Muslims

[vorlon13]

Those poll results in the opening post are extremely unPC.

We should be ignoring them, and making ad hom attacks against the pollster.

[Catholic_Lady]

What I meant was, how are you going to make them accept that idea?  What are your ideas?

As for me.  There is a two-step process here:

First, the West needs to wean itself off oil so that it no longer matters what these primitive shits do, and

Second, they need to have it out among themselves without our interference, just as catholics and protestants did in the 16-17th centuries.  They need to slaughter each other in great numbers with mind-numbing atrocities until they, too, realize that killing and being killed for an invisible sky-daddy is just fucking stupid. 

The 30 Years War ended in 1648 and Europe recoiled in horror which led to the Enlightenment and that was the beginning of the end of religion in Europe.  Today it is a vestigal presence and jesusists no longer massacre entire populations over such burning questions as Transubstantiation.  I regard this as an improvement.  But I have no idea how much blood will need to be shed before muslims come to regard the issue as not worth fighting over.

I dunno... I don't think it's right for us, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, to sit back and let them kill innocent people and children. Not only that, but they won't just keep the slaughtering on their own soil. They will terrorize the West and kill people there too... as they have always done. And then of course, we have the problem of refugees leaving the country and needing to find a home somewhere... which is what is happening now.  

Furthermore, Jihad has been going on ever since Islam first came into existence. It seems if they were going to learn on their own that killing is wrong, it would have happened a while back ago. It keeps happening because of the root of the problem: the fact that there is no order in Islam and that anyone can read the Koran (a violent book) in any way they like and go around killing people in the name of Mohammed. Islam needs to be reformed from within. There are a lot of really bad Muslims, but there are more good Muslims than bad ones. These good Muslim folks, who are the majority, need to face this problem head on and figure out how they're going to deal with it. Obviously it won't happen overnight. It may take centuries. But it needs to be done and it needs to start somewhere, at some time, otherwise this will never end.

[Minimalist]

It keeps happening because of the root of the problem: the fact that there is no order in Islam

There is no order in xtianity, either, but finally they did stop.

Complex problems do not have simple solutions.  That, right there, is the fundamental problem of American foreign policy as practiced since about 1900.

You know, if we stop selling them arms they would have to finish their war with sticks and swords.  How very koranic! 

Finally,

I don't think it's right for us, as the richest and most powerful country in the world

You need to lose that idea.  We are the most indebted nation in the world precisely because we have been trying to do exactly what you are suggesting.  And military power has not proven to be terribly effective.

You really need to ask yourself how it is that ISIS can take 1,000 assholes, give them a swing across the monkey bars, hand them an AK-47 and send them out to chase 30,000 well-equipped Iraqi "soldiers" out of Mosul in an afternoon?  All this shit about "training" rebels is exactly that.  Shit.  It's a panacea.  Commitment to a cause is what matters.  You need to understand that we always back the wrong horse.  You also need to understand that we are bankrupting ourselves trying to occupy the whole world.

[Catholic_Lady]

Min, I respect your opinion, but you're only answering to 2 fragments of what I said, and not even the whole sentence. 

Islam and Christianity are not equal. I don't think it'll do us any good to treat them like they are exactly the same and so to just sit back and assume Islam will stop fighting because Christianity did. They are different, with different fundamental teachings, different history, and different ideologies (New Testament vs the Koran). I think both faiths have had their own different problems, and both will need different things to solve it.

But I guess only time will tell how everything turns out. In the mean time, unfortunately, there isn't much you and I can do about it. I just hope Isis doesn't continue to grow. They are a particularly bad type of nasty.

[Dystopia]

We can see MK here, our resident Muslim, and see that he is a perfectly good and moral person. If his interpretation/understanding of the Koran and of Islam was some sort of official Islamic law, documented in their doctrine, it would be completely fine. The Islam religion doesn't need to be obliterated. Just reformed.

MK is not really the representative of Islam, and he certainly isn't the most average example of what a Muslim is, like you are not the most common example of what a Catholic is. Exceptions do not change the rules, they stand out against everyone else and shine. Margaret Tatcher was prime minister during a time when sexism was still grossly common, but that didn't mean sexism ceased to exist, she was simply an exception to the rule.

[Minimalist]

Islam and Christianity are not equal.

No, that's where you are wrong.  Religion serves one purpose.  Control of the masses.  It does not matter what space fairy it purports to worship it is all about controlling people.

Your god is every bit as silly as theirs, you know.

[Minimalist]

but you're only answering to 2 fragments of what I said, and not even the whole sentence.

Sometimes it is necessary to cut to the chase.

[Thumpalumpacus]

I dunno... I don't think it's right for us, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, to sit back and let them kill innocent people and children. Not only that, but they won't just keep the slaughtering on their own soil. They will terrorize the West and kill people there too... as they have always done. And then of course, we have the problem of refugees leaving the country and needing to find a home somewhere... which is what is happening now.  

I disagree. Middle Easterners have a proverb: Me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against the world -- meaning that internecine struggle will stay that way so long as the outer world stays out of it. If the West intervened in a Muslim sectarian war, they would drop their fight with each other and band together to fight the Western incursion.

They won't cease terror attacks against us right away, but if there were a Muslim schismatic war, the attacks on the West would peter out, because in a war, you focus your power on your immediate enemy; you don't scatter your attacks, because you dissipate your own military power that way.

Look at it this way: Yemen is in the middle of a bloody civil war. When's the last time a terrorist plot against the West originated in Yemen?

Furthermore, Jihad has been going on ever since Islam first came into existence. It seems if they were going to learn on their own that killing is wrong, it would have happened a while back ago.

Not necessarily. Some lessons must be searing in order to stick.

It keeps happening because of the root of the problem: the fact that there is no order in Islam and that anyone can read the Koran (a violent book) in any way they like and go around killing people in the name of Mohammed.

By this logic, there should also be Protestant terrorism.

Islam needs to be reformed from within. There are a lot of really bad Muslims, but there are more good Muslims than bad ones. These good Muslim folks, who are the majority, need to face this problem head on and figure out how they're going to deal with it. Obviously it won't happen overnight. It may take centuries. But it needs to be done and it needs to start somewhere, at some time, otherwise this will never end.

I don't know that the process hasn't already started, but is simply under the radar right now.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Here's the problem with islam, the way I see it - it has actual totalitarian control over large populations, which differentiates it from most other religions. And religious zealots in charge of theocracies - as much, as we may perceive them as savages - have learned some history.

They know what happened to christianity, when western churches gave up most of their political powers and allowed for secularization of western society. They will do anything to hold on to power and from their perspective, that means not allowing for any kind of reformation.

Moderate muslims don't seem to have much say in their own countries and I doubt that will change any time soon, or perhaps ever, since executing political opponents in a totalitarian theocracy is easier than taking a sh*t.

That's par for the course.  Assorted religions have always paid a major role in the Middle East and the priest class usually held the whip.  It's been that way for thousands of years.  Islam is just the latest religion to follow that model.  The main problem is that such behavior is a mental illness and it's passed on from generation to generation throughout the ages.  If Islam and Judaism vanished today the people would just cook up new BS religions to take their place.  They simply can't help it.  In the Old Testament the Israelites couldn't go five minutes without worshipping something.

[Minimalist]

These good Muslim folks, who are the majority, need to face this problem head on and figure out how they're going to deal with it.

Religions...all religions...define a" a good _________" differently.  A good catholic obeys the pope.  A good muslim obeys the koran.  What is needed is more bad muslims who are willing to say "fuck this primitive shit...it's the 21st century."