So speaking of victim blaming, some thousands of radical Muslims cause mayhem, hundreds of millions of pearl-clutching western ******s so brave in their ability to overcome the .00001% odds they might die via terrorist attack and make it to work and school and board airplanes or whatever turn their comic book fanfic about how scary and threatening all this Muslimness is to them into real life laws and security theater, and of course the Koran and Islam to blame for being so undemocratic and creating the security state.

This is like the Radical Muslim Gateway Drug theory or something. Of course all radical Muslim terrorists probably traverse the scale from orthodox Muslim to 'sympathetic' to radicals and then next to becoming radical carrying out violent terrorist attacks. Coolest story bro stuff, just like how most heroin addicts probably smoke pot before shooting heroin up, ergo ******s call marijuana a 'gateway drug' whatever the **** that means. Any deleterious thing is almost always preceded by something less so. That's not interesting. I assume almost all if not all radical religious fundamentalists will get their start in what most of the rest of us would call perfectly orthodox and normative and non-threatening religious behavior and thought.

How many religious conservatives are there elected in congress/senate?

When assessing the damage they do, and how to deal with it and over come it, its obvious we should ignore the much larger rump of the communities that vote for them, support them and make them possible? Of course not.

The radical terrorists cant emerge from a social vacuum any more than than a religiously conservative politician can.

Pakistani Cab Driver Man is still a more exciting character than Aquaman.

This is kind of an absurd idea. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that your speech cannot be criticized.

And "fear of reprisals" isn't why people are against publishing offensive cartoons. It would still be a bad idea if there were no reprisals at all.

You mean like how Breivik couldn't have emerged without the hundreds of thousands of Norwegians who are sympathetic to his cause of slaughtering young socialists?

Serious?

This is a meaningless.

Are you actually going to make me spell out the massive differences between a lone deranged gunman and a collective group of militant terrorists.

Cmon.

13ball, if no reprisals happen, why is drawing cartoons a bad idea?

I don't disagree but this isn't like some very compelling point, the larger we cast the 'look at all these backward fundamentalist conservative Muslim' net and find millions or tens of millions of people, and like a comparatively small percentage of looney tune terrorists trying to blow everyone up, you get a far less compelling story about how the culture of fundamentalist Islam is uniquely and solely causative for terrorism when we still only find like .0001% of people who are part of that 'large rump' turn to bombs and assault weapons.

There's always going to be some oddballs and however fair the world is there will always be some small loony groups about.

To create what we have now requires some very bad political situations.

What's your view on political correctness?

How many people want to save (insert nearly extinct species here)? Probably many millions. Still only about 0.0001% of people will do anything about it. Some will even become violent to do so.

Dont think that number is really telling us much about how much Islam does or does not motivate to become a terrorist because how ever much social pressure/desire there is to do something, only the tiniest % of people ever get off there arses and do anything about it.

The salient thing is that the pressure is there and that the wider community makes actions possible. If there was not wider support for the IRA in the Catholic communities in NI and the Republic, the small % of actual terrorists would never have existed.

LOL no. Saddam didn't oppress Shiites and Kurds, there are no oppressive govts in the Arab world as the Western world is ruining Arab economies. Got it.

Which powers created Iraq?

I Think, racist/most right and all far right parties in Europe pose a much bigger threat to Europe then any radical islamist. Would also bet anything I have, that nazi scums have killed more people in the last year than radical islamists have.

How many Pakistani cab drivers does it take to screw in a light bulb?

well.... better than nazis I suppose! wrap it up then.

Pretty sure the right play is to be down on both at the same time and not be meh terrorists, Nazis tho.

Also I am blonde and nordic looking, so am immune to Nazis.

This is something important to discuss. Groups like these are leading a "blame Islam" charge and have been growing even before these recent events in France.

Ofc. I just wanted to say that radical islamist aren't even in the same league as nazi scums are.

Nazis = Chelsea
Radical Islamist = Halifax Town

Yup. That's something Americans ITT don't seem to grasp, how we have just absolutely awful populist parties all over Europe taking advantage of the fear mongering. Battling them right now is far more important than fighting over theological differences with the Muslim minority.

What just happened in France, Madrid and London bombings all say hai there.

It's hilarious to watch the same people who blamed Palin for the giffords shooting bend over backwards to minimize the involvement of Islam.

I am from the Uk, but would like to point out the USA has plenty of politicians taking advantage of fear mongering.