We probably get far too much of that around here. If you notice there are only about 10 or 12 regular posters on PWI these days. Remember back in the day when you didn’t know who was going to show up and draw down on you? It was better then, far more fun. And I think part (only a part) of the problem is the pseudo intellectuals who show up and demand peer reviewed studies and that no one use Wikipedia and on and on. I mean this is a bodybuilding site. I feel if someone has to resort to those types of standards that it sucks a bit of fun out of the site.
If you notice we don’t see plenty of people that we used to enjoy talking to. One example is Pushharder, a great guy, funny, smart and always ready to represent himself well in any debate.
I guess I could sum it up in two words we need to “lighten up”.
Although this thread has jumped the shark, I’ve c/ped several tweets from the Arab-American risk guru Nassim Taleb, clarifying in a less than thousand characters pages upon pages of text written both here and elsewhere:
“Salafi is Salafi is Salafi, no nuance. Salafi is inherently violent terrorism. Those who promote Salafism are guilty”
Salafi Mosques are the root. Since 2001 the idiotic West let Saudi “allies” keep spreading Salafism. Destroy Riad.
Problem is religions are not banned. If Nazism is banned, Salafism/Wahabism must be banned. Shut down Saudi Arabia.
Designation “Islam” is absurd; there are 3 religions. -Shia -Sunni secular, Ottoman, Sufi, urban… -Salafi/Wahabi (ISIS, Saudi Barbaria)
I strongly suggest following him on Twitter - he’s a fascinating character, with a deadlift based test to find idiots in your life:
I don’t know if their religion is inherently flawed or not. I cannot speak intelligently about the islamic faith since I am neither a muslim, nor have any interest in the religion at all.
So I will leave it to people like Maajid Nawaz to both speak intelligently on islam and it’s link to terror.
I do know that there are a lot of muslims with really bad ideas.
I know there are a lot of muslims who are in fact evil and seek to commit evil.
I do not know if their religion is perverted or they pervert the religion.
I know we do not have the luxury of a polite discourse anymore as terrorism is rampant everywhere in the world and it has to be destroyed. Groups like ISIS and Boko Haram must be wiped off the face of the earth. Followers of those groups need to be dealt with in a harsh manner.
The work of the reformists like Maajid, need support.
His autobiography is an eye opening read. His assessment of Islamist tactics in universities and the media, and his own journey out of extremism, reveals much of the problem we are now facing.
I haven’t read his autobiography, but I know a lot about him and I have heard him speak. Honestly, he gives a more frightening assessment of islamism than any right-wing demagogue ever could. He’s been on both sides.
Whether or not most muslims are peaceful is irrelevant. If 51% of muslims are peaceful that’s still a majority. Any registrable percentage of 1.6 billion people are identified as violent radicals is A LOT of fucking people. 1% of 1.6 billion is still 16,000,000 people and we know the radicalization rate is much higher than that. The lowest estimates I have seen is 8%. The highest I have seen is 25%. That’s a hell of a variance, but it indicates a rather large and scary problem.
Just one person radicalized can kill 84 people, another 49 and on and on.
There are 3 million muslims in the U.S. My question is, where the hell are they?
Here, they have the freedom to speak out against jihad without the fear of reprisal. Here they have the freedom to reach out and work together with non-muslims without getting the death penalty. They can be gay, apostasize, draw pictures, write books, write letters, hold meetings, etc… WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY?
There is rampant islamic terrorism around the world. We’ve seen it, we continue to see it weekly. What do we see from the islamic community? Very little. Mostly, “Hey, don’t blame all muslims.”
Well sorry, I am tired of that shit. If they don’t want to be part of the solution then get the fuck out of the way and shut up. I have no use for peaceful muslims. I have use for muslims who see a problem in their tribe and have ideas and designs to do their part to fix it because, now there is no “minding your own business” anymore.
The peaceful muslims are irrelevant. It’s the radicals who are murdering at epidemic rates, I don’t have time to worry about the peaceful majority. The violent minority want me and my family dead. And though they are a minority, there is still way to many for me to worry about hurting the feelings of the majority.
It is a fascinating book. His discussion of his active radicalization of his family and British universities is terrifying. I would strongly recommend it. It is a manual of their tactics from a former true believer.
Okay, okay, in spite of this thread having jumped the shark, I’ll do some 'splainin because you actually seem to be synthesizing information and have your own take.
If you google “non-muslim terrorism” you will get several results that indicate 94% of terrorist acts are committed by non-muslims…in America…since 1990, according to the FBI.
However, this quote is taken out of context. While it was meant to be incendiary, the target was a single poster. Most other readers recognized the bullshit quotient.
It is. A fact, but also a problem. Any solutions?
Relevant because it was in response to this statement,
The poster made a statement, I countered it. I think it’s relevant.
Yes, they did, see the statement above regarding Muslim communities. I may have put words in his mouth, but the implication was clear.
Now this is salient. Most people do not realize the difference between Islamism and Islam. @loppar touches on this when he quotes Nassim Taleb,
These are radical offshoots of Islam, somewhat similar to Christian Fundamentalists that bomb abortion clinics. I know they aren’t trying to kill you, but, have you spoken out about them like you want the peaceful Muslims to do? Would you speak out if it put a big target on your back?
So @pat, you make a lot of good points, and I don’t disagree with you. However, I think you took several things out of context, which is actually a pretty good rhetorical device. And, I think you have contributed to the conversation, a conversation that needs desperately to continue moving forward if we are going to resolve anything. I know it would feel good to nuke all the ISIS bastards, to send in ground troops and clean all of the rat bastards out, and to bomb the ME to rubble, but we all know that will just leave a vacuum for other radical leaders to fill.
The real problem is a lack of education. If we can teach people to think critically, they’ll learn that they are being taken advantage of by these radicals and see through their bullshit rhetoric. But, how do we do that? I have no fucking clue.
I’m a big fan of Christopher Hitchens, RIP, and he said it best when he said, and I paraphrase, we should focus more on what we have in common than what our differences are. Ultimately, we have more in common, and that should provide a base for discussion…once we get rid of all of the radicalized fuckwads.
EDIT: I quoted @pat quoting other posters, myself included, but it looks like the words are @pat’s - my apologies, not sure how to rectumfy that.
Lewiston, Maine. Our boys won the state soccer championship last year and are ranked nationally. Mostly boys of Somalian heritage. A small city in Maine absorbing thousands of Somali Muslim refugees is not without problems, but violence, rape and terrorism have not been among them. They’ve been here for over a decade now.
I agree with the first part and the sad fact that we will leave a vacuum for another radical if we glass the area, but not the second part. Particularly if you read the biography legalsteel is talking about…the radical leaders are the most relatively educated. That doesn’t mean all educated muslims in the ME are that way (look at the young generation in Iran), but it does indicate that the problem is deeper than eduxation level.
Lack of education at a general population level may be a catalyst for further radicalism, but it is not the cause.
As I said elsewhere, and as someone said to me–you can’t change a person’s mind (or soul) effectively if you don’t first look at their physical needs. Now, I am going to be honest and say I don’t know what that looks like with the ME. But I do know that when a person can’t see where their future will be, or when their next meal will be, or if theyll be alive in a week or a month or a year, they are likely to believe anything at all that promises them better. They are psychologically vulnerable.
Yeah, good points, I think you misunderstood me and that is my fault. [quote=“Aragorn, post:116, topic:219500”]
the radical leaders are the most relatively educated
[/quote]
and this allows them to take advantage of the less educated and that is the problem, as I see it -or at least one of them.
If we can educate the lesser educated to think critically, they will recognize that the leaders are taking advantage of them.
Understand your point, but humbly disagree. I think the disparity in education levels is more of a cause than a lack of education.
If the whole population is uneducated, well then it’s just a free for all. But if some are educated and they are using that education to manipulate the less educated, well then lack of education of the general population is a problem.
This goes to Maslowe’s Hierarchy of Needs - you can’t actually think if you are not rested, fed, and loved is the theory. I’m a teacher. I taught in inner city Sacramento, East New York (the most violent precinct in all five boroughs of New York), and Freeport, Long Island (a diverse demographic with some real hard cases), and I can vouch for the veracity of the theory.
If a kid is hungry or tired, he can’t learn. Those are physical needs. So, no, you can’t change their mind or soul (teach) because all they give a shit about is recovery - sleep or food.
So my point was that the uneducated are manipulated by the educated - it’s a familiar dance, we all know it. And, it’s an old theme - Animal Farm may be the most recognizable literature.
But, we cannot carpet bomb with smart pills (anybody heard that joke?), but it would be great if we could.
Ok, I googled it.
Is this the report you are talking about?
Where property theft, vandalism, tree spiking, arson, mail fraud etc. are included as acts of “terror”? Most of these are victimless crimes, crimes not intended to hurt people. It’s basically a list of every petty crime ever committed by anyone with an axe to grind.
So I will stick with this being bullshit.
When we speak of ‘terrorism’ we refer to the direct targeting of innocent lives for religion or cause. And on that front, islamic radicalism has no equal in this day and age.
There is leadership in islam, they just happen to be all bad. Get good leadership. Support good leadership. To few muslims are doing too little. CAIR is questionable at best and they are more concerned about ‘Islamophobia’ than they are about islamic terror and that’s a problem. It’s fine to protect your own. But they are, quite frankly, more concerned with the destruction of Israel than the persistent problem of radical islam.
I likely suppose that this is due to fear. Anything construed as ‘unislamic’ in the islamic community can cause one to feel the reasonable fear for one’s life. That is a problem in itself.
I actually know why more muslims don’t speak out, its due to fear. And if that’s the case, it’s indicative of more serious problems then you have from any xenophobia.
The poster has a point. Things like ‘honor killing’ and ‘sharia’ and ‘female genital mutilation’ was never in the American lexicon without a mass migration of muslims in the US. Are there increased problems where muslims have mass emigrated to, seems the answer is yes. It is certainly the case in Europe.
Can a woman, walk freely down the street in a bikini in Dearborn, MI without harassment? I doubt it.
Nobody actually said it. But look, the more terrorism that happens, the wider spread it is, and the larger the body count, the less sensible and sensitive people are going to be about it. People are sick of it and rightly so.
We cannot change hearts and minds in islam. We have no standing, only muslims can do that, but too few, way too few are doing anything, much less enough.
So yeah, the more islamic terror attacks, the less tolerant people will be. And unless the muslim community, (I presume you are a muslim?) starts standing with us to condemn it, then people will see you as part of the problem.
Silence is not an option here. Either you condemn it and I mean condemn it without the word “but,” or “however,” being in your sentence, the more you will be seen as a ‘them’ not an ‘us’.
Any condemnation with a string attached, is not condemnation but support for the terror.
For instance, if you say “I condemn violence of any kind, but they should have known better than the draw a cartoon of the prophet.” Then as far as I am concerned, you are not condemning, you are supporting the act.
People cannot help how they feel. And most people cannot descern their feelings from thoughts, facts, or actions. They think it’s all one in the same. The feeling people are increasingly getting is angry. Really, how much can we take? How much are we going to take? How much you think France is going to take before they just say “'Fuck it. Deport them all and kill any who won’t leave.” and who is going to blame them? Oh sure people will pay lip service to the discrimination, but deep down inside, they understand it.
The terrorism is pushing people to the breaking point. Nobody has seen what the breaking point looks like, but its not going to be pretty.
At some point, if this continues unchecked, it’s going to be war and not like previous wars. People pushed to the brink will not becareful. They will be thorough.
Christians who blow up anything or do any kind of violence are condemned by the Christian community, outright. Nobody hates the Westboro Baptist Church more than Christians. They are a punchline to a joke about Christians, and yet, they have not killed a single person. They are the worst Christianity has to offer.
Abortion clinic bombers and doctor killers are condemned, no “if, and’s or but’s”. We happily throw those assholes to the wolves with no support.
You cannot compare fundamentalists Christians to radical islam. There is no comparison. Fundamentalists are truly few in number and very few of them break the law. They shout on street corners, that’s about it.
Well depending on the device used, we could make the place so radioactive, anybody looking to populate it won’t be a problem long.
All joking aside, I do not propose nukes (though I am not necessarily against it either if such a move is prudent, in reality), but ISIS needs to be destroyed and humiliated, whereever they are, which includes Libya and other places of operation. And it needs to be done with speed and purpose, with a defined objective. And if need be, we occupy the land. And if people don’t like it, they can fuck themselves, because they have long had their shot to take care of it and didn’t.
They still have their shot to go in and root them out. They can take care of the problem now and I would lead the charge in praising them for doing so.
It does not look good for the Arab world, to have this rancid disease at their doorstep and them doing very little to nothing to get rid of the problem. If they do not want the west to be involved then they need to take care of it. But they don’t have long to wait because they are consistently and repeatedly attacking the west. And we are close to the brink on not being able to take it anymore.
Horseshit, there is no indication that lack of education has any effect on radicalization. Especially when so many of the terrorists we know of, are in fact well educated.
Well first, leave your rectum out of it. And I am all about bridges. How about the peaceful muslims start making some noise for peace and condemnation of violence? Too few are doing it. When you have the majority voice, it should be easy to shout down the minority.
We, the west, can only root out ‘bad ideas’ by killing the people who have them. Muslims are the ones who can change each other for the better. You work from within, we work from the outside and we meet in the middle as allies.
The solution to that is simple, don’t leave it a vacuum. I really don’t care if it looks like conquest. If we take the land and there is not a legitimate west-friendly power to take over, then we occupy they land until someone steps up to provide leadership and peace to the area.
It would be plain stupid to rid the world of ISIS only to leave and have it reoccupied by an ISIS of a different name. That does not mean we wait to take action, that does not mean we keep getting attacked over and over and over and over.
Post-war is inevitably messy, that’s just the way it is.
I am not saying we should go there to occupy, but we shouldn’t rule out occupation. It’s not a dirty word. If the Arabs and the Persians don’t like it, they can either fix it or suck a dick.
So many of the terrorists are educated? What? You mean the high leaders are educated. The front line soldiers and civilian supporters sure as shit are not haha.
