Islamic Terrorism

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-08, 18:11

I've decided to move this discussion here from the wanderlust thread so as not to further derail it and because I think most of this has to do with terrorism committed by Muslims.
Vlürch wrote:So, if being told that I'm wrong and me understanding why, changing my view on the issue (even if only slightly) gets me compared to flat-earthers and creationists, I have no idea what you expect. A complete 180 degree turn? When, as far as I know, I already agree with you on the important parts?

I know you said you're done, but please, tell me what part of what I said is so wrong that it warrants comparing me to some of the worst scum on the earth? I just don't get it.

I didn't understand what you were trying to say in that part I bolded up there.

A lot of this stuff is honestly pretty basic information. The only reason I'm inclined not to be surprised that you don't know it is because you said on another thread that you've never received formal education beyond primary school.
Jews could in the future be under threat of genocide by Arabs.

This is impossible in our lifetimes as long as the US continues to fund the state of Israel and supply it with weapons.
I mean, a huge part of Islamic extremism is centered on antisemitism, and Islamic extremism is on the rise, so Jews are going to be more threatened if it keeps growing.

Pragmatically speaking, most Islamic extremist movements do not have Israel as their primary concern. The only movement of any kind that seems to have attacked Israel in recent years appears to be Hamas. Most of these movements have attacked fellow Muslims plenty of times, though.
the Arabs I've talked to have been assholes. That includes a few Arabs in real life, including a doctor; he was definitely doing his job, but he was a total cunt and told me to man up as the first solution. Just because he turned out to help me more than I could imagine most doctors do, that doesn't erase his rudeness.

I'm sorry to hear that. I've met plenty of Arabs who were nice, including at least two on this forum.
I'd like to understand why they have any connections to terrorists

Well, if that's all you need to know, then why not just ask? Asking Uyghurs "why do any Uyghurs have any connections to terrorists?" is probably going to be a lot less offensive than saying, "You know, I just can't sympathize with you Uyghurs' struggle for independence because the fact that a small minority of your people are engaged in terrorism puts me off of it."

The basic answer at least seems pretty simple to me: Terrorism doesn't have an ethnicity or religious affiliation or anything. There are terrible people in every ethnic group (and religion, etc.), and if they have enough power to engage in terrorism, then they probably will. If their entire ethnic group is subjugated in some manner, then they can probably gain more or less widespread support, too.
most terrorism in China is committed by Uyghurs

No, it's not. It's committed by the Chinese government.
there are Palestinians that want to exterminate Israel out of existence; they don't necessarily actively seek to genocide Jews, but it could happen in the future much easier than Jews genociding Arabs

Okay, first of all, Palestinians committing genocide against Jews is not comparable to Jews committing genocide against all Arabs, if that's what you meant. The vast majority of Arabs live nowhere near Israel and are not going to do jack shit about Israel no matter how much they may say they want to.

Second, not all Jews live in Israel. Palestinians don't give two shits about Jews who don't.

Third, it is by no means easier for Palestinians to commit genocide against Israeli Jews than the other way around. (Modern) Israel was formed by the British government and has had plenty of support and assistance (including lots and lots of military capabilities and soldiers) from Western countries throughout its history. The range of modern-day Palestine (or Palestinian territory) is a direct result of the conflicts between Israeli Jews and Palestinians, and Palestinians get nowhere near as much support or assistance from anyone as Israel does.
if Israel started to genocide Arabs, it wouldn't be hard to imagine every single Muslim majority country in the world starting to bomb the fuck out of them and killing all Jews within their borders.

Very few countries border Israel, and the Jewish population elsewhere in the Middle East seems small enough to die out all on its own.
The opposite could never happen.

The opposite pretty much already has happened. The US is a longtime ally of Israel and has already bombed the fuck out of all sorts of Muslim-majority countries (and then some). It has never attacked Israel in any way.
That's like saying that if Finland, Estonia and Hungary were nuked out of existence, it wouldn't be worse from a cultural and linguistic point of view than if Slovenia, Bosnia and Poland were nuked out of existence.

That's exactly right, and you know I speak with authority on this at least as far as the linguistic point of view is concerned because I am a linguist. It's not worse; it's equally bad. One set of human beings being murdered is just as bad as another set of human beings being murdered. Murder is bad, period.
The latter three are all Slavic countries, but the former three are Uralic and the only non-Indo-European countries in Europe, so it would be a huge blow to diversity in Europe.

Sure, it would be a pretty big blow to diversity in Europe (you would still have some non-Indo-Europeans left, though: Basques, Maltese, Turks...). This does not make it any better at all for anyone else to be nuked, though.
Similarly, if Basques were genocided, it would be a fuckton worse than Finns being genocided because Basques speak a language isolate.

Every language will die someday, and once either Basque or Finnish dies, we will lose a lot of valuable linguistic information either way. Once Finnish dies, we will no longer have access to a lot of information about the Uralic languages. And sure, once Basque dies, we will no longer have access to a lot of information regarding the languages of Europe in general. But the flip side of the coin is that European languages in general have a lot in common, too; even Basque has a lot in common with other European languages.
For me, language death is one of the saddest things in the world.

Although this opinion is common and I actually study as wide a variety of endangered languages as possible, I have never really understood this opinion. I mean, sure, death of any kind is bad, but languages have probably been dying almost as long as they've been living. I think what's more tragic than the mere fact that languages are dying is the fact that languages are currently dying at a faster rate than we've ever seen before.
If the last speaker of a given language is murdered, that's worse than him/her dying of natural causes.

Well, yeah. If anyone is murdered, that's obviously worse than them dying of natural causes. That has nothing to do with languages.
The same applies to entire cultures and languages.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.
I didn't know there were speakers of other languages than Arabic in Palestine, so I now understand that my argument is flawed in that regard, but with Palestinian Arabic and Hebrew it's still valid because Hebrew is the only non-Arabic Semitic language spoken in the region which's whose speakers have an independent country.

In what region? And what difference does it make that they have their own country? They didn't, say, a hundred years ago.
Yes, but they are both Arabs. Jews are not, and as such, the extinction of Jews would be worse than the extinction of Palestinians.

The extinction of anyone is as bad as the extinction of anyone else. Fortunately, it doesn't seem as if either Israelis or Palestinians are realistically in danger of extinction at this time.
Yes, that's fortunately the case now, but if there was a full-blown war between Israel and any Arab country, Jews would be the ones at risk, not Arabs.

