|
PeonForHer -> RE: Islam (12/1/2016 3:16:37 PM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: kdsub
quote:
number one source of terrorism in the entire world.
I believe the average follower is not a terrorist but you would have to be blind to reality not to recognize the truth in the statement above. We can defend individuals of the Muslim faith we know and we should. But... just because they are peaceful and tolerant of other faiths does not mean their religion is not fostering intolerant terrorism on a scale that is affecting the stability of our civilization.
Until the whole of Islam itself acknowledges the fact that a significant portion of their followers are violently warping the teaching of their religion and directly addressing the issues there will be no peace. They have to stop setting back and having others sacrifice their children to solve their problems...They must rise up against this sickness in their religion and stamp it out. Non-Muslims cannot and should not be doing it for them.
Butch
What I don't get is the 'religious determinism' of that sort of view, Butch. This view has it that you read the Koran, you know what a Muslim is. Nothing else is required. No knowledge of the given Muslim's political, social, economic or cultural background; his psychological make up, what experiences he's had (does living in a war zone in Syria versus living in a cold, grotty but peaceful town in England make a difference? I'd guess so!) ... none of that matters. He's Muslim, it describes everything he feels and what he wants to do in the Koran, and that's that. Ali who grew up in Wolverhampton in England, eating bad food, watching EastEnders, playing football and listening to shitty British pop music, is going to be the same as Ali in Saudi Arabia .... It's nonsense, isn't it?
None of us here would ever do that with a Christian - would we? I mean, I was brought up in the same religion as members of the extreme religious Right in the USA ... but I'm not like them. I don't think I could spend two minutes in the company of the average KKK member. I'm not even like the more moderate US sorts who are against abortion but in favour of capital punishment, and take a dim view of Darwin. At the same time, at the 'other end', I'm not a Quaker and not a pacifist. I don't know such people, don't relate to them and don't feel any responsibility for what they believe in, and do, other than that which I'd feel just by virtue of their being humans just as I'm a human myself.
I like to take a military analogy (ironic, I know) - that of 'surgical bombing'. You work out precisely what your enemy is, target that - and *only* that. Anything else isn't just immoral, it's counter to self-interest because it runs the risk of creating yet more enemies. It also throws out the most tried-and-tested strategy against a social enemy ever created: that of 'divide and rule' - which always works by showing that you can discriminate between the good guys and the bad guys and are prepared to bestow your rewards and punishments accordingly.
|
|
|
|
