Is it your position that:
- all westerners will & should sit quietly by while Islamic Terrorism in the west ever increases? Do you think this is a probable outcome?
That's not my position at all. My position is that people shouldn't make Muslims feel unsafe in the countries they live in and focus on condemning the people responsible for the problem. Islam and the average Muslim are not the people responsible for the problem.
- you expect all people to trust a government that says 'they aren't muslims'...when they've been muslim all their lives?
I don't care if the government calls them Muslims or not. It's a matter of perspective. I care that Muslim as a label isn't seen as the same as a terrorist just as Christians aren't seen as the equivalent of the KKK.
- you expect all people to trust a government that can't stop terrorist attacks?
I expect that people don't kill people for being Muslim.
Trust is essential to a government dealing with this in the most effective way...and they are losing it in many demographics of society.
You think more people will trust the government if it takes to profiling Muslims?
If in your mind terrorism is just summarized into a simple minded, bigoted, brainwashed man having a bomb and trying to blow it up between the crowd, yes I admit that you see it more from radical Muslims than western people.
But the kind of terrorism that we see from west and on top of that from America, is different and by far more tricky because they can conceal the reality by their dominant media..
The discussion is too long and I am reluctant to speak about things that disconnect us rather than connect us..
It's simply a different thread.
So, you cannot attack all Muslims by attributing what radical Muslims do to Islam and when they reply you back say that's another topic.. It's simply not another topic because they are both connected to each other. One makes the other and vice versa.
So, you cannot attack all Muslims by attributing what radical Muslims do to Islam
If in your mind terrorism is just summarized into a simple minded, bigoted, brainwashed man having a bomb and trying to blow it up between the crowd, yes I admit that you see it more from radical Muslims than western people.
But the kind of terrorism that we see from west and on top of that from America, is different and by far more tricky because they can conceal the reality by their dominant media..
If you admit that bombarding airliner of a country is terrorism so let's have a search on what America did to Iran air flight 655..
If you admit that bombarding civilians is terrorism, so let's take a look at unmanned aircrafts of America in Afghanistan..
You (not you vikorr, I am generally speaking) cannot say Iran is trying to get nuclear bomb while you've built hundreds of them already and you are holding them in your warehouses and say that's another topic while that topic will never arise because your dominant media will never allow it by all the means and tricks that they know and have.
sky123 wrote:You (not you vikorr, I am generally speaking) cannot say Iran is trying to get nuclear bomb while you've built hundreds of them already and you are holding them in your warehouses and say that's another topic while that topic will never arise because your dominant media will never allow it by all the means and tricks that they know and have.
The world has agreed that the widespread possession of nuclear weapons is a very bad thing. As such they created a treaty where everyone agreed to forego nuclear weapons, and the countries who already had nuclear weapons agreed to draw down their arsenals and eliminate them.
North Korea signed the treaty and then violated it by developing nuclear weapons. However the world responded by placing very strong sanctions on them, so it can't really be said that they've gotten away with it.
Iran also signed the treaty. If they were to violate the treaty and develop nuclear weapons, and if they were allowed by the world to get away with it, it would be the end of the treaty. Anyone else who wanted nuclear weapons would just follow Iran's example and violate the treaty.
On the other hand, if Iran violated the treaty and was then subjected to very strong sanctions like with North Korea, that would preserve the treaty. Other countries that might want to violate the treaty will see that they will face strong sanctions if they violated it, and they will choose to keep complying with the treaty.
If we allow the treaty to collapse, nuclear weapons will spread around the world and it will only be a matter of time until there is a devastating nuclear war.
Even Buddhist Monks have justified violence and killed a lot of people. They are killing people right now. There’s also scripture and the theme of Compassionate Killing in Buddhist thought that support their justification for killing people. Leike Jihad, Compassionate Killing is open to interpretation.
The Upayakausalya Sutra tells the story of one of the Buddha’s former lives, where he is captaining a ship carrying five hundred merchants. One night, ocean deities come to him in a dream and identify one of the passengers as a bandit who is planning on killing the merchants. Buddha evaluates three possible actions: do nothing and allow the bandit to kill everyone; inform the merchants, who would kill the bandit and incur evil karma for murder; or kill the bandit himself.
The Buddha dwells on this ethical dilemma for seven days, trying to decide who should be murdered—apparently just locking up the bandit was not an option—and eventually decides to murder the bandit himself. In keeping with the principle of compassion, this is framed not as retribution for evil, but as compassionately sparing the bandit the horrible karmic consequences of mass murder, and allowing him to be subsequently reborn in paradise.
Even more troubling is the way this sutra distinguishes between allowing the merchants to kill the bandit in anger, and the Buddha’s murder with “great compassion” and “skillful means.” The explicit lesson here is that a truly enlightened bodhisattva is willing to do something evil in the name of a good that only he knows, but we shouldn’t be confused by this! The very fact that it is evil is a sign of his great compassion—the Buddha is generous enough to murder the bandit and endure the karmic consequences of an additional one hundred thousand aeons2 before he can become fully awakened, sparing the bandits and the merchants from evil karma.
