Saying ISIS are "at war with Islam" is like saying Protestants are at war with Christianity because they're fighting Catholics. It's ridiculous. ISIS represents the view of a large portion of Islamic society. They draw their ideas and justifications from scripture. They largely perform the same acts as Muhammad (beheading, enslaving, warmongering, atttempting to set up a caliphate).

ISIS can't be at war with Islam - they are Islam. The fundamentalist sect represented by ISIS can be at war with the fundamentalist sect represented by say Shia in Iran, but they're both Islam.

It's just rivers of stupid from you lately.

Why is it so difficult for people to understand this?

It's definately happening via the internet. Recruitment, planning, communication etc.

It's a low percentage chance that a catastrophic event will take place. It's much less likely under a Trump administration. If left ignored, the percentages go way up.

It was unlikely a"JV" team terrorist group could make a significant impact a few years ago.

I hope you people start learning your lessons soon.

These sentences don't make sense in the context of the world though. Of course, recruitment, planning, Yada, yada is going on, but the scale isn't on the scale you need to have some apocalyptic event people are losing their heads about in this thread. Anarchism killed seven major world leaders including a US President and where is anarchism today? Nazism had whole towns in the US and other countries dedicated to it as well as a whole state apparatus. People legitimatly thought Nazism was the way forward.

Though normally it wouldn't have to be explained but saying that jihadists aren't a civilization all threat or probably won't lead to some apocalypse doesn't mean they shouldn't be taken seriously, or counteracted, etc but it's putting it into context.

The guy's only taken two security briefings since he's been president elect. He wouldn't know if there even were a problem.

Because for some unknown reason, libs love muslims, and if they admit to themselves that they love a religion that is one of the most sexist and homophobic in the history of the world their heads will explode.

****ing christ

Because he's loltastically incorrect?

You're not smart enough to keep a simple lie straight. That's why you voted for trump.

In regards to Isis and Islam? Your wrong. You are severely outclassed by Toothe in this argument.

blasphemer!

ISIS does not 'represent the view of a large portion of Islamic society'.
ISIS is not islam but a part of islam. Most of the non-fundamentalist muslim world is indeed at war with ISIS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Military_Alliance

The non-fundamentalist Muslim world is a minority of the Muslim world. Over a billion Muslims are fundamentalists.

I'm just responding to some joker who says that "ISIS are at war with Islam". They're not. ISIS and their views are a substantial part of Islam. In fact, they're the purest form of Islam.

Does it really make any difference whether Islamic countries, who execute gays, are fighting ISIS, who execute gays? They're both Islamic nutjobs. They're fighting over power, not Islam.

So which is it, dictates from the Koran or power? That is incoherent. Your whole claim is that they follow pure Islam, but as soon as you make power the real goal, then you have to accept that religious principles will be compromised. And that would be a mutable religion that adapts and varies, which you reject.

So you accept ISIS's definition of Islam, rather than the people fighting them. Way to cede the battle.

But that isn't how religion works. There isn't a pure form defined by God. People use the symbols for their own purposes, giving their own meanings. Religion is what people believe, what they make it. So jihadists and American pedants don't get to dictate what Islam is.

Both have the same beliefs - beliefs derived from the Koran and Islam. They are fighting for power. Understand?

It's not "ISIS vs everyone else". Here's what Muslims believe:



ISIS comprises what, less than a million people including their fervent supporters? Meanwhile, at least 1.39 billion Muslims are sexist bigots from their own statements, who believe that woman are subservient. over a billion support barbaric fundamentalist rape culture laws which suppress women and minorities. Over 500 million think you should be murdered if you leave Islam. Over 700 million think a woman should be murdered if she cheats on her husband.

ISIS aren't some fringe. They're the mainstream.

Muhammed dictated what Islam is. The Koran and Hadith drove that home. The way Muslims and their hate preachers have interpreted it since has defined it further. You can deny reality all you want, but Islam is a far more fundamentalist, sexist, bigoted and violent religion than all others, in its core teachings. It's not even close. Hence why Muslims are far more fundamentalist, sexist, bigoted and violent than all other religious people.

This isn't some new thing either:
Notice the similarity to what Tripoli's Muslim ambassador said 230 years ago, to what ISIS says and does? No? Of course you don't.

Where have I seen that blue ball before?

It's the official PU mascot.

The difference with contemporary judaism and christianity is that those two mostly stopped taking their ancient books literally and are no longer stoning gays, burning people for alleged witchcraft or conquering the world in the name of faith. They did do quite a bit of that in the past though (christianity in particular).

The chance of an islamic enlightenment happening within our lifetimes seems infinitesimally small. Even so, I think any step towards moderation is a step in the right direction given the lack of viable alternatives. The rhetoric of "we're at war with islam/ the muslim world" does not seem very helpful in this regard.

Wrt the polling data there might be some bias going on. Residents of countries with sharia law may be too scared to say that sharia sucks and that you should be free to leave islam if you so choose. These people live under the rule of a tyrannical dictator or wacko religious nutjobs or both, and that has been the case for all of their lives (and those of their parents).

How was white nationlist bigotry stamped out?

- Hate speech against them
- Active disruption
- Laws forcing integration
- Widespread condemnation by the political and media classes
- Active education campaigns against this nasty ideology.

How was Nazi ideology stamped out after WWII?

- Hate speech against them
- Active disruption
- Laws forcing de-Nazification
- Widespread condemnation by the political and media classes
- Active education campaigns against this nasty ideology.

See how that works?

Yet with Islam, you recommend taking the opposite approach and mollycoddling the misogynist violent racist religiously nationalist bigots. Yet it's just an ideology like any other.
This is just ignorant. Second generation Muslims in places like England or Holland hold similar views on gays, for example, as people who live in the most fundamentalist countries.

