I heard it about a handful of English cities a few years ago. Pretty sure it's bullshit used to scare the easily frightened.
Terrorist Attacks in Paris
- Thread starter Gryffindorian
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I heard it about a handful of English cities a few years ago. Pretty sure it's bullshit used to scare the easily frightened.
Ah so "No go zones" are bullshit fabricated by the likes of Fox News..
I should have known.
I should have known.
I agree with that. Push polling or nonrepresentative polling such as self selected internet polls really can come up with wacky results. That said, all the reputable polling companies know how to run a representative poll.
A lot of them seem to go through third parties and/or front groups but everyone involved know who the real recipient is. The Saudi bans don't seem to be very vigorously enforced, only the most blatant get shut down, and I suspect the reason for that is because a very large slice of the Saudi population actually supports Salafism and killing all of the nonbelievers because God supposedly wills it.
You will notice those folks would still be supporting terrorism against nonmuslims no matter what we or anyone else do. It is true that western policies can compound the problem and convince more fence sitters to get into the fight but it is also true that there is also a hard core of 50 million- 200 million muslims who would support attacking all nonmuslims no matter what we say or do.
That is why I told Karzak earlier that he is both right and wrong with the Facebook memes he has been posting. Reality is more complex than his memes make out. In fact, they are rather facil.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. Millions of Muslims did not suddenly wake up and decide to become extremists. Extremism among Muslims has socioeconomic causes, many of them from Western Imperialism. Islam is no worse and no better than Christianity or Judaism so the question must be asked as to why there's such levels of extremism and I think a lot of the answer has to do with the state of the Middle East, a state that was caused by Western antics either directly or through figureheads.
I do not believe there really are no go zones but there are Arab ghettos where police will not go without sufficient back up in place because the local Arab population is extremely hostile to the state. Many of them truly are racial/religious separatists who will beat up nonmuslims who wander into their hood and they will even attack the postman. They usually have set up their own sharia complient "court" system to keep things out of the official courts and because that really is what these people believe.
Truthfully, this should not be tolerated at all but sadly it seems that it is. This is a problem.
There you are just wrong. Western policy does influence the 1.3 billion nonterrorist supporting muslims in the world but the 50 million to 200 million who support terrorism to one degree (especially the 50 million die hard Salafists) really would still be trying to kill all nonbelievers no matter what we do. Also it is not the poor and the jobless who are most likely to radicalized and become Salafists but the well to do and educated (see the 9/11 attackers and the various bombers in Europe).
I am a pretty liberal guy as well as an atheist but I have noticed my fellow liberals often are mistaken in believing everyone else is more or less the same as they are and thst if they just talk with them enough and try to reason with them enough then they can change their minds. That is not always the case. Some people really do have radical violent world views and, sadly, the Salafists can correctly point out that their violent intolerant version of Islam really is the version Mohammed practiced and which was explicitly written about in the Koran. They truly believe God has ordered them to do this and you will not be able to talk them out of it.
That is a major difference between Islam and other religions so, no, they are not all the same. I would suggest you try reading the Koran sometime (I did it while I was stationed in Iraq) and you will learn a lot about those differences (especially when you read the hadith. Today's edition of the Guardian had an article dispelling this western liberal belief that some how it really is all the west's fault and that the Salafists would not be doing what they were doing if only the west did something different. As I said, we can influence the fence sitters but the 50 million to 200 million would still be at it no matter what we do.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/17/jihadism-western-policy-jeremy-corbyn-isis
That is the article from The Guardian which I spoke about. You will notice the author Rafael Bahr is a British muslim. You are repeating a stereotype, probably out of well meaning ignorance, but it still shows a lack of understanding about what motivates the Sunni extremist groups. Here is a hint: Read their public press announcements because they repeatedly say what motivates them and why they are doing what they do complete with quotes from the Koran.
That is the article from The Guardian which I spoke about. You will notice the author Rafael Bahr is a British muslim. You are repeating a stereotype, probably out of well meaning ignorance, but it still shows a lack of understanding about what motivates the Sunni extremist groups. Here is a hint: Read their public press announcements because they repeatedly say what motivates them and why they are doing what they do complete with quotes from the Koran.
