Fux Freakout

[tvashtarkatena]

The revolutionary tally so far:

 

Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Sudan.

[tvashtarkatena]

Right Wing ballyhooing about an Islamic Revolution typically fabricated using rubber band analogies:

 

But, but...what about IRAN in '79????!!!!!!

 

Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt

 

Edited February 3, 2011 by tvashtarkatena

[rob]

The right wing LOVES democratic revolutions, unless the people are asking for a government that isn't on the "Approved List."

 

Then, suddenly, the will of the people doesn't matter.

[JayB]

Not sure...the opportunity to build a life in a liberal democracy, etc is sufficient to significantly alter the core political, religious, and ethical convictions of all Muslims who practice their faith under those conditions.

 

I wonder if the same could be said about our Christian Problem.

 

I'll be a happy man if the total death toll from religious fanaticism in Muslim countries is 1-2 people per 300 million every 4-5 years, and they manage to institute an set of institutional safeguards for individual liberties that equals our own despite our "Christian Problem."

 

The major unstated premise behind your comment is that all religions, and by extension, all sets of religious convictions are fundamentally the same, and thereby equally likely to arouse violent fanaticism in their adherents, and present equal obstacles to the advancement of liberal values.

 

The logical correlate of this is that what people believe - their most fundamental and deeply held convictions - have absolutely no influence over how they understand the world and behave in response to what they experience in it.

 

If you believe that, then I suppose you can believe that that a religion that has an extreme commitment to non-violence at it's core (let's take Harris's example of Jainism as an example), and a religion that has adopted the concept of holy-war in defense of the faith as a central duty of all believers are equally likely to produce suicide bombers.

 

Crazy.

 

As with every other debate we've had on this topic, you completely miss the point. Here it is: though all religions are not all the same, the Judeo-Christian tradition and Islam (and others) share bloodthirsty texts and an historical proclivity towards violent conversion and expansion. If one has "outgrown" (or more likely, temporarily set aside) those tendencies, it's question of what kind of socio-political and economic conditions developed that swept aside fundamentalism and religiously-derived political authority. The existence of widespread religious fundamentalism in the Middle East cannot be explained simply by appealing to violent passages in the Koran or pointing to medieval Islamic crusades or essentializing Islam or Muslims but rather by the very real historical conditions that are currently giving immediate political meaning to those texts. Yes, the texts exist, people act on them, but the underlying social conditions are what make those texts important to people, identify with, and act upon them at particular points in time. Sorry if that hasn't jived with US geostrategic interests and their need to preserve repressive client regimes to protect the flow of cheap oil, fight the Commies (within those countries and the USSR), and protect the Israeli Outpost.

 

Yes - social conditions matter, but poverty and repression exist all over the globe but they don't accurately predict who perpetrates acts of the deliberate slaughter of as many civilians as possible very well at all anywhere, much less who commits those acts within predominantly Muslim societies.

 

The fact that second generation Muslims who have spent the entirety of their lives in liberal Western democracies have been conspicuous participants in terror plots all over the world also negates this thesis. Ditto for western converts with no ancestral or cultural connection to the middle east whatsoever.

 

Then there's the matter of the customs and practices that prevail within the religion itself. Is Western repression responsible for, say, for the existence of the punishment for apostasy? Is this something that was foisted on Sunni legal scholars back in the Middle Ages?

 

Sorry, but religious beliefs are every bit as powerful, if not more powerful modulators of human behavior than political beliefs, they aren't all the same, and these differences result in widely variable propensities for violence and resistance to the advancement of liberal ideas.

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Strawman alert! "Muslims uppity cuz their poor." Nobody's ever argued that here...ever.

 

Yawn.

[Hugh Conway]

Oh, it's back to the Muslims are bad and Islam hasn't done anything, ever, strawman.

 

Oh, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is universally awesome. Afterall, there's no weirdo sects in either Judiasm (cough, ultraorthodox) or Christianity (uh, how about the Pedophiles!) to disprove that

[Hugh Conway]

Wasn't it 3rd and 4th generation Irish funding the IRA (course they were white, so that terrorism doesn't count).