There have been at least three full-blown wars between Israel and Arab states, and Israel won every time. The first time AFAIK was in 1948 when it was invaded by five Arab states all at the same time.
I just don't like how the argument is often made that it has to be either one way or the other, not both. Like, if the community that the terrorist came from condemns it, nobody outside the community has the right to condemn it, and the other way around, that if someone outside the community condemns it, the community itself isn't expected to condemn it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're misunderstanding the argument. The point is, it's always easy to point fingers at other people and blame them for terrorism or violence or any other bad thing. It's much harder to look at ourselves and think about what we can personally do about it, but it's also more important to do that because obviously, if everyone just points fingers at everyone else, no one will fix their own problematic actions.
Why can't we all unite in at least our opposition to terrorism? How can that be so hard, unless some of the non-terrorists are secretly in support of terrorism?

Every human is unique and different. Therefore, it tends to be somewhat difficult at least to unite humans for a particular cause.
That Jews are Jews even if they're also other things, so they can always have more in common with each other than others if they want, which is why it's surprising to me that there are such huge differences not only in individuals or small groups but within Israel as a country that relate directly to the Jewishness rather than other issues like every country has as well.

How is this any different from Finns?

Besides, remember that Jews are non-territorial, which means they come from all over the world. Finnish Jews, Russian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Indian Jews, and Japanese Jews all have very different sets of experiences despite all being Jews, in much the same way that Finns, Russians, Egyptians, Indians, and Japanese also all have very different sets of experiences despite all being humans with a mostly European/Asian cultural background. :P
I meant the different branches of Islam, since they're objectively not as different from one another as Christianity or Hinduism or whatever are from each other, so it would be easier to indoctrinate people into another sect within Islam gradually than to suddenly force an entirely new religion on them. Isn't something like that pretty much what happened in Oman?

Where'd you get the idea that that happened in Oman? :hmm:

Sure, it may be easier to indoctrinate people into another sect than into another religion, but indoctrination is hard just in general. It's probably easier (in the sense of requiring less effort than conversion) to just let people believe whatever they want.

In the case of Bahrain, what apparently happened was that a (relatively extreme? militant?) sect of Shia Islam called the Qarmatians took over Bahrain but were later defeated by the Abbasids who practiced a more moderate version of Shia Islam. Later Sunni rulers apparently preferred this over the Qarmatians' brand of Shia Islam, which kind of makes sense, right? In fact, they encouraged it.
I know, but the founder of Buddhism didn't personally massacre tons of people like the founder of Islam did.

The founder of Islam didn't, either.
Nonviolence is at the core of Buddhism

Islam, too.
Violent Buddhists are contradicting themselves and their beliefs and they're hypocrites, violent Muslims are strict followers of their religion with no contradiction and often no hypocrisy

Nope. They're all contradicting themselves and their beliefs and are hypocrites.
Sufi interpretations are different from the obvious

Nope. They're just different.
Yeah, and that's sad, but it also has probably a lot to do with Xinjiang having been a part of China for so long

Well, yeah.
and it's even known by the Chinese name.

Well, there is an alternative in use.

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby Saim » 2017-08-08, 20:31

The founder of Islam didn't, either.


I agree with the rest of your post 100% but this is historically untenable, at least if we're to take seriously the picture of Muhammad given by Islamic scripture. I mean, beyond the outright genocide of the Banu Qurayza, Muhammad was a military and political leader who is known to have killed a lot of people (or had them killed).

That said, I'm not sure what modern relevance that is supposed to have. Modern Islamic practice is not determined by scripture in some sort of acultural, ahistorical vacuum. Jihadis within the Salafist movement are clearly at least partially inspired by the prophet's military conquests, but I doubt most Muslims have heard of the Banu Qurayza or think of international conflict primarily through the prism of scripture.

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-08, 20:57

Okay, I was wrong then. Thanks! :)

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby Vlürch » 2017-08-08, 22:48

vijayjohn wrote:I didn't understand what you were trying to say in that part I bolded up there.

That arguing with me can't be the same as arguing with creationists or whatever because I do change my views if I'm convinced that I was wrong.
vijayjohn wrote:
Jews could in the future be under threat of genocide by Arabs.

This is impossible in our lifetimes as long as the US continues to fund the state of Israel and supply it with weapons.

I hope so, but I doubt it... people probably said the same before Hitler started killing Jews.
vijayjohn wrote:
I mean, a huge part of Islamic extremism is centered on antisemitism, and Islamic extremism is on the rise, so Jews are going to be more threatened if it keeps growing.

Pragmatically speaking, most Islamic extremist movements do not have Israel as their primary concern. The only movement of any kind that seems to have attacked Israel in recent years appears to be Hamas. Most of these movements have attacked fellow Muslims plenty of times, though.

Ok.
vijayjohn wrote:
I'd like to understand why they have any connections to terrorists

Well, if that's all you need to know, then why not just ask? Asking Uyghurs "why do any Uyghurs have any connections to terrorists?" is probably going to be a lot less offensive than saying, "You know, I just can't sympathize with you Uyghurs' struggle for independence because the fact that a small minority of your people are engaged in terrorism puts me off of it."

The basic answer at least seems pretty simple to me: Terrorism doesn't have an ethnicity or religious affiliation or anything. There are terrible people in every ethnic group (and religion, etc.), and if they have enough power to engage in terrorism, then they probably will. If their entire ethnic group is subjugated in some manner, then they can probably gain more or less widespread support, too.

I can sympathise with the Uyghurs that want independence, and if there was like an international voting on it that any random person could sign up for, I'd definitely support them. Terrorism, though, is a crime that in my opinion taints those that the terrorist has interacted with that didn't even try to stop them; if they have family that knew about it and they didn't turn them in, then they're partially to blame for allowing the terrorist attack to happen. There was a poll in the UK that showed only 34% of Muslims would contact the police if they knew someone they know is involved in terrorism, and the UK isn't even majority Muslim. Other researches, like this one, have shown that Muslims in some countries have some pretty fucking terrifying views, while in general Kazakhs and Albanians are the least extreme in their views. I don't know of any polls or anything about the views of Muslims in Finland, but there obviously are some thinly veiled pro-ISIS people (no pun intended), but they don't have the support of anyone except themselves as far as anyone knows, and they thankfully don't commit any terrorist attacks... and even though some have gone to Syria to join ISIS, at least they didn't blow shit up here.
vijayjohn wrote:
most terrorism in China is committed by Uyghurs

No, it's not. It's committed by the Chinese government.

I knew I should've said "excluding state terrorism", but I figured it'd be obvious it doesn't count.
vijayjohn wrote:The US is a longtime ally of Israel and has already bombed the fuck out of all sorts of Muslim-majority countries (and then some). It has never attacked Israel in any way.

But that's what America does, it's why pretty much nobody likes the country... but no one can say anything against it, since the US is the only country that's legally allowed to do shit like that.
vijayjohn wrote:One set of human beings being murdered is just as bad as another set of human beings being murdered. Murder is bad, period.

