The Glade 4.0

The only idiocy expressed in this thread belongs to Diamondeye and anyone defending his notion that Islam is a cause of violence. Instead of actually attempting to understand the socio-political and geo-political sources of "terrorism" and radical Jihadist extremism, far too many of you are simply content to make religion the problem. When someone indicates that the problem has a lot less to do with religion and more to do with a lot of other things, including the post-colonial history of Western Empire, you dare insult them?

I didn't defend Vilks or his audience. I merely mentioned that Western Media and Western Politicians have succeeded in making an enemy of a religion instead of dealing with all the other myriad problems that have placed the world in this situation. So, you can consider it idiocy to have a greater understanding of the situation, but you'll quickly find yourself in the same boat as Diamondeye: a xenophobic bigot who really doesn't understand the situation at all.

Indeed, why don't the majority of you apply the same skepticism you direct toward the media on issues of our President or our policy toward the media on issues of "Islamic" violence? There are very few things that piss me off, but watching generally reasonable people making bigoted and racist statements while defending themselves with cultural hegemony is one of them. The issue here isn't whether or not there exists a radical segment of Islam; whether or not its an easy target for blame in the War on Terror; the issue is precisely how easy it was to convince the majority of people here that its the religion's fault and not individuals.

And lest you guys somehow think I'm hypocritical on the issue, I'll remind you that I've chewed out the anti-theists who think the Crusades were some sort of Christian campaign against the world or that the Inquisitions were this mass genocide for precisely the same behavior.

And if you need a specific reason as to why Diamondeye made my **** list? When did we, as in the United States, gain the authority to tell people they don't know or understand their own culture's history? The Islamic World is just as broad and just as multinational as the Christian World. It spans as many borders, as many ethnic groups, and as many demographics. So if all it takes to lose your respect is calling someone on their bigotry and xenophobia, then **** you, too. Because, honestly, Diamondeye is far too willing to defend himself on this issue for my taste. I gave him the pass the first time he let the bigotry get to him; he doesn't get a second.

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There are nut jobs in religion (if a tree fell down, it's bound to hit a couple too)... don't hate the game, hate the playa ya'll >=D

And damn you guys are getting way too personal in here...

Khross:

In the video posted which sparked the discussion, before you and DE decided to start throwing meta haymakers around, I did not see or hear anyone express their concerns over post-colonialism, or western imperialism. What I did witness was lots and lots of religious saber rattling.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Rynar:

What I witnessed was otherwise skeptical people far too willing to blame the religion instead of the individuals involved; and that behavior alone speaks far too damningly of our own media, our own society, and our own self-centered view of the world. "Islam" has become a target, as opposed to the violent individuals or radical individuals involved. It has become the easy target; and that should scare anyone with a passing knowledge of Colonial American history and the precursors to the American Civil War.

And if it makes me the bad guy to point that out, then so be it. But otherwise reasonable people should be able to make the distinction; and at least one person in this thread is either incapable or unwilling to do so.

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I would argue that it is reflective of a bit of both. While I would certainly hesitant to blame Islam outright, I would certainly have to consider the idea that religion in general lends itself towards these sorts of things, as it appears, over the course of human history, that religion has generally acted as the ideal final agitator when being used to whip masses into a frenzy.

The individuals leading the extremist movement from a political level are clearly motivated by the things you have discussed here, but those things in and of themselves haven't motivated the masses. Remember, in their rhetoric they condemn us as "infidels" not "imperialists".

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

In reviewing just the first 2 minutes of the youtube I posted originally, this is really a no brainer.

The "movie" lasted less than 30 seconds before the guy was physically assaulted. Immediately followed by the various people in the audience shrieking "Allahu akbar", people punching the cops and so on. They later broke into a "Muhammad" chant. It's no stretch to label this related to Islam.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

What Khross is saying is true. Those Islam protesters went there with the full intention of assalting the dude. This is no different to Christian protesters burning down abortion clinics (or attempting to).

Just because some of the people in a religion is nuts, you should not paint them all in the same brush...

Yes you can condemn those people in the video, but you shouldn't condemn Islam as a whole...

You mean a video made by an Iranian political artist that was already widely known and recognizable to the target audience that Vilks sought to insult? Somehow I'm guessing that part is left out of the general American knowledge on the subject.

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Lets all group hug!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Seeing as he has me on ignore I was going to return the favor, but he's also bringing me up so I'll put this out there: Khross doesn't have jack **** to explain how I'm wrong except vague allusions to his "studies of Arab literature", a hasty generalization about "Western propaganda" and a lot of whining that I just don't understand.. something.. that's just too **** hard to explain.

