Looking for the roots of terrorism

[Fenster]

Everyone here is a "moderate" Muslim. Lets have a show of hands. Madness.

[Beanz]

Everyone here is a "moderate" Muslim. Lets have a show of hands. Madness.

I agree that to subscribe to a doctrine in which one man or a group of men remove the need to think for yourself is madness. It is the path of least resistance. This is the problem at the heart of Islam that I have never made any bones about expressing from day one. It is incompatible with the way we think in the west and very much like the views of Christian fundamentalists who seem to also believe that there is no longer any need to follow their own heart, brain, mind or common sense. When there is an accident or tragedy people often reveal remarkable selflessness, courage and kindness and this for me reveals the true nature of humanity, it is what sets us apart from the animals. I found this video on the youtube page of the one you posted. It is remarkable how much fundamentalists have in common, and yet how different these two young men are. While there are also problems with thinking only logically and ignoring our intuition, it is the young atheist lad here who is the balanced one. He is displaying proof that even without a spiritual belief and a reliance on logic, he is clearly in touch with his own heart, mind and common sense (intuition). The Muslim guy has even forgotten how to have a conversation. Dogma and narrow man imposed thinking, has led him to just repeat parrot fashion an argument that makes no relevant sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv071...22327029#t=221

How can any non brainwashed person believe that it is right, or in the interests of Justice or in the service of a beneficent or merciful God to stone someone to death ? Only those who do not listen to their own God given heart could believe such a thing.

[Beanz]

I should also say that one video is not the most representative way of explaining the thoughts of every moderate Muslim. Remember that the guy who saved all those Jews by hiding them in the fridge in Paris was a Muslim and the Policeman protecting the Charlie Hebdo "blasphemers" who was shot dead, was a muslim. I would be surprised to find that they were fans of stoning. I have expressed reservation and caution from day one about extremes in either direction and using arguments that could be interpreted as xenophobic. Nowhere did I call anyone a xenophobe for expressing uncomfortableness with such irrational ideologies. That is what should set us apart form extremists. The ability to vehemently disagree without acting like a different opinion is blasphemy.

[Beanflicker]

and the Policeman protecting the Charlie Hebdo "blasphemers" who was shot dead, was a muslim.

To be fair, that guy was just responding to a shooting: he didn't know who he was protecting or the motive of the shooters.

[Fenster]

The video I posted isn't meant to be representative of all muslims.

If a room full of hundreds of young "normal" people can believe in such a disgusting, barbaric, medieval form of justice, for things that are completely and utterly harmless, then it's hardly surprising that some take it a step further and start killing people. Brainwashed because of Islam.

[pacfan]

Now seriously, it's the culture, the culture a person is brought up in. Culture has a very strong influence on people's lives, even more so than religion per se. Culture can make a seemigly perfect gentleman act like a total beast in certain situations. Influence of culture on a person's life is so pervasive that it can mold his character in a way that nothing else can. Remember, Japanese used to be suicide bombers, but now they are totally different people because they no longer live in their old culture that glorified violence...

[Kirkland Laing]

Culture has a very strong influence on people's lives, even more so than religion per se.

This is dead right. It's a regional thing rather than a religion thing. Look at the way women are treated in India, the attitude to rape, domestic violence, honour killings, acid attacks and so on. Basically a big chunk of the world are backwards fucking savages towards women and anybody not from their group or tribe. Religion is just another thing they use to differentiate and justify their actions but not even the main one in most cases (not recently though in Muslim countries).

[Kirkland Laing]

The video I posted isn't meant to be representative of all muslims.

If a room full of hundreds of young "normal" people can believe in such a disgusting, barbaric, medieval form of justice, for things that are completely and utterly harmless, then it's hardly surprising that some take it a step further and start killing people. Brainwashed because of Islam.

This is true but it's down to the fact that the mosques and the imans in Norway and probably most of the mosques and imans in the countries those people originally came from are funded by Saudi or other Gulf money that funds this medieval fundamentalist strain of Islam.

And we don't do anything about it. Look at the orgy of arse kissing that we had after the Saudi king died on Friday. I was surprised to read that Abdullah was a force for moderation and peace. And we've just agreed to give a World Cup to Qatar and are kisssing their arses, ignoring that they're building their stadiums with slave labour and the Qatari royal family are funding various Islamic terrorist groups.

If we'd found a clean cheap source of energy a decade ago and had managed to turn over the world's transport fleet to the new fuel and also replaced domestic and industrial power sources that used to run on oil then we'd now be putting these fuckers under sanctions, arresting their royal families if they set foot outside their countries and funding moderate imans to replace all the fundamentalist nutters currently teaching in mosques. We'd also be not giving a fuck about interfering in the Middle East. No Iraq wars, no drone attacks, no military bases, no propping up dictatorships. And the Middle East would be happily fighting amongst themselves à la Syria and not giving a fuck about us. Unfortunately this is not the case.