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On December 17 2014 10:00 Belisarius wrote:It certainly could be. I can really only speak anecdotally from my own experience or that of people I know. Obviously, I'm anglo-Australian, so it won't be directed at me. None of my friends from other backgrounds have complained about it, but I also only know a couple of muslims who I feel would mention it to me. I also live and work within 10 minutes of the city centre, at a university with a huge internatonal student body, so I really can't speak even for suburbs further out without extrapolating. It's worth noting that that stuff is hot news at the moment and is also anecdotal, so could be localised or isolated. It also could be systemic, and the fact that it's happening at all is certainly not good. If you look at something like http://www.islamophobiawatch.co.uk/category/anti-muslim-violence/ (reputable source, I know, but they're real news stories being reposted), there are similar incidents in Vienna, Seattle and various places in the UK. Since we've established that Australian police don't keep statistics on whether crimes are racially motivated, it's hard to judge objectively whether Australia is particularly bad or just has the same number of idiots as anywhere else. Neither would surprise me.
I can't help but think there are likely nefarious reasons for not keeping those types of statistics. Especially after they were recommended years ago and a lack of police response was a common theme for racially/religiously charged incidents.
Also small update: It's being reported that the shots were first fired after one of the hostages went for the attackers gun when he started to nod off.
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I heard about this on the news my thoughts go to the families and all the people involved in the incident. The situation could have gone a lot better but it also could have been much worse. If they called the sas(special advanced soldiers) in they could have been better equipped to deal with the situation. But on the other hand may have made it go on world news with all the publicity which is all this guy wanted playing into his hands or even made this guy erupt. I dont know too much about who was better equipped to deal with this situation maybe in this case it was best for the police to handle things as they knew his background and had an idea what this guy was like. But i still think the outcome that everyone really wanted was for no one to get hurt or die so something need to be done to make sure this does not happen again more enquiries.
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It's interesting to me how most people who ask why this attack happened fail to arrive at the correct conclusion.
In this particular instance, the guy was mentally unstable and had a history of attention-seeking behavior and rejection from social groups. His demand for an ISIS flag and for world-wide media coverage was purely for attention. He wasn't fundamentally aligned with the ideologies of ISIS or even Islam for that matter. Only a month ago he was a follower of a different religion. If he didn't have a flag with Arabic writing, the event would never have reached international headlines and this thread would not exist. Compare him to Eliot Rogers (I wonder how many remember that guy?); you'll be able to draw a lot of parallels.
Regarding terrorists belonging to Islamic faith in general, once again, people generally arrive at the wrong conclusion when they ask 'why' they do what they do. They don't do it because their religion tells them to kill Westerners. Historically, Western societies, for one reason or another, have invaded several countries where the predominant religion is Islam. Most of the locals just want to live peacefully and for the foreign invaders to go away. For many of these people, Islam is their lens through which they see the world. With this lens, they try to rationalise the events that are occurring. It's inevitable that a few extremists with the loudest voices who are most pissed off at having their world-views challenged and societies destroyed are going to want to fight back. They will use religious faith as a tool amongst their own community to establish a sense of 'belonging' and 'being right', to explain why these things are happening in an attempt to unify the people to fight back.
All other factors being equal, if you were to swap every Christian/Jew with Muslims (all 3 faiths are based on essentially the same belief system), I predict the same situation would happen. You'd see a technologically superior Islamic society (ie. the West) invading poorer Christian/Jewish countries (ie. Middle-east). The Christians/Jews would respond in the only way they know how: Rally support against the invaders using religious faith as common ground to promote guerrilla warfare ie. terrorism. The technologically superior Muslims wouldn't understand why the Christians/Jews are suicide bombing them so much, and would conclude it's because of differing ideologies. The Christians/Jews would be labelled as terrorists. The vicious cycle would continue ad-infinitum because people generally only understand their world through their own perspective.
It was never about religion. It's simply about people wanting to feel empowered and safe in living the life they want to live and interpreting the world from their 'correct' perspective. When an outside influence challenges that, the natural response is to defend yourself no matter what and rationalise the outside threat within your established world view. Same principles hold true regarding political ideologies (see: Cold War), sexual preferences (see: ongoing gay rights debates around the world), choice of sporting team (usually fueled by notions of patriotism), choice of phone (see: Android vs iOS), choice of video-game console (see: XBots vs Nintendrones vs Sony fanboys), idea of racial superiority/balance in Starcraft...the list is endless.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
LilCinkin
That's an awful lot of projection to swap Muslims with Christians and Jews and re-create entire historical decades of events based on what you yourself think millions of people "might" do if they wore a different hat.
