Manhattan explosion

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by ddt

There are two different, related problems. The first is that ISIS has conquered vast parts of Syria and Iraq and has instituted an Islamist terror regime there. The second is that some Muslims in the West feel attracted to ISIS' ideology and either try to get to Syria to join ISIS, or plan and commit terror attacks in their home countries. These radicalized form a small part of the Muslim communities in the West, and they're invariably late teens or twens, and second generation immigrants. That is what happens, and, frankly, I don't understand why that happens either.

It happens because Islam is incompatible with the society around them, so they face a dilemma: their religion or the society around them. Invariably some will choose religion. We call those "radicalized", and the rest "secular".

We have radicalized Christians too in our midst. In some countries they even conduct terror attacks, usually against abortion clinics. The difference is that these people are an actual aberration, an actual tiny minority, whereas in Muslims they're a very substantial minority.

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But the vast, vast majority of Western Muslims are against this. Their clerics speak against it; these youngsters typically don't get radicalized in their local mosque, but online. Their parents are against it; often they don't know about it until it's too late, and they're aghast when they find out. There are legion stories of parents going to the police saying "my son wants to join ISIS, please stop him". Look at the figures in the link Aisha posted: 26% of the jihadists that the American security services track, have been tipped off by family or their community.

Look at the figures from a different perspective: in almost 3/4 of cases, the family or their community ignored the warning signs. This isn't evidence a "vast majority" is against it. All evidence points out that there are four groups - radicals, those who agree with radicals but don't actively help them, those that disagree with radicals but don't actively hinder them, and those who are against the radicals and proactive in it.
According to the best numbers this last group amounts to 20-30%, there are 5-15% of radicals, and the other two groups fill out the rest.
None of the groups amounts to a "vast majority". Chances are not one group amounts to anything more than a plurality.

If there was an actual "vast majority" of people who actively hinder the radicals, Islamic terrorism in the West would happen significantly less frequently than Christian terrorism does, simply because Muslims are outnumbered by Christians from 10:1 to 100:1, depending on the country. We can chalk up some of the difference to other factors, but in the case of the United States, we're talking about 1-2 orders of magnitude of difference, which can be accounted for with, well, 'misinterpretations' that passages like:

Sahih Bukhari, 1:2:24: Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform a that, then they save their lives an property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."

mean that Mohamed has been commanded to fight non-Muslims until they convert to Islam, when it's obviously an account of utmost tolerance of unbelievers by Islam.

/sarcasm

There are passages like these all over Hadith and other Islamic holy texts. Seriously what's the reason why they aren't a problem? Because not all Muslims agree with them or something?

McHrozni

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

It happens because Islam is incompatible with the society around them, so they face a dilemma: their religion or the society around them. Invariably some will choose religion. We call those "radicalized", and the rest "secular".

Except, as I've already pointed out to you (twice now) the terrorists target their recruiting efforts towards people who know the least about their religion and specifically avoid the more devout, because the more religious the person is the more resistant they are to the Jihadists' message.

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Look at the figures from a different perspective: in almost 3/4 of cases, the family or their community ignored the warning signs.

Or there were no warning signs to see (or no family to see them): Jihadists target the isolated and disaffected for recruitment.

That number isn't "1/4 of families/communities don't ignore warning signs, while 3/4 do", it's "of all the jihadists being watched by authorities for whatever reason, more than 1/4 are on that list because their families/communities alerted those authorities".

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If there was an actual "vast majority" of people who actively hinder the radicals, Islamic terrorism in the West would happen significantly less frequently than Christian terrorism does, simply because Muslims are outnumbered by Christians from 10:1 to 100:1, depending on the country.

It does. That's why you've had to focus on things like death counts instead of number of incidents.

[Darth Rotor]

Originally Posted by cullennz

You should probably read up on terrorists

Start with the IRA

Suggest you clue up.

[Noztradamus]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Precisely, and thank you.

What exactly is the upside of not offending them anyway?

McHrozni

They might kill you last

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by A'isha

Except, as I've already pointed out to you (twice now) the terrorists target their recruiting efforts towards people who know the least about their religion and specifically avoid the more devout, because the more religious the person is the more resistant they are to the Jihadists' message.

And as I've pointed out to you at least twice now, this isn't because of some inherent quality of the religion, but rather that someone without strong preconceived notions about the religion is much easier to convince.

Look at your own 'arguments' as to why Islam isn't a problem and try to look at it from the outside if you can. "I don't interpret it in this way, so it's not a problem" isn't a convincing argument. It's not even an argument, it's a mere assertion based on personal opinion, nothing more.

Quote:

That number isn't "1/4 of families/communities don't ignore warning signs, while 3/4 do", it's "of all the jihadists being watched by authorities for whatever reason, more than 1/4 are on that list because their families/communities alerted those authorities".

And in the remaining 3/4 of cases this didn't happen. Conceivably that's partially because the warning signs are what we'd consider piety in a different religion, and to some extent because a significant proportion of Muslims actually consider killing the kaffir to be virtuous, they just don't want the non-spiritual baggage that comes with it (permanent vacation in Cuba et.al.). Yet you still claim the religion is not to blame, a claim I find progressively more laughable with every new silly excuse you attempt to make.

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It does. That's why you've had to focus on things like death counts instead of number of incidents.

There are many factors that are important - total number of plots, number of plots that come to fruition, number of perpetrators and body count are among them. The number of plots that come to fruition you solely focus on is certainly the least important of the them, not least because law enforcement is more effective if there are many incidents from one particular group.

For example:

Citing research from his institution, Major noted “114 plots or 77 percent of them are self-identified Caliphate plots,” and “about 20 percent” are groups such as “neo-Nazis, anarchists, the anti-government groups.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...has-escalated/

The number of plots is obviously much more important than the number of plots that succeed, simply because Police is much better at tackling predictable threats than unpredictable ones, for reasons I hope are obvious. Muslims are responsible for over 3/4 of all tracked terror plots in the US, while amounting to only 1% of population. The difference isn't just significant, it's staggering.