I agree 100% with the latter sentence, and in most circumstances the former too, but in terms of genocides or potential genocides, or just language death even naturally, it's different because a larger chunk of humanity is lost if there's more uniqueness to that group of people or language. What I'm saying isn't the idiotic oppression points bullshit, since that gives privileges to people and is detrimental to equality, but only acknowledgement of the unique characteristics of any individual group of people just like the individuals within that group. If someone more unique dies than someone who isn't as unique, it's a loss to uniqueness, and as such there's less diversity that can even be considered possible for individuals. With groups of people, that's amplified by every single individual in that group.

Consider if Kennedy or Martin Luther King had died before they were able to influence people. America, and the entire world, would almost certainly be a worse place. The same can be applied to languages and cultures, but instead of any single individual, all the speakers of the language and the people whose culture it is are the ones that influence people. If they stopped speaking the language before it was recorded, the rest of the world would probably never know that the language even existed. There almost certainly were more languages spoken even in Europe that were never attested in any way, others dying simply because their speakers changed to a more dominant language or because they were genocided. In Asia, even more so, and in Africa probably most of all. Who knows about America or Australia or any islands? If someone kills one of the last speakers of a language, that's worse than if they killed a random English-speaker or Finnish-speaker or whatever language that isn't endangered.

You can disagree, but it is at the end of the day a matter of opinion, even if my opinion is that it's objectively true... as much as any human things can be objective, anyway, so not really objective, but...
vijayjohn wrote:
The latter three are all Slavic countries, but the former three are Uralic and the only non-Indo-European countries in Europe, so it would be a huge blow to diversity in Europe.

Sure, it would be a pretty big blow to diversity in Europe (you would still have some non-Indo-Europeans left, though: Basques, Maltese, Turks...). This does not make it any better at all for anyone else to be nuked, though.

Whether Malta, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in Europe is a matter of debate, personally I don't care enough and just decided to be on the safe side and exclude them. Basques don't have an independent country, so they're not included by definition in what I said; they're arguably even more important because of that, too, but they should get their own independent country first and then they could have enough stability.
vijayjohn wrote:
For me, language death is one of the saddest things in the world.

Although this opinion is common and I actually study as wide a variety of endangered languages as possible, I have never really understood this opinion. I mean, sure, death of any kind is bad, but languages have probably been dying almost as long as they've been living. I think what's more tragic than the mere fact that languages are dying is the fact that languages are currently dying at a faster rate than we've ever seen before.

For me, at least, it's a combination of the rate and the endangerment of languages because they're replaced by others.
vijayjohn wrote:
If the last speaker of a given language is murdered, that's worse than him/her dying of natural causes.

Well, yeah. If anyone is murdered, that's obviously worse than them dying of natural causes. That has nothing to do with languages.
The same applies to entire cultures and languages.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

If the last speakers of a language switch to another language because they move or whatever and nobody eventually speaks it anymore, that's like the language dying of natural causes. If they're forced to switch to another language, that's like the language being murdered.
vijayjohn wrote:
I didn't know there were speakers of other languages than Arabic in Palestine, so I now understand that my argument is flawed in that regard, but with Palestinian Arabic and Hebrew it's still valid because Hebrew is the only non-Arabic Semitic language spoken in the region which's whose speakers have an independent country.

In what region? And what difference does it make that they have their own country? They didn't, say, a hundred years ago.

The Arabian Peninsula. Them having an independent country doesn't really make a difference, I was just making sure that nobody would think I thought Neo-Aramaic and whatnot don't exist.
vijayjohn wrote:There have been at least three full-blown wars between Israel and Arab states, and Israel won every time. The first time AFAIK was in 1948 when it was invaded by five Arab states all at the same time.

Whoa. :shock: Alright, so, I was wrong about this, too, and Jews actually can defend themselves against Arabs. That's good to know and makes me feel better about the whole Middle East situation.
vijayjohn wrote:
I just don't like how the argument is often made that it has to be either one way or the other, not both. Like, if the community that the terrorist came from condemns it, nobody outside the community has the right to condemn it, and the other way around, that if someone outside the community condemns it, the community itself isn't expected to condemn it.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're misunderstanding the argument. The point is, it's always easy to point fingers at other people and blame them for terrorism or violence or any other bad thing. It's much harder to look at ourselves and think about what we can personally do about it, but it's also more important to do that because obviously, if everyone just points fingers at everyone else, no one will fix their own problematic actions.

I guess maybe that could be the case... but I don't know, it hasn't seemed like that most of the time...
vijayjohn wrote:
Why can't we all unite in at least our opposition to terrorism? How can that be so hard, unless some of the non-terrorists are secretly in support of terrorism?

Every human is unique and different. Therefore, it tends to be somewhat difficult at least to unite humans for a particular cause.

Yet people can unite to found ISIS, etc... :roll:
vijayjohn wrote:
That Jews are Jews even if they're also other things, so they can always have more in common with each other than others if they want, which is why it's surprising to me that there are such huge differences not only in individuals or small groups but within Israel as a country that relate directly to the Jewishness rather than other issues like every country has as well.

How is this any different from Finns?

Finns are just an ethnolinguistic group, not also a cultural and religious group. Sure, not all Jews are adherents of Judaism, but there is some cultural common ground as a result of it and the thousands of years of history. Finns haven't had a common religion/mythology in centuries, and even though most Finns are officially Lutherans, that's not really true in practice; pretty much anyone that actually believes in the stuff in the Bible is considered mentally ill, at least here in Finland, and that's a good thing in my opinion even though I personally do believe in God... but my beliefs aren't really Christian or any other religion's in particular, they're way too vague and I'm not really sure enough of them for the most part, so it doesn't bother me. Also, there's no unifying culture either, thanks to the centuries of Swedish and Russian influence.
vijayjohn wrote:Besides, remember that Jews are non-territorial, which means they come from all over the world. Finnish Jews, Russian Jews, Egyptian Jews, Indian Jews, and Japanese Jews all have very different sets of experiences despite all being Jews, in much the same way that Finns, Russians, Egyptians, Indians, and Japanese also all have very different sets of experiences despite all being humans with a mostly European/Asian cultural background. :P

So, Jews in one country don't keep in touch with Jews in another country through the internet or anything, more than non-Jews?
vijayjohn wrote:
I meant the different branches of Islam, since they're objectively not as different from one another as Christianity or Hinduism or whatever are from each other, so it would be easier to indoctrinate people into another sect within Islam gradually than to suddenly force an entirely new religion on them. Isn't something like that pretty much what happened in Oman?

Where'd you get the idea that that happened in Oman? :hmm:

They have their own branch of Islam that's hardly at all practised outside the country. I've never really read about its history, but I assumed it was passed down from the top to the people either when they weren't yet fully islamised or due to isolation or something?
vijayjohn wrote:Sure, it may be easier to indoctrinate people into another sect than into another religion, but indoctrination is hard just in general. It's probably easier (in the sense of requiring less effort than conversion) to just let people believe whatever they want.