 

Lets not forget the 1st and 2nd generation Hindu Sri Lankan exiles funding the LTTE child soldiers murder and rape.

[JayB]

Actually - what I've been arguing is that that a lack of education and wealth are both negative predictors for participation in transnational Islamist terror plots. Neither these factors, nor political repression can account for the virtual absence of people who subscribe to other faiths or ideologies that exist in the Arab world engaging in these acts.

 

I don't expect you to understand or make a meaningful response to any of the above, since that's clearly not what motivates very many of your responses here, but there we are...

 

 

 

 

[JayB]

Oh, it's back to the Muslims are bad and Islam hasn't done anything, ever, strawman.

 

Oh, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is universally awesome. Afterall, there's no weirdo sects in either Judiasm (cough, ultraorthodox) or Christianity (uh, how about the Pedophiles!) to disprove that

 

Not actually what I've been arguing at all - which is that not all religious beliefs are identical, these differences can and do have a profound influence on people's ethical, political, and cultural outlook, which translates into significant differences in how people behave under a given set of social conditions.

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to construct a set of social conditions in which Quakers believe that it's their religious duty to use the deliberate slaughter of as many civilians as possible as part of a holy war to defend Christianity that's both sanctioned and inspired by the Bible these days - just that it would be rather more difficult to do so than it would for say, Wahhabis.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Actually - what I've been arguing is that that a lack of education and wealth are both negative predictors for participation in transnational Islamist terror plots. Neither these factors, nor political repression can account for the virtual absence of people who subscribe to other faiths or ideologies that exist in the Arab world engaging in these acts.

 

I don't expect you to understand or make a meaningful response to any of the above, since that's clearly not what motivates very many of your responses here, but there we are...

 

 

 

 

I've given your narrowing the definition of what is evil, reprehensible behavior to include only suicide bombing all the credit it's due. As usual, it takes two (or more) to tango, and the west has been tangoing with the Islamic world for a long, long time now. Oh, and I don't recall the Japanese or Tamil Tigers both the leading user of suicide bombing prior to our invasion of Iraq) being Muslim, but nice run at an AUTHORITATIVE FINISH.

Edited February 3, 2011 by tvashtarkatena

[Hugh Conway]

Actually - what I've been arguing is that that a lack of education and wealth are both negative predictors for participation in transnational Islamist terror plots. Neither these factors, nor political repression can account for the virtual absence of people who subscribe to other faiths or ideologies that exist in the Arab world engaging in these acts.

 

If you ignore Lebanese Christian terror, and Israeli terror... sure. If you ignore the IRA (catholic), LTTE(Hindu), intra-Indian hindu nationalists and a host of other terror orginisations you can make the grand pan-islamic terror case.

 

Except that case is bullshit, because you have to ignore all of the other shitty groups. I mean, this guy:

not only was a crock, he spent alot of money funding terror.

[ivan]

Oh, it's back to the Muslims are bad and Islam hasn't done anything, ever, strawman.

 

Oh, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is universally awesome. Afterall, there's no weirdo sects in either Judiasm (cough, ultraorthodox) or Christianity (uh, how about the Pedophiles!) to disprove that

 

Not actually what I've been arguing at all - which is that not all religious beliefs are identical, these differences can and do have a profound influence on people's ethical, political, and cultural outlook, which translates into significant differences in how people behave under a given set of social conditions.

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to construct a set of social conditions in which Quakers believe that it's their religious duty to use the deliberate slaughter of as many civilians as possible as part of a holy war to defend Christianity that's both sanctioned and inspired by the Bible these days - just that it would be rather more difficult to do so than it would for say, Wahhabis.

 

i guess i'm left w/ the question of: so what? even if islam is a more violent religion than all its other stupid cousins, so what? what good comes from making that (perhaps just) accusation? the principle of religious freedom can't and shouldn't be challenged on such grounds, so what practical thing does this realization lead to?

[tvashtarkatena]

In the aggregate Muslim societies are no more violent than the USA.

[prole]

i guess i'm left w/ the question of: so what? even if islam is a more violent religion than all its other stupid cousins, so what? what good comes from making that (perhaps just) accusation? the principle of religious freedom can't and shouldn't be challenged on such grounds, so what practical thing does this realization lead to?