The fact of the matter is that he doesn't know what the socio-political and geo-political sources of terrorism are, and he's misinterpreting what I'm saying as "Islam/religion is the problem" rather than what I actually did say: It's a catalyst, and it exacerbates the problem. Not all religions have the same effect on people and culture. All he's doing is getting outraged that people, especially me, are calling his bare assertions into question. Yes, DS dares insult him because he's saying nothing of substance and then running behind the ignore button with faux outrage about spurious claims of racism.

That's what you get though, when someone thinks they can just explore everything in a sanitized academic way and ignore what's actually happned, especially when you just automatically assign "non Western" sources some special weight. We've seen this in all too many threads - "Well, you just aren't reading the right/ enough non Western sources."



You know, the hilarity here is that no one's trying to make a religion an enemy. You can't get rid of Islam. You do, however, have to understand that Islamic peoples and nations are more likely to respond with violence and maintain that course of action for far longer than those that are not.

Khross doesn't have a greater understanding of the situation; he's just tossing this "xenophobic bigot" crap around to make it look like he does because he buys into what unspecified bits of Arab literature tell him or something. What he has is his understanding of the situation, and he thinks that because it's different from the mainstream one that it must be better and the mainstream one must be propaganda.



Of course, it should be blindingly obvious that when you start using claims like "cultural hegemony" and that people are convinced it's religions' fault (when, if anything, the majority of the press and our politicians have gone to great length to do the opposite) to try to make it appear that people noticing that the vast majority of terrorist violence comes from Islamic sources are somehow racist, you're simply not dealing with the real world but with an abstracted academic caricature of it.

I pointed out that other cultures, non-Islamic ones, that might have the same grievances against various Western countries do not seem to produce this same level of violent, proactive, aggressive militancy we call terrorism. Viet Nam does not, nor does Kenya. But Khross has no answer to basic, obvious facts other than to make claims of propaganda, poor training and the like which he backs up with no argument or fact at all.



I don't actually disagree with this part, Khross has done what he claims here. However it bears mentioning once again that no one is "blaming Islam". Khross read what he wanted to instead of what was actually said.



Of course, since I said nothing of the sort, Khross hasn't a leg to stand on here. I said he (meaning Khross) needed to go back and redo his studies of those people and their view of their own culture, because either he didn't understand them or he did them while giving them entirely too much credence in relation to the events we're discussing which are world events, not Middle Eastern events.

Yes, people from Islamic countries understand their own culture, just as we understand ours. However, he just got done ripping someone's *** in another thread because too many people here believe things about our culture, such as George Washington and the cherry tree, that aren't exactly actual-factual. Why would he think people from the Middle East are different?

More importantly, when we're talking about why violence goes on and how it relates to colonialism, that violence involves interaction with our cultures. Middle Eastern people may understand their own culture, but they have no monopoly on understanding history insofar as it relates to the rest of the world. They are no less guilty of ethnocetrism, bias, cultural hegemony (whatever that's supposed to be) or straight up revisionism than anyone else. Khross is trying to justify "racism" because no, DE does not buy that when it comes to interacting with Western nations, Middle Eastern ones do not get the final say on how their behavior has actually played out in point of fact. All he;s doing is giving them special extra weight in order to avoid dealing with the uncomfortable fact that they aren't the choir boys the authors he's read have evidently lead him to believe.

In point of fact, Khross does not understand the issues he's discussing very well. He's evidently gotten so far down into the academic weeds he can't see the trees, much less the forest. Worse, he's given not one fact or argument to back up his claims in this thread. No mention of what he's read; who these ARab authors are. Not even a cursory summary of what they argue. Not even the most basic summary of what leads him to believe it's pre-and-post-colonial events that are primarily the source of terrorism. He might actually have adecent argument, but he doesn't want to make it.

Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it, nor does a tantrum over supposed racism. This is not just the "Khross says it and it must be true" show. When I've been the one speaking on issues I'm well-educated on, I've explained carefully my reasoning and provided sources. He wants to just pronounce things to be true.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

viewtopic.php?p=63809#p63809
http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?p=63856#p63856
http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?p=63945#p63945
http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?p=63974#p63974
There are the four responses that prompted my initial response. None of them have anything to do with the vast populations and different ethnographic groups that comprise the Muslim world. They are all comments on Islam. At which point, you piped in Diamondeye ...
viewtopic.php?p=64026#p64026
http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?p=64050#p64050
http://www.gladerebooted.org/viewtopic.php?p=64148#p64148


viewtopic.php?p=64163#p64163


At this point you suggest that somehow studying Islamic and Arabic History and literature invalidates my knowledge on the subject. You continue this line through several posts.

