Forgive me, but there is something unreal about this

[s1m0n]

Christians, animists, Hindus and Buddhists are being killed and enslaved in the various hot spots around the world, such as Phillipines, Kashmir and Sudan. It's more than intra-Islamic and it certainly is religious war, at least on their part.

That's the superficial way to look at it, and it's easy to think so.

The war in Sudan, for instance, is easy to understand, right? It's nasty northern muslims warring on peaceful soputhern christian animists.

Not so fast. The engine driving that conflict has very little to do with religion. The real source of conflict is climate change. The Sahel (the margins of the Sahara) is drying and turning to desert as a direct result of:
1. climate change
2. changes to farming practises caused by the move to a market/export economy, a change mandated by the IMF in order to service debt.
3. the Loss of coastal fisheries due to European and Japanese trawlers overfishing in coastal African waters. Again, the EU and Japan used their economic power to force the coastal nations to permit this fishery.

As a result, populations are on the move all across northern and equatorial Africa. Where they collide, wars start. Drought and famine have this effect irrespective of religion.

That's the real context for the war in the Sudan. Viewed in this light, it's suddenly not so obviously about anything intrinsic to Islam. In all three factors I listed above, western greed and overconsumtion is the engine, not religion.

~~

So we should spend some time looking in the mirror before we patly announce that muslims are violent savages engaging in religious wars.

[djm]

Most Muslims do not want to make the world believe Islam by force, if they did there would already be a Muslim world

Sorry, that's bull pucky. Islam was spread through the mid-east on the edge of the sword, and as was mentioned above, they very nearly did manage to storm into Europe. The tragedy in the Serbian/Croatian/etc states with Muslims fighting Christians were the border of those wars, and the people there became Muslims by force, not choice. The spread of Islam was stopped by huge (for the time) bloody wars. Muslims were held back, but not defeated.

I won't waste space completely copying s1m0n's post but it is bang on. There are significant populations who have progressed little if at all socially and economically from a thousand years ago. That some (not all) of these areas are Muslim is not the sole defining characteristic. Many of these backward areas are Catholic. Simply throwing money at them now would be no good. They need to advance culturally to the point where every point of contention is no longer responded to instantly with bloodshed and revenge. We have only barely come out of this sort of behaviour ourselves, and it is only because we have the financial wherewithal to be able to afford such a luxury as to sit back and ponder big-picture morality without worrying about being murdered or robbed or imprisoned every other day.

There is definitely a threat under our noses. For whatever reasons, right or wrong, there is a cultural bias towards violence in the countries that currently purport to be Muslim. That's why they can still produce such large numbers of suicide bombers. And this is not intra-Muslim conflict (which still remains and is brutally violent and widespread). It is no longer an intra-mideast conflict. It is now in the heart of the West, downtown London even, by people living in England, but still raised in culture that applauds violent retribution at any perceived slight or transgression, regardless of any particular religion.

djm

[dubhlinn]

So people who were born in this Country, grew up in this Country, and have lived in this Country all their life are now prepared to wipe each other out in the name of Religion?

This all sounds very familiar to me...

Maybe if the Army of a foreign power was brought in and told people where and when they could go about their daily business things might improve....

Then again, based on past experience, maybe not.

Slan,
D.

[djm]

No. Born in that country. Raised in another culture.

We have nothing to compare. We in an occidental culture have always had loose nuts acting out on their own. We have individuals who are susceptable to being influenced to violence, but these are individuals, not hundreds and hundreds. We do not have organized schools on how to be a suicide bomber (e.g. Hamas). Our culture does not support whatever attitude or outlook is required to get such a mass response to a call for such primitive behaviour.

I believe this is a cause for concern. I do not have a magic bullet solution. I am not declaring any group of people to be evil. I am simply saying that we are shocked to see this behaviour coming out of our own backyards, but this behaviour is almost everyday in the countires from which these cultures come from. It is too common, if you take my meaning.

djm

[The Weekenders]

Christians, animists, Hindus and Buddhists are being killed and enslaved in the various hot spots around the world, such as Phillipines, Kashmir and Sudan. It's more than intra-Islamic and it certainly is religious war, at least on their part.