I do not advocate an opposite approach but rather a more moderate approach (skipping the hate speech and widespread condemnation) because I don't see the approaches you describe to combat white nationalism and Nazism working in the case of islam. Post-WWII there were no longer countries whose governments advocated these policies; these views had become minority/fringe views that could be and were suppressed by most western countries. Similar policies could be used in western countries against the muslim minority but not within the muslim world against itself. Such an approach is more likely to cause further resentment towards the west within the muslim world.

Wrt the views of second (and third) generation muslims I agree that this is a major problem. The later generations are arguably more extreme in their viewpoints than the first generation. A significant portion of ISIS recruitment also comes from western countries.

My point was not meant to whitewash the polling data, merely to add some perspective. Most of the people in majority muslim countries have been suppressed for generations and taught to live by the rules of some ancient book. That does not make them ISIS supporters.

You could not miss the point more completely.

Muhammad isn't around to dictate anything, so people still have to decide what it all means, and very few think that means supporting ISIS. The Koran and Hadith don't drive anything home, they are just words on parchment; people have to interpret them, same as any text.

Although some Christians claim their rigid fundamentalism is the only correct reflection of the Bible, it is immediately apparent that time and events have created all sorts of variants. Endless changes in economics, empires, family life, all require adaptation by culture and religions. What's weird is that you think history stops impacting neural patterns in the case of Muslims.

So what, then can we say about religions? What we can talk about is the range of impacts they can have, the number of people they'll affect and in what way, and the tendency to affect populations in various way.

You're playing a foolish trump card where you get to claim that because Islam is interpreted in many different ways, the fundamentalist interpretations aren't invalid, and Islam is compatible with peace and women rights (lol.jpg) because 5% of its practitioners follow a modern, highly liberal interpretation.

That's just a low rent dodge to avoid reality. I'm sure more than 10% of Branch Dividians didn't approve of murdering their children to go to heaven. That doesn't mean that Branch Dividianism isn't a sick, ****ed up cult, that leads to bad consequences when you get enough Branch Dividians in one spot with enough political power. Ditto for Nazism. More Nazis were against Jew genocide than Muslims. Think about that for a second.
I'm several levels above you in thinking about this stuff. What's weird is that you think your analysis represents reality.

I've stated before that religion is like a mind virus. How it interacts with different populations, cultures, wealth levels, external cultures, varies from place to place and circumstance to circumstance. But we can look at what Muslims actually believe, what percentage believe it, how strongly they believe, how they treat others, and so on.

Islam, in terms of its harm, contagiousness, and effect on the individual and society, is a mind virus ranging from smallpox to a minor case of the flu, depending on the individual, with the middle somewhere around polio in nearly all situations.

Christianity is a mind virus that's far milder. In certain circumstances it turns very pernicious, but those circumstances are far narrower and no longer exist. Today, it's somewhere between a moderate case of the flu and taking a performance enhancing pill. Most people are completely immunity - the West has herd immunity to Christianity.

Buddhism is a mind virus that has few if any pernicious effects.

See the difference? That's where reality is at. Islam is roughly on par with Nazism in terms of harm, repression, violence, religious nationalism, and danger to global peace should they ever gain economic or political power. A few minority Muslims (or Nazis, or White Supermacists), aren't harmful in and of themselves and tend to have their view forcefully moderated by those around them. Get them in a large groups with political power, however...

Moreover, when not actively treated and contained, Islam tends to mutate into more pernicious strains over time. You're seeing that right now in the Middle East as dictators disappear. You saw it 40 years ago when Khomeini took over from the Shah. You saw it 300 years ago with the Barbary Slave Trade and the Ottoman Empire. You're seeing it right now in places as disparate as Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Egypt, Turkey, Syria. Go see how Brunei has changed. No bombs have been dropped there...

People should glance at the Pew Forum source cited by the graphic, because it shows that chart to be endlessly deceitful. For example, you'd think from it that almost half of Muslims (748 million) support execution for adultery.

What the Pew report says is "In 10 of 20 countries where there are adequate samples for analysis, at least half of Muslims who favor making sharia the law of the land also favor stoning unfaithful spouses."

However, not all Muslims think Sharia should rule, and most of those who do actually do not think it applies to non-Muslims: "Only in five of 21 countries" did "at least half say all citizens should be subject to Islamic law." That graphic is full of slight of hand, it is lying BS.

The Pew data shows the opposite of graphic: There is great variation in Muslim attitudes. For example, just 12% of Muslims in Albania think Sharia should be the law of the land, while 99% do in Afghanistan (p48).

The survey certainly shows that millions of people have violent, intolerant, beliefs, but millions do not. However, the claim of Toothsayer, which he doubled down on, is that Islam is uniform, incapable of change, and outside the forces of history. That's nonsense, he is a frat boy venting on a bar stool.

Holy semantics argument!!!

In any event, good job overtly cheering for a violent, global clash of civilizations throughout the thread (and others). It's what homogeneous, racist, northern European "betters" do.

Interesting Nazi references, though. It is rich when you try and Reichsplain things to us.

You seem to present "mind virus" as an analogy, but quickly slip into claiming causative power, which is sophomoric.

If religion is a virus, it's one where people get to choose which virus they catch and how virulent it is, which is not like a virus at all.

And if you have to keep reminding people how high level your thinking is, it ain't.

I understand your argument against religion in general, but picking and choosing which to denounce seems a bit strange to me. Saying that the "circumstances are far narrower" for Christianity seems like that on some level you are acknowledging that material conditions do play a large factor in these things. Islamists don't have a monopoly on crazy, there are also things like born again Christians in Kinshasa murdering children as witches. You can blame religion as some kind of mind virus, but I think the more rational explanation is that these people are just really really ****ing poor and ignorant.