Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

You make a good point, but I don't think it's right to conflate state-sponsored religion in a authoritarian regime like Egypt with moderate Muslims in Western countries. The government in Egypt (and other Arab countries) has wrapped itself in Islam for legitimacy, and so it is driven to punish atheism essentially as an attack on the state.

I am doing no such thing. If extremist thoughts weren't tolerated by any muslim communities, would it be as safe to recruit in those communities? Do you think that the idea that any criticism of Islam or the prophet exists only in those places where it's literally against the law? Are you saying that other muslim communities with ties back to those places don't adopt those attitudes?

TM

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

See my response to RT above. No-snitching culture crosses race lines from latino to black to white in ghetto communities. It's not a movement that has a leader who speaks out about snitching. It's a backwards idea that has gained the support of people who would never even think of committing a serious crime. It's the same principle.

I guess I don't see this as a Muslim thing. The guy you quoted above was talking about condemnation of an atheist in Egypt, which seems to me to be a very different thing than purported tolerance for Islamism on the part of moderate Muslims in the West.

You are so focused on stopping any one act. I am thinking about this in a different way. Reduce the tolerance for extremism amongst those who are not extremists to change the atmosphere in which people are being converted to extremists. Again, I'm not saying this is the only solution. It would be great if we weren't bombing people and constantly creating newly disaffected people. But you seem to only want to approach the problem from one angle and refuse to acknowledge that there are moderate muslims that tolerate the radical thoughts and ideas that breed extremists. I don't get it.

I don't see the evidence that moderate Muslims tolerate the extremists. The extremists who commit crimes often seem to be disaffected younger men with a raft of other problems -- criminal history, lack of prospects, etc. -- who often were not raised as Muslims but turned to radical Islam after many other troubles. They often don't even seem to be that religious.

And to be clear, I have been specifically reacting to the notion that moderate Muslims should denounce the Islamists. Not sure you're suggested that, either.[/QUOTE]

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

I am doing no such thing. If extremist thoughts weren't tolerated by any muslim communities, would it be as safe to recruit in those communities? Do you think that the idea that any criticism of Islam or the prophet exists only in those places where it's literally against the law? Are you saying that other muslim communities with ties back to those places don't adopt those attitudes?

TM

I'm not sure I'm following you. In your prior post, you said (in part):

“When a person comes out and promotes his heresy, promotes his debauchery, and justifies his apostasy on the basis that ‘Islam is not good,’ then there is the judiciary,” Sheikh Abdel-Gelil said. “The judiciary will get him.”

If moderate muslims believe that people who criticize muslims should be punished and extremists trade off of that sentiment to espouse crazier and crazier shit while labeling any dissent as anti-muslim, you end up with a group of people who are not going to speak out. And when you weave the idea that Islam is beyond reproach into law, you end up where we are right now.

My problem is in your jump from the first paragraph to second. The Sheikh is talking about how the Egyptian state (the judiciary) reacts to atheism ("his heresy"). You then say, "[i]f moderate muslims believe that people who criticize muslims should be punished...." (emphasis mine) But I don't think moderate muslims believe that people who criticize muslims should be punished. At least not moderate muslims in the West; at least not the ones I know.

What you are describing, it seems to me, doesn't have to do with the religious beliefs of moderate Muslims. It has to do with relatively illegitimate governments in the Arab world that have turned to Islam for legitimacy, and how they handle their weakness. If the Egyptian government were legitimately elected and accepted by the Egyptian people, it wouldn't have these issues. But it isn't, and Islam has a lot more legitimacy there than the government does.

You say, "if extremist thoughts weren't tolerated by any muslim communities," but I'm not sure what that means. Anyone can start a mosque, and a wingnut with a beard can find disaffected young men and become their religious leader. This happens because other muslim communities aren't interested in that kind of extremism. Was Tim McVeigh tolerated by his white, Christian communities? Did they even know what he was thinking?

Like RT, I see these attacks much more as expressions of troubled individuals who express their anger in Islamist terms, rather than indications of some sort of more widespread pathology in those with Muslim beliefs.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Replaced_Texan

There isn't anything particularly remarkable about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, though. He scares me a shit ton more than his brother. There's NOTHING particularly about his past up until the marathon that could raise flags to say "hey, this guy looks like he's headed down a wrong path" other than being related to a psychopath.

I didn't realize his trial started this week.

By the way, if you go back into Boston's terrorist past, to include things like the weatherman incidents, for example, the common thread in all of them is some connection to area colleges or universities, not religion. Maybe some of the onus here falls on places like Brandeis or Harvard, that have spawned terrorists like the weathermen and unabomber.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

By the way, if you go back into Boston's terrorist past, to include things like the weatherman incidents, for example, the common thread in all of them is some connection to area colleges or universities, not religion. Maybe some of the onus here falls on places like Brandeis or Harvard, that have spawned terrorists like the weathermen and unabomber.

Cambridge Rindge & Latin? UMass-Dartmouth?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Cambridge Rindge & Latin? UMass-Dartmouth?

Well, if we're identifying communities they're a part of, yes.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Ty's blog post listed 10 examples- they were all tied to Islamic terrorist. Deeper?