In the case of Bahrain, what apparently happened was that a (relatively extreme? militant?) sect of Shia Islam called the Qarmatians took over Bahrain but were later defeated by the Abbasids who practiced a more moderate version of Shia Islam. Later Sunni rulers apparently preferred this over the Qarmatians' brand of Shia Islam, which kind of makes sense, right? In fact, they encouraged it.

Interesting, I thought they practically banned Shia Islam.
vijayjohn wrote:
I know, but the founder of Buddhism didn't personally massacre tons of people like the founder of Islam did.

The founder of Islam didn't, either.
Nonviolence is at the core of Buddhism

Islam, too.
Violent Buddhists are contradicting themselves and their beliefs and they're hypocrites, violent Muslims are strict followers of their religion with no contradiction and often no hypocrisy

Nope. They're all contradicting themselves and their beliefs and are hypocrites.

This time on Unilang, the religion of peace meme strikes once again... :ohwell:
vijayjohn wrote:
Sufi interpretations are different from the obvious

Nope. They're just different.

The obvious interpretations are those that don't look for symbolic alternatives or consider historical differences and progress. Thus, the conclusion that Islam is a religion of war and violence. It isn't necessarily, but it is at face value, which is pretty much (at least a contributing catfor to) why the debate of whether Sufis are even Muslims exists.
vijayjohn wrote:
Yeah, and that's sad, but it also has probably a lot to do with Xinjiang having been a part of China for so long

Well, yeah.
and it's even known by the Chinese name.

Well, there is an alternative in use.

But who actually calls it that except explicitly pro-independence activists? From what I can tell, it has a negative ring to it in the eyes of most westerners because it validates the Islamists wanting to call it that. Uyghuristan or something sounds more appropriate if it was a state for Uyghurs, and the Kazakh-majority parts joined Kazakhstan and the Mongolian-majority parts joined Mongolia, etc. Why not, even? It'd be better for them all to be free from Chinese oppression.

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-09, 3:48

Vlürch wrote:arguing with me can't be the same as arguing with creationists or whatever because I do change my views if I'm convinced that I was wrong.

Thanks for keeping an open mind while those of us who don't really agree with you explain our position. This is why I'm at least kind of trying to address your points sensitively (i.e. without just shutting you down because I happen to strongly disagree with your views or something). Tbh, though, I can understand why eskandar would have assumed you wouldn't be open-minded about this because it's so rare in online arguments that people are. Online arguments are frequently pointless.
vijayjohn wrote:
Jews could in the future be under threat of genocide by Arabs.

This is impossible in our lifetimes as long as the US continues to fund the state of Israel and supply it with weapons.

I hope so, but I doubt it... people probably said the same before Hitler started killing Jews.

Nope. There has never been a level of support for Jews comparable to that provided to the state of Israel. For that matter, I'm not sure any state has ever had that much foreign support right from the get-go.
I can sympathise with the Uyghurs that want independence, and if there was like an international voting on it that any random person could sign up for, I'd definitely support them. Terrorism, though, is a crime that in my opinion taints those that the terrorist has interacted with that didn't even try to stop them

Okay, but to what extent is it possible to distinguish between terrorism on the one hand and an independence struggle on the other anyway? Was the Finnish Labor Party (Suomen Työväenpuolue), the forerunner of the SDP/demarit founded in 1899, a terrorist organization? Were the White Guards (Suojeluskunnat) a terrorist organization? The Irish Republican Army (IRA)? The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association? I mean, all of those have murdered innocent people, haven't they?

Or more broadly, what is a terrorist organization and what is not? Countries don't agree on this question; some organizations are considered terrorist organizations by some countries but not by others. For example, the governments of Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates consider the Taliban a terrorist organization, but the governments of the US, UK, France, and China do not.
if they have family that knew about it and they didn't turn them in, then they're partially to blame for allowing the terrorist attack to happen.

Sure, but this is another area where it's a lot easier to point fingers than it is to actually do something about it. I may not have terrorists in my family, but what can I do about it? You may not, either, but what can you do about it? Well, you and I can keep in mind that this problem exists, learn something about terrorist organizations, learn about their history, etc. In other words, we can keep ourselves educated on the topic so we know better how to deal with it and so we don't oversimplify the problem (because honestly, it's a pretty complicated problem. If it wasn't, it would have been resolved ages ago).

In addition, this is an area where it's worth the trouble to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone in such a family. Let's say that you did have terrorists in your family, or even just one terrorist, who you are close to. What do you do then? Do you turn them in even if you're more attached to them than to some faceless nation-state that you're serving by doing that? Or do you refrain from doing that even if they run the risk of harming others and possibly themselves? If you turn them in, how do you know you won't be punished, too, on the grounds of guilt by association? Do you try to convince them not to do it? What if they choose not to listen to you? What if they don't have a choice but to follow through with their attacks? (For example, what if they're being forced to attack someone on pain of death?) Again, it's just not that simple.

Personally, when I think of a state where everybody turns people in whenever they violate (the letter of) the law even if those people are close relatives, I think of the Soviet Union. I don't think that's a good model.
Other researches, like this one, have shown that Muslims in some countries have some pretty fucking terrifying views

Well, all kinds of people in all kinds of countries have some pretty fucking terrifying views. But if:
they thankfully don't commit any terrorist attacks...

then it's not really a problem, is it?
and even though some have gone to Syria to join ISIS, at least they didn't blow shit up here.

But that doesn't make it any better, does it? I mean, sure, it makes it better for you personally, but I thought you were saying that you don't condone terrorism and terrorism is bad and end of story. If so, then isn't that still just as bad, regardless of how little it affects you on a personal level?
I knew I should've said "excluding state terrorism", but I figured it'd be obvious it doesn't count.

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. Just because terrorism is committed by a government and not by some other type of organization doesn't make it any better or any more trivial; it's still terrorism. Even when it's not committed by a government, it often has the support of one or more governments anyway, not to mention specific individuals who hold high-ranking positions in some countries' governments. Besides, if you exclude state terrorism, then that means that you would be excluding, say, the Taliban since they control much of Afghanistan, or ISIS because they control much of Syria and Iraq.
But that's what America does, it's why pretty much nobody likes the country... but no one can say anything against it, since the US is the only country that's legally allowed to do shit like that.