However you will, of course, cherry pick the data, focus solely on successful plots where the difference is smaller (but still significant) and pretend the evidence for Islam being a part of the problem doesn't exist.

In a related matter, I noticed you completely ignored the Hadith I quoted. Why is that? Because you think it's been mistranslated or something? You tend to dismiss such evidence without ever giving a compelling reason to do so, which I don't find particularly convincing.

McHrozni

[smartcooky]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

The number of plots is obviously much more important than the number of plots that succeed, simply because Police is much better at tackling predictable threats than unpredictable ones, for reasons I hope are obvious. Muslims are responsible for over 3/4 of all tracked terror plots in the US, while amounting to only 1% of population. The difference isn't just significant, it's staggering

And the implications are more than just staggering, because that 75% of all terrorist plots being tracked is not being planned by the whole 1% of Muslims living in the US, but by a just small part of that 1%. The disproportionality defies belief.

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by smartcooky

And the implications are more than just staggering, because that 75% of all terrorist plots being tracked is not being planned by the whole 1% of Muslims living in the US, but by a just small part of that 1%. The disproportionality defies belief.

Well yes, but the same is true for the remaining 99%. The 23% of plots by 99% of population is also conducted by a very, very tiny minority of the 99%. All evidence suggests this minority is proportionally significantly smaller than the small part of that 1%, which is where the 77-fold difference in the number of plots comes from.

Overall this shows Islam increases the danger of terrorism by approximately two orders of magnitude, and the increased focus of law enforcement and intelligence agencies on Islamic terrorists reduces that by approximately one order of magnitude.

A'isha, alongside many others, completely ignores the textual evidence that strongly supports the observational data and tries to use the cherry-picked observational data to conclude Islam is not a source of problems. I the approach find rather ridiculous. Does she want to end up in a gas chamber, I wonder? Because this is where the whole thing will end if the problem with Islam is not tackled before it escalates beyond control. Burkini bans were already quite popular, even though it was a stupid, counter-productive policy. Even westerners have a tolerance limit, and since that limit is generally much higher than elsewhere, consequences of reaching it will also be much more severe. The only way to prevent that is to change Islam into something radically different than it is. It can still be called Islam and involve pilgrimage to touch a meteorite in Arabia, as the pagan cultist tradition dictates and so on, but it also needs to excise the parts that make it problematic completely and permanently if the catastrophe is to be avoided.

McHrozni

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

And as I've pointed out to you at least twice now, this isn't because of some inherent quality of the religion, but rather that someone without strong preconceived notions about the religion is much easier to convince.

If someone who doesn't have strong preconceived notions about the religion is much easier to convince to turn to jihadism than someone who is strongly versed in that religion, then it's pretty clearly not the religion itself that's to blame.

Quote:

Look at your own 'arguments' as to why Islam isn't a problem and try to look at it from the outside if you can. "I don't interpret it in this way, so it's not a problem" isn't a convincing argument. It's not even an argument, it's a mere assertion based on personal opinion, nothing more.

If your "interpretation" were correct, than we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing regarding jihadist recruiting techniques, we'd be seeing the opposite.

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And in the remaining 3/4 of cases this didn't happen. Conceivably that's partially because the warning signs are what we'd consider piety in a different religion, and to some extent because a significant proportion of Muslims actually consider killing the kaffir to be virtuous, they just don't want the non-spiritual baggage that comes with it (permanent vacation in Cuba et.al.).

Conceivable to you, sure, but your speculations already contradict observable reality regarding devoutness vs. recruitment by jihadists.

Quote:

Citing research from his institution, Major noted “114 plots or 77 percent of them are self-identified Caliphate plots,” and “about 20 percent” are groups such as “neo-Nazis, anarchists, the anti-government groups.”

http://freebeacon.com/national-secur...has-escalated/

A "security briefing" [EDIT: with no data, methodology, or anything else] given at the International Spy Museum to the Washington Free Beacon by a for-profit "think tank" that not only pushes conspiracy theories that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the Obama Administration, but also peddles "spycraft-themed excursions" such as SpyCruise and SpyRetreat, co-sponsored by crackpot Paul Vallely. Oh, and like every good counterterrorist research organization, they have an official Cafepress site where you can buy T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and beer steins.

Yeah, you're going to have to find a better source than that.

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The number of plots is obviously much more important than the number of plots that succeed, simply because Police is much better at tackling predictable threats than unpredictable ones, for reasons I hope are obvious. Muslims are responsible for over 3/4 of all tracked terror plots in the US, while amounting to only 1% of population. The difference isn't just significant, it's staggering.

However you will, of course, cherry pick the data, focus solely on successful plots where the difference is smaller (but still significant) and pretend the evidence for Islam being a part of the problem doesn't exist.

Earlier this year I linked you to Europol's Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, which tallies not just successful attacks, but failed and foiled attacks as well. From 2006 through 2013, there were 2680 failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks in the EU, with 17 of them (or 0.6% of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired. 2111 of them (or 78.7%) were separatist attacks (Northern Irish, Basque, etc.).

Quote:

In a related matter, I noticed you completely ignored the Hadith I quoted. Why is that? Because you think it's been mistranslated or something? You tend to dismiss such evidence without ever giving a compelling reason to do so, which I don't find particularly convincing.

Mainly because it's off-topic for this thread, and I've already plaued dueling scripture quotations with you and tried telling you what Muslims believe about that. If you want to ignore what Muslims actually believe and prefer to stick to your own personal interpretation instead, you go right ahead and don't let me stop you.

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Does she want to end up in a gas chamber, I wonder?

You know, if I'm the one being told to back off my opinions on a message board or I risk being put in a gas chamber when the inevitable genocide against Muslims comes, maybe it's not my ideology that's the problem here.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by A'isha

If someone who doesn't have strong preconceived notions about the religion is much easier to convince to turn to jihadism than someone who is strongly versed in that religion, then it's pretty clearly not the religion itself that's to blame.