The question to ask yourself in this hypothetical swap is if Christians would fly airplanes into the world trade center due to a Christian equivalent of "Jihad" and would gleefully sacrifice themselves so they could be promised X number of virgins and eternal happiness.
I don't really think so.
I can understand that Christians did some awful shit centuries ago and did mass murder people, but we're in the 20th century here, its 2014, and some of the most awful independent terrorist groups in the world use literal interpretation of their religion to do what they do.
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You disagree? The scripture for twisting world views into similar ways that are done by extremist Muslims exists in Old Testament.
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Any act of violence ie. shooting/stabbing/beating people, planting bombs etc. is the same as flying a plane into a building if the motivation for those acts is based on religious beliefs.
Look at the Spanish Inquisition or the Crusades if you don't believe followers of Jesus are capable of violence against people of differing religious faiths.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
BTW I'm not on the side of any religion here and readily admit Christianity has committed quite atrocious acts in its history using literal interpretation.
But why are we in 2014, where all the major religions of the world have evolved, yet we still have multiple groups within the Islamic faith trying to turn their conquered territories back into the stone age.
Al Queda / Taliban / ISIS / Boko Haram. All use Islam to create their laws and to bring an entire region sub-region of people into its control, and then exerting its dominance to completely reshape how society is lived for the worse.
Let's talk about today, not what a 14th century Christian would do.
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On December 18 2014 01:42 Tien wrote:
BTW I'm not on the side of any religion here and readily admit Christianity has committed quite atrocious acts in its history using literal interpretation.
But why are we in 2014, where all the major religions of the world have evolved, yet we still have multiple groups within the Islamic faith trying to turn their conquered territories back into the stone age.
Al Queda / Taliban / ISIS / Boko Haram. All use Islam to bring an entire region sub-region of people into its control, and then exerting its dominance to completely reshape how society is lived for the worse.
I think you answer your own question. Al Queda, Taliban, ISIS, Boko Haram are all extremist organisations, not religions. They simply use religion as a tool to achieve their agenda. Their agenda is to fight back against those who they perceive to have wronged them, ie. Western civilization. If you were born in Iraq and lived a peaceful life, until one day your neighbor is killed by a foreigner who believes in a different religion, you'll likely get pissed off and want to do something about it. Swap 'Iraq' with the country you live in, and you will hopefully see the point I'm trying to make. The difference between the country you live in and Iraq is that your country was not actually invaded by foreigners, whereas Iraq was.
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United States22883 Posts
On December 18 2014 01:26 Tien wrote:
LilCinkin
That's an awful lot of projection to swap Muslims with Christians and Jews and re-create entire historical decades of events based on what you yourself think millions of people "might" do if they wore a different hat.
The question to ask yourself in this hypothetical swap is if Christians would fly airplanes into the world trade center due to a Christian equivalent of "Jihad" and would gleefully sacrifice themselves so they could be promised X number of virgins and eternal happiness.
I don't really think so.
I can understand that Christians did some awful shit centuries ago and did mass murder people, but we're in the 20th century here, its 2014, and some of the most awful independent terrorist groups in the world use literal interpretation of their religion to do what they do.
Erm... the Serbian Orthodox Church incited a lot of vitriol against Bosnian Muslims before the attempted genocide. On face it was about nationalism but you can't disconnect Serbian nationalism from the Church, and it became another tool to incite people into murdering Muslims. Their clergymen used to bless Serbian soldiers before they carried out executions. There's actually video documentation of it.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
My neighbour is killed and I am pissed off. I can understand fighting back with a gun.
But re-creating an entire new civilization using historical textbooks to dictate how everybody under my control (by the sword) will live?
Blaming the outside world for what created the Taliban, Al Queda, ISIS, Boko Harem is being a bit apologetic toward the actual monster.
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You can play the blame game with everything. True Islam isn't connected to terrorism, true communism is connected to the USSR, true nationalism isn't connected to Nazi-Germany, etc... You can always shift the blame around to defend whatever you like. And although everybody should distinguish between Muslims practising their religion peacefully and extremists, Jihad actually is central part of Islam. The concept of spreading your religion through war, just or not, is not part of Judaism or Christianity.