I'm not sure I really understand what you mean here, but just because the US does it doesn't make it okay, nor does it mean we should all just shut the fuck up about it. The government of the US absolutely should be held accountable for all the shitty aspects of its foreign policy. After all, the reason why a lot of terrorist organizations are a problem on an international scale is because ironically, it was the US that empowered them on a huge scale in the first place. People who would later go on to form Al-Qaeda and the Taliban got tons of money and weapons from the US during the Cold War, and that made it possible for them to commit terrorism since then. Those who went on to form ISIS also got money and weapons from the US.
You can disagree, but it is at the end of the day a matter of opinion, even if my opinion is that it's objectively true... as much as any human things can be objective, anyway, so not really objective, but...

So in the end, it doesn't really matter, now, does it? :)
Whether Malta, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in Europe is a matter of debate

I agree with most of this, but Malta? Malta is not a matter of debate. It's in Europe, and it's part of the EU.
vijayjohn wrote:
I didn't know there were speakers of other languages than Arabic in Palestine, so I now understand that my argument is flawed in that regard, but with Palestinian Arabic and Hebrew it's still valid because Hebrew is the only non-Arabic Semitic language spoken in the region which's whose speakers have an independent country.

In what region? And what difference does it make that they have their own country? They didn't, say, a hundred years ago.

The Arabian Peninsula. Them having an independent country doesn't really make a difference, I was just making sure that nobody would think I thought Neo-Aramaic and whatnot don't exist.

Sooo basically, like I was saying, Hebrew isn't really special in that regard. :)
vijayjohn wrote:
Why can't we all unite in at least our opposition to terrorism? How can that be so hard, unless some of the non-terrorists are secretly in support of terrorism?

Every human is unique and different. Therefore, it tends to be somewhat difficult at least to unite humans for a particular cause.

Yet people can unite to found ISIS, etc... :roll:

Okay, well, people uniting to found ISIS and people uniting in opposition to terrorism aren't really comparable things, either. ISIS is an organization; individual people are not. ISIS as I understand it uses various tactics in order to gain recruits: bribery, propaganda, conscription...whereas what you're asking for sounds more like it requires individuals to all just somehow come to the same conclusion of their own accord. That's not the way it works.
Finns are just an ethnolinguistic group, not also a cultural [...] group. [...] Also, there's no unifying culture either, thanks to the centuries of Swedish and Russian influence.

Okay, sorry, but here, I have no idea what you're talking about. How does Swedish and Russian influence mean that Finns don't have a unifying culture? Language, after all, is a part of culture.
So, Jews in one country don't keep in touch with Jews in another country through the internet or anything, more than non-Jews?

Nope.
They have their own branch of Islam that's hardly at all practised outside the country. I've never really read about its history, but I assumed it was passed down from the top to the people either when they weren't yet fully iIslamised or due to isolation or something?

Generally, if I understand this correctly, change is much more likely to be bottom-up than top-down. Ibadism in Oman is indeed dominant due to isolation, but this is because it has a long history in Oman, not necessarily because of anything having to do with the leadership.
This time on Unilang, the religion of peace meme strikes once again... :ohwell:

My point is that it really makes zero difference what religion an extremist belongs to. Truly, anyone can use any religion they feel like to justify violence, and people do just that. It's not the specific religion that matters here; it's the people who are twisting it and the violence that occurs as a result.
The obvious interpretations are those that don't look for symbolic alternatives or consider historical differences and progress.

I have no idea what you mean by this.
Thus, the conclusion that Islam is a religion of war and violence. It isn't necessarily, but it is at face value, which is pretty much (at least a contributing catfor factor to) why the debate of whether Sufis are even Muslims exists.

They are. There, problem solved. You're welcome. ;)
But who actually calls it that except explicitly pro-independence activists?

Well, originally, it wasn't used by pro-independence activists or anything like that. It was a term originally coined by Russians in the late 19th century. Turks apparently also call it that, at least in Turkish: Doğu Türkistan.

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby Saim » 2017-08-09, 14:07

Vlürch wrote:I agree 100% with the latter sentence, and in most circumstances the former too, but in terms of genocides or potential genocides, or just language death even naturally, it's different because a larger chunk of humanity is lost if there's more uniqueness to that group of people or language.


What you're saying would (perhaps) make some sort of sense in a weird vacuum where we're forced to press a button that would immediately eliminate one of two different nations, one that's closely related to some other ones and one that's not (whatever the criteria we may choose to define "cultural similarity"; I'm not convinced there's much of a way to measure this objectively -- given you mentioned languages, riddle me this: are Czechs and Slovaks more "closely related" to Austrians and Hungarians or to Bulgarians and Russians?).

However, that's not the world we live in. Genocide is preventable. That's why people find your "which genocide is better?" thought experiments either perplexing or downright atrocious. These are real people you're talking about, and you're contemplating their mass murder due to some weird sense of linguistic essentialism.

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby Vlürch » 2017-08-09, 16:56

vijayjohn wrote:Tbh, though, I can understand why eskandar would have assumed you wouldn't be open-minded about this because it's so rare in online arguments that people are. Online arguments are frequently pointless.

Mmmh...
vijayjohn wrote:Nope. There has never been a level of support for Jews comparable to that provided to the state of Israel. For that matter, I'm not sure any state has ever had that much foreign support right from the get-go.

But haven't they probably also gotten the most opposition, so it kind of balances out?
vijayjohn wrote:
I can sympathise with the Uyghurs that want independence, and if there was like an international voting on it that any random person could sign up for, I'd definitely support them. Terrorism, though, is a crime that in my opinion taints those that the terrorist has interacted with that didn't even try to stop them

Okay, but to what extent is it possible to distinguish between terrorism on the one hand and an independence struggle on the other anyway? Was the Finnish Labor Party (Suomen Työväenpuolue), the forerunner of the SDP/demarit founded in 1899, a terrorist organization? Were the White Guards (Suojeluskunnat) a terrorist organization? The Irish Republican Army (IRA)? The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association? I mean, all of those have murdered innocent people, haven't they?

Out of those, I feel like only the IRA is a terrorist organisation by the strict definition of terrorism. Like, sure, almost any group of people fighting for any cause can be labelled one, especially when they kill people at more or less random, but the IRA is the only one that has since its beginning been organised with the intent to not have peace unless it's exactly on their terms, and they've split up into various more and less radical groups with time.

Of course, you're right that it's not always possible to distinguish between what is and what isn't terrorism, but in cases like that it may not even matter since they're not mutually exclusive. I think an independence movement becomes a terrorist organisation if it's centered on an authority that refuses compromises or if the leadership condones the either overtly discriminatory or indiscriminatory violence of its members, but not if there is no central authority or if the central authority is willing to make compromises for peace. If the government they're fighting against refuses to make even minor compromises after they begin negotiations, then that's state terrorism and the independence movement can simply not be categorised as a terrorist organisation unless they also have the other characteristics of terrorism.

The HSRA, then, was both a terrorist organisation and part of a legitimate independence movement. In Finland, there was arguably state terrorism when Mannerheim was in power (and before that what could have been at the time called regular terrorism), but it's not considered such because it had a positive outcome. Similarly, the IRA may not be considered a terrorist organisation in the future if they someday manage to unite Ireland and the good outweighs the bad, even if it takes a long time.
vijayjohn wrote:Or more broadly, what is a terrorist organization and what is not? Countries don't agree on this question; some organizations are considered terrorist organizations by some countries but not by others. For example, the governments of Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates consider the Taliban a terrorist organization, but the governments of the US, UK, France, and China do not.

The Taliban is a terrorist organisation because they keep terrorising people even during peace negotiations. If Omar had instead of becoming a medieval dictator started a peace process when he became Afghanistan's head of state, then maybe the Taliban would have had a chance of not being seen as all terrorists, but that didn't happen and that makes them terrorists even if they're not considered such by everyone. Also, their ideology is against individual freedom and in favour of censorship, which, if they were still in control of the government, would be state terrorism; because they're not in control of the government, that makes it regular terrorism.
vijayjohn wrote:
if they have family that knew about it and they didn't turn them in, then they're partially to blame for allowing the terrorist attack to happen.

Sure, but this is another area where it's a lot easier to point fingers than it is to actually do something about it. I may not have terrorists in my family, but what can I do about it? You may not, either, but what can you do about it? Well, you and I can keep in mind that this problem exists, learn something about terrorist organizations, learn about their history, etc. In other words, we can keep ourselves educated on the topic so we know better how to deal with it and so we don't oversimplify the problem (because honestly, it's a pretty complicated problem. If it wasn't, it would have been resolved ages ago).

It could be made easier to solve with a universal definition of what is terrorism and what isn't.
vijayjohn wrote:In addition, this is an area where it's worth the trouble to try to put yourself in the shoes of someone in such a family. Let's say that you did have terrorists in your family, or even just one terrorist, who you are close to. What do you do then? Do you turn them in even if you're more attached to them than to some faceless nation-state that you're serving by doing that? Or do you refrain from doing that even if they run the risk of harming others and possibly themselves? If you turn them in, how do you know you won't be punished, too, on the grounds of guilt by association? Do you try to convince them not to do it? What if they choose not to listen to you? What if they don't have a choice but to follow through with their attacks? (For example, what if they're being forced to attack someone on pain of death?) Again, it's just not that simple.

Well, I'd try to talk sense to them and argue with them about what they think it would accomplish, hammering it into their head that it doesn't accomplish anything in the end and that it'll only make the problem worse, whatever the problem is. If everything else failed, I'd report them to the police before they had the time to hurt anyone. If they were being forced to do it, I'd ask them why they didn't report the person forcing them to do it, or if nothing else was possible, why they didn't just turn the attack on the terrorist forcing them to do something instead of hurting innocent people?
vijayjohn wrote:Personally, when I think of a state where everybody turns people in whenever they violate (the letter of) the law even if those people are close relatives, I think of the Soviet Union. I don't think that's a good model.

I think people should only report their close relatives or whatever if they commit (or are planning to commit) violent crimes like murder, etc. and/or if the crime isn't done out of survival or whatever. Like, if someone has no choice but to sell drugs or something to get money for food and they have kids or something, reporting them would hurt more people than letting them sell drugs, but if someone murders people to steal their money or something, that's when it should be reported without exception. Now, if there was a system where the kids of drug dealers were given all the things they need, and their parents could regain custody after they get their life back together once they get out of prison, that'd be a different matter.
vijayjohn wrote:
Other researches, like this one, have shown that Muslims in some countries have some pretty fucking terrifying views

Well, all kinds of people in all kinds of countries have some pretty fucking terrifying views. But if:
they thankfully don't commit any terrorist attacks...

then it's not really a problem, is it?

It is still a problem because they have the potential to become terrorists. It's like Neo-Nazis or doomsday cults. They may not be killing people right now, but they are likely to do so in the future and are just ticking time bombs.
vijayjohn wrote:
and even though some have gone to Syria to join ISIS, at least they didn't blow shit up here.

But that doesn't make it any better, does it? I mean, sure, it makes it better for you personally, but I thought you were saying that you don't condone terrorism and terrorism is bad and end of story. If so, then isn't that still just as bad, regardless of how little it affects you on a personal level?

There has never been any Islamist terrorist attack in Finland, so it is better if they go blow shit up in Syria or Iraq or wherever than here, since those are everyday occurrences there. Yes, it's still bad, but at least they might get caught by the local military or police and could even get killed, whereas here they would probably only be sentenced to a few years in prison and that'd only radicalise them further. No punishment is severe enough for terrorists, and they should not have any human rights; having sympathy for terrorists isn't as bad, but I would support mandatory re-education programs to de-radicalise them (there already are some, but they're voluntary).
vijayjohn wrote:
I knew I should've said "excluding state terrorism", but I figured it'd be obvious it doesn't count.

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. Just because terrorism is committed by a government and not by some other type of organization doesn't make it any better or any more trivial; it's still terrorism. Even when it's not committed by a government, it often has the support of one or more governments anyway, not to mention specific individuals who hold high-ranking positions in some countries' governments. Besides, if you exclude state terrorism, then that means that you would be excluding, say, the Taliban since they control much of Afghanistan, or ISIS because they control much of Syria and Iraq.

No country recognises the Taliban or ISIS as legitimate states. If they were recognised by even one UN member state, it would be state terrorism by that country's definition, but it still wouldn't be by the others'.
vijayjohn wrote:
But that's what America does, it's why pretty much nobody likes the country... but no one can say anything against it, since the US is the only country that's legally allowed to do shit like that.

I'm not sure I really understand what you mean here, but just because the US does it doesn't make it okay, nor does it mean we should all just shut the fuck up about it. The government of the US absolutely should be held accountable for all the shitty aspects of its foreign policy. After all, the reason why a lot of terrorist organizations are a problem on an international scale is because ironically, it was the US that empowered them on a huge scale in the first place. People who would later go on to form Al-Qaeda and the Taliban got tons of money and weapons from the US during the Cold War, and that made it possible for them to commit terrorism since then. Those who went on to form ISIS also got money and weapons from the US.

True, but what I mean is that at least it isn't like North Korea that's the world police. America shouldn't be, either, but it is on the better side of a fuckton of evils.
vijayjohn wrote:
You can disagree, but it is at the end of the day a matter of opinion, even if my opinion is that it's objectively true... as much as any human things can be objective, anyway, so not really objective, but...

So in the end, it doesn't really matter, now, does it? :)

Maybe not, but well.
vijayjohn wrote:
Whether Malta, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia are in Europe is a matter of debate

I agree with most of this, but Malta? Malta is not a matter of debate. It's in Europe, and it's part of the EU.

Malta is right at the edge of the Eurasian and African tectonic plates, so geographically it could be considered part of either. But yeah, I suppose due to politics and culture and whatnot, it is clearly a part of Europe after all. :oops:
vijayjohn wrote:Sooo basically, like I was saying, Hebrew isn't really special in that regard. :)

It may not be special overall, but it is special in being the national language of an internationally recognised country, unlike other Semitic languages except for Arabic. If there was an independent Assyrian state, that would be awesome, and it'd also reduce Hebrew's "importance" in linguopolitical terms.
vijayjohn wrote:Okay, well, people uniting to found ISIS and people uniting in opposition to terrorism aren't really comparable things, either. ISIS is an organization; individual people are not. ISIS as I understand it uses various tactics in order to gain recruits: bribery, propaganda, conscription...whereas what you're asking for sounds more like it requires individuals to all just somehow come to the same conclusion of their own accord. That's not the way it works.

Good point... but honestly, it shouldn't be impossible to found an anti-ISIS that acted like a cancer or something but for a good cause, infiltrating ISIS and de-radicalising them from the inside.
vijayjohn wrote:
Finns are just an ethnolinguistic group, not also a cultural [...] group. [...] Also, there's no unifying culture either, thanks to the centuries of Swedish and Russian influence.

Okay, sorry, but here, I have no idea what you're talking about. How does Swedish and Russian influence mean that Finns don't have a unifying culture? Language, after all, is a part of culture.

It's only a part of culture. There are also traditional music, clothing, etc. and those are far lesser-known by the average Finn than the equivalents in at least Russian culture, and Sami traditional things are even mistaken for Finnish traditional things. Some Swedish things as well are definitely thought to be originally Finnish, although I can't think of any examples right now.
vijayjohn wrote:
So, Jews in one country don't keep in touch with Jews in another country through the internet or anything, more than non-Jews?

Nope.

Huh... alright, I thought Jews were tight-knit around the world and unified by their Jewishness.
vijayjohn wrote:
They have their own branch of Islam that's hardly at all practised outside the country. I've never really read about its history, but I assumed it was passed down from the top to the people either when they weren't yet fully iIslamised or due to isolation or something?

Generally, if I understand this correctly, change is much more likely to be bottom-up than top-down. Ibadism in Oman is indeed dominant due to isolation, but this is because it has a long history in Oman, not necessarily because of anything having to do with the leadership.

Interesting, I'll have to read more about it. And oh, right, it's called Ibadism... I always forget that because the name makes me think of tribadism. :P
vijayjohn wrote:
This time on Unilang, the religion of peace meme strikes once again... :ohwell:

My point is that it really makes zero difference what religion an extremist belongs to. Truly, anyone can use any religion they feel like to justify violence, and people do just that. It's not the specific religion that matters here; it's the people who are twisting it and the violence that occurs as a result.

Sure, but still, the Abrahamic religions, Islam especially, are inherently more violent than Buddhism because they don't condemn it and even promote it. Any religion can be twisted, but my point is that Islam doesn't have to be twisted; in fact, it has to be twisted to not be violent. Thankfully a lot of people do twist it that way, but there's no guarantee that their children will end up making that twist as well, which is a huge part of why young Muslims are more likely to be radicalised than old ones. If they don't have anyone to explain the Koran to them in a way that negates the promotion of violence, they take it as it is written and become suspectible to terrorist propaganda much easier.

This same thing does happen in Christianity with the Bible, too, but not as much because the New Testament is weighed over the Old Testament and, at least in Finland, as far as I know it's the default to stress the importance of "what would Jesus do?" and the life of Jesus as an example to live by. But if every decision was preceded by "what would Muhammed do?", you couldn't go outside without seeing a pile of bodies and raped toddlers at every corner. That's not to say that there aren't times when "what would Muhammed do?" can be a good thing to ask oneself before doing something, but that in moral decision it's usually better to go with "what would Jesus do?" and err on the side of caution.
vijayjohn wrote:
The obvious interpretations are those that don't look for symbolic alternatives or consider historical differences and progress.

I have no idea what you mean by this.

If you read the Koran without considering the time and place it was written and the way things have progressed since then, and take everything at face value, it's going to sound like your duty is to slaughter the fuck out of everyone. On the other hand, if you .
vijayjohn wrote:
Thus, the conclusion that Islam is a religion of war and violence. It isn't necessarily, but it is at face value, which is pretty much (at least a contributing catfor factor to) why the debate of whether Sufis are even Muslims exists.

They are. There, problem solved. You're welcome. ;)

Of course they are, but not everyone thinks that way. Salafists don't see them as Muslims and have been murdering them throughout history, and still do today, simply because of that; I'm not sure how true it is, but I read somewhere that ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Sunni extremists hate Sufis more than they hate atheists. I doubt they hate them more, but I could definitely see how they hate them as much or at least close to as much.
vijayjohn wrote:
But who actually calls it that except explicitly pro-independence activists?

Well, originally, it wasn't used by pro-independence activists or anything like that. It was a term originally coined by Russians in the late 19th century. Turks apparently also call it that, at least in Turkish: Doğu Türkistan.

Is it really the official term used in Turkish? :o Google does have more results for it than Şincan, but... huh...
Saim wrote:What you're saying would (perhaps) make some sort of sense in a weird vacuum where we're forced to press a button that would immediately eliminate one of two different nations, one that's closely related to some other ones and one that's not

Thankfully that's not what the world is like, and I'm definitely and absolutely not saying it should be or that it could ever be...
Saim wrote:(whatever the criteria we may choose to define "cultural similarity"; I'm not convinced there's much of a way to measure this objectively

There probably isn't when it comes to genuinely complete objectivity, but there are ways to measure cultural similarities and linguistic similarities through cultural and linguistic objectivity. So, like I said in reply to Vijay, I know it's not real objectivity, but at least it is more objective than subjective.
Saim wrote:given you mentioned languages, riddle me this: are Czechs and Slovaks more "closely related" to Austrians and Hungarians or to Bulgarians and Russians?).

Probably about the same in the big picture, and closer to Austrians and Hungarians in terms of culture due to history and current politics, but when it comes to language, obviously Bulgarians and Russians. Why?
Saim wrote:However, that's not the world we live in. Genocide is preventable. That's why people find your "which genocide is better?" thought experiments either perplexing or downright atrocious. These are real people you're talking about, and you're contemplating their mass murder due to some weird sense of linguistic essentialism.

Sorry, I just find it much easier to think about things with hyperboles than without when it involves politics. :para:

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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-08-10, 19:14

Vlürch wrote:But haven't they probably also gotten the most opposition, so it kind of balances out?