If I had any money to gamble, I'd bet big I could find at least 10 examples of terrorist acts by white Christian terrorists, even if I limit myself to just one Klan lynching.

Deeper.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by taxwonk

If I had any money to gamble, I'd bet big I could find at least 10 examples of terrorist acts by white Christian terrorists, even if I limit myself to just one Klan lynching.

Deeper.

now we are going in circles. a majority white christian country empowered the FBI to try to stop the Klan. so now it's your turn.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

now we are going in circles. a majority white christian country empowered the FBI to try to stop the Klan. so now it's your turn.

"Terrorism" is what we call violence aimed at political ends by non-state actors. Western governments use violence all the time, but it's not "terrorism." Are you looking for a historical explanation of why it is that Christians exercise political power in Western governments?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

now we are going in circles. a majority white christian country empowered the FBI to try to stop the Klan. so now it's your turn.

Egypt: majority Islamic country whose government has outlawed political Islamic organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and is engaged in widespread crackdowns on them.

Russia: majority Christian country whose government is sponsoring terrorists in the Ukraine. Downed a plane recently, you might have heard about that.

What are we trying to show here, anyways? That both Christians and Muslims engage in terrorism, and that governments of both countries will repress terrorist organizations? Really? You need that demonstrated?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"Terrorism" is what we call violence aimed at political ends by non-state actors. Western governments use violence all the time, but it's not "terrorism." Are you looking for a historical explanation of why it is that Christians exercise political power in Western governments?

I have no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll just not respond. This is now the same discussion we had the last time there was some horrible Islamic terrorist attack. What has been missing from all the blogs you posted and all the posts you/RT/Wonk/GGG have posted is a complete lack of what to do- lots of what we shouldn't do, and what we can't expect to happen from moderate Muslims, but nothing as an alternative. Maybe if one of tried to answer that at least we won't be snapping at our tails.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

[A bunch of stuff]

Frankly, I think I'm done with this conversation. Your tendency to overlook the central theme behind my argument in favor of an approach that completely compartmentalizes a section of a conversation into something so narrow that you can say, "I don't think that that's right," makes it so that I don't really want to bother.

I've given you an example of something I thought was pretty similar. Instead of talking about it, you decided to seize on one part of one post in our discussion to try to focus your argument on how that single example (Egypt) couldn't relate to anything else. Whatever.

If you want to argue that there is no moderate muslim support for the idea that muslims (or anyone else) should be punished for blasphemy and that that support isn't the basis for (i) laws in many places (from Afghanistan to Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia to wherever) criminalizing it (whether you base your argument on what the "muslims you know" think or not) and (ii) the attitude that it is okay to go out and murder someone who commits it in other places--even if carried out by crazies, then I'm done with the conversation. Pointing out that this idea is common in muslim communities the world over isn't even controversial.

Hell, maybe we just have a different idea of what a moderate muslim is.

I have conceded that there are many problems that have led to extremist thought. I have not once said that you or anyone else is wrong about the many problems that create extremists. I find it highly annoying that you refuse to acknowledge the possibility of something other than your own limited opinion, even when I have posted articles (today and the last time we discussed this) in which actual muslims say the very same things I am saying. I'd post more, but what's the fucking point?

So let's be done with this.

TM

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Egypt: majority Islamic country whose government has outlawed political Islamic organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and is engaged in widespread crackdowns on them.

Russia: majority Christian country whose government is sponsoring terrorists in the Ukraine. Downed a plane recently, you might have heard about that.

What are we trying to show here, anyways? That both Christians and Muslims engage in terrorism, and that governments of both countries will repress terrorist organizations? Really? You need that demonstrated?

Russians shot the plane down to advance Christianity, or perceived Russian interest?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Hell, maybe we just have a different idea of what a moderate muslim is.

This is a very serious issue, I think. For most Westerners, a moderate Muslim is simple a Muslim who (a) is westernized or (b) may not be westernized but is aligned with the West (e.g., the Saudi state). Some people mean (a), some (b), some both (a) or (b). But if I point, for example, to an Islamic woman who wears a veil and is happy to defend the practice, she may not be viewed as moderate regardless of her other beliefs. Likewise, someone who supports any Islamic elements in state law, even if limited to, for example, marital law as applied to Muslims, will be viewed as immoderate, even while someone supporting a Jewish state in the same sense will not be viewed as immoderate.

[taxwonk]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

This article deals with both sides better than we ever will.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/wo...=fb-share&_r=0

TM

I think this sums it up right here:

“Some people who feel crushed or ignored will go toward extremism, and they use religion because that is what they have at hand,” said Said Ferjani, an official of Tunisia’s mainstream Islamist party, Ennahda, speaking about the broader phenomenon of violence in the name of Islam. “If you are attacked and you have a fork in your hand, you will fight back with a fork.”

The problem is islam in the same sense that the problem facing Palestinians is the jews, or the problem facing publishers in Texas is the capital "C" christians
who sit in their living rooms, read manuscripts and count the number of times someone refers to Charles Darwin.

It all comes down to people who are alienated. They have no way they can see of getting out of an untenable situation. What do we do when we are faced with the untenable? We turn to whatever purports to answer the unanswerable.