That's the superficial way to look at it, and it's easy to think so.

The war in Sudan, for instance, is easy to understand, right? It's nasty northern muslims warring on peaceful soputhern christian animists.

Not so fast. The engine driving that conflict has very little to do with religion. The real source of conflict is climate change. The Sahel (the margins of the Sahara) is drying and turning to desert as a direct result of:
1. climate change
2. changes to farming practises caused by the move to a market/export economy, a change mandated by the IMF in order to service debt.
3. the Loss of coastal fisheries due to European and Japanese trawlers overfishing in coastal African waters. Again, the EU and Japan used their economic power to force the coastal nations to permit this fishery.

As a result, populations are on the move all across northern and equatorial Africa. Where they collide, wars start. Drought and famine have this effect irrespective of religion.

That's the real context for the war in the Sudan. Viewed in this light, it's suddenly not so obviously about anything intrinsic to Islam. In all three factors I listed above, western greed and overconsumtion is the engine, not religion.

~~

So we should spend some time looking in the mirror before we patly announce that muslims are violent savages engaging in religious wars.

Well, there is more context, such as the centuries long encirclement and forced conversion of animist Africans to Islam. Is that reaching far back enough?

I agree that, for example, in the Sudan, those factors you mentioned are specific to the most recent conflict. But if you study the history of Africa, you can practically draw a graphic representation over time to show the forced conversion of the continent from the outside in. Countless cultures have been wiped out, purity of various tribal groups and nations has been destroyed.

If one were to apply the standards of Western environmentalism, which value diversity, to the human family, then the greatest tragedy is in Africa, not North America, no matter how many people hyperfocus on the last five hundred years here, as opposed to the last 1400 years in Africa.

The sword of Islam has obliterated discrete tribes all over Africa, enslaved men, raped women and changed the basic nature of the people there. And this preceded the evil Western colonialism. Many of the slave sellers in Africa were ready to do business with the evil Europeans when they caught on to the slave trade because they were already trading them to other Islamic countries and empires. Not all slavecatchers were Muslim, but many were.

No culture is innocent, I am not saying that. But I do contend that Westerners focus overly on their own sins while the same types of genocide continue elsewhere in the name of Islam. And as pointed out in the thread, it's come to the West too and Westerners seem too sheepish about the relative values of their own culture, because of guilt or whatever, to find it worth defending.

I have mentioned it before, but the fact that amplified Islamic calls to prayer are allowed in a suburb of Detroit five times a day while the ACLU is scrubbing crosses off of every public building in the US is but an example. I know it made a huge stink, but I respected the French for banning religious symbols across the board, instead of bowing to the Muslims while damning ourselves, as happens in other Western countries.

[spittin_in_the_wind]

Christians, animists, Hindus and Buddhists are being killed and enslaved in the various hot spots around the world, such as Phillipines, Kashmir and Sudan. It's more than intra-Islamic and it certainly is religious war, at least on their part.

That's the superficial way to look at it, and it's easy to think so.

The war in Sudan, for instance, is easy to understand, right? It's nasty northern muslims warring on peaceful soputhern christian animists.

Not so fast. The engine driving that conflict has very little to do with religion. The real source of conflict is climate change. The Sahel (the margins of the Sahara) is drying and turning to desert as a direct result of:
1. climate change
2. changes to farming practises caused by the move to a market/export economy, a change mandated by the IMF in order to service debt.
3. the Loss of coastal fisheries due to European and Japanese trawlers overfishing in coastal African waters. Again, the EU and Japan used their economic power to force the coastal nations to permit this fishery.

As a result, populations are on the move all across northern and equatorial Africa. Where they collide, wars start. Drought and famine have this effect irrespective of religion.

That's the real context for the war in the Sudan. Viewed in this light, it's suddenly not so obviously about anything intrinsic to Islam. In all three factors I listed above, western greed and overconsumtion is the engine, not religion.

~~

So we should spend some time looking in the mirror before we patly announce that muslims are violent savages engaging in religious wars.

Well, there is more context, such as the centuries long encirclement and forced conversion of animist Africans to Islam. Is that reaching far back enough?