Yes. Fox Noise is notorious for this BS. Either outright lies or careful twisting of the truth to stoke up their audience. They know what their audience wants to hear and they're very good at it.
My dad watches Fox Noise all day, every day. After 9 years of this, it's like he's from another planet. We've never agreed politically, and that's fine. But now he has a totally different definition of "facts" than I do. And "verifying" said "facts." Anything that contradicts what he hears on Fox, in however mild a way, is a "goddamn liberal lie." Anything.
They not only misinform their viewers, they actively seek to anger them, and make sure they remain in a mire of cynicism, hate, and paranoia. That's what's disturbing the most. Especially in times like this where there's no shortage of red meat to throw to the masses, manufactured or otherwise.
Of course, you can enlarge this discussion to the whole cable news model and talk about the degredation of news and the media over the decades, but at times like this, FACTS need to speak louder than anything else. And the lies Fox perpetuates about Muslims, even if debunked, continue to thrive like a disease.
You may want to look up the Islamic reform movement in the 8th through 10the centuries because that is at the heart of the Salafist complaint about the other 1.2-1.3 billion muslims on the planet. When Mohammed and his immediate followers were alive Islam really was like what the Salafists currently espouse. After Mohemmad died and muslims had conquered a giant empire the rulers realized the old radical extremist kill all of the unbelievers tenets of Islam would no longer work if they wanted to actually govern a giant multi ethnic, multi religious empire so they tried to reform away the most extreme bits. Often not so successfully even contradicting direct commandments in the Koran with vague arguments that those only applied when Mohammed was alive and not now that he is gone. The Salafists have always disagreed with those reforms and continue to demand that the Koran be literally followed including all of the barbaric crap which ISIS and similar groups now follow.
Read up on that period as it may help you improve your understanding. As I have repeatedly said, nonmuslims can reach a reasonable compromise with about 1.3 billion muslims in the world but those last 200 million or so will never give up and really do want to kill or enslave every single person on Earth who is not just like them and wishing that away or ignoring it will not change anything.
Read up on that period as it may help you improve your understanding. As I have repeatedly said, nonmuslims can reach a reasonable compromise with about 1.3 billion muslims in the world but those last 200 million or so will never give up and really do want to kill or enslave every single person on Earth who is not just like them and wishing that away or ignoring it will not change anything.
Okay...so what is a reasonable solution?
A literal reading of ANY religious text can lead to some wild conclusions, and if a person is devout enough, there's no telling what lengths they'll go to. Following the Old Testament literally will have a lot of people stoned to death for some innocuous activities. As I'm sure a literal interpretation of the Koran has some pretty backward shit in there that people in the 21st century should reject, but don't because that's how they're brought up and that's all they know.
But what is the solution? Genocide of "200 million people" is not possible nor is it permissible. Ghettos and internment only breeds more contempt over time. What to do that will stamp it out once and for all?
A literal reading of ANY religious text can lead to some wild conclusions, and if a person is devout enough, there's no telling what lengths they'll go to. Following the Old Testament literally will have a lot of people stoned to death for some innocuous activities. As I'm sure a literal interpretation of the Koran has some pretty backward shit in there that people in the 21st century should reject, but don't because that's how they're brought up and that's all they know.
But what is the solution? Genocide of "200 million people" is not possible nor is it permissible. Ghettos and internment only breeds more contempt over time. What to do that will stamp it out once and for all?
Fox seems to mix a few facts (just enough to make it sound plausable) with a whole lot of opinion, conjecture, and ideological spin. The result is highly deceptive but what makes it most dangerous is that there usually is a small kernel of truth covered with all that bunk.
Thus fact check, find out what is fact and what is fiction, cross check it with more factual sources, but don't just always dismiss the whole thing out of hand just because of the source. I do not watch Fox and prefer to read the fact checking sites or more reliable foreign sources then look into the right wing stuff which gets rated as true by those fact checking websites.
A reasonable solution? I don't have one and doubt anyone else does either. If you allow for any muslim immigration you are going to get some of those 200 million with the rest. Even if you completely cut off all muslim immigration, something which would never happen, then you would still have some of the citizens who are muslims who will radicalize. It is a no win situation.
