Like, supporting them how? Financially? Emotionally?

Who did I call Uncle Tom?

TRIGGER WARNING, AGAIN

What the **** are you even talking about?

Do you support their criticisms of Islam, or do you call them, "brown people who hate Muslims"?

Well, I'm not sure he's ever said that.

But think through what you want here.

Is what would make you happy is for Obama to put on his mufti hat and speak, ex cathedra, endorsing Wahabism as the one true version of Islam?

Does that strike you as a good idea, or a bad idea?

I still don't know what "support" means in this context. Do you mean, "agrees with"?

Well, that's gonna be a case by case basis. But since I'm not personally a Muslim, you can probably take a guess at my views on validity of each aspect of that religion. So before you dip back into copy pasting from Criticism_of_Islam_by_nonwhites.doc, I really don't give a ****.

Which brings up something that made ChrisV cry earlier... what the **** is the point of going case by case about the theological underpinings of various competing strands of Islam? That seems more RGT than Politics. And as little as I care about that coming from actual scholars of Islamic thought, I care one million times less when it's coming from some Thomas Jefferson Raping His Slaves was OK hayseed.

But not everyone is me, and maybe some people do want to get into the real deep cuts of the Koran. Go to RGT and spam all the Hitchens and Harris and Ali you want.

Unless, and stop me if you've heard this before, there's really only just the one religion you want to express distaste for(Islam), and that distaste needs to be expressed in the political context of mosque surveillance, war with Syria/Iran, and refugee bans.

damn, son

gets HEATED up in this

anyway vhawk, my summary of what I perceive to be what Elliot is getting at is posted there in good faith, I'd love to hear your response in particular to the part Foldn quoted, not because I GOTCHA BRO - which, duh, of course I didn't - but because I'm sure you have interesting things to say about specifically that interplay between Islam-as-idea and Islam-as-manifested-by-practitioners

also I think I've asked you this before, but did you and I play poker in Adams Morgan with Georgia Avenue and another dude in like 2007? perhaps it will remind you that Georgia really did one-outer me and dance around chanting "It came! It came!" after trolling me about how he knew his one-outer was coming?

Seems like a good idea to me.

Alright cool then. As long as you're not such a dip **** on twitter and other public spheres where repressed Muslims attempt to align with each other and gain support, and you don't condemn them with the kind of spew you do in here, I'm relieved. I'll continue making the same criticisms they are, and you go on do your thing.

Better yet still was that he and ChrisV, when sent into a tizzy about the horrible liberal tricks that get played on them, like "what are you talking about and why are you talking about it?" come up with these hilarious self-serving explanations about how they are just the defenders of peace and love on the internet and they have a deep well-spring of concern for humanity; they don't even need a reason to badger people into hating Islam! It's just illuminating to talk and listen or something. They're just here to schoolmarm everyone into hating Islam too, but look, they don't need a reason.

Hillary Clinton comes along with a practical policy proposal, and vhawk, clever shrew that he is, figures out quickly this MIGHT impact his ability to vent angry white guy frustrations on the internet and then it's an immediate trip to utilitarian town. HOLD ON THERE HILLDOG, this could do alot more more harm than good! ARE WE SURE ABOUT THIS?! Let's not get too hasty.

I only wish there was some alternate history where we could play this out again and let Hillary Clinton suggest making Middle East sand glow or murdering the families of terrorists or something.

Guise, I get that Hillary Clinton holds alot more formal political power than SMP, I get it! I do! But you have to appreciate the irony of hectoring liberals into working up a nice frothy hate for Islam, an when met with "no I don't think I'm going to share your hate, but why do you keep droning on about this" get met with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and some herp derp about Truth and spreading peace and love all over the world. And when told their arguments that we should be walking around yelling at Muslims too, turn pedestrian Muslim behaviors into radicalism and lambasting their holy book as barbaric porn, how THAT might naturally lead justify all kinds of ****ty treatment of Muslims and even more global foreign adventures, well ****, JUST TRUTH TELLING HERE, can't make ChrisV or vhawk really slow down and consider the consequences, truth has to be heard something something.

Hillary Clinton comes up with a proposal to censor ISIS and hooo boy, have we considered how this might harm innocent angry whites with internet connections? That could do a lot more harm than good, Hillary Clinton needs to SLOW DOWN.

Restrictions on freedom of speech cannot be the way to go.

I know it's not a popular view but I honestly think opening the floodgates to allow a couple hundred thousand refugees in and giving them social support is the best thing we can do.

I believe in the brain washing powers of Hollywood, Saturday morning cartoons, and Sex and the City. (Call it American exceptionalism if you want. I believe we can change people's minds, not all of them but most, if we show them first hand what the modern world has to offer) With a few million westernized Muslims (in Europe and US) in 20 years, we'll crush radical Islam the same way we crushed the USSR: buying hearts and minds.

Getting it wrong 1 in a 1000 is not a decent success rate when there's was no chance.

Always enjoy Fly thinking he has anybody in tears and he's really on form today. So it wasn't a complete waste.

It would be terrible for the POTUS to do anything other that what Obama and GWB did in this regard and say it's not Islam, it's Islamic extremism.