Excuse me, but how does that follow?

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by Argumemnon

Excuse me, but how does that follow?

Because if "Islam" were the necessary and sufficient component, jihadist recruiters wouldn't be avoiding already-knowledgeable and devout Muslims in favor of targeting those who are the least knowledgeable and devout: if it were, knowledge of and adherence to Islam would directly correlate with likelihood to follow a jihadist path (ie, the more Muslim you are, the more likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling), and recruiters would be focusing their efforts on those who are the most religious.

Instead, what we see is an inverse correlation: the less Muslim you are, it seems, the more likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling (and the more Muslim you are, the less likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling). That's why jihadists try to recruit those who know the least about the religion and who are the least devout, and specifically warn recruiters off from trying to recruit those who are the most religious.

Obviously, being more Muslim is not any kind of inoculation against jihadism, but it's pretty clear that being more Muslim is not any kind of driver towards jihadism, contrary to what you'd expect if it were Islam itself that were the necessary and sufficient component.

[Belz...]

Thank you for the explanation.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

It happens because Islam is incompatible with the society around them, so they face a dilemma: their religion or the society around them. Invariably some will choose religion. We call those "radicalized", and the rest "secular".

Really? Not a Fundamentalist, anti-intellectual wing of Islam, but Islam itself?

I have several Muslim colleagues (most Sunni, and a few Shia). I can think of one whose actions often worry me - but only because they involve him trying to commit us to technologically risky projects for customers or wants us to give him very short timescales with no slack for mistakes.

The others? I am no more worried by them than I am by the small group of devout Christians at work (they have had joint Bible/Koran studies before now, not my thing, but I am aware of it).

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by A'isha

If someone who doesn't have strong preconceived notions about the religion is much easier to convince to turn to jihadism than someone who is strongly versed in that religion, then it's pretty clearly not the religion itself that's to blame.

I'm sure you'd agree that I have strong preconceived notions about Islam. Therefore either you need to acknowledge me as an authority on the matter, or else admit your baloney attempt at switching the argument is intellectually dishonest to the point of ridicule.

Would you like to try again maybe?

Quote:

If your "interpretation" were correct, than we wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing regarding jihadist recruiting techniques, we'd be seeing the opposite.

Would you care to base this on something other than proof by assertion? I'm all ears.

Well, eyes technically, but you know what I mean.

Quote:

Earlier this year I linked you to Europol's Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, which tallies not just successful attacks, but failed and foiled attacks as well. From 2006 through 2013, there were 2680 failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks in the EU, with 17 of them (or 0.6% of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired. 2111 of them (or 78.7%) were separatist attacks (Northern Irish, Basque, etc.).

Again with the cherry-picking, I see.

Here's a quote from the 2013 report, for example:

A continuous increase in the number of arrests for religiously inspired terrorism has been observed since 2011, whereas arrests for separatist terrorism have significantly decreased.

Not surprisingly, the 2016 report has a whole section on Jihadis. Why?

Because according to page 44 of the report, out of 104 attack in 2015 with a specified source, 17 were Jihadi. This is twice the percentage of Muslims in any European state, about eight times where it should be, if Islam was a random factor. One page down, on page 45, are the list of arrests. Out of 933 arrests for a specified cause, 687 were Jihadis. That's almost 3/4 of all terror arrests coming from 2% of population - almost 40 times where it should be.

Remember when I said police is better at preventing predictable attacks? There's your reason. The low number of attacks by Jihadis is a testament of good police work, not benevolence of Islam. Not that the number of attacks is actually low, since it's still about several times of what it should be, if Islam was a non-causative factor. Remember when I said that Islam accounts for an approximately 100-fold increase in terror risk, but police work reduces it to about 10-fold? Interpol numbers confirm both numbers ... before we dive in death tolls, where Islam easily beats all other sources of terrorism combined.

So yeah, I do feel confident citing that source, given that what you consider a good source essentially confirms it.

Just so you know, above is a proven correlation between Islam and terrorism. There is also a very compelling set of mechanisms that explain that relation, namely Islamic holy texts and often historical examples, I quoted one such example in this thread. Islamic terrorists themselves further explicitly state this is why they're conducing attacks. What do you offer against that again?

Quote:

If you want to ignore what Muslims actually believe and prefer to stick to your own personal interpretation instead, you go right ahead and don't let me stop you.

If every single Muslim in the world believed Islam compelled them into receptive homosexual relations with pigs it wouldn't change the fact the Islamic scriptures say no combination of that is permissible. Please acknowledge that already.

Quote:

You know, if I'm the one being told to back off my opinions on a message board or I risk being put in a gas chamber when the inevitable genocide against Muslims comes, maybe it's not my ideology that's the problem here.

You don't risk being put in a gas chamber because of your opinions, where did you get that idea from anyway? You risk being put in a gas chamber because you (appear to) follow a religion whose greatest achievement in the past several centuries is 1001 ways to make innocent everyday objects into tools to commit mass murder, and whose followers (including you) spare no effort to defend the religion and keep it as it is while making essentially no effort to fix the glaring problems with the religion.

My comments about gas chambers are exactly as much a threat as a climatologist warning about the disastrous climate change is a threat. I actually want to spare you from that fate, but you're listening about as much as a rich oil magnate is to the climatologist. This was explained to you before. Why do you keep misrepresenting my points?

McHrozni

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by jimbob

Really? Not a Fundamentalist, anti-intellectual wing of Islam, but Islam itself?

Yes, Islam itself. I'll explain below.

Quote:

I have several Muslim colleagues (most Sunni, and a few Shia). I can think of one whose actions often worry me - but only because they involve him trying to commit us to technologically risky projects for customers or wants us to give him very short timescales with no slack for mistakes.