There is nothing simple about it. The sword of Islam has obliterated discrete tribes all over Africa, enslaved men, raped women and changed the basic nature of the people there. And this preceded the evil Western colonialism. Many of the slave sellers in Africa were ready to do business with the evil Europeans when they caught on to the slave trade.

To continue to ignore or equivocate the role of Islam in these areas shows more of the cultural self-loathing I am so unpopular for pointing out.

Where do you guys learn this stuff? (Really...I want to know ) I know very little about the history/social context of Africa, especially as presented in these two posts. Where can one learn about it?

Robin

[Walden]

I don't think I can agree with the sentence from the Times editorial as written.

If you change a few words, though, I think it really is true...

It should read: "It is an undeniable fact that religion is infected with extremist factions that threaten our way of life."

Islam the religion isn't the real problem--violent fanaticism is, and I think it's found in more religions than just that one.

--James

Sometimes, perhaps, that which is called religion begets violent fanaticism, but, I think, it is more often that violent fanaticism likes to abuse religion for its own purposes. If one wants to have a revolution, it is easier if one can convince one's compatriots that "God is on our side," so to speak.

[The Weekenders]

Lotsa books, Robin, too many to remember or list. The threads of my personal inquiry have been about various aspects of culture and history. I lived in an old Moghul city in India, Hyderabad, and had a very close friend who was a descendant of them. We had planned a trip through all the Islamic countries but it never happened. I have been studying them ever since. I have also studied their role in Spain, as well as the history of Jewish people and culture. And in the course of trying to understand American history and our role in slavery, I read up on the subject of who gathered, bought, transported African slaves to America. Many books on colonial history cover that.

For an interesting and well-documented book about the history of Western racism, with lots of perspective thrown in, I would recommend "The End of Racism" by Dinesh D'Souza. It's brilliant. He has to touch on many cultural attitudes and outlooks, including the premises of modern cultural anthropology in order to cover the subject. A very influential book in my thinking.

[s1m0n]

No culture is innocent, I am not saying that. But I do contend that Westerners focus overly on their own sins while the same types of genocide continue elsewhere in the name of Islam.

There's no "overly" about it. Perhaps the purest and most universal spiritual principle is that there's no virtue in confessing other people's sins; everyone has to confess their own.

The problem with the west is that we DON'T examine our own sins.

[mukade]

I'm with Weekenders on this one.

We need rid our societies of all potential extremist groups. That's why all Muslims need to be returned to Muslim countries. I will admit that not all Muslims are extremists, but they all have that potential.

In the same way, Irish terrorists have bombed London many times and yet the Irish are free to live in our country. Although they are have called a cease-fire, all Irish people are potential terrorists and need to be deported for the stability of our society.

Mukade

[perrins57]

I'm with Weekenders on this one.

We need rid our societies of all potential extremist groups. That's why all Muslims need to be returned to Muslim countries. I will admit that not all Muslims are extremists, but they all have that potential.

In the same way, Irish terrorists have bombed London many times and yet the Irish are free to live in our country. Although they are have called a cease-fire, all Irish people are potential terrorists and need to be deported for the stability of our society.

Mukade

Oooops, us Btitish are in trouble on this basis. We had the most expansive empire the world has ever seen. We killed more people groups than any other nation. On Mukade's logic, we British would not be allowed anywhere.

ps you are a handsome chap Mukade

[OnTheMoor]

Some excepts from an article today. The writer is considered far right by Canadian standards

Terrorism Hasn't Completely Fallen Out of Favour
David Warren

Pew Research has just published a 17-country poll of public attitudes touching Islamic extremism. The survey included six predominantly Muslim countries. It repeated questions from another survey done two years ago, from which we deduce that the popularity of Osama bin Laden among Muslims is receding.

This, at least, is the media headline: "Support for terror wanes among Muslim publics." In fact, the surveyshows support for Osama has grown in Pakistan and Jordon, fallen elsewhere. The question why is left unanswered.

....

Since the chief targets of suicide bombings are Jews, it is noteworthy that overwhelming majorities in the Muslim countries continue to hold what the pollsters call "unfavourable" views of Jews. The "favourables" reach a high of 18 per cent in semi-Westernized Turkey; zeroes were scored in Jordon and Lebanon. The Pew survey shows that Muslims take a better view of Christians, but not by much. Only Lebanon were those "favourables" very high, and that country is nearly half Christian.

