Terrorist attack in Paris on French magazine

[Oberon]

Could be anywhere Jim, we are at war after all. The enemy will grow stronger or weaker depending partially on our actions, but make no mistake we must not give in to extremism, nor answer it with extremism of our own.
I hope the French police catch these terrorists alive and they are denied the chance to martyr themselves.

[Betonov]

They should all understand (wishfull thinking) that the less they behave like barbarians, the less their prophet would be mocked.

[Armistead]

Gonna see more and more of this. The world is at war with radical Islam and we can't figure how to deal with so called moderate Islam without offense to war with the radicals. It's gonna continue to worsen and eventually a major showdown....

[Oberon]

That is exactly the thing, it is how we treat moderate Islam, either we drive them into the arms of the extremists and make more work for ourselves, or we work at driving a wedge between them and the extremists and cut off the extremists manpower base. It's not foolproof, you are going to get incidents like this, but if you take the national population of Muslims of a country and the number of extremists in that country and compare the two it is hardly an overwhelming majority, unlike some people would have you believe, for their own political and ideological causes.

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Oberon

That is exactly the thing, it is how we treat moderate Islam, either we drive them into the arms of the extremists and make more work for ourselves, or we work at driving a wedge between them and the extremists and cut off the extremists manpower base. It's not foolproof, you are going to get incidents like this, but if you take the national population of Muslims of a country and the number of extremists in that country and compare the two it is hardly an overwhelming majority, unlike some people would have you believe, for their own political and ideological causes.

Well, just look at the numbers of so called moderates that want to ban free speech against Muhammad and are OK for those that offend their religion to be killed.

The only ones that can drive a true wedge are moderate Muslims, which mean they have to go to war in mass against radical, in principle and law. The fact is Islam run states won't do this.

In nations like France large radical populations are growing, you have possible 1000's joining ISIS and other radical groups and they seem to have free roam back and forth....It's eventually going to turn into a civil war or clash of civilizations. Radicals only want to grow and terror so much as they keep gaining power, but eventually we'll all be involved in another major ME war..

The only thing that can reform Islam is Islam....

[Skybird]

Oh yeah, there it shows up again: this dream of a "moderate Islam". Not even six hours from first calling the news to mentioning moderate Islam - not bad, but it could be mentioned even faster!

Its not in the scripture it bases on, but still - even if the dream lived just one week, one day - it nevertheless has LIVED !

Islam is as totalitarian by its ideological fundament as communism or fascism are. Supremacist to the core and bone, unforgiving towards anybody refusing it, nobody's friend except to itself, all world's enemy. A world it says it has the divine obligation to claim all, and where peace only can be had on your knees, under the sword of Muhammad, in voluntary or enforced submission, the green flag flying in the wind above you. You either love green - or you are to be dead.

This and nothing else is the teaching of Islam, and always has been. The Arabic root of the word Islam means submission.

[Tchocky]

Still no word on the gunmen. Getting some heartbreaking texts from a friend in Paris.

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Still no word on the gunmen. Getting some heartbreaking texts from a friend in Paris.

If these guys get away I'm sure they'll strike again eventually.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Armistead

Well, just look at the numbers of so called moderates that want to ban free speech against Muhammad and are OK for those that offend their religion to be killed.

Against a global population of 1.8bn how many Muslims have called for those who offend Islam to be killed? As with any religion, ideology or political group, the ones who speak the loudest get all the attention.

The only ones that can drive a true wedge are moderate Muslims, which mean they have to go to war in mass against radical, in principle and law. The fact is Islam run states won't do this.

Sadly you are correct, I think many Islam run states are scared of the changing of the status quo. There are moderates who want to change things, but they are...oddly enough, mostly in the west, where they can speak out about changing things without worrying about being arrested like the poor sods who put a youtube video of them dancing on the internet.
How much of this is politics and how much is religion is debatable, but the two do play a big part in it.

In nations like France large radical populations are growing,

Not just France, across Europe...and not just in Islam too, the rise of parties like the NF, the UKIP coalition with far-right Polish political groups and the ease in which Europeans heap all the ills of the world upon either illegal or legal immigrants and Muslims is rather disturbing and yet a strange sense of deja vu...

you have possible 1000's joining ISIS and other radical groups and they seem to have free roam back and forth....