The others? I am no more worried by them than I am by the small group of devout Christians at work (they have had joint Bible/Koran studies before now, not my thing, but I am aware of it).

You're making the classical mistake of conflating Muslims with Islam. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes, and the majority are no more likely to commit terrorist attacks than anyone else. This is not due to effects of Islam, but rather the effects of factors other than Islam - be it human nature, culture, education or what have you. You can't judge Islam by the best of Muslims, you need to take a wider view.

This wider view must necessarily take in mind the overall successes of the Islamic civilization (generally abysmal, with a few notable but not lasting exceptions), Islamic holy texts (much of that is outright horrible), best Muslims (nothing particularly outstanding there), average Muslims (not horrible, but not great) and worst Muslims (I won't delve into describing those).

The overall score is that Islam scores poorly on many fronts and disastrously on others. There are occasional green shots, like the Islamic golden age, there are very occasional notable individuals who are Muslim and still contribute much to the society (e.g. Mohammad Abdus Salam), but these are exceptions. The norm is that Islam retards development of human civilization and humanist principles. As such it is Islam that is the problem. The only thing these examples of upstanding Muslims show us - few and very far between as they are - is that the problem of Islam is not always insurmountable. If that's the best thing you can say about an ideology then any honest judgement of the said ideology will have a strong negative slant to it.

That's how you approach judging an ideology in an organized, consistent and honest way. If it's any consolation I don't consider Islam to be the worst ideology in human history. It's in the top 10 of the list, probably also in the top 3, but I really can't say it's the worst.

You're correct in noting that some wings of Islam are worse than others. This is true for any ideology.

McHrozni

[marplots]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

(much snipped)
This wider view must necessarily take in mind the overall successes of the Islamic civilization (generally abysmal, with a few notable but not lasting exceptions), Islamic holy texts (much of that is outright horrible), best Muslims (nothing particularly outstanding there), average Muslims (not horrible, but not great) and worst Muslims (I won't delve into describing those).

I disagree in that your criteria are misplaced. If we look instead at Islam on an individual basis, the ideology fares much better, and certainly no worse than Christianity.

It may be that Islam is not a good doctrine for running a country, but so what? On an individual basis, it is quite good at resolving existential angst, providing a "life path" and building a strong family and community. It is a misapplication of western values to decry the principles embodied in Islam as primitive or against human values as if those values were set objectively. Shouldn't we rather accept that Muslims find value and purpose in it, and that is sufficient?

One only has to ask what happens when a Muslim immigrates to the west. Do they abandon their religion in the face of some objective evidence that it is shallow and misinformed? Hardly. They may modify it to fit the circumstances, but I doubt the faithful are leaving their Korans at the customs booth.

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by marplots

I disagree in that your criteria are misplaced. If we look instead at Islam on an individual basis, the ideology fares much better, and certainly no worse than Christianity.

If you discount the possibility of becoming a human bomb, I take it?

Quote:

It may be that Islam is not a good doctrine for running a country, but so what? On an individual basis, it is quite good at resolving existential angst, providing a "life path" and building a strong family and community. It is a misapplication of western values to decry the principles embodied in Islam as primitive or against human values as if those values were set objectively.

I daresay resolving personal angst comes secondary to living a life worth living to begin with. In fact, the latter is a major contributor to having the said angst in the first place.

Furthermore, I fail to see how Islam is so good at resolving angst, when there are way more Muslims who devote their lives to killing others for a chance at paradise than there are in other religions. I'm sure some make it, but given the bad results on the other side I wouldn't call Islam to be particularly good at this.

Islam is objectively against human values, if you define them as:
civility, respect, consideration; honesty, fairness, loyalty, sharing, solidarity; openness, listening, welcoming, acceptance, recognition, appreciation; brotherhood, friendship, empathy, compassion, love, and furthermore request these are met without preconditions. You see, Islam has a precondition: you need to be a Muslim male for the human values to apply to you. If you're an infidel or a female then screw you. Literately in some cases.

Ayat al-Baqarah 2:223: Your women are your tilth (to cultivate), so come into your tillage how you choose; (...)

Needless to say, criticizing this is no misappropriation of Western values. Equality for all, regardless of their religion or gender or anything else you are unable to change about yourself is the overreaching human value. Yes, it started in the West, and it is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization, but so is the very idea of human value.

Quote:

One only has to ask what happens when a Muslim immigrates to the west. Do they abandon their religion in the face of some objective evidence that it is shallow and misinformed? Hardly. They may modify it to fit the circumstances, but I doubt the faithful are leaving their Korans at the customs booth.

Most people don't take religion very seriously and this applies to Muslims as well. I struggle to see how the fact not all Muslims take Islam seriously absolves Islam of guilt it has for, among other things, inciting violence.

McHrozni

[smartcooky]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

You're making the classical mistake of conflating Muslims with Islam. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes, and the majority are no more likely to commit terrorist attacks than anyone else. This is not due to effects of Islam, but rather the effects of factors other than Islam - be it human nature, culture, education or what have you. You can't judge Islam by the best of Muslims, you need to take a wider view.

Yes.

Judging Islam by the best of Muslims is rather like judging Christianity by the Salvation Army, or the whole of Catholicism by St Vincent De Paul!

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by smartcooky

Judging Islam by the best of Muslims is rather like judging Christianity by the Salvation Army, or the whole of Catholicism by St Vincent De Paul!

Yup. I wouldn't recommend that either. Comparison between Islam and Christianity invariably comes to comparing the best of Islam with the worst of Christianity. Islam comes marginally ahead in that case.

Comparing the Salvation Army to Boko Haram yields results that are a bit more one-sided, but the logic is only as flawed as when comparing Islam during the Islamic golden age to the Inquisition. The former is widely agreed to be absurd, the latter standard practice.

An average westerner has a far better opinion about Islam than it ever deserved.

McHrozni

[Belgian thought]

Judging from various threads there seems to be common theme.

1.) If you are not from religion x, y or z or are not a believer of religion x, y or z you cannot criticise it because you do not know enough about religion x, y or z.