Indeed, you begin doing precisely the thing you, myself, and many others told Montegue not to do: telling people how they think. In fact, you throw a false dilemmas and a few strawmen in there for good measure. And just to make sure you're totally fabricating your own authority on the subject, you hastily generalize my position from the get go.

But, that's ok. You keep telling me what I think and why. The evidence in the thread weighs against you, as i've said the following:

1. It's not the religion.

2. There are geo-political and socio-political reasons for the behavior.

3. I never ascribed any validity to terrorism or the grievances.

What I did say and do stand by is that you're a xenophobic bigot who should know better; and your own words in this thread should give you pause. I've said that before, when you made a statement carelessly that was indeed ethnically and religious offensively. And that you continue to think it is not is another problem entirely.

But, obviously, you can ascribe to me arguments I haven't made and statements I haven't made to assert, quite barely, I don't have a leg to stand on. I, on the other hand, can quote exactly what you've said and demonstrate you're making this an issue of religion far more than anything else.

So, keep telling me I'm too academic because your language and tone and statements convey something you apparently don't see. I'm even willing to continue giving you the benefit of the doubt at a conscious level; but the responses in this thread are mostly unconscious and suffer from a cultural bias that has no place here among intelligent people.

And to that end, I'll apologize for snapping at you. However, you really should refrain from ascribing arguments or statements I have not made to me. I've been reading about this since Stanley Cohen wrote about it in the Early 80s. I've been reading about "Islamic Fundamentalism" when it was so far afield as to be the topic of Debate Disadvantages in the NFL and NDT arenas 2 decades ago.

As for other groups that took different paths? I can't think of any post-colonial nation that escaped colonization without violence at one point or another. Islam is the easy target; it's the easy label; it's the easy thing to blame ... and it is shameful that American society has chosen to do so.

As for explaining the political complexities, where do you want to start? The Crusades? The British Empire? The 19th Century? Edward Said's Orientalism? Violent radicals don't get a pass from me; neither do pushy, antagonistic "artists" who want to **** on other people's beliefs as an exercise in free speech. It may be the latter's "God" given right, but they're assholes who need a good sock in the mouth.

More to the point, there is the problem of media reporting only the violence and only the extremism. There was precious little reporting of the Iranian general population risking the ire of their crazy *** government by protesting 9/11 (as a single example).

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Did.. did you just invoke the Short Skirt argument in defense of violent reactions to free speech?

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Kaffis:

No.

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Khross:



I'm not sure this statement meshes with your point.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Well if we're going by the assumption that what Khross is saying is true, then those abortion clinics knew that some Christians would be offended by them, so as I see it it's their fault in the first place and they deserved and *** beating.

Protesting against abortion is perfectly acceptable. Physically assaulting and intimidating an abortion clinic worker or doctor is criminal. That's the distinction. Typically, people who have bombed abortion clinics in the US are driven by their faith to do so and that faith is usually Christian. If you want to get into the socio-economic and geo-political reasons for it too, well you'll be the first.

Similarly, the "well it's only like .044283% of the Muslim world that is really radical" is specious. There are just too many examples of radical schools, mosques, imams, clerics, governments, terrorist groups, terrorist attacks, religious leaders and religious followers to say "well it's only a tiny fraction". Either what those Imams preach is Islam, or it isnt. It's clear what they preach is not a religion of peace. It's clear the people in this video are not at all interested in peace. If it isnt Islam we need a term to distinguish the two, and most people use "Radical Islam".

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Rynar:
Except it does ... It's reductive. Do you know the differences in belief between Shia, Sunni, and Sufi Islam? What about African American Islam as practiced during the earlier part of the 20th Century? There's no single set of Muslim Cultural norms. More to the point, the statement assumes that violence in the video identity issue.

