 |
|
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
|
| Post subject: |  |
|
^
Everyone is an amateur Koran quoter except for the few islamic scholars who've done the detailed work, and even then the scope for interpretation is massive for how it's written.
Mohammed was a scattered ****, started off semi sensible (for a bloke who decided to declare himself the last Jewish prophet) and worked on similar stuff to the bible, then overtime (and conquest) his tone changed a lot and his words became a manifesto for conquest and war.
Problem is, it's not written chronologically. Where 2 parts conflict, the piece written last wins, but the casual reader has NFI which is which. So, so called scholars and Mullahs can quote passages with almost zero fear of contradiction.
if you read it, keep in mind the history. If two parts conflict, odds on the more violent one was the more recent and therefore wins.
_________________
Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
 |
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| In the Universe we know. |
|
|
|
|
Mountains Magpie
Joined: 01 Mar 2005
Location: Somewhere between now and then
|
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| stui magpie wrote: | ^
Everyone is an amateur Koran quoter except for the few islamic scholars who've done the detailed work, and even then the scope for interpretation is massive for how it's written.
Mohammed was a scattered ****, started off semi sensible (for a bloke who decided to declare himself the last Jewish prophet) and worked on similar stuff to the bible, then overtime (and conquest) his tone changed a lot and his words became a manifesto for conquest and war.
Problem is, it's not written chronologically. Where 2 parts conflict, the piece written last wins, but the casual reader has NFI which is which. So, so called scholars and Mullahs can quote passages with almost zero fear of contradiction.
if you read it, keep in mind the history. If two parts conflict, odds on the more violent one was the more recent and therefore wins. |
Even the semi-sensible stuff is pretty barbarous. The core of Islam and Christianity are the words of Muhammad and Christ. If you read both as ethical manifestoes, one is full of bloodthirsty injunctions and bribes of sensuality, and the other majors on words like love, forgiveness, peace and redemption. I don't particularly believe in gods, but the words are the words. The present terror bears a relationship to the ethics being read closely by many young men. Those ethics validate their testosterone soaked impulses in the worst possible way.
To dismiss the words because it takes a professional to wrest them away from their manifest meaning is not really fair dealing.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| Mugwump wrote: | | David wrote: | The War on Iraq and 9/11 were part of a chain of events going back decades. The important point, of course, is that the Iraq War was not in any sense a relevant, useful or necessary response to those attacks – it was an unprovoked attack that destabilised the country and region for a decade and counting. While Al-Qaeda were operating before and after, their attacks on the West were petering out by the end of the last decade. Then the Syrian civil war happened, jihadists found a new flashpoint to rally around, and a fairly minor player in that war named Islamic State became a new focal point by invading a weakened Iraq and declaring a caliphate — something that most analysts agree would never have happened if the US hadn't disbanded Saddam's army. And that's when the terror attacks in the West started happening again.
One thing I really wish people would understand – the amateur Koran-quoters most of all – is that terrorism comes and goes in waves.
Why is it that the IRA stopped bombing England? What happened to militant leftists like the Baader-Meinhof group? Does anyone even remember today that there was a radical Jewish group in the US committing terrorist acts in the 1980s?
The IRA didn't get what they want, and neither were they defeated in any meaningful sense. Northern Ireland is still under the sovereignty of the UK. With the neoliberal order dominating the continent, European far-leftists would seem to have far more reason to engage in extremist violence now, but they don't. The Jewish Defence League are still in existence, but haven't committed a terrorist attack in years.
My theory is that radical political violence needs something unified to rally around. When that goes – whether it's the result of external cultural change, or the loss of charismatic leaders, or group divisions, or a loss of faith in the cause and its ability to achieve its aims – the terrorism stops too. This is what happened with Al-Qaeda, and I suspect it's what will happen with ISIS after they are defeated in Iraq and Syria. There may be other successful international jihadist groups in future, or there may not. What seems certain to me is that we are in the middle of a wave and that it will pass.
But the far-right politicians and their supporters who want everyone to believe that the West is at war with Islam, not Islamist jihadism, play into the hands of the ISIS narrative. By giving that group credibility, they ensure this wave will take a little longer to end, and by doing so they endanger us all. |
David, you have tried this "it will pass" line before, on the basis that the IRA and BaaderMeinhof both passed. Militant Islam is nothing like those two movements, in its aims, its history, its geographic scale, methods, religious nature and its sheer complexity. It really is rather unique. So if it seems certain to you that it will pass, I'd say your sense of "certainty" is numinous indeed. Even if it does pass, of course, there may well be hundreds of thousands of innocent lives lost.