2.) If you are a believer of religion x, y or z but you do not know enough about religion x, y or z - you blow people up.

Good stuff this religion.

[smartcooky]

Originally Posted by Belgian thought

Judging from various threads there seems to be common theme.

1.) If you are not from religion x, y or z or are not a believer of religion x, y or z you cannot criticise it because you do not know enough about religion x, y or z.

2.) If you are a believer of religion x, y or z but you do not know enough about religion x, y or z - you blow people up.

Good stuff this religion.

Harsh, but fair!

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by smartcooky

Harsh, but fair stupid!

FTFY.

Belgian thought does not make it clear exactly which "various threads" he is referring to, but if he meant threads on this board then I defy him to find anyone sanctioning "blow[ing] people up" for any reason justified by their beliefs in any of the ones discussing terrorist bombing.

In other words, pure straw. (Well maybe not so pure. It seems to be heavily adulterated with bull feces.)

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by quadraginta

FTFY.

Belgian thought does not make it clear exactly which "various threads" he is referring to, but if he meant threads on this board then I defy him to find anyone sanctioning "blow[ing] people up" for any reason justified by their beliefs in any of the ones discussing terrorist bombing.

In other words, pure straw. (Well maybe not so pure. It seems to be heavily adulterated with bull feces.)

I think you misunderstood his point 2. It's a statement of fact, not a permission to do it.

McHrozni

[marplots]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

If you discount the possibility of becoming a human bomb, I take it?

I missed the part in the Koran where it instructs people to become human bombs. Is this in a later edition?

Originally Posted by McHrozni

I daresay resolving personal angst comes secondary to living a life worth living to begin with. In fact, the latter is a major contributor to having the said angst in the first place.

Hardly. It's a common enough theme: "The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates. It's quite normal to seek meaning.

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Furthermore, I fail to see how Islam is so good at resolving angst, when there are way more Muslims who devote their lives to killing others for a chance at paradise than there are in other religions. I'm sure some make it, but given the bad results on the other side I wouldn't call Islam to be particularly good at this.

Again, you would have to show that the purpose of the religion is to do that, rather than being something some adherents of the religion do. For example, there is a theme in Christianity called "prosperity theology" which adopts the idea that belief in Jesus comes with wealth attached. It's not a common theme and certainly not a defining characteristic of Christianity. However, there are easily thousands of adherents to that particular idea.

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Islam is objectively against human values, if you define them as:
civility, respect, consideration; honesty, fairness, loyalty, sharing, solidarity; openness, listening, welcoming, acceptance, recognition, appreciation; brotherhood, friendship, empathy, compassion, love, and furthermore request these are met without preconditions. You see, Islam has a precondition: you need to be a Muslim male for the human values to apply to you. If you're an infidel or a female then screw you. Literately in some cases.

Ayat al-Baqarah 2:223: Your women are your tilth (to cultivate), so come into your tillage how you choose; (...)

I'm surprised Muslims haven't noticed they are objectively against human values. Someone should point this out to them.

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Needless to say, criticizing this is no misappropriation of Western values. Equality for all, regardless of their religion or gender or anything else you are unable to change about yourself is the overreaching human value. Yes, it started in the West, and it is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization, but so is the very idea of human value.

Equality for children? The insane? Criminals? The lines we don't spot are the lines we grew up with - they seem normal and "right." Do we get to apply the label "human values" because Muslims are, at their core, not human?

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Most people don't take religion very seriously and this applies to Muslims as well. I struggle to see how the fact not all Muslims take Islam seriously absolves Islam of guilt it has for, among other things, inciting violence.

McHrozni

This is silly. Muslims doing nonviolent Muslim stuff aren't taking it seriously? I guess if you get to define the religion to fit your argument, the argument is won before it starts.

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

I'm sure you'd agree that I have strong preconceived notions about Islam. Therefore either you need to acknowledge me as an authority on the matter, or else admit your baloney attempt at switching the argument is intellectually dishonest to the point of ridicule.

You're the one making a baloney attempt to switch the argument away from why jihadists try to recruit those who know the least about the religion and are the least devout (and specifically warn recruiters off from trying to recruit those who are the most religious) and pretend the discussion is about people with strong anti-Muslim prejudices.

To say nothing of your introduction out of the blue of the rather bizarre strawman that someone with "strong preconceived notions about Islam" is some kind of authority about...whatever it is you think it makes you an authority about.

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Would you care to base this on something other than proof by assertion? I'm all ears.

See my response to Argumemnon above.

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Because according to page 44 of the report, out of 104 attack in 2015 with a specified source, 17 were Jihadi. This is twice the percentage of Muslims in any European state, about eight times where it should be, if Islam was a random factor.

And the year before, 2014, there were just 2 jihadist attacks out of 201, or 0.99%. [EDIT: And your "specified source" thing is deliberately misleading nonsense intended to inflate the number you're using for your calculation. There were 211 attacks in 2015, 17 of which (or 8.05%) were jihadist.]

With those years included, for 2006 through 2015, there were 3092 failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks in the EU, with 38 of them (or 1.22% of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired. 2243 of them (or 72.5%) were separatist attacks (Northern Irish, Basque, etc.).

You pick one year with a higher jihadist total out of all the years of data, and declare that because the percentage of attacks that were carried out by Muslims in that one specific year is higher than than the percentage of the Muslim population, Muslims are a bigger terror threat than their population percentage would indicate, despite the fact that just the year before, the percentage of jihadist attacks was far, far lower than the percentage of the Muslim population (to say nothing of all the previous years).

And you accuse me of cherry-picking?

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One page down, on page 45, are the list of arrests. Out of 933 arrests for a specified cause, 687 were Jihadis. That's almost 3/4 of all terror arrests coming from 2% of population - almost 40 times where it should be.

