@hightor,
hightor wrote:
Quote:In essence he replied just as millions of Americans would: How can we make them any angrier at us?
We can't make the angry ones any more angry but we can definitely nudge some of the moderate ones over the edge.
True, but considering that there are so many angry ones, what's a few more?
More seriously and more importantly, neither the US, nor any nation should make decisions relative to its interests and especially its national security, based solely or largely on global perception and reception and that is particularly the case for those groups who represent the threat being considered.
Now this doesn't mean that such perceptions should not be considered and weighed but that is not the thrust of arguments made on the floor of Congress or network news shows where any and all policies and statements made by Republicans are "recruiting posters" for ISIS and hands are furiously wrung worrying about how "moderate" Muslims will perceive them. Of course this is largely a reflexive political argument, and that is why it should be largely ignored.
If, in fact, a policy is likely to materially increase the threat it is intended to mitigate it's, obviously, problematic, but if a temporary ban on immigrants from certain countries judged to present an extraordinary threat to our security is going to nudge moderate Muslims into the terrorist camp, I question how moderate they were to begin with, and I'm sure it could easily be replaced by any other statement or policy to anger them and drive them to violence.
I'm sure the hysteria generated by the opposition doesn't assist these borderline moderate jihadis in understanding the policy and quite pertinent fact that it doesn't apply to Muslims specifically, or all "Muslim nations," but it would be ridiculous to charge them with assisting in the recruitment of terrorists.
Quote:Unlike most of my liberal acquaintances, I'm not a big fan of immigration or refugee resettlement — not for the reasons usually cited by conservatives, however. But focusing on a particular religious group (even if restricted to a few nations) is predictably just the sort of response which courts a worldwide chorus of opprobrium.
I'm not sure what the usual conservative reasons are, but my personal view is that if we are not to be the world's police force, then we should not be it's homeless shelter either, which is to say that it is not only impossible for us to right all of the world's wrongs, so many of our efforts to do so have proven counter-productive.
As I believe you are pointing out, our geopolitical interests are always going to drive our selection of the lucky recipients of our attention which opens the door to as much criticism or more criticism than gratitude and praise. There are reasons we are focused on Syrian refugees and not any of the other oppressed and/or displace peoples of the world, and it's not because they are uniquely suffering or that their plight is worse clearly more horrific than any other.
In part, it is because, for whatever reason, the MSM had chosen to focus on the Syrian civil war and the plight of Syrian refugees more than the poor wretches in the Congo or Tibet. In this regard, I think they were led by the nose by politicians who have an interest in highlighting Syria and Muslim refugees, but their readers and viewers tend to react only to what is served up to them and not inclined to a) dig any deeper into the matter than the photo of a drowned young boy on a European beach or b) invest much effort in learning about those parts of the world not spotlighted by the MSM, but in which people are suffering as much as Syrians. This isn't necessarily a criticism. People have their own lives to live and their own suffering to endure. There is nothing inherently wrong with immediately responding with compassion to the plight of suffering human beings. It should be said though that a great many of these "everyday" Americans are quite happy to use their
compassion as a tribal cudgel.
Quote:No, personally I wouldn't think that. Islam isn't that kind of belief system. Its doctrines are too obscure, too wedded to a mythologized 7th Century nomadic culture. There's no tradition of "higher criticism" and critical study of the religion's origins has been suppressed. Indoctrinated with the idea that God is beyond all comprehension and trained to ritual submission, there's no place for independent critical thinking. The sense of pride and honor you describe doesn't grow out of an individual's sense of growth, stoic virtue, or personal achievement but solely from belonging to a group and conforming to its doctrines.
If the West were really serious about defanging radical Islam it could ignore individual Muslims and work instead to delegitimize the faith itself. Remnants of paganism could be exposed, revisionist critiques could be applied to the early history of the faith, psychologists could describe and deconstruct its interior logic, Hollywood could produce movies featuring apostate heroes, comedians could lampoon the notion of angelic messengers or Divine Will. The Mission: Make Islam Irrelevant! I only see one big drawback to this sort of cultural campaign: people could just as easily use similar stones of fact and logic against the glass cathedral of Christendom. Ooops!
Of course the question to which you responded was both rhetorical and sarcastic.
I don't buy the myth of a culture underpinned by pride and honor. Those qualities are not unique to any specific group or more or less important to them than to others, but it is a myth that it tossed around all of the time, just as the myth of ummat al-Islamiyah is too. The latter may be aspirational, but the only evidence of it's application I see, is the way so many Muslims seem to be comfortable with the notion of not treating infidels with the same principles of justice and compassion, ostensibly, afforded other Muslims.
Your suggestion on how the West might defeat radical Islam might be effective but it has already been tried on Christianity with mixed results. However, unlike with Christianity, the Left's uproar would be thunderous and anyone trying it would become the new recruitment agent for ISIS, and the next attack on an American consulate in the Middle East or North Africa would be blamed on any "anti-Muslim" video, film or book used in the effort.
Just look at the crap Bill Maher has taken for doing to Islam what he has done, with great applause from the Left, to Christianity.