 

Good question. Sam Harris, modeler of Jay's "Islam as Metaphysical Contagion" argument in the other thread, suggests the only real policy at our disposal is containment through repressive, Western oriented regimes abroad and God only knows what domestically. Yeah, that's another one for the dustbin if you're keeping track...

[Fairweather]

Strawman alert! "Muslims uppity cuz their poor." Nobody's ever argued that here...ever.

 

Yawn.

 

they're

 

Dumbass.

[prole]

Ladies and gentlemen, the American conservative movement...

[tvashtarkatena]

Oh, it's back to the Muslims are bad and Islam hasn't done anything, ever, strawman.

 

Oh, and the Judeo-Christian tradition is universally awesome. Afterall, there's no weirdo sects in either Judiasm (cough, ultraorthodox) or Christianity (uh, how about the Pedophiles!) to disprove that

 

I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to construct a set of social conditions in which Quakers believe that it's their religious duty to use the deliberate slaughter of as many civilians as possible as part of a holy war to defend Christianity that's both sanctioned and inspired by the Bible these days - just that it would be rather more difficult to do so than it would for say, Wahhabis.

 

 

APPLES TO ORANGES ALERT!

 

Your rhetoric kitbag sucks.

 

Here you compare the Muslim world's most radical and violent sect with the Christian world's most pacifist.

 

Let's substitute the Klan for the Quakers, shall we?

[tvashtarkatena]

According to our own principles, the Egyptians have a right to democratic self determination. Hopefully, that will be all or mostly secular. That may not be politically possible, at least at first, as our founders deemed slavery to be too hot to handle for their times. And, unlike our revolution, Egypt has the advantage of many prior examples and being a 6,000 year old society.

 

Contrary to the Right, who never fail to patronize popular uprisings against US backed totalitarians like this, the Egyptians will do fine. They've certainly won my admiration and deserve our support in this new beginning.

[ivan]

In the aggregate Muslim societies are no more violent than the USA.

not my point, and, as you say, apples and oranges

 

hindus burn their wives on their husbands funeral pyres

shintoists make fine kamikazes

catholics like altar boys and their sweet attire

and muslims would like to kill fugazi!

[Kimmo]

Contrary to the Right, who never fail to patronize popular uprisings against US backed totalitarians like this, the Egyptians will do fine.

 

The "egyptians" will do fine? you're (for fw) generalization might be construed as patronizing.

[ivan]

Contrary to the Right, who never fail to patronize popular uprisings against US backed totalitarians like this, the Egyptians will do fine.

 

The "egyptians" will do fine? you're (for fw) generalization might be construed as patronizing.

the fact that egyptians have been managing to piece together a cvilization for 30 times the age of our humble nation does inspire a cautious brand of optimism in the eventual outcome of the current bruhaha

 

that said, it's not like there's a great tradition of enlightened democracy along the nile, so i suspect whatever the current madness cooks up, it'll settle soon enough back into the old pattern of autocracy...

[j_b]

The fact that second generation Muslims who have spent the entirety of their lives in liberal Western democracies have been conspicuous participants in terror plots all over the world also negates this thesis. Ditto for western converts with no ancestral or cultural connection to the middle east whatsoever.

 

Terror including bombing of peaceful crowds is a tactic that has been used throughout time, including today by judeo-christians. You should consider reading some history.

[G-spotter]

the fact that egyptians have been managing to piece together a cvilization for 30 times the age of our humble nation

 

That wasn't the current Egyptians man, it was (in honor of black history month) the Nubians

 

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

[ivan]

The fact that second generation Muslims who have spent the entirety of their lives in liberal Western democracies have been conspicuous participants in terror plots all over the world also negates this thesis. Ditto for western converts with no ancestral or cultural connection to the middle east whatsoever.

 

Terror including bombing of peaceful crowds is a tactic that has been used throughout time, including today by judeo-christians. You should consider reading some history.

the 66th anniverary of the dresden bombing is next week

[j_b]

indeed, but as long as the perpetrators didn't mean to commit suicide at the same time, it is A-OK