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I used to share all the opinions that are being expressed here. So of course there should be a consequence for joining what is known as a terror organization.
Yet, you should see the series if you can. I think there has to be a distinction between someone who deliberately and consciously adhered to this path of terrorism and hatred. And someone who (spoiler here) is a teenager with a dysfunctional family, is looking for a way out of her own hellish situation and is being directed by her circumstances to the trap and brainwashing of these terrorists and ends up extinguishing her life and other people’s lives as a result of this.
So if these person were to understand how stupid their initial choice was (after facing the reality of the situation as it truly is) then maybe they and their kids should be given a second chance.
Also: These people are a very big issue in Europe. Like, there are people who are known to be completely radicalized and ready to commit all sorts of Barbary. Yet when their jail sentence ends some 5-10 years after being released, they are allowed to become ordinary citizens once again. + There are even cases of radicalization inside prisons etc.
That is why I always say that China is basically a “rational actor”. This is the reason why they are not releasing the pressure upon their Uygur population in Xinyang. I am not saying that what they are doing is right. Yet, Islam is being heavily politicized. So if someone is using that religion at a political ideology, than how does a communist / authoritarian state react to that?
Second question: How does a democratic state react to these Islamo-fascists (that’s the term we use to describe these people in my region)?
Let's do a little bit of work on the framing. Islam is political, it doesn't get heavily politicized, it starts out that way. War and religion are both politics by other means. The "pressure" is a campaign of ethnic cleansing, internment, and reeducation. Is the question how do we or how does a communist state....or how should we or a communist state?
In the first sense, the question answers itself. This is one thing that a communist authoritarian state may do. Other types of states organized in other ways have often availed themselves of the same option. We exterminated the natives here, kettled the survivors, and sent their children away to be educated at government funded church run schools where the abuse would continue for many more decades under apartheid conditions. Native resistance ended at wounded knee. Somewhere around 300 lakota were killed and 19 medals of honor were awarded to the participants. More for the overall campaign. A century of war followed by a century of apartheid followed by about a half century of disenfranchisement, the us officially apologizing for what it calls it's ill-conceived actions (and many other bad words) about a decade ago... bringing us up to today.
What should a communist state, or a democratic republic, do? Should in some sense not exclusively related to decency, I'm assuming. Rational..as in, will it work? What do you think, did it work for us? If china spent the next 250 years getting rid of those people and making sure they never bounce back....is that a win? 25? 2.5?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
“Islam is political, it doesn't get heavily politicized, it starts out that way.”
- As I pointed out in many other topics, I totally disagree with that. The etymological meaning of religion is “To bind back” and the etymological meaning of Islam is “to surrender to God”. Spirituality (all spirituality) is an inner journey or some sort of psychological transformation program in which the individual (us / we) rethinks of his / her relationship with the divine. As it has been pointed out by philosophers like Martin Luther, it only involves the individual and the individual only. So it’s not even a “group” phenomenon. If there is a religious community or a religious authority, these guys are only there to support this inner transformation of the individual. Period.
“...”
- China is not exterminating the Uygur. They aren’t even properly assimilating them. They have these camps and reeducation centers in which they are overtly torturing and brainwashing these people (clearly tyrannizing them) but as a result, these people cannot even consider becoming the next West-Bank or anything like that and annoy the Chinese government like that. That’s what authoritarian states do.
And a note on the ethnocide of native Americans: It’s very nice to see people like Shailene Woodley take part in the defense of native American right and truly recognize the wrongs that have been done to these people. This is a part of our evolution as a specie and I believe that things are rather moving in the right direction.
On the democratic way of dealing with extremism, many people think that governments are not doing enough on these issues. I’ve already talked about radical Islamists being released some 5 years after they have been arrested. Sometimes after becoming even more radical and radicalizing other people in prison.
+ There has been a verdict in France yesterday on the teenagers that had somehow helped the murderer of the Teacher Samuel Patty in October 2020. The judge gave only a year of house-arrest to 5 of these 6 teenagers.