Contrast this with Western attitudes toward Muslims. Only in the Netherlands did more than half the respondents say they took an "unfavourable" view of them (51 per cent). The United States and the English-speaking countries continue to be well-disposed to Muslims, and France, too, remained strongly "favourable". But across continental Europe, their image seems to be sinking for one reason or another.

In the main, it would be fair to generalize that we like them a whole lot more than they like us.... but the fact itself should be assimilated: that our idea of "tolerance" is - our idea.

And while support for suicide bombings is happily declining, the truth is that, overall, something like on third of all the Muslims surveyed continued to approve of such tactics ... While it is impossible to abstract numbers for Muslim respondents living in the West, other polls have consistently shown they tend to take more radical positions than Muslims in Islamic countries.

The standard "liberal" ciew is that perhaps one per cent of Muslims are fanatics and therefore potential terrorists. I do think the proportion likely to become suicide bombers is quite low: for regardless of religion, most humand beings instinctively avoid getting killed. But it is clear enough that the proportion of Muslims who do, in principle, support terrorism against the West is not low.

...

Now, a disclaimar is always necessary, for any poll that is conducted across national, linguistic, cultural and especially religious frontiers. The same question may take on a much different flavour, if asked in English or in Arabic; in a city or a village; before or after a major news event; to a Christian or a Muslim etc.

But this is the whole point. We assume, glibly, that people from non-Western cultures share our basic values - life, liberty, happiness, and so forth. We forget that these (mostly unexamined) attitudes were implanted in the West through two millennia of Christian teaching; and would take centuries to root out.

Our values were once common currency in the Middle East, too, for most the that region was once Christian. But in the 14 centuries since the Islamic conquest, what we take for granted was in fact rooted out.

[anniemcu]

I'm with Weekenders on this one.

We need rid our societies of all potential extremist groups. That's why all Muslims need to be returned to Muslim countries. I will admit that not all Muslims are extremists, but they all have that potential.

In the same way, Irish terrorists have bombed London many times and yet the Irish are free to live in our country. Although they are have called a cease-fire, all Irish people are potential terrorists and need to be deported for the stability of our society.

Mukade

I do hope you are kidding... really... if you want to rid your, our or any society of potential extremists, you better get back to small village, non transitory living.

The glasses through which you view others, to determine if they are potentially a threat to you, are actually blinders.

If I were to use your "logic", you'd be deported.

[Whistling Pops]

In this thread it had been suggested that liberals are soft on terrorism issues and favorable toward Muslims. It is irritating that conservatives feel the need to say what liberals favor. I am a liberal because I veiw conservatives as the greatest threat to my liberty. Conservatives would then assume that I would take the side of Muslims. And they would be WRONG! Personally, I was in favor of deporting every Muslim after 9/11. I still would favor deporting ALL Muslims. I think that would have done more to protect this country than invading and destroying two other countries. I don't buy the argument that Islam is a religion of love and a few extremists cause the problems. I think Islam IS the problem.

[The Weekenders]

Pops, I don't say that liberal-thinking people take the SIDE of Muslims. But I do charge that there is "dark-spot" thinking on THIS ISSUE (that is, a context of reasoning that has a dark spot of deniability or unwillingness to confront something very unpleasant); that in the attempt to be multiculturally sensitive and fearful of offending or oppressing people who are potentially terrorists, the plain fact of the rise of Islamic fanaticism is leaving people to feel as though their hands are tied. I want Brits to be more than tearful and I don't want our leaders to soft-pedal the infiltration of our countries by people who wish to destroy us.

I know that many fear nationalism, zenophobia, internment camps, guilt by association, etc. because of painful historical episodes. But I contend that we are better off risking repeating these mistakes than continuing to allow sleeper cells and radical Imams who preach overthrow and violence to be unchecked. No more "dress up like a Muslim day" in public school while a chorus can't so much as sing a Christmas carol, for example.

Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden has stated clearly that he wants a war of cultures and religion and its perplexing in the extreme to grant his wish.