Not really, no. They're opposed by a bunch of Middle Eastern countries, but that's about it. Meanwhile, they get at least $3 billion every year from the US alone.
I think an independence movement becomes a terrorist organisation if it's centered on an authority that refuses compromises or if the leadership condones the either overtly discriminatory or indiscriminatory violence of its members, but not if there is no central authority or if the central authority is willing to make compromises for peace.

I don't think anyone should get a free pass on terrorism just for compromising or lacking a central authority. I think people being murdered is too important for either of those things to matter for that purpose.
It could be made easier to solve with a universal definition of what is terrorism and what isn't.

That would take a lot of effort and wouldn't make much of a difference. Definitions are part of language, and no government practically controls language change.
If everything else failed, I'd report them to the police before they had the time to hurt anyone.

But the police won't necessarily do anything about it and, again, may choose to punish you as a direct result of your report.
If they were being forced to do it, I'd ask them why they didn't report the person forcing them to do it, or if nothing else was possible, why they didn't just turn the attack on the terrorist forcing them to do something instead of hurting innocent people?

Because the person giving them orders doesn't work alone and trying to do that could put themselves and their families at immediate risk?
I think people should only report their close relatives or whatever if they commit (or are planning to commit) violent crimes like murder, etc. and/or if the crime isn't done out of survival or whatever.

But terrorism often is.

I don't think it's individuals who commit terrorism that matter as much as the organizations they're part of. I mean, if someone commits a suicide attack, for example...they're already dead. Who cares about them specifically anymore?
It is still a problem because they have the potential to become terrorists. It's like Neo-Nazis or doomsday cults. They may not be killing people right now, but they are likely to do so in the future and are just ticking time bombs.

They're not if they also have no power to actually do anything.
There has never been any Islamist terrorist attack in Finland, so it is better if they go blow shit up in Syria or Iraq or wherever than here, since those are everyday occurrences there. Yes, it's still bad, but at least they might get caught by the local military or police and could even get killed

If that really was true, then there would probably be no ISIS.
No country recognises the Taliban or ISIS as legitimate states.

Okay, but three did recognize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a legitimate state, which at the time was pretty much the same thing. In any case, I stand by my point that terrorism is bad no matter who's doing it, whether it's a state everyone recognizes or an individual or a fledgling organization.
True, but what I mean is that at least it isn't like North Korea that's the world police. America shouldn't be, either, but it is on the better side of a fuckton of evils.

I'm still not really sure what this means, but I really don't think any virtues of America's are relevant in this context because its foreign policy is not one of them.
vijayjohn wrote:
You can disagree, but it is at the end of the day a matter of opinion, even if my opinion is that it's objectively true... as much as any human things can be objective, anyway, so not really objective, but...

So in the end, it doesn't really matter, now, does it? :)

Maybe not, but well.

Speculating on the relative worth of one group of human beings over another is really not a productive thought experiment.
It may not be special overall, but it is special in being the national language of an internationally recognised country

But you said it doesn't really matter that it's a country!
it shouldn't be impossible to found an anti-ISIS that acted like a cancer or something but for a good cause, infiltrating ISIS and de-radicalising them from the inside.

It isn't impossible. It's been done already but was punished.
It's only a part of culture. There are also traditional music, clothing, etc. and those are far lesser-known by the average Finn than the equivalents in at least Russian culture, and Sami traditional things are even mistaken for Finnish traditional things. Some Swedish things as well are definitely thought to be originally Finnish, although I can't think of any examples right now.

None of that means Finland doesn't have its own culture though, and I wouldn't be surprised if all of those things were true of almost every country ever. Idk about "unifying," but then I don't know wtf that's supposed to mean anyway.
Huh... alright, I thought Jews were tight-knit around the world and unified by their Jewishness.

I don't think it's even humanly possible for an ethnicity to be that close-knit.
Sure, but still, the Abrahamic religions, Islam especially, are inherently more violent than Buddhism because they don't condemn it and even promote it.

No, they're not, and no, they don't promote it.

There's plenty of gruesome violence in the Buddhist scriptures, too, y'know. Some of those judged to be the most noble Buddhists, both in the scriptures and in real life, started out being violent as fuck, murdering way more people than Muhammad could have ever possibly killed. One of my favorite Buddhist stories pretty much ends with the main character being murdered by an angry mob and basically saying he's grateful they beat him up.
Any religion can be twisted, but my point is that Islam doesn't have to be twisted

If it didn't, then Salafism would have had a history of a lot more than just 300 years. And no, Salafism hasn't existed for more than 300 years.
which is a huge part of why young Muslims are more likely to be radicalised than old ones. If they don't have anyone to explain the Koran to them in a way that negates the promotion of violence, they take it as it is written and become suspectible to terrorist propaganda much easier.

Nope. That's because it's interpreted and very explicitly explained to them that way.
Is it really the official term used in Turkish? :o

Idk, maybe.
Saim wrote:given you mentioned languages, riddle me this: are Czechs and Slovaks more "closely related" to Austrians and Hungarians or to Bulgarians and Russians?).

Probably about the same in the big picture, and closer to Austrians and Hungarians in terms of culture due to history and current politics, but when it comes to language, obviously Bulgarians and Russians. Why?

Because then this whole idea of being "closely related" breaks down to the point where your thought experiments don't work anyway.
Sorry, I just find it much easier to think about things with hyperboles than without when it involves politics. :para:

It may always be easier to think about things in terms of hyperbole, but it's definitely not better.

Politics isn't for everyone and doesn't interest everyone to the same extent; in fact, I doubt it's all that interesting for almost anyone on this forum (and I'm definitely including myself in that statement; I'm so uninterested I barely bother to follow the news these days, even though I know I should). Like basically anything else, it's only really interesting when it challenges our prior beliefs about how the world works.

הענט

Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby הענט » 2017-08-31, 13:47

I always ask people here : Why are you so afraid of Muslims, when the largest terrorist attack was comitted by a retired Czech man?


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Re: Islamic Terrorism

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-12-24, 4:31

Surprise surprise, I of all people am reviving this thread after more than a year!

The lady who sits right next to me at work is Danish, so dealing with the recent murder of a Danish woman and a Norwegian woman in Morocco has been difficult for her. Yesterday morning, she was talking about it to a couple of my co-workers. She said she couldn't understand why people would kill other innocent people or something like that and also pointed out that people in Morocco have also been expressing their condolonces in the aftermath of the killings. At one point, she said that the killers weren't even human in her mind. I can't help wondering: If killing just two people is enough to make them inhuman, where does that leave us Americans who regularly elect commanders-in-chief that are responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent men, women, and children?

Of course, I didn't say this out loud. I turned around and went back to work while trying to think of what I could possibly do to help her feel a little better and ultimately decided to offer her a hug. It appears as if she appreciated that more than I expected her to.


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