As far as calling out Wahabbism, yeah SA could be called out, but that won't make it disappear and the Dictators of Saud (unlike Iran) are actually partners in trying to stop funding and supplying terror organizations.

Imo, as far as policy goes, the West should have some trade policies that favor countries that meet some standards of democracy and individual rights. Or something like that. (Which is done to some extent. Especially in the conditions for countries to join the EU. Not sure if such things have been part of the TPP membership considerations. )

John Kerry last month:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remar.../11/249565.htm

Good Vox article about Obama in February:

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/19/8065143/obama-isis-islam


I want Obama to call it out and say specifically Wahabi conservative Islam is not compatible with the West.

But that would make Saudi an enemy and we can't have that.

Word up! 20 years would be grand.

Saudi is sending money to mosques around the world that promote wahabi islam.

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Jon...197/story.html

They aren't an ally or a partner except when we buy oil from them or sell them guns. Look what Saudi is doing in Yemen. Just another crap fest.

Any thoughts or links to articles discussing a strategy of sanctions against Saudi Arabia?

Tien, how would you want Obama to do it?

I want an honest conversation too but I just don't see how the POTUS could do it without inflaming ethnic/racial tensions and only making things worse.

Getting serious for a moment.

I was reading some of your links and it strikes me that it's more about not getting the support from liberals that they hoped for more than being held back in some way by liberals.

They may well have a point but it's not clear what to do about it. Are there any plausible ideas on what should be done by liberals that isn't being done.

American liberals are not preventing a reformation of Islam in any way. Like, you can't seriously believe that the POTUS going on TV to denounce Islam as practiced by the majority of Muslims in the world as backwards, anti-Enlightenment, and/or an anathema to Western values, is going to spark a reformation within Islam. Presumably you will be all "well, obviously not," so what is your point? Seriously. As Dvaut (?) said there is no magic button. The idea that liberals are preventing Islamic reformation is utterly preposterous.

How happy are ISIS getting such a massive reaction from the usa when they didn't even have to directly do anything? mass shootings are a part of every day american life but when they are done by apparent terrorists the president gives a oval office address to the nation. Hilarious how they keep playing into the terrorist hands, and pure karma for creating ISIS in the first place. Great tv and amazing publicity for ISIS and credibility.

In an ideal world I would not recognize or support SA or any other non-democracy (though I wouldn't necessarily sanction them). I wouldn't let ideals absolutely rule over utilitarianism though. If abandoning SA would do no one any good, and cause a vast amount of harm, maybe there's another way.

If you read my posts generally, you probably could guess that I would like to cut fossil fuel dependence.

obama officially endorsing taking away constitutional rights based on the attorney general's word only.

Good. ****ing. show.

You go ahead and hate them, whatever bro. This confuses others here (e.g., ChrisV) but you can hate Islam in RGT to your hearts content. We have a whole forum for it.

At some point when questions become political we're trying to figure out how to order the world. Terrorist attacks have unfortunately become seminal moments in creating political reactions about how we order the world. Emotions run high. Memes get started, policy gets crafted in response: for instance, the notion that Muslims, hundreds of millions of them, are affected by a pervasive radicalism has justified a huge increase in surveillance, curtailing civil rights, and justified a really terrible war in both conceit and execution.

The consensus for those policies is built in these moments, right now. Not on 2p2, I grant. The stakes are pretty low here. But what we're saying here is more or less being replicated everywhere else. The normalization of castigating Muslims for being incompatible with liberal democracies and being beholden to extremist ideologies without any or very little context or qualifiers is both unseemly (e.g., bigoted) but worse, is part and parcel for how these consensuses get built and acted on.

You go ahead and hate Islam, go for it. That you think this is fit for political conversations at these particular times suggests to me that this is alot more than something merely personal. You've got 365 days out of the year to scribe how ****ty Islam is on RGT. That all the "ISLAM = WORST" creep on out in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack is not like some accident and belies the notion your only goal is to reform Islam or just share your thesis about religion. It's particularly telling that the targets for this **** like, are very rarely actually Muslims. This forum is a great example. I'm guessing the number of Muslims here is like, less than 2%. Could be ~0%, I really don't know.

And yet we have tons of keyboard warriors going HAM trying to convince everyone Islam just the worst. How does that work? Hector a local non-Muslim western liberal into reforming Islam? That **** doesn't make any sense. It's clear that the behavior of posters ITT all the way up to like national political parties (Le Pen, the GOP, UK IP) -- when they lose their **** about political correctness and lacking the will to confront the problems and say all the harsh realities -- that's not trying to reform Muslim behavior or trying to reform Islam, it's trying to browbeat liberals into signing up for putting the boot to Muslims throats. No one is dumb enough to fall for this "concerned citizen of the world sharing his thoughts about religion" guise, you guys have actual political goals you are trying to accomplish here, no one is dumb enough to think you just landed here by happenstance after terrorist attacks time and again. People with actual political goals clearly see this is a great opportunity to add grist to the Bomb A Muslim Country mill or whatever your staking horses are -- internment, censorship, anti-immigration sentiments, surveillance, who the **** knows what you guys fantasize about. And you don't want to miss these opportunities.

Cool story, great post.

Religion is just theeeeeeee wooooooorst.

Wow, just lol.

Here you go: