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On September 11 2015 19:59 Faust852 wrote:
I don't get why the fear of Islam is so taboo here. I mean, if you follow a little bit of what is happening in middle orient because of Islam, your fears are totally reasonable.
Please tell me, why should i fear Muslims?
I had several of them in my class... Never was an Issue.
I work with several of them at my Job... Never had an Issue.
I talk to them and they dislike what is Happening in the middle east just as much as i do.
Now... Should i fear Muslims because of constant news coverage of bad shit some of the most extreme ones do when everything I experienced suggests to not?
Should i also fear Christians because of the Northern Ireland conflict, Brejvik (or whichever way he is spelled) or various other nutjobs that might or might not have directly used their religion as inspiration/reason for their crimes?
As for your Point about Islam in General... I don't exactly see how it does much better than Christianity in this regard? What the Islam lacks is the period we call "enlightenment" in the Christian world... The only Thing that makes Islam worse than christianity, is that more Moslems actually still believe in its book.
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Though I'm a fan of a lot of Tocqueville's ideas, to say that he is a "better thinker" than Marx is pretty hardcore ignorance. Like any great thinkers, they each said a lot of things that were prophetic, and a lot of things that seemed reasonable but ultimately ended up being untrue. I will note that taking any economic/political idea and applying it exactly "by the book" will lead to horrendous results.
On September 11 2015 19:54 SoSexy wrote:
Too bad people can't see the menace Islam is. I am sure many governments would not have a problem with buddhists, christians, induists, etc - but when you take in people whose religion clashes so hard with society (Sharia law, unparalleled in any other religion of the world) you are going to have problems, sooner or later.
I do understand why they don't see it. When you are far-removed from the major government centers of Islam, you tend not to see how systemic and malicious the religious institutions of Islam really are. The countries closest to ME tend to be the most opposed to accepting them, and I find that that is with good reason.
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We have had Christians killing doctors in the US for years. The KKK is a Christian terrorist group. Defacing holy sites in other countries. Bombing the Olympics and threatening to murder Muslims. They have weird paramilitary compounds with numerous families that don't allow kids to go to public schools. No one blames it on the religion itself. And exposure to secular governments and societies will only move towards an "enlightenment" period for Islam.
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Are you comparing KKK to Islam extremists? Really?
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Zurich15362 Posts
On September 11 2015 23:45 739 wrote:
Are you comparing KKK to Islam extremists? Really?
How about the Lord's Resistance Army?
The point is there were and are plenty of extremist Christians out there, yet we don't fear Christianity. For some reason with Islam this is different.
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On September 11 2015 23:32 LegalLord wrote:Though I'm a fan of a lot of Tocqueville's ideas, to say that he is a "better thinker" than Marx is pretty hardcore ignorance. Like any great thinkers, they each said a lot of things that were prophetic, and a lot of things that seemed reasonable but ultimately ended up being untrue. I will note that taking any economic/political idea and applying it exactly "by the book" will lead to horrendous results. Show nested quote +On September 11 2015 19:54 SoSexy wrote:
Too bad people can't see the menace Islam is. I am sure many governments would not have a problem with buddhists, christians, induists, etc - but when you take in people whose religion clashes so hard with society (Sharia law, unparalleled in any other religion of the world) you are going to have problems, sooner or later. I do understand why they don't see it. When you are far-removed from the major government centers of Islam, you tend not to see how systemic and malicious the religious institutions of Islam really are. The countries closest to ME tend to be the most opposed to accepting them, and I find that that is with good reason.
My girlfriend is a Muslim, and I have travelled in Morocco. I can see absolutely no reason to fear either Muslims or "the Islam". In fact, I can see absolutely no difference between painting all muslims with the same brush now, and painting all jews with the same brush in the Weimar republic.
Of course, I am ignoring the anti-western rhetoric of radical Islamic terrorist organizations. Most of them are simply politicized Islam (al-Nusra, al-Quaida), who use the Islam as a means to an end (power, mainly). ISIS seems to be a bit different in that there are some real nutjobs, but it is absurd to paint all muslims with the same brush as ISIS.
And no, there really isn't any point in saying that all peaceful muslims are not following the Islam correctly, and ISIS is (as they themselves like to claim), because it's bullshit. Firstly, the Koran itself states that its interpretation is personal. Secondly, the Koran and the Hadith are open to hudreds, if not thousands or millions of different interpretations. Saying that all muslims should interpret the Islam exactly as ISIS does is exactly as radical and misogenistic as ISIS itself is.
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On September 11 2015 23:29 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2015 19:59 Faust852 wrote:
I don't get why the fear of Islam is so taboo here. I mean, if you follow a little bit of what is happening in middle orient because of Islam, your fears are totally reasonable.
I had several of them in my class... Never was an Issue. I work with several of them at my Job... Never had an Issue. I talk to them and they dislike what is Happening in the middle east just as much as i do.
Though I don't believe that all Muslims are bad (I know peaceful ones who are not malicious as well), anecdotally I will say that I have had very dissimilar experiences. While I have rarely met extremists in the making, I have met many, many Muslim immigrants and descendants of immigrants who would watch and implicitly support the extremists waging jihad in their host nations. There is a systemic issue here.
In terms of immigration policy, the goal should be (as with any sane immigration policy) to keep the good immigrants and expel the bad. Banning Muslims is a good first-order approximation, that I think is reasonable for countries with minimal resources. To do better than that, it would be wise to consider very carefully the risk that malicious immigrants may pose and find good ways to identify them.
On September 11 2015 23:48 zatic wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2015 23:45 739 wrote:
Are you comparing KKK to Islam extremists? Really? How about the Lord's Resistance Army? The point is there were and are plenty of extremist Christians out there, yet we don't fear Christianity. For some reason with Islam this is different.
Most Christian religious extremists act defensively (in defense of their ideals and homeland etc) rather than aggressively in the sense of land-grabbing that groups like ISIS are known for. That's a significant difference.
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It breaks down because the reality of such groups is an abstraction given weight by the indoctrination of people such as yourself. The dominant force of human history is the interaction of the opinions, sentiments, prejudices and beliefs of people, and the political and material organisation of society is merely the outcome of that. Saying that my political or ideological inclinations are the consequence of my relative position in society is a fraud that breaks down immediately upon self-reflection; it is an utterly inadequate foundation for explaining what I believe, for what you believe, for what any real person believes.
As for how I know that Germans are really being compassionate rather than being fakes when they donate their time and money to help their new guests and neighbours; I do not need to prove it. I merely require that you and I believe the same thing arising out of our shared faith in how human behaviour works. The authenticity of action and purpose gains greater credit in relation to their proximity with the personal. When I express my feelings to my wife, they may be assumed to be more authentic than the feelings I express before a church congregation, which in turn may be assumed to be more authentic than the feelings I express when interviewed for television. Being smiled at by a dog and being smiled at by Angela Merkel are polar opposites of authenticity, and one can only appeal to the superior esteem the former enjoys over the latter to prove the case.
Marx's analysis of capitalism created not only a school of thinking, but generation of thinkers. There is a reason why Lévi-Strauss used to read 30 min of Marx every day and not Tocqueville. Considering Tocqueville above Marx is ignorance.
It is nauseating how the Marxist cannibals always think that they are in the avant-garde of social criticism, yet conform blindly to the hideous orthodoxy of their canon. They weirdly simultaneously think that their opinions are both distinctive and common-sensical. They are happy to appeal to popularity when it comes to asserting their superiority over other schools of thought, but loathe to appeal to popularity when it turns out their ideas lose election after election. Figure that.
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On September 11 2015 23:45 739 wrote:
Are you comparing KKK to Islam extremists? Really?
It was a huge political movement in the 1920s, with an estimated 4 million members nation wide. And they were horrific and did terrible things. They liked to hang people from trees, rather than behead them on videos.
Edit: for reference, the CIA estimated that ISIS has around 30K fighters from the most recent report I can find.
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Though I'm no fan of the KKK, comparing it to ISIS and their ilk is just ridiculous.
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On September 11 2015 23:54 MoltkeWarding wrote:
It breaks down because the reality of such groups is an abstraction given weight by the indoctrination of people such as yourself. The dominant force of human history is the interaction of the opinions, sentiments, prejudices and beliefs of people, and the political and material organisation of society is merely the outcome of that. Saying that my political or ideological inclinations are the consequence of my relative position in society is a fraud that breaks down immediately upon self-reflection; it is an utterly inadequate foundation for explaining what I believe, for what you believe, for what any real person believes.
As for how I know that Germans are really being compassionate rather than being fakes when they donate their time and money to help their new guests and neighbours; I do not need to prove it. I merely require that you and I believe the same thing arising out of our shared faith in how human behaviour works. The authenticity of action and purpose gains greater credit in relation to their proximity with the personal. When I express my feelings to my wife, they may be assumed to be more authentic than the feelings I express before a church congregation, which in turn may be assumed to be more authentic than the feelings I express when interviewed for television. Being smiled at by a dog and being smiled at by Angela Merkel are polar opposites of authenticity, and one can only appeal to the superior esteem the former enjoys over the latter to prove the case.
Some of your comments looks like Clastre reversed marxism - where the superstructure define the infrastructure. But at which point does your analysis of the role of passions and interactions plays in our politics (something I usually agree with from monday to saturday) leads you to believe that interests play no role in politics.
Merely arguing that interests are social construct does not lead to believe that they are secondary. My gender is a social construct and still define me to a certain extent - and me being of this gender and not the other does not boals down to the "indoctrination" I suffered at the hand of my evil parents (it's a little broader than that I believe).
Also, it is not my "indoctrination" that create groups, but common behaviors, common positions within the structures and - in this topic it seems - borders. Those were there long before me.
Finally, the correlation between the position and the ideological tendancies is not a fraud that break down after "reflection" ... it is a fact that we see in all societies and that is true for the vast majority of the population. Saying that all this is false is basically like arguing that sociology is full of shit and history useless.
Show nested quote +Marx's analysis of capitalism created not only a school of thinking, but generation of thinkers. There is a reason why Lévi-Strauss used to read 30 min of Marx every day and not Tocqueville. Considering Tocqueville above Marx is ignorance. It is nauseating how the Marxist cannibals always think that they are in the avant-garde of social criticism, yet conform blindly to the hideous orthodoxy of their canon. They weirdly simultaneously think that their opinions are both distinctive and common-sensical. They are happy to appeal to popularity when it comes to asserting their superiority over other schools of thought, but loathe to appeal to popularity when it turns out their ideas lose election after election. Figure that.
It's funny because a colleague asked me if I was a marxist just today. I answered that I read his books, but do not consider myself a marxist. There are plenty of things I disagree in Marx's work, but I'm still responsible and free enough to judge the value of his work without instantly going back to this boring discussion about orthodox marxism, marxians, etc. It seems like you can't do that, and instantly discard Marx because he created hordes of orthodoxes. The fact that Marx's children are not all beautiful does not mean that Tocqueville is more valuable than Marx.
May I remember you what Marx responded to french orthodox ? If this is marxism, then I am not a marxist.
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On September 12 2015 00:10 LegalLord wrote:
Though I'm no fan of the KKK, comparing it to ISIS and their ilk is just ridiculous.
Its good to know you're not a fan of the KKK. And the point is that you can find endless Christian terrorist groups throughout history and today, with varying levels of violence based on the region they are in. Same with other religions and ideologies. Sometimes whole nations adopt crazy violent thinking and end up building massive camps to kill all the Jews. Sometimes collective farming is forced on people and it kills 11 million people in their own country.
Saying the Muslims are more dangerous than other groups only works if you completely ignore the history of violence from those groups.
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On September 12 2015 00:27 Plansix wrote:
Saying the Muslims are more dangerous than other groups only works if you completely ignore the history of violence from those groups.
Or if you realize that for all these events, the violence and death caused in the name of Islam has killed significantly more people than all these events combined and brought instability to the four corners of the world.
Comparing a group like the KKK to a group like ISIS is just laughable. Furthermore, you are ascribing religious motivations to non-religious occurrences to vilify Christianity.
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I was unaware that we could go back through all of history to prove which was worse. That seems like it would take a while and be sort of fruitless. But like 50 Million people died in world war 2 alone. The war in Syria is only at like 200K people dead. So it will take a while for them to catch up. ISIS isn't anywhere near that number yet.
The KKK is a Christian group by their own claim. They ascribe to "Christian values" and at their peek many of their leaders were church leaders as well. And slavery and repression of blacks was justified through the bible. And since the metric for being of the religion is saying you are, then the KKK is a religions group, just like ISIS is "Muslim". Now if we want to get into the nuanced discussion of it they are just using the religion as an excuse and an ability to gain undue authority and followers, that might get us someplace.
Also note that ISIS has attacked other Muslims during religious holidays and at holy sites during prayer, civilians and otherwise. They obey the religion when it suits them, much like the KKK.
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On September 12 2015 00:40 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2015 00:27 Plansix wrote:
Saying the Muslims are more dangerous than other groups only works if you completely ignore the history of violence from those groups. Or if you realize that for all these events, the violence and death caused in the name of Islam has killed significantly more people than all these events combined and brought instability to the four corners of the world. Comparing a group like the KKK to a group like ISIS is just laughable. Furthermore, you are ascribing religious motivations to non-religious occurrences to vilify Christianity.
And you are, for the most part, ascribing religious motivations to non-religious occurrences to vilify Islam.
The vast majority of ISIS militants are disgruntled, disenfranchised westerners drawn to the promise of rape and pillage. Islam only has something to do with anything when you look at the fanaticism of some of the leaders. But it is a horribly distorted version of Islam, that the vast majority of Muslims abhor. It's about as valid as stating that the Spanish Inquisition is an accurate representation of Christianity.
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I'm fairly certain the KKK are not currently immigrating to Europe and have not historically proven to be exceptionally hard to integrate. Then again, I'm unsure what you are even arguing? Extremist Christians exist? No shit? They don't pose any real issue for Europe though.
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On September 12 2015 01:06 Ghostcom wrote:
I'm fairly certain the KKK are not currently immigrating to Europe and have not historically proven to be exceptionally hard to integrate. Then again, I'm unsure what you are even arguing? Extremist Christians exist? No shit? They don't pose any real issue for Europe though.
Extremist Muslims don't pose any real issue to Europe either. They are currently fighting a war in a hellhole. The vast majority of sane people (just your regular Syrians, both Muslim and other) is trying to get away from this war, and flee (to Europe).
Using Muslim extremism as a reason to not accept refugees is the most twisted and upside down reason I have heard. These people are fucking well FLEEING Muslim extremism.
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and have not historically proven to be exceptionally hard to integrate.
the KKK had to integrate somewhere in the past? And you're apparently suggesting it was not exceptionally hard? (majority white western europeans in the country, so I guess not)
What is your point here?
If it were this bit:
I'm fairly certain the KKK are not currently immigrating to Europe
then I don't understand how the bit I first linked (second half of the same sentence) is relevant or what sense it is supposed to make.
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On September 12 2015 01:06 Ghostcom wrote:
I'm fairly certain the KKK are not currently immigrating to Europe and have not historically proven to be exceptionally hard to integrate. Then again, I'm unsure what you are even arguing? Extremist Christians exist? No shit? They don't pose any real issue for Europe though.
Neither is ISIS. The people who are feeling to Europe are the folks ISIS is trying to kill or repress. And integrating is difficult, but not impossible.
I'm not arguing against immigration control or any form of regulation. Of course nations need to do that. I was arguing against the idea that the "EU needs to fear Muslims" as some sort of truth.
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On September 12 2015 01:05 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On September 12 2015 00:40 LegalLord wrote:On September 12 2015 00:27 Plansix wrote:
Saying the Muslims are more dangerous than other groups only works if you completely ignore the history of violence from those groups. Or if you realize that for all these events, the violence and death caused in the name of Islam has killed significantly more people than all these events combined and brought instability to the four corners of the world. Comparing a group like the KKK to a group like ISIS is just laughable. Furthermore, you are ascribing religious motivations to non-religious occurrences to vilify Christianity. And you are, for the most part, ascribing religious motivations to non-religious occurrences to vilify Islam. The vast majority of ISIS militants are disgruntled, disenfranchised westerners drawn to the promise of rape and pillage. Islam only has something to do with anything when you look at the fanaticism of some of the leaders. But it is a horribly distorted version of Islam, that the vast majority of Muslims abhor. It's about as valid as stating that the Spanish Inquisition is an accurate representation of Christianity.
I'm getting a No True Scotsman vibe from this. ISIS is very much a religiously motivated organization, if the whole "create a state with sharia law" aspect didn't tip you off. I'm not even going to go into your statement that most ISIS are westerners because that is demonstrably wrong.
Frankly, I'm not seeing that ISIS is a group that the majority abhors, seeing that it has significant support from many extremists groups that merged into them, and that a significant number of cities willingly accepted ISIS control. It's an ugly reality that the vision that ISIS puts forward is one that has a frighteningly large support base in the ME. Evidence that most Muslims oppose that vision is questionable at best.
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