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On December 18 2014 02:07 Tien wrote:
My neighbour is killed and I am pissed off. I can understand fighting back with a gun.
But re-creating an entire new civilization using historical textbooks to dictate how everybody under my control (by the sword) will live?
Blaming the outside world for what created the Taliban, Al Queda, ISIS, Boko Harem is being a bit apologetic toward the actual monster.
agree. we should not blame the CIA torturers and gitmo by what outside forces did to the US on 9/11.
see the monsters for who they are, don't be apologetic people. not even a bit.
am I doing this right?
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On December 18 2014 01:42 Tien wrote:
Let's talk about today, not what a 14th century Christian would do.
This is key. You can't talk about an idea such as religion and how people adopt it into their behaviors without considering the context/environment in which those people live.
I agree with you when you say that a modern day Christian or Catholic living in our Western society would not do the same things that we see extremist Muslims from terrorist organisations such as ISIS doing.
But, if you change the context ie. take a modern day Christian person and put them back in the 14 century, then the way they will behave will likely be different. Just like in my hypothetical example, if you took people from different religious faiths ie. Muslims, Christians, Jews, and changed the context in which they were living, then you would very likely observe different behaviors than what you see today. History has proved this to be true repeatedly.
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
To play this religious swap game.
I completely disagree with the idea that angry Christians in the year 2001 from Saudi Arabia, that grew up wealthy (Osama), would be so angered by infidels stepping foot in the Vatican Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and would fly planes into the Muslim capital of the world NYC.
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On December 18 2014 02:25 Tien wrote:
To play this religious swap game.
I completely disagree with the idea that angry Christians in the year 2001 from Saudi Arabia, that grew up wealthy (Osama), would be so angered by infidels stepping foot in the Vatican Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and would fly planes into the Muslim capital of the world NYC.
I didn't say the Christians would hijack a plane and fly it into buildings. You're taking the notion of the swap too literally. What I'm trying to say is, if you swapped the positions, the Christians would feel persecuted by having their homeland invaded. Realising that they face a technologically and economically superior "enemy", they would resort to Guerrilla warfare style tactics, such as terrorism, in an attempt to fight back and stand up for what they believe to be "right". The roots of this lie in human tribal psychology.
There are theories that the events of 9/11 were enabled by the US Government. There is circumstantial evidence to suggest this is the case. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised one way or the other.
Regardless of whether 9/11 was staged, it is interesting to analyse the series of events which followed. The US government used these events ultimately to secure an economic and possibly geographical military advantage abroad (similar to spreading a religious ideology, instead they are spreading political ideologies of capitalism and democracy). The way this was sold to distraught US citizens was to restore peace and freedom and to ensure their safety, using words such as "patriotism" and "democracy" a lot. Many Americans actively advocated an invasion of another country in the context of a post-9/11 world (keep in mind, Americans mostly identify as peaceful Christians). If 9/11 didn't happen, far fewer Americans would actively support invading another country. At the same time, many Americans were outright against the invasion of another country, just as many Muslism are outright against acts of terrorism.
Surely you can see the same pattern of abuse of ideology here: People with an agenda (Al Quaeda/US government) using an idea as a tool (Islam/Patriotism + Democracy) to gain support and create unity amongst the masses to agree to something they would not normally agree to (Fly plane into building/Invade another country) in response to an event that has pissed them off (Foreigners invaded my home/Terrorists blew up my symbol of capitalism). The specifics are different but the patterns are the same. It's not really about religion or politics. It's about power and creating a sense of belonging amongst people. Religion and politics and countless other things are abused by power-hungry individuals and institutions all the time, in every country, since humans evolved. People want to feel like they belong to a group. When the group they identify with is threatened, they respond in a predictable way, which as I said, is rooted in tribal psychology. You have to separate the ideas of religion and politics from the interpretations of the people sprouting the crap: Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult for many people to do (and hence why they are great tools of manipulation).
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
You can't play that hypothetical swap game you invented and change the rules and history with it. It just doesn't work that way.
If you were to swap every Christian/Jew with Muslims (all 3 faiths are based on essentially the same belief system), I predict the same situation would happen.
Would a group of Christians that came from rich as well as poor circumstances, use literal interpretation of their religion to fly planes into the world trade center because they felt persecuted that infidels were walking all over their Vatican Mecca, and desecrating their land?
