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Now you're just trolling.
So after reading Prag's last post I would like for us to try and reach some common understanding so I will offer my apology about my vitriolic and childish rhetoric towards you and give you thr benefit of doubt and ask that you demonstrate how i have misrepresented Islam, if you can do this I will noy hesitate tp admit I am wrong. But you have to understand why I cannot accept a seconed hand account of what you say some nameless Imam has said as a valid refutation of my post, and if you can show me how my understanding of Islam is tantamount to Conservative propaganda I will gladly accept my mistake. So I am willing to listen and once again offer my apology for my conduct.
Credit where credit is due. Many cannot handle doing what you did here.
Granted. I understand why you cannot accept a second-hand account by an Imam. I would reject that as well, just like I reject Wiki.
Here is a good factual article that explains why we in the west must not condemn islam for the acts of terrorist.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/11/09/islam-is-a-religion-of-peace-manal-o...
I am all for condemning islam, but because it is a myth. Just as I would condemn any religion.
Another problem is that people are completely uninformed about some of these organizations. ISIL for one.
Many call it ISIS which is incorrect. The terrorist that are ISIL promote and end of the world scenario to recruit disaffected followers. This means that an islamic state must take and control more lands than Syria. ISIS only means Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIL means the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant.
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) The undefined region around Syria is historically referred to as the Levant (an archaic French phrase for the "lands of the rising sun), including modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan.Dec 3, 2015
Also one of the islmic groups that I lived with has this as their basic tenet.
https://www.theismaili.org/community
I could produce many maybe thousands of examples of peace loving muslims that regard their religion as one of peace and reject violence and terrorism.
As for the "regressive liberal or leftist" comments, there is no need for me to address that as you yourself know that that is just a right-wing catch-phrase used to insult Liberals.
Furthermore, I am not seeking for you AlphaLogica to admit being wrong. I am not keeping score. I don't have an ego to satisfy. We'll tell you if you're wrong and why, but we don't need to insult you personally. We don't you to insult us personally either.
terrorism is not a tenet of islam. War maybe, and even violence but not terrorism. All religions preach some sort of violence. That hasn't change at all. Christian bomb abortion clinics in the name of their god, but I don't blame the whole of christianity for that act.
There has to be something different about Islam, that makes it more violent though. In the last 10 years there have been 18,000 terrorist acts, most of which were Islamic related. I have no problem believing that Islamic PEOPLE are peaceful, I have problems believing the religion itself is peaceful. While the bombing of the abortion clinic is sad and misguided, I don't think it comes close to the amount of deaths Islam has caused, in recent history. You can be killed for leaving the religion in some territories, that is just unnecessary and brutal violence. The "moderate" Muslims are doing nothing about it either. Granted, some may want change, but no one seriously speaks out about it. There is a thread in the hub section, with an atheist in Bahrain, who is in fear of his life. This is truly unacceptable from the modern day world, and while Islam can remain, it needs to be reformed.
Oh, when I was a kid: when someone said terrorist it raised images of Catholics (IRA) or perhaps the US backed death squads in Central America. In my father's generation it raised images of Buddhists (Vietnamese NLF).
When you try to affect political change with violence and you have enough resources to be powerful it is called an army going to war.
When you try to affect political change with violence and you have don't have resources to be powerful it is called terrorism.
Why do people turn to violence to solve political matters? Because it works. For all the high-tech stuff we have access to, we still got one foot in the cave. Sadly, there really isn't anything different about Islam/Muslims; for them to be different they would have to not resort to violence for political change.
If you had been oppressed by a royal family, if you have watched the people in power just acting like wild playboys supplied by money from the west, if you have been kept from having what we in the west call a normal life simply because you the subject of a corrupt royal family, YOU might act out against what YOU see as the enemy of your family and life. Many people resort to what they think will give them salvation against worldly oppression....religion. That is the Arab peoples in a nutshell. It isn't islam, it is decades of oppression and subjugation.
The equivalent in this nation is the plight of poor black families. They act out actually only about 5% act out in anger. But many white people see it as blacks just not assimilating to the system. Those white people are wrong, but it is a good comparison.
What is the financial status (standard of living) on average, of those who have committed terrorist acts in the name of Islam? How many of them were born, raised, or live outside of the countries you describe?
Not looking to be a contrarian...simply looking for data to verify what you've said.
You have to take into consideration the long history of Arabs and Persians. First, the crusade came and attacked a people that were perfectly willing to tolerate all religions in their territory. Then, of course, the west began an empire building domination that subjugated the entire Arab and Persian world. The British began recognizing Arab royalty. That royalty completely oppressed their subjects AND started living like playboys. The general population blamed western influence on that situation. There has never been real democracy in the Arab world. The Shaw of Iran was a tyrant. The Saudi Royal Family have been nothing but playboys. Only Jordan and a few Egyptian leaders have cared for their people.
In a recent interview in Germany, an ISIL defector was interviewed. He said that ISIL looks for Europeans with criminal backgrounds.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/middleeast/100000004566132/exporting-...
He also described the fact that ISIL can easily recruit Arab Americans that are discriminated against because of their religion.
ISIL desperately wants and needs the USA and the west to start calling terrorist "islamic terrorist". Then they can recruit saying that the west is engaging in a holy war against islam.
Our general rhetoric is already a big recruiting tool for ISIL, but if we officially start describing terrorist as "islamic terrorist", we will disenfranchise the whole of the islamic world. Thus creating a much bigger problem.
There is an issue in your response that I would like to address.
"First, the crusade came and attacked a people that were perfectly willing to tolerate all religions in their territory. "
It's actually the other way around:
In the seventh and eighth centuries, Islam was introduced in the Arabian Peninsula by the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a newly unified polity. This led to a rapid expansion of Arab power, the influence of which stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.
-Wickham, Chris (2009). The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400–1000.
For example, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre:
In 1009 the Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah gave explicit orders to destroy the churches in Palestine, Egypt and Syria, and above all the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as recounted by the historian Yahya ibn Sa'id.- The Oxford History of the Crusades.
The first crusades were a response to Muslim expansion where they captured many lands deemed 'holy' by early Catholics and destroyed multiple churches. After that it was simply a tit for tat justification, where both sides over exaggerated the 'threat' to their way of life in order to get the uneducated masses riled up for some good old ethnic cleansing, like the massacre of the jews in Germany in the year 1096
Granted the crusades were retribution, but I was referring to the result, not the motive. I thank you for that good and accurate information. I am attempting to show Cybrlyn why there is a great number of disaffected muslims and why they feel the way they feel. Note that after the 1st WW, Arabs were cheated out of what the British government promised. This led to mistrust of the west.
Remember also that although the crusades were waged against all of islam, only the Sunni took up arms against the crusades. Many Europeans lives were saved by Shia that did not recognize the Caliph as their legal or religious authority.
All very interesting but it didn't answer my question.
You want to know the financial status of terrorist that are affiliated with ISIL? Well, I don't really know. That is why I offered the defector interview for you. He describes how suicide bombers are recruited. Who is targeted to recruit and why. There are many reasons these people are disaffected. Oppression, racial prejudice, a feeling of not belonging, so on and so forth. I'm sure that for some financial may be a factor, but I have no information of anyone joining ISIL for financial gain. The join ISIL for an identity. The are disillusioned about their lives. ISIL preaches an end of the world scenario. They preach that one must become right with their god (Allah) to obtained rewards in heaven. So ISIL is made up of corrupt power mongers who lead the organization, and the body is made up of recruits that are disillusioned with the world and their place in it.
I asked because you mentioned money and poverty.
Sorry. I was talking about the overall oppression carried out by the royals over decades.
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