you could, you know, simply go educate yourself a little. i am not saying go educate yourself a lot, i am saying just a little bit.

Also, please don't put racists words into my mouth as i never said anything bad about Arabs. i know its probably hard for people who are on the other side of the globe to realize there's a difference between Arabs and Islam, but we who live here do.

OT: This could lead to another interesting, but irrelevant, topic: why are 2 thousands dead a big deal in Gaza, but no fucks were given about 150 thousands in Syria? Until chemical weapons, obviously. Because, you know, CHEMICAL WEAPONS OMG. Dead people aren't as dead when killed by mere bombs or bullets. /OT

I'd like to touch on this. The reason is very simple: More Westerners are emotionally invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have been for years or even decades. We measure ourselves, in part, by how well "our" side does. So naturally, we're always looking for find ways to score points on the subject in order to increase our relative social standing and self-worth.

Conversely, we haven't gotten likewise invested in any of the sides in the Syria conflict. Assad was either demonized or ignored, so he's got no cheerleaders. The other groups were either extremely obscure or non-existent until recently. Since it doesn't really produce any points for us to score against one another, it doesn't matter how many people are getting killed.

That's why it's a big deal.

That's not a reason, that's a result. the reason is that if there was anything the Islamic countries and people were unified around, it was opposing israel. because of that and because of the large quantity of islamic people in europe, stuff about israel hits the headlines and the streets at a disproportionate scale. because of that, people will naturally form an opinion about this topic and emotionally invest in it.

The Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the (Western) literary canon. - Noam Chomsky.

Then again, islam was founded by a warlord, while christianity was founded by some odd jewish hippie.

The Old testament. the New testament is actually extremely peaceful.

Pfft, look at Europe and it's religious wars and the way that the spread of Christianity often involved violent eradication or conversions (which weren't always willing conversions) of pagans. Plenty of wars have been waged in the name of god too. Christianity isn't exactly that peaceful either.

They didn't have to twist it very far either.

Have you ever traveled through S.E Asia? If you do happen to go to a buddhist majority country like, say, thailand, you might see a most peculiar thing: little buddha statues in the entrance of households that the people feed three times a day. if you read some of the buddhist "scriptures" (start with the dharmmapada), you might find out that those statues are completely against the buddhist teachings, which actually resemble western philosophy texts more than western religious texts.

My point is that those buddha status are despite buddha teachings and not because of, and that even if christian ruled countries committed atrocities, it was despite of the christian message, not because of. that claim is extremely hard to make regarding the Quran.

[tuypo1]

Not really the Islamic education you are talking about but Islamic education none the less

Oh wait crap that charts on the computer and im on my phone I will upload it in the morning

[Ai Shizuka]

Um, I don't know of any 'bomb the shit out of them' operations in Somalia?

Right, nobody bombed Somalia. I just meant full blown military operations, in a general sense.


Everyone else: gj derailing the thread on the usual religion garbage. Because apparently people like Burningpet are still taken seriously.
Do you even read what you write? I seriously struggle to find proper answers to that pile of stereotypical bullshit.

[burningpet]

Since i am not the one who attacks personally and since i am merely discussing a central theme to this thread (A thread about IS - Islamic State), i'd say that i am not the one derailing the thread.

http://www.debka.com/article/24211/Taking-the-US-fight-against-IS-into-Syria-would-consolidate-Assad-and-his-Iranian-Hizballah-allies
Debkafile is a website that claims to receive information from intelligence officers in the IDF. i tend to brush aside most of their opinions and claims, but here and there you can stumble upon an interesting read.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/france-calls-for-action-on-islamic-states-cash-supply-1408739992
I have been seeing this brave statements surface throughout europe recently. mainly that the West needs to start hurt ISIS funding sources, mainly Qatar and Turkey (Turkey buys oil from ISIS).

A journalist claims he found ISIS training base on google earth by using hints he/she found on twitter pics of ISIS trainees.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/22/journalist-islamic-state-training-camp/

[10ebbor10]

It seems quite logical though. If A is fighting B, and you bomb the crap out of B, A is going to benefit.

Then again, is the situation in Syria really that dangerous for Assad. Seems like the Assad- ISIS front hasn't moved that much.

[Wolfhunter107]

Snip

It's a good way to keep oneself occupied.