Or arrests aren't correlated with attacks, whether successful or foiled, since the number of arrests for separatist attacks was far higher back when the number of separatist attacks was also far higher than it is now, and despite jihadists arrests being the largest proportion of arrests now, the largest proportion of attacks are still separatist attacks.

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Just so you know, above is a proven correlation between Islam and terrorism.

Only if you quite literally cherry-pick one year of data from the ten years available and deliberately ignore all the other years.

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If every single Muslim in the world believed Islam compelled them into receptive homosexual relations with pigs it wouldn't change the fact the Islamic scriptures say no combination of that is permissible. Please acknowledge that already.

What you think the Islamic scriptures say matters not at all compared to what Muslims think those scriptures say.

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You don't risk being put in a gas chamber because of your opinions, where did you get that idea from anyway? You risk being put in a gas chamber because you (appear to) follow a religion whose greatest achievement in the past several centuries is 1001 ways to make innocent everyday objects into tools to commit mass murder, and whose followers (including you) spare no effort to defend the religion and keep it as it is while making essentially no effort to fix the glaring problems with the religion.

"Change your religion or die" is a threat whether it comes from jihadists or from anyone else.

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My comments about gas chambers are exactly as much a threat as a climatologist warning about the disastrous climate change is a threat. I actually want to spare you from that fate, but you're listening about as much as a rich oil magnate is to the climatologist.

A campaign of genocide carried out by racists is not comparable to climate change for the rather basic reason that climate change has no agency and is merely the result of macroscale physical processes, while a campaign of genocide carried out by racists is the result of individual human beings with full agency making the conscious decision to carry out said campaign.

If I'm put in a gas chamber, it won't be as the result of some uncaring natural process that's the inevitable result of the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it'll be because some human being, knowing full well what he's doing, deliberately and consciously puts me there.

So yeah, telling me that I'm going to be put in a gas chamber unless I change my ways is more of a threat than saying climate change is an approaching disaster. Trying to pass off the threat of me being put in a gas chamber because of my beliefs (whatever they happen to be) as "being for my own good" just makes it even more disgusting.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by marplots

I missed the part in the Koran where it instructs people to become human bombs. Is this in a later edition?

You have to set your Koran to "download updates automatically".

[marplots]

Originally Posted by Argumemnon

You have to set your Koran to "download updates automatically".

That made me snortle coffee out my nose.

[quadraginta]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

I think you misunderstood his point 2.

Nope. I don't think I did.

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It's a statement of fact, not a permission to do it.

McHrozni

You'd like people to believe that. You've made that clear.

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by marplots

I missed the part in the Koran where it instructs people to become human bombs. Is this in a later edition?

It's a logical consequence of a combination of Islamic holy texts offering paradise to martyrs, defining martyr as someone who dies fighting for the cause of Allah and the invention of explosives.

I guess you knew that already, but attempted a cheap shot anyway.

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Again, you would have to show that the purpose of the religion is to do that, rather than being something some adherents of the religion do.

Which is why I often quote from Islamic holy texts to show the religion supports that. You have holy texts that support terrorists and you have people who become terrorists and claim they did it due to the said holy texts.

What more do you want?

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Equality for children? The insane? Criminals? The lines we don't spot are the lines we grew up with - they seem normal and "right." Do we get to apply the label "human values" because Muslims are, at their core, not human?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

McHrozni

[McHrozni]

Originally Posted by A'isha

And the year before, 2014, there were just 2 jihadist attacks out of 201, or 0.99%.

Go on, what does this show?

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[EDIT: And your "specified source" thing is deliberately misleading nonsense intended to inflate the number you're using for your calculation. There were 211 attacks in 2015, 17 of which (or 8.05%) were jihadist.]

Once you consider four times the norm to be a result good enough to mention, you've lost the argument.

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With those years included, for 2006 through 2015, there were 3092 failed, foiled, or successful terrorist attacks in the EU, with 38 of them (or 1.22% of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired. 2243 of them (or 72.5%) were separatist attacks (Northern Irish, Basque, etc.).

It's almost as if Islamists kicked into a higher gear at the end of the observed period. Care to guess why? I'll give you a hint, it probably has to do with the establishment of the Caliphate.

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You pick one year with a higher jihadist total out of all the years of data, and declare that because the percentage of attacks that were carried out by Muslims in that one specific year is higher than than the percentage of the Muslim population, Muslims are a bigger terror threat than their population percentage would indicate, despite the fact that just the year before, the percentage of jihadist attacks was far, far lower than the percentage of the Muslim population (to say nothing of all the previous years).

No, where did you get that ridiculous idea from anyway? Muslims are a higher threat from the general population for a host of reasons, one of which is that they are associated with a general increase with the number of terrorist attacks.

Other reasons include, but are not limited to:
- following holy texts that justify terrorist attacks as well as religious supremacism
- committing terrorist attacks with the purpose to kill people, not to accomplish a specific goal (unlike separatists)
- committing far bloodier terrorist attacks than any other group (often even all other groups combined)
- organizing into state-like groups whose specific intent is to wage terror
- receiving state aid from Muslim states specifically to conduct terror

Being associated with more terror attacks, even in the West is just the cherry on the cake. It removes the usual excuses of poverty, oppression and the vague "foreign interference" as being the causes, which is why I find it useful to work with. Overall though it's just another brick in the wall, not the sole piece of evidence as you fraudulently claimed. You even acknowledged some of the other bits in this very thread, and now you pretend they weren't there. I find your approach disingenuous and dishonest.

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Or arrests aren't correlated with attacks, whether successful or foiled, since the number of arrests for separatist attacks was far higher back when the number of separatist attacks was also far higher than it is now, and despite jihadists arrests being the largest proportion of arrests now, the largest proportion of attacks are still separatist attacks.

In addition to the stuff above, since no Muslim group in the West could reasonably be called separatists, adding separatists to the mix is not justified. You see, we can state with absolute certainty no Muslim group in the West could reasonably call itself separatist, they're either immigrants, be it first, second or third generation - but rarely more than that, or converts who follow Islam but live in their county of birth and have no separatist cause to back. Clearly separatism can inspire terrorism, but it doesn't inspire Muslims in Europe to commit terrorism.