The accusation is dissatisfied. They all wanted tougher punishments but the judge seems to have been willing to give these kids (young-adults) another chance in their lives if you know what I mean.
So the right wing parties are demanding tougher measures. My view is similar. But I do not support tougher punishment. I support more social measures. These terrorists should not be able to be so appealing to these kids in the first place. So the root causes will have to be solved first.
December 10, 2023 at 11:08 am (This post was last modified: December 10, 2023 at 11:11 am by The Grand Nudger.)
I would suggest that you feel compelled to make counterfactual statements about religion in general and islam in particular because, even though you have a revised (and I suspect improved) belief system..some part of it's credibility in your own mind hinges on the islamists magic book being true...and it is certainly their book. This is a longstanding problem for every derivation of abrahamism.
The trouble is that there's not really any way for a person or a group to have an idea about how life should be and people should act and how governments should be arranged that isn't political. A religion without politics™ is mere superstition. Just a collection of things that go bump that some people believe in, but that do not compel them to any particular set of actions or any specific ideology. That does not create a unified moral community.
Islam is inescapably political, and insomuch as you think that's wrong, that's you saying that islam is wrong. Insomuch as you think islam should be less political, that's you saying islam should be less islamic. Mind you, I don't disagree, but I do suspect that it's an impossible ask.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
December 10, 2023 at 3:51 pm (This post was last modified: December 10, 2023 at 4:06 pm by Anomalocaris.)
the main reason why religion is organized is to make what is otherwise politically difficult or infeasible, feasible and easier for the ring leaders. All else are but incidental or mere means to this end. And, if it ever loses the credible promise of providing this capability, it will wither quickly until ether it disappears, or until some other ambitious hucksters spot opportunities in its decline to become the new ring leaders by finding ways to reinvigorate this promise.
So an Apolitical religion is oxymoronic as an abiotic organism..
I think it is safe to say no mass organization or movement are created in any human society for apolitical reasons, and none will endure for significant time in any human society without having a comtinued political role.
(December 10, 2023 at 11:08 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote: I would suggest that you feel compelled to make counterfactual statements about religion in general and islam in particular because, even though you have a revised (and I suspect improved) belief system..some part of it's credibility in your own mind hinges on the islamists magic book being true...and it is certainly their book. This is a longstanding problem for every derivation of abrahamism.
The trouble is that there's not really any way for a person or a group to have an idea about how life should be and people should act and how governments should be arranged that isn't political. A religion without politics™ is mere superstition. Just a collection of things that go bump that some people believe in, but that do not compel them to any particular set of actions or any specific ideology. That does not create a unified moral community.
Islam is inescapably political, and insomuch as you think that's wrong, that's you saying that islam is wrong. Insomuch as you think islam should be less political, that's you saying islam should be less islamic. Mind you, I don't disagree, but I do suspect that it's an impossible ask.
You are looking to things in a historical / practical perspective. I am not saying this is wrong.
In fact my only counter-argument here is that all (major) religions started out as a tool of self-improvement and that includes social improvement. Later they all became more and more politicized. But that’s because of us. Not because of God. In practical terms, with Christianity the Living-God Emperor went away. And the Divine-Emperor came to replace him. But that changed with the reform. First England renounced Papal domination by creating the Anglican Church. Than Protestantism and reformism emerged. And in time we started seeing Religion as an inner journey rather than an ideology that’s always telling us how bad we are and how we are supposed to obey and submit to everyone except to ourselves. That’s just the old ways. There is a new methodology now. It’s not that I don’t wish sometimes that things could go back to the way they were but things have changed and they have changed for rather good reasons. You seem to want for the fairy tales to completely disappear. I am not completely opposed to that either. This garden is already magic and beautiful enough even without any fairies living in it. Yet, as I have repeated more than one time, my issue is not an issue of mythology. There is a journey of personal quest and personal transformation that I find to be beneficial to myself. And the main problem with politics is that it has absolutely nothing to do here. I’ve had friends with similar philosophical convictions, I had role model even teachers. Still the journey is not toward an outside cosmic personality. It’s a journey toward a reality that is inside.