That's the trouble with Europe, as you chaps in the States have found with Mexico...it's hard to maintain and defend a land border against people who are determined to leak through them.

It's eventually going to turn into a civil war or clash of civilizations. Radicals only want to grow and terror so much as they keep gaining power,

I think that clash has been happening since 2001 really, they bomb us, we get terrified of Muslims, which alienates more Muslims who go to the extremists who recruit these Muslims to bomb us, which makes us get terrified of Muslims...and so on and so forth.
People from both sides of the political spectrum then jump in to add their fuel to the fire, and stoke the flames even higher which just pushes more people into extremism, and so on and so forth.

but eventually we'll all be involved in another major ME war..

It is quite likely, I can't see this cycle breaking any time soon.

The only thing that can reform Islam is Islam....

This is true, and there are those who are trying, and in a way the actions of the extremists and our reactions will encourage them to try harder, but you can't turn a supertanker on a dime. I mean, look how long it took to reform Christianity. Our role, really, should be rather than to make the jobs of those trying to reform Islam harder by doing exactly what the extremists want (classify all Muslims as a threat), we should help the reformers by combatting the extremists without stooping to their level.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Against a global population of 1.8bn how many Muslims have called for those who offend Islam to be killed? As with any religion, ideology or political group, the ones who speak the loudest get all the attention.

Most Germans did not kill a Jew or abused or dealt with a Jew themselves during the Nazi tyranny, seen that way they were "innocent" and peaceful. To say that the rise of the regime and Nazism had nothing to do with the Germans, nevertheless would be wrong. The Third Reich was not just anybody or nobody, it was the Germans.

[Tchocky]

This is beautiful

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Against a global population of 1.8bn how many Muslims have called for those who offend Islam to be killed? As with any religion, ideology or political group, the ones who speak the loudest get all the attention.

My problem with that is that it happens every day. Al Kaida, Boko Haram, Al Nusra, Al Shabab, Hamas, IS, ...the list seems endless. Almost every day we hear about another extremist atrocity commited in the name of Allah and then the the standard appeasement phrase that that has nothing to do with Islam. I don't buy it anymore it happens too often for that and it's always the same religion that's supposed to be the scape goat.
Maybe if we see a demonstration of 15.000 Muslims in Paris against those extremists I get some hope again.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

My problem with that is that it happens every day. Al Kaida, Boko Haram, Al Nusra, Al Shabab, Hamas, IS, ...the list seems endless. Almost every day we hear about another extremist atrocity commited in the name of Allah and then the the standard appeasement phrase that that has nothing to do with Islam. I don't buy it anymore it happens too often for that and it's always the same religion that's supposed to be the scape goat.
Maybe if we see a demonstration of 15.000 Muslims in Paris against those extremists I get some hope again.

Add to this the simple and undeniable statistical fact that for the x-th year in a row, Christians are the most prosecuted religious group worldwide. China and the Muslim world lead the list of prosecutors.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

My problem with that is that it happens every day. Al Kaida, Boko Haram, Al Nusra, Al Shabab, Hamas, IS, ...the list seems endless. Almost every day we hear about another extremist atrocity commited in the name of Allah and then the the standard appeasement phrase that that has nothing to do with Islam. I don't buy it anymore it happens too often for that and it's always the same religion that's supposed to be the scape goat.
Maybe if we see a demonstration of 15.000 Muslims in Paris against those extremists I get some hope again.

How about 12,000?
http://www.dawn.com/news/661434/uk-m...inst-extremism

Or the Imams of 2000 Mosques?
http://www.thelocal.de/20140919/germ...inst-extremism


Let me put it to you this way, if two Muslims had firebombed a church in the US (with no casualties), I'd imagine that a thread would have been made about it already.
Yet earlier today, two white Neo-Nazis firebombed the Colorado Springs outpost of NAACP, and there is nary a whisper.

Still, if you guys want to believe that all Muslims are extremists, exactly as the extremists want you to, then I guess I can't change your minds, just as I wouldn't be able to change the minds of the men who committed this act of terrorism today.