Dashel:
I've said no such. I said Lars Vilks probably deserves an ass-beating; even then, however, your analogy is flawed. A suitable parallel, given the parties you and Lydiaa chose, would be people from Planned Parenthood demanding access to distribute Abortion materials at the annual Southern Baptist Conference meeting. Those people from Planned Parenthood would need their asses beat, too.And, yet, I still haven't defended what those idiots (on either side of the argument) did in the original post. Vilks was an idiot. Those who assaulted him were idiots. However, the fact that you think it is faith driving people to blow up buildings in the United States is demonstrative of my original point: Western media and society have made "Islam" the enemy, not terrorist douchebags.You'll need to quantity that particular "too many" for this comment to have any weight at all. You've already demonstrated ignorance of the religion and the ethnographic complexities of situation. It's simply easy to blame it all on a bunch of "Islamic crazies" and accuse the religion. Don't tell me I'm in the wrong because I state the situation is more complex than you accept. You're just engaging in the same kind of cultural reductivism and otherification that made some things I won't mention possible.

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What you've done is moral equivalence, specifically here:



They are not remotely equal and the crowds actions vastly overshadow anything Vilks showed on a movie screen for all of 30 seconds.

Further you keep wanting to insinuate that this movie was shown at some religious event. It was at Uppsala University, their website claims the are a "World-class research and first-rate education of global use to society, business, and culture. Uppsala University is one of northern Europe's most highly ranked universities."

He was doing this screening at a lecture on free speech.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Dashel:

viewtopic.php?p=64140#p64140

I'll just point out that I mentioned where this happened before anyone else in the thread. That said, do you know what the video he showed was? I'll just go ahead and assume not. The images came from a photo series by Sooreh Hera (an Iranian Artist), and Vilks had more than enough information to know they were offensive and antagonistic toward the audience he was likely to have. And, seeing as how those images had already caused similar responses elsewhere, Vilks intended for them to provoke a violent response.

Both parties are equally reprehensible.

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You pointed out where it was yet you've insinuated twice now that it was at some religious event when in fact it was a university lecture on free speech:

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Ah. I see I'm not really on ignore. Just as I suspected.



No dumbass, I didn't suggest that it invalidated it. I suggested that you need to rethink the way in which you've gone about studying Islamic and Arabic history and literature because you've obviously taken what they have to say at face value and given it special consideration over what the rest of the world has to say. I hate to break it to you but matters of Islamic and Arabic interaction with the rest of the world are not matters of Islamic or Arabic history; they are matters of world history. The Islamic or Arabic perspective on the issue is not somehow magically more accurate than anyone else's, and everyone else's is not magically "propaganda" because it happens to contradict theirs, or because it happens to be the mainstream "Western" thought.

Speaking of which, your bellyaching about Hasty Generalizations was totally out of line given that you started off by dismissing everyone else as listening to "Western propaganda" for no reason other than that it contradicts your conclusions from your studies.



Well gee, Khross, if you could have been assed to actually take a position beyond "You all just believe Western propaganda", "My studies of Arab literature indicate something else but I'm not going to give even a cursory explaination of what or why." and "It's not religion, it's pre and post colonialism because I say so" maybe that wouldn't have happened. I wasn't telling you what you think, I was being forced to speculate because your position could not be discrened beyond "you're just wrong because I say so and oh by the way I'm offended". Grow the **** up. You're in no position to complain anyhow, since you did exactly the same thing with your half-ass assumptions about my study or training just because I'm not reaching the same conclusion as you.



The evidence over multiple threads is that any time someone takes a mainstream position, you get your panties in a bunch about how it's propaganda of some sort. I'll call your attention to your recent comments about people needing to believe int he cherry tree.



The evidence of the thread is that I've disagreed with you on the first point and given reasons why, and you've given no counterargument other than your own say-so. As to the second and third point, I did not disagree that geo/socio political factors are involved (you may recall the catalyst argument) and I did not accuse you of giving validity to the grievances.



No, it was neither of those things. The term in question was no diffferent than calling the Viet Cong "Charlie" or "VC". It was not a racial or religious term except insofar that in ARabic it is a religious term of respect. If I'd wanted to make a racial comment, there are plenty of pre-existing slurs most of which involve camels or the wearing of bath towels as headgear or references to sand, which I ahve not and will not use.



Well no **** sherlock, that's because religion is the issue of the **** thread. If your position is that it's somehow racist to suggest that their religion may, in fact, not be on an equal footing to every other world religion regardless of the evidence of actual events because you find that suggestion offensive, then you can just **** off. If you'd like to cite actual facts that explain why I'm incorrect, I'm still perfectly willing to listen. If, on the other hand, you'd prefer to keep pronouncing it out-of-bounds because you're offended by the very idea, and just making vague allusions to stuff you've read without even the most cursory attempt to explain what that is and why it's correct, then I'm very rapidly going to lose any remaining inclination I have to listen to you.