This being said. I am (and many like me are) active participants in the creation of a world that includes more justice and wellbeing. I have fierce political position and I don’t have a snoby attitude toward politics either. But politics and religion: there is simply no way I can see it work. Not in spiritual terms, not in political terms. On the contrary: In 2023, everyone would agree that this is an abomination
I’m not going to romanticize the feudal world order that existed in the past. But it was still a real practical way of doing things that seemed to work in the reality of that time. I am going to refer you to a movie that points at how corrupt this feudal order was in the Medici Era in the 16th century: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110963/
Also, the works of Machiavelli is a work that mirrors perfectly how these past monarchies were rotten from the inside and were anything but a perfect world order. Still, it was the reality of the time. At least on some level there was a given world order that was mainly theocratic and it has an appearance of functionality at least on some superficial level. The populist religious approaches of the 20th / 21th century are not really related to that. You can at the whole middle-east to see that. I don’t know if you are interested in soccer for instance. Yesterday there was a Soccer Club Director who went in the middle of the play to punch one of the referees in the face. As BBC pointed out, this is actually something that goes beyond ordinary hooliganism. The Turkish people are actually living in this constant state of paranoia. Half of the thing they hear is a lies. They are constantly being bombarded by a Russo-Iranian style fantastic propaganda. In fact half of the people are like MAGA supporters in the US. They live in a world that is similar to ours but radically different with all sorts of conspiracy theories and lies about real factual events. So many here believe that this referee “needed” to be punched in the face. The truth is: people don’t trust referees or club leaders or soccer players themselves anymore. There are conspiracy theories on that too. https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkish-refer...11814.html
So that’s 21st century “theocracy”. As I said, it’s an abomination that is struggling to survive through fear, political pressure and propaganda.
Poor machiavelli - writes a risk assessment, goes down in history as a manual.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
HI, I didn't like how I formulated my previous Post. Being unable to edit it I typed it again. Can you erase my previous message? Thanks
I’m not going to romanticize the feudal world order that existed in the past. But it was still a real practical way of doing things that seemed to work in the reality of that time. I am going to refer you to a movie that points at how corrupt this feudal order was in the Medici Era in the 16th century: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110963/
Also, the works of Machiavelli is a work that mirrors perfectly how these past monarchies were rotten from the inside and were anything but a perfect world order. Still, this was the political reality of the time. At least on some level there was this given world order that was perceived as being theocratic in nature and it still was serving its function in the organization of most societies in that era. I don’t think we can say that the populist-religious approaches of the 20th / 21th century can be truly compared to that. You can look at the whole middle-east to see that. I don’t know if you are interested in soccer for instance. Yesterday there was a Soccer Club Director who went in the middle of the play to punch one of the referees in the face. As BBC pointed out, this is actually something that goes beyond ordinary hooliganism. The Turkish people are actually living in this constant state of paranoia. Half of the things they hear from the media are nothing but lies. They are constantly being bombarded by a Russo-Iranian style propaganda that causes them to be suspicious about anything and everyone. I like to compare their ideology to the ideology of MAGA supporters in the US. They live in a world that is similar to ours but radically different with all sorts of conspiracy theories and lies about real factual events. So many people in this country believe that this referee “needed” to be punched in the face. The truth is: People don’t trust referees or club leaders or soccer players themselves anymore. Even something as fun and as entertaining as sports has become the playground of conflicting interests, lies and paranoia between different groups of people: https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkish-refer...11814.html
So that’s 21st century “theocracy”. As I said, it’s an abomination that is struggling to survive through fear, political pressure and raw-propaganda.
![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)