The story is double-edged. Killing protects others from the horrific karma of killing. At Harvard in April 2009, the Dalai Lama explained that "wrathful forceful action" motivated by compassion, may be "violence on a physical level" but is "essentially nonviolence". So we must be careful to understand what "nonviolence" means. Under the right conditions, it could include killing a terrorist.
I didn't deny a link between the increase in Muslim-perpetrated terrorist attacks and growing anti-Muslim sentiment. I just think the correlation is because of ignorance and bigotry in the sense that people who resent Islam conflate terrorism done in the name of Islam with Islam.
I don’t see the ignorance in promoting love and respect.
S/he has dedicated a lot of his or her life to studying Islam and reading the Qur’an and has provided evidence that refutes many of your points about Islam, but you have still disagreed with many of sky’s objections.
I admit my ignorance in terms of both my knowledge of Islam and my ability to understand being Muslim. You too are ignorant of those things but don’t act as if you are.
And though I get that you don’t think all Muslims are terrorists, you do think (correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve misunderstood you in the past) Islam in some way lends itself to terror. This belief may not be strictly wrong, but I believe Islam lends itself to terror in the same way any principled unifying movement has the potential to. I don’t say this as a denial or apology for Islamic terrorism. I say this because of historical examples that support this idea.
If we go farther back, we know that violence in the Islamic world wasn’t greater than in other empires.
So what exactly makes violence by others less dangerous or less threatening? Because their warriors don’t yell God every time they stab the enemy?
I really don’t see how Christians who bombed abortion clinics didn’t bomb them in the name of Christianity.
Why is someone shouting “allahu akbar” while committing an act of terror such an important distinction?
You 'don't deny'...you just have been previously writing your statements to avoid actually agreeing - you skirt around the issue. Even here:
- the blue you are admitting the link between increasing terrorism, and increasing resentment. But at the same time,
- with the Red, you are implying that all the 'people who resent islam' already existed.
There's no ignorance whatsoever in promoting love and respect. These are good things (unless you are loving & tolerating intolerance). And yet, even here....we see you skirt around, and rephrase the valid reasons I gave for ignorance. Which were:
- a lack of knowledge about: the Quran, the Haddiths, the history of Jihad, the theological foundations of Jihad etc.
It is a very fractured religion, in terms of beliefs. Many things she believes, many other Muslims strongly disagree with. Many Sunni, and particularly the Wahhabis, go so far as to call her an unbeliever. Activist Islamists tend to call everyone else unbelievers too.
There are plenty of aspects of the religion that I am ignorant of. Your issue is one that you fall for frequently:
- you think talking about an portion = talking about all. This is simply and utterly, illogical.
Yet you apply this to me talking about the Muslims who commit terrorism in the name of Islam to me somehow equating this with me talking all Muslims. You equate me talking about / having knowledge of the violent aspects of the religion, with me claiming to know about every aspect of the religion (which of course I never have)
Perhaps you need to look at why you are engaging in the behaviour you have exhibited in the past few posts to me (the behaviour I keep pointing out)
As a note, I use 'White Supremacist Skinhead' not to equate Muslims with them, but because people understand WSS ideology as intolerant. And as each concept can be judged on it's own merits (as well as part of a whole), if you found those concepts disturbing for White Skinhead Supremacists, it would require double standards to not find it disturbing in the Quran.
In no way does that show my ignorance of Islam.
Since you’ve pointed out my ignorance without knowing whether I have or haven’t studied the Qur’an or my experiences in Muslim communities, I’d like to point out yours. sky123, a person whom you respect as far as I can tell, is a Muslim. S/he has dedicated a lot of his or her life to studying Islam and reading the Qur’an and has provided evidence that refutes many of your points about Islam, but you have still disagreed with many of sky’s objections.
I was pointing out that the knowledge you apparently have (of the violent aspects of the religion) is not sound. You're not a scholar who has dedicated the time necessary to truly understanding Islam in relation to the Qur'an. You don't speak Arabic.
I don't believe that Islam lends itself to terror any more than other principled movements.
Again, you have assumed I know nothing about the Qur'an or Ahadith.
You compared the Qur'an to the White Supremacist Skinhead handbook, if that exists.
I am very much aware of the intolerance expressed in parts of the Qur'an and the Ahadith, as I am aware of the intolerance expressed in the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy, God calls for the mass killing of Canaanites. You however have decided to ignore intolerance in other religion, and compare pluralistic Islam and its complex text, the Qur'an, to White Supremacy which has one clear objective.
Again, you have assumed I know nothing about the Qur'an or Ahadith.
Again, stop trying to have me talking about all of the Quran/Hadith, when I am addressing a portion. In the area I am talking about I assume you know little or less, yes. Your responses don't show knowledge of it.