In short, wuit appealing to your own **** authority. If you have some facts and insight, you might change my mind. I am, after all, all about knowing the enemy and living in reality, but you haven't done that. You've decided to get all butt-hurt that I won't just take your say-so.



The only cultural bias I've seen so far here is your arbitrary proclaimation of readily observed facts as "Western propaganda" with some vague references to politicians and the press, and equally vague references to your studies of Arab literature and how that makes Western perspectives wrong. There's a cultural bias here, but it isn't mine, and since I see no reason to think you've got any personal stake in the Islamic/Arab perspective, I can only conclude that you are taking that position simply because it's not the one Western politicians espouse, and your dislike of Western politicians is well documented.

Furthermore, I really don't see what studies of literature have to do with studies of actual events, except in a very indirect sense. I don't, for example, see that Moby Dick gives us any insight into the causes of any of the various wars between its writing and the present time, and I don't see why you think Arabic literature would be any more pertinent.



The NFL debates Islamic fundamentalism?

Your apology is accepted. However, at the risk of repeating myself, you've taken no position other than "I'm right, you're wrong, because I say so and I've studied a lot." I haven't seen a single fact, source, or anything cited by you yet. Would you prefer we had just had a "I'm right!" "No, I'm right!" shouting match? The difference between Monty and me is that he customarily tells people what they think even when everyone present has told him in exquisite detail why he's incorrect, while I've done it on this occasion only because your position has amounted to "I'm right and you're wrong because I say so and oh by the way if you disagree you're a racist." I don't think you compare any more favorably to Monty than I do at this point.



That is quite true (and it's nice to see an actual fact). However, those post-colonial nations have not found it necessary to keep antagonizing the rest of the world. My prime example is Viet Nam; despite a post colonial struggle spanning a good 3 decades depending how you measure it, we do not see Vietnamese suicide bombers appearing in New York or Paris, and Viet Nam is not, to my knowledge, blesses with the sort of natural treasure trove that many Islamic nations have in the form of oil reserves.



We may as well start at the Birth of Muhammed if we're going to go that far back. I alrady cited he Battle of Badr and the Qu'ranic verses he "had revealed" to conveniently be allowed to begin that military action.



I seem to recall that being reported, actually. I also don't know that their government really disagreed with their protestors. Iran is heavily Shi'ite and the Taliban and Bin Laden are Sunni. Iran was not terribly fond of the Taliban. Shia, however, is only 15% of all of Islam, so that sentiment can't easily be generalized outside of Shia areas.

In any case, the bottom line is that while relatively few muslims are truly violent or extremists, that's largely because there can only physically be so many of those while society still continues to function. There are orders of magnitude more that are supportive of such activities to varying degrees, from sending their children to safe houses or out into the streets as human shields, providing donations to terrorists, to the sort that sit around at the local coffee house talking about how they aren't crazy about this suicide bombing buisness but hey, at least they're fighting Americans.

Tacit support of that sort is far, far, far more common than actual violence simply because society can only afford so many people fighting. We could easily imagine that for every guy actually fighting and blowing things up there are 10 that provide him food, water, or other support directly. For every one of those, there are 10 that provide a little help when they can, or a lot if they're rich, For every one of THOSE, there are another ten that don't get involved for whatever reason, but aren't willing to express so much as mild disapproval.

Sometimes you do get disapproval when peopl get tired of things blowing up in their neighborhoods, or when shia-sunni conflicts rear their heads. But they are really not widespread. What IS widespread is indifference; the sentiment that they may not approve of the violence, but they do approve of the targets; the feeling that "I don't like suicide bombing, but the Israelis/Americans/British deserve whatever they get, so I'm just going to keep my mouth shut and mumble the appropriate words in public."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Dude.

"You cant show that here, this is a university lecture on the limits of free speech!"

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Dashel:

I've not insinuated anything. I've asked how you would feel if he deliberately choose to antagonize and insult your religion in an environment where he could expect a significant number of anti-abortion Christians (or anti-pedophilia Christians). I didn't say you'd be violent.

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Except, I've done no such thing. But you are, once again, being arrogant enough to tell me what and how I think; and that pretty much comprises the rest of your post.

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I see, so you're going to suggest that "university lecture on the limits of free speech!" vindicates Vilks? I'll simply point out he exercised his right to free speech and got his *** handed to him over the impropriety of his statements and chosen images.

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It's amusing to me how you don't respond to the rest of Diamondeye's post.

Also socio-political reasons caused many Christians to wage war against those not Christian. It doesn't make it a violent religion. How can you guys forget about that?