The problem is these groups really do exploit the very freedoms we hold dear to try to bring down western civilization (or at least that is their stated goal). Any effwctive security response would entail reductions in certain freedoms which most people would not support so that means we are more or less stuck accepting a certain amount of Islamic violence unless we go total mideval (which I do not advocate). It is a question of how much freedom we want to exchange for security (see the Patriot Act) which seems like a shit sandwich to me.
If you have any better ideas then I would love to hear them. The right wing response is, as we know, go fascist and deport all muslims. The danger is that would actually work but would have drastic reprocussions on how the west is viewed and seen. Sometimes people will go for simplistic solutions though especially if the left doesn't offer up any viable alternatives. Just admitting attacks will continue to periodically happen certainly is not a vote winner.
If you don't think Western imperialism has enraged much of the Middle East then I don't know what to tell you.
Really? Because they've actually put out demands in the past as to what they want people to do. Al Queda did this back in the 90s. What do YOU think is the cause? Right now it seems that you're saying since they're Muslim it's somehow what will naturally happen.
Not true. There are many, many poor folks, especially poor young men, who are converted into these groups. It's worth noting that many in ISIS right now come from the former Iraqi army, people who were at a loss as to what to do after Iraq fell thanks to Bush's invasion.
The Bible contains just as many horrific statements as the Koran does and has motivated just as many terrible acts (such as the Iraq War since Bush said the Christian God told him it was just). You seem to think that ISIS just magically appeared out of religious fundamentalism, but that's simply not the case. Without the US' invasion of Iraq and the destabilization that occurred afterwards, ISIS as we see it would not exist right now.
This does not mean there wouldn't still be crazy fundamentalists, but the West destabilizing the Middle East empowered them tenfold.
But when did Terrorism start being a common thing?
Did we have these problems in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? I know we had the thing in Munich in 1952 but what group was that? Was that an Islamist group?
Just seems after Sept. 11 a lot of this started to come to the surface, more then it had in the past, if that makes sense, or that we have become more media saturated and because of wide coverage more of these stories tend to get heard...
Just growing up in the 70s and 80s I never heard many of these kind of stories on the news..
Did we have these problems in the 50s, 60s, and 70s? I know we had the thing in Munich in 1952 but what group was that? Was that an Islamist group?
Just seems after Sept. 11 a lot of this started to come to the surface, more then it had in the past, if that makes sense, or that we have become more media saturated and because of wide coverage more of these stories tend to get heard...
Just growing up in the 70s and 80s I never heard many of these kind of stories on the news..
You never heard of the IRA?
I am an atheist so I do not have a dog in this fight but, at least for Christians (at least the main sects) all agree the old testimony is provided for background info and that the heart of Christianity is the teachings of Jesus which are found in the New Testiment. You will notice Christians tossed out most of the old Testiment restrictions (not eating pork, not wearing clothing of mixed fibers, stoning people who work on the sabbath, etc...) and not even Jews follow all the old Testiment restrictions any more. Most Muslims do and the die hards, such as the Salafists literally do. That is a massive difference which you are ignoring with your false equivalencies between various religions.
One really is more violent in its foundational text and that is just a fact. I am happy around 1.3 billion muslims ignore that and prefer the reformed version but you do have the very real problem of around 200 million who do not do so. Stop trying to pretend they are all the same.
One really is more violent in its foundational text and that is just a fact. I am happy around 1.3 billion muslims ignore that and prefer the reformed version but you do have the very real problem of around 200 million who do not do so. Stop trying to pretend they are all the same.
I would suggest looking deeper into the history of Irish independence because the original main break down was political and not religious wrt Ireland. Most of the black and tans were Irish catholics for example. Over time it became partially sectarian but it did not start out that way. The foundation was always political and not religious. Hell, just look at all the sides and factions in the Irish civil war.
Teacake was referring to Coco_pops never hearing of terrorist acts before 9/11. Not anything to do with their religious connections.
This is just apaling ignorance to claim all religions are the same. There is a hell of a lot which makes Islam more objectionable than the others and even some of our fellow liberals admit that. Here is a clip of Bill Maher on PBS which I would like you to watch.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=kg84Bhtxg6M
Hopefully we can hear less of these simple minded false equivalencies in the future.