As for "amateur" Koran quoters, I presume that's a term for someone who quotes what the Koran actually says. So when evidence is produced and quoted perfectly correctly, it's "amateur". Right. |
All of the aforementioned groups were unique and had very different aims and methods, and the same goes for the various groups within the category "militant Islam". Hamas, Chechen separatists and ISIS are all Islamic groups that engage in terrorist activity, but they are completely different organisations with different methodologies.
I'm puzzled that some continue to assert that terrorism is some intrinsic part of Islam when terrorism in the Muslim world has only really existed for about 70 years and the international Islamist terrorism we're dealing with today only really got going in the 1980s. So, what suggests to you that this kind of terrorism is somehow inherent to Islam and isn't eventually going to die out? Perhaps this wave of violence will have more staying power than I expect, but I have no doubt it is a wave.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_terrorism
| Skids wrote: |
What about Poland... nobody seems to want to acknowkedge that NO refugees = NO terrorism  |
The kind of attacks we're seeing nowadays do seem to be mostly perpetrated by people who consider themselves Muslims, so it shouldn't be overly surprising that a country with a negligible Muslim population has no Islamist terrorist activity. Whether that's a good reason for them to perpetuate their closed-border policy is another question, and it's totally irrelevant to anything we might choose to do here.
(Ironically, the influx of Polish immigrants in the UK was one of the main reasons Brexit happened. Hatred of foreigners works in funny ways. But that's another matter.)
You can look at this as a matter of determined percentages – i.e. x% of a given Muslim population will have terroristic leanings, therefore a country with a 2% of population of Muslims will have 2 attacks, a country with 5% will have 5 attacks and so on – but that's not how it works. The key variables at the end of the day are always going to be things like socioeconomics, social cohesion, in-group monitoring and national security. Aggressive rhetoric, as most people who actually work in this area have been telling us since day one, is actively counterproductive to those aims.
If, on the other hand, you're starting to fantasise about ideas like mass deportation, immigration bans or internment, you're going to cause far more human misery and suffering than 100 terrorist attacks. And even if you did pursue such extremist policy, you wouldn't even have the certainty that we'd made ourselves safe; how could you know for a fact that there'd never be another Martin Bryant or Anders Breivik, or a new wave of some other form of terrorism? So, no, cautious policy continues to be smart policy. The fact that we haven't had a major terrorist attack on our shores so far should be something to celebrate – let's all hope it stays that way.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Last edited by David on Wed Jun 07, 2017 10:25 pm; edited 4 times in total |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| I am glad we agree. |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^. No, the fact that many immigrants were Polish had effectively nothing to do with it.
There is negligible "hatred" of immigrants or foreigners in the U.K., but there is justified concern from 50% of the population that Britian's infrastructure and services are stretched by the sheer number of immigrants from many parts of Europe, and the fact that crime from Albanian and Bulgarian immigrants has been noticeable. There was also deep misgiving at the fact tthat Britain was disproportionately a target for for Eu immigration Because of its traditions of tolerance and the fact that everyone's other language is English, but our EU "partners" were uncompromising about the problem in pursuit of their integrationist ideological goals.
Poles are generally liked as good, hard and skilled workers, and our historic allies.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
Fair enough that you form that view on reading these. I have no doubt that there were a few ugly human beings whose tiny, thuggish brains switched to social harassment. I suspect it was happening before the referendum as well. We see this in every society. I hope they were rounded up and severely dealt with. They certainly don't represent 99.9% of British views and they had no causal influence on the 17 million who voted for Brexit.
_________________
Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Wed Jun 07, 2017 11:52 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
|
|
|
Skids 
Quitting drinking will be one of the best choices you make in your life.
Joined: 11 Sep 2007
Location: Joined 3/6/02 . Member #175
|
| Post subject: | |
|
You're right, that was a stupid post.
_________________
Don't count the days, make the days count.
Last edited by Skids on Thu Jun 08, 2017 7:57 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
|
David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
|
| Post subject: | |
|
That post isn't really worthy of a serious response.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
| Post subject: | |
|
^ modern Islamic terrorism is born of technology and globalization, which has made the Muslim concept of the Ummah very present. Muslims believe via the Koran and in the Mosques that their loyalty to the Ummah transcends loyalty to their nation. Technology makes this visible and real to many, in a way that it was not in the past.
So if you see this passing, you'd have to describe how this history-making cocktail of ideology and technology will pass to make a potentially successful argument. History is not static, so a logic which models its trajectory on the IRA strikes me as weak.
_________________
Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
| Post subject: | |
|
| What is History? |
|
|
|
|
Culprit
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
|
|
|
|
|
think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
|
| Post subject: | |
|
USA news reporting ISIS leader may be dead?
_________________
You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
You cannot attach files in this forum
You cannot download files in this forum
|
|
The Rules
FAQ
Usergroups
Calendar
Search
Log in
Register