In light of that the actual background reading for terror threat for Muslims is not all non-Islamic terrorist attacks, but all non-Islamic, non-separatist terrorist attacks. As we see above, Muslims stand out somewhat even if we conflate the data with separatists, but a more honest approach yields results that are, well:

For 2006 through 2015, there were 849 failed, foiled, or successful non-separatist terrorist attacks in the EU, with 38 of them (or 4.4 % of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired.

Notably worse. This is called adjusting for a known confider. It's even quantifiable in this case. How many of the 3000-something attacks had no specified cause? We should remove those as well, since we can't just assume none of them are Jihadi. They move the Jihadis up a notch to about 5%.

Furthermore, you completely ignore the fact some 15-20% of all terror convictions every year are Jihadis. The good police work confounds the number of attack further, since police is evidently much better at preventing Jihadi violence than it is separatist violence. This is in part due to Jihadis being more predictable (smaller demographic to focus on), but in no small part because police focuses on them more. Before you cry racism or Islamophobia or some similar nonsense consider the fact the relatively low number of Jihadi attacks, despite up to ten times greater police effort, still manage to at approximately match all other sources of terrorism combined in terms of overall death toll. It's only natural to focus on the greatest threat. Preventing a single Nice-style attack is obviously preferable to preventing ten night-time bombings that injure or kill no one and are otherwise indistinguishable from vandalism.

The only way you present Muslims as being no worse than the average is if you lump them up with terrorism from all causes, including the most prominent causes that we know don't apply to them, ignore the severity of attacks and focus solely on the number of attacks, focus solely on the West, ignore the fact in many years Muslims still fared far, far worse, ignore the fact Jihadis are disproportionally represented in number of convictions and ignore other highly relevant factors in assessing the terror threat.

And then when you're called out for the numerous fallacies you're committing, cry about cherry picking. Unbelievable.

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What you think the Islamic scriptures say matters not at all compared to what Muslims think those scriptures say.

The events of the past 20 or so years in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, France, UK, Spain, USA, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Israel, Yemen, Lebanon, Mali, Algeria, Egypt, Philippines, Bangladesh, Libya and many other places lead me to believe a great many Muslims think those scriptures say pretty much what they appear to say.

Why do you think this doesn't matter is beyond me. Care to answer?

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"Change your religion or die" is a threat whether it comes from jihadists or from anyone else.

In my case it's exactly as much a threat as "stop using fossil fuels or go extinct" is a threat. The fact the two threats are different in nature in no way changes that. I'm warning you of a disaster that will approach you, that you can avoid, but I can't stop it. It's exactly the same as with climate change. This was pointed out to you on numerous occasions.

Well, it's your life. Just don't say this wasn't predicted.

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A campaign of genocide carried out by racists is not comparable to climate change for the rather basic reason that climate change has no agency and is merely the result of macroscale physical processes, while a campaign of genocide carried out by racists is the result of individual human beings with full agency making the conscious decision to carry out said campaign.

And I'm doing my very best to try to prevent it. The problem is that stopping it requires changing your religion to something other than what it is today. You can still call it Islam and pray to an meteorite like a devout astrogeologist (? - what's the correct term for someone who studies space rocks?) and whatever. Just cut out the crap that kills people. If you think it's a fabrication that really shouldn't be a problem.

There is even precedents - Abu Bakr did precisely that. The first one, not this al-Baghdadi guy. If he could do it, so can you.

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So yeah, telling me that I'm going to be put in a gas chamber unless I change my ways is more of a threat than saying climate change is an approaching disaster. Trying to pass off the threat of me being put in a gas chamber because of my beliefs (whatever they happen to be) as "being for my own good" just makes it even more disgusting.

I believe I already stated why you could get put in a gas chamber, it's in the post you quoted. Yeah, it's radically different from "your beliefs". You changed it to "your beliefs" in order to set up a straw man, which is what is really quite disingenuous. Do you think I manage to forget my argument in between replies or something?

McHrozni

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Go on, what does this show?

That in 2014, Muslims carried out terror attacks at a rate far, far less than their percentage of the population would imply.

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Once you consider four times the norm to be a result good enough to mention, you've lost the argument.

And here you double down on your single-year cherry-picking.

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It's almost as if Islamists kicked into a higher gear at the end of the observed period.

Which indicates that, contrary to your assertions, that Islam isn't directly correlated with terrorism at all, since jihadist terror attacks don't happen at a constant rate per population, and until that year you cherry-picked there were far fewer jihadist attacks than there "should" be based on their population percentage.

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No, where did you get that ridiculous idea from anyway? Muslims are a higher threat from the general population for a host of reasons, one of which is that they are associated with a general increase with the number of terrorist attacks.

As you can easily tell from looking at the 2006-2015 data in its entirety (instead of cherry-picking a single year that conforms to your biases), that's not true at all.

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In addition to the stuff above, since no Muslim group in the West could reasonably be called separatists, adding separatists to the mix is not justified.

Yes, if you remove all the non-jihadist terrorist attacks that took place from your list of terrorist attacks, the percentage of terrorist attacks caused by jihadists on that list goes way up.

And in any case, your statement isn't even true, since the Kurdish PKK is listed in the INTERPOL reports in the section on separatist terror groups.

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For 2006 through 2015, there were 849 failed, foiled, or successful non-separatist terrorist attacks in the EU, with 38 of them (or 4.4 % of them) being Islamist or religiously-inspired.

Notably worse. This is called adjusting for a known confider. It's even quantifiable in this case. How many of the 3000-something attacks had no specified cause? We should remove those as well, since we can't just assume none of them are Jihadi. They move the Jihadis up a notch to about 5%.

