[Skybird]

Originally Posted by scandium

Relativism eh? Hmm. Well context matters. You'd posted what struck me as a meaningless article (since there was no analysis or anything given on it) on violence in a place that is well known for its violence. To try and provoke you into coming out with whatever point you had to make I posted an equally meaningless article about violence somewhere else. Both had youths in common as their perpetrators. If there was any point to my post it was that drawing any conclusions on Islam from this incident in Niger is about as meaningful as drawing conclusions on 12 year olds from that youth in Calgary.

This is my supposed "relativism" at work: trying to understand the phenomena of say serial killers would get you precisely nowhere if you observed that most serial killers are white and Christian (which they are; the phenomena is also a fairly modern and Western phenomena but that is neither here nor there) and equated the acts of serial killing with Christianity - and any person who tried to do so would be laughed at. Yet with Islam and terrorism this is exactly what you, and others, do Skybird and this is what Jihadwatch is all about and you ignore that acts of terrorism committed by the world's 1.2 billion Muslims are about as rare as serial killings committed by the world's population of Christians.

This is a good counterpoint to jihadwatch (but amusing in a wry sort of way instead of full of doom and gloom) from Akram's Razor:

Rule 5: It's always "jihad"

Related to Rule 4 is the fact that any event involving Muslims is always jihad. Not the concept of a peaceful personal struggle to do the right thing that most Muslims, sly foxes that they are, claim to intend when using the word. Nor is it the noble campaigns for good causes that normal, Christian people think of when they talk about "crusades". Anything a Muslim does is always violent holy war directed against everyone around them. Whether they're pinning prayers to their graduation gowns or just standing by the road licking an ice cream cone, it's jihad and you're under siege like the Viennese facing the Ottoman hordes in 1529. Don't let the social economic and political realities of near complete Muslim powerlessness in the modern, Western/Christian-dominated world distract you from the fact that you are an oppressed Dhimmi living under the yoke of Muslim tyranny.

So make sure you pepper your report with the word "jihad" and other buzzwords that remind readers of the mortal peril we all live in thanks to the existence of Islam. Don't forget to mention medieval Islamic concepts like jizya, slavery, and, everyone's favorite, houris. The fact that these concepts are about as relevant to most modern political problems as Danegeld is besides the point. And wherever context permits make hysterical allusions to Nazism since that hateful ideology developed in Germany, the heartland of Islamic civilization. (Indeed, the world still shudders at the memory of their chilling symbol, the dreaded Iron Crescent & Star.)

Finally, always err on the side of innuendo, paranoia and stereotype. Remember that if you can't think of a good reason for inserting prejudicial language now, someone else will eventually dream up a retroactive justification. And then you'll be a prophet.

http://akramsrazor.typepad.com/islam...g_t.html#jihad

What you simply refuse to realize, although it cannot be laid out to you even more clearly and obvious, is the simple fact that certain types of violance are ORDERED by Islam (Islam on the basis of Koran and Muhammad, which is the only ideolgy that is valid to be called Islam), that this is a duty EVERY Muslim is called for to obey, that it is encrypted in their scriptures, that this is what makes it forever totally different from the teachings of Jesus, that it is preached by many of their preachers, and more important: the majority of the really highranking clerics and international representives (the mayor of Medina for example, the president of the highly influential Anzhar academy, and so on) - and that the overwhelming majoirty of the Muslims you would describe as the more reasonable ones does not stand up against this, does not help by deeds to overcome this, does not force those that "abuse" their faith for violant goals to step down, does not take care to make their claims on religion an object of examination, does actively resist the idea to monitor "radical" muslims in their middle, does not take care of these "radicals" themselves, etc. etc. etc. you said it yourself one or two days ago: judge them by their deeds or non-deeds. and that's what I do. What Muslim communities actually do contradicts what you think about them. But you simply do not care and stick to your selfwritten storyboard of what islam is: it is equal to us, and is about the same God, and just mirrors the same lights and shadows of christianity, which is not at all any different from the politics of the church. Here the point is reached where it become useless to talk to you. You simply do not want to hear the truth as told by facts from history, scripture, practice, preaching, and that is all about your position.

You also do ignore that what you accuse the mediaval West of - still is contemporary practice in almost all Muslim countries - not of the past, but TODAY.

Next, you ignore or I suppose: you do not know the reality at schools in the West. In Germany, THE MAJORITY os students from Muslim colonist families since many years had a massive revival of orthodox beliefs. They hail honour murders, and the beating of wifes. A great ammount of their girls agree to the boys on these issues. Now ignore this, too. It's a reality at German schools. Also is it a reality, that turkish ultra-nationalism is not on the march, but on a rushing storm at German schools. Sharia, of course, in their Rucksacks.

And - surprise, surprise - the deeds of the radicals are to be found in congruency with their scriptures (Koran, Hadith), and these radicals accuse the moderates (that try to convince us that Islam is all that NOT) of being no true Muslims anymore - and thus attack them as well. The hostility of Bin Laden towards Saudi Arbaia is just the most famous example.

All your political and theological thinking is noice and well, it is complex, and well-meant and ambitioned - but is based on a fundamwent that ignored simple facts of Islam. Facts that you continue tomignore and declare instead that it is equal to christinaity (without even solving the copntradiction between "church" and "Christianity").

You cannot be helped. But once you realize that you were wrong, be advised that this will mean the arrival of an Islamic socieity that doe snot tolerate opinions like yours. Metaphorically spoken, you will end up like the communists and socialists that also found it clever to help Khomeni to install islam in iran again. they were the first that Islam hund up in the streets. Because what you believe is true Islam, in the understanding of true Islam is an afffront to Islam, and thus needs to be destroyed. you even do not realize that it is not Islam you try to support, but an abstract self-construction.

unfortunetaly the damage opinions like yours are doing can never be repaired again. That's why people like your are so dangerous in their ignorance. you are defending somehting - that in the form you describe it simply does not exist, whereas the real body behind your claims - is of lethal hostility toewards your attitude. they will remain silent as long as the door is not completely open, or their is still a chance that it will be shut again. Once that is no more, you'll get eaten up.