The answer is simply no by any kind of circumstantial argumentation you propose. Either play by the game you created, or don't use that hypothetical example to try and prove a point.
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Shouldn't the answer to that instead be "I don't know?"
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On December 18 2014 03:41 Tien wrote:You can't play that hypothetical swap game you invented and change the rules and history with it. It just doesn't work that way. If Show nested quote +you were to swap every Christian/Jew with Muslims (all 3 faiths are based on essentially the same belief system), I predict the same situation would happen. Would a group of Christians that came from rich as well as poor circumstances, use literal interpretation of their religion to fly planes into the world trade center because they felt persecuted that infidels were walking all over their Vatican Mecca, and desecrating their land? The answer is simply no by any kind of circumstantial argumentation you propose. Either play by the game you created, or don't use that hypothetical example to try and prove a point.
I see you're a stickler for specifics and are unable to recognise patterns. I never mentioned 9/11 recurring again specifically, you did. I have not changed the rules or situation that I outlined. There is no difference between flying a plane into a building from suicide bombing or shooting or stabbing or any other act of violent guerrilla warfare committed in the name of a religious ideology to defend your belief system. If you think there are distinct differences, then I suppose everything I've been saying has flown right over your head.
I suppose the saying "history repeats itself" doesn't mean anything to you, because specific circumstances can never repeat themselves.
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On December 18 2014 04:19 LilClinkin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2014 03:41 Tien wrote:You can't play that hypothetical swap game you invented and change the rules and history with it. It just doesn't work that way. If you were to swap every Christian/Jew with Muslims (all 3 faiths are based on essentially the same belief system), I predict the same situation would happen. Would a group of Christians that came from rich as well as poor circumstances, use literal interpretation of their religion to fly planes into the world trade center because they felt persecuted that infidels were walking all over their Vatican Mecca, and desecrating their land? The answer is simply no by any kind of circumstantial argumentation you propose. Either play by the game you created, or don't use that hypothetical example to try and prove a point. I see you're a stickler for specifics and are unable to recognise patterns. I never mentioned 9/11 recurring again specifically, you did. I have not changed the rules or situation that I outlined. There is no difference between flying a plane into a building from suicide bombing or shooting or stabbing or any other act of violent guerrilla warfare committed in the name of a religious ideology to defend your belief system. If you think there are distinct differences, then I suppose everything I've been saying has flown right over your head. I suppose the saying "history repeats itself" doesn't mean anything to you, because specific circumstances can never repeat themselves.
You have a point to a small extend about the unity against the evil Westerners, but there are many cases of them are just killing their own non-Western, sometimes even Muslim people, like Boko Haram, Taliban in Pakistan and ISIS
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Russian Federation4447 Posts
On December 18 2014 04:19 LilClinkin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 18 2014 03:41 Tien wrote:You can't play that hypothetical swap game you invented and change the rules and history with it. It just doesn't work that way. If you were to swap every Christian/Jew with Muslims (all 3 faiths are based on essentially the same belief system), I predict the same situation would happen. Would a group of Christians that came from rich as well as poor circumstances, use literal interpretation of their religion to fly planes into the world trade center because they felt persecuted that infidels were walking all over their Vatican Mecca, and desecrating their land? The answer is simply no by any kind of circumstantial argumentation you propose. Either play by the game you created, or don't use that hypothetical example to try and prove a point. I see you're a stickler for specifics and are unable to recognise patterns. I never mentioned 9/11 recurring again specifically, you did. I have not changed the rules or situation that I outlined. There is no difference between flying a plane into a building from suicide bombing or shooting or stabbing or any other act of violent guerrilla warfare committed in the name of a religious ideology to defend your belief system. If you think there are distinct differences, then I suppose everything I've been saying has flown right over your head. I suppose the saying "history repeats itself" doesn't mean anything to you, because specific circumstances can never repeat themselves.
But when you say this isn't about religion I believe you are ignoring certain facts.
The laws and regulations being adopted by Islamic extremists groups are being traced back right into the actual texts of the book. When ISIS fighters post videos of buying female sex slaves, they quote the Koran and Muhammad owning slaves.
ISIS isn't inventing laws out of thin air, they are word for word self selecting passages in the Koran that suites their purposes, and utilizing those literal passages to dictate laws.
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EPT