Which means that even with your dishonest butchering of the data to try and get the result you want, Muslims apparently commit terrorist attacks at a rate that pretty much matches their population percentage.

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The good police work confounds the number of attack further, since police is evidently much better at preventing Jihadi violence than it is separatist violence.

Now you're trying to massage the data even more by double-dipping. Foiled attacks are already counted in the INTERPOL lists. And, again, back when there were far, far fewer arrests of jihadis than separatists, there were still far fewer jihadist attacks than there were separatist attacks, so the fact that there are far fewer jihadist attacks than there are separatist attacks now that there are more arrests for jihadis than separatists doesn't seem to mean what you want it to mean.

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The events of the past 20 or so years in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, France, UK, Spain, USA, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Israel, Yemen, Lebanon, Mali, Algeria, Egypt, Philippines, Bangladesh, Libya and many other places lead me to believe a great many Muslims think those scriptures say pretty much what they appear to say.

What happened before 20 years ago (or, in Europe, before just a couple of years ago)? Were there sudden mass conversions to Islam to push things over the terrorism tipping point? Was there a magic switch that was flipped in all Muslims that wasn't on before? Did Muslims read your posts about Islam and slap their foreheads, going "I totally forgot I was supposed to be a terrorist! Thanks for reminding me, I'll get right on that!"

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I believe I already stated why you could get put in a gas chamber, it's in the post you quoted. Yeah, it's radically different from "your beliefs". You changed it to "your beliefs" in order to set up a straw man, which is what is really quite disingenuous. Do you think I manage to forget my argument in between replies or something?

Oh, my mistake. You actually just got done telling me about how I'm fated for the gas chambers for the crime of apparently being a Muslim who already doesn't think that Islam supports terrorism and killing people, but because I haven't "chang[ed my] religion to something other than what it is today" I'm still doomed (presumably because even if I'm a Muslim who already rejects terrorism, the fact that there are other Muslims who haven't yet rejected terrorism still leaves me on the hook for it).

So you're telling me I'm going to be put in a gas chamber for someone else's beliefs, not mine. What a relief.

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

It's a logical consequence of a combination of Islamic holy texts offering paradise to martyrs, defining martyr as someone who dies fighting for the cause of Allah

Or drowns, falls off a mountaintop, gets eaten by wild animals, gets stung by a venomous creature, has a wall fall down on them, dies in childbirth, dies of cholera or the Plague, or dies a natural death in their bed.

[marplots]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

It's a logical consequence of a combination of Islamic holy texts offering paradise to martyrs, defining martyr as someone who dies fighting for the cause of Allah and the invention of explosives.

Which is why I often quote from Islamic holy texts to show the religion supports that. You have holy texts that support terrorists and you have people who become terrorists and claim they did it due to the said holy texts.

What more do you want?

Here's what I want. I want to know if you really think the Koran is magical and has the power to make people into terrorists. I want to know because I do not wish to offend any religious beliefs you may hold. If you honestly think Allah is creating terrorists with a book, I will defer from criticizing, even though I do not believe it possible.

[Myron Proudfoot]

Originally Posted by A'isha

Because if "Islam" were the necessary and sufficient component, jihadist recruiters wouldn't be avoiding already-knowledgeable and devout Muslims in favor of targeting those who are the least knowledgeable and devout: if it were, knowledge of and adherence to Islam would directly correlate with likelihood to follow a jihadist path (ie, the more Muslim you are, the more likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling), and recruiters would be focusing their efforts on those who are the most religious.

Instead, what we see is an inverse correlation: the less Muslim you are, it seems, the more likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling (and the more Muslim you are, the less likely you are to find jihadist arguments compelling). That's why jihadists try to recruit those who know the least about the religion and who are the least devout, and specifically warn recruiters off from trying to recruit those who are the most religious.

Obviously, being more Muslim is not any kind of inoculation against jihadism, but it's pretty clear that being more Muslim is not any kind of driver towards jihadism, contrary to what you'd expect if it were Islam itself that were the necessary and sufficient component.

would it be fair to say that because religious texts often contain contradictory accounts and information, that those less versed in the text would be more prone believe someone cherry-picking that text to prove a point??

[A'isha]

Originally Posted by Myron Proudfoot

would it be fair to say that because religious texts often contain contradictory accounts and information, that those less versed in the text would be more prone believe someone cherry-picking that text to prove a point??

I don't think that's the only reason, but that's almost certainly one of the reasons.

[marplots]

Originally Posted by Myron Proudfoot

would it be fair to say that because religious texts often contain contradictory accounts and information, that those less versed in the text would be more prone believe someone cherry-picking that text to prove a point??

Works pretty well with the US Constitution...

[Giz]

Originally Posted by marplots

Here's what I want. I want to know if you really think the Koran is magical and has the power to make people into terrorists. I want to know because I do not wish to offend any religious beliefs you may hold. If you honestly think Allah is creating terrorists with a book, I will defer from criticizing, even though I do not believe it possible.

You think that words and ideas catching readers imaginations and changing their minds is somehow magical?

Coming soon... Harry Potter and the debating society! Necromancy, Thaumaturgy and Polemics!

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by McHrozni

Which is why I often quote from Islamic holy texts to show the religion supports that. You have holy texts that support terrorists and you have people who become terrorists and claim they did it due to the said holy texts.

I don't necessarily disagree with you but I want to point out that the bibble gets the same treatment.

[marplots]

Originally Posted by Giz

You think that words and ideas catching readers imaginations and changing their minds is somehow magical?

Coming soon... Harry Potter and the debating society! Necromancy, Thaumaturgy and Polemics!

The Koran is probably as effective at manufacturing murderers as this:

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I AGREE

[William Parcher]

The two guys who picked up the cooker bomb and took the bag it was in have been identified. They are security guards for EgyptAir. Reports say that they unknowingly deactivated that bomb just by handling it in the act of taking the bag.

[EHocking]

Airline security guards are also baggage thieves on their days off?
This surely is the basis for a French comedy film?