I'm afraid the fundy christians and the fundy muslims are gonna get us all killed.

[Loren Pechtel]

2 crazed brothers commit a horrifying crime.

To some this tarnishes a billion others.

I think they are looking for any excuse to tarnish this billion.

If they were acting alone I would agree with you. We already have a dozen arrested for helping them.

 

[Warpoet]

If they were acting alone I would agree with you. We already have a dozen arrested for helping them.

A whole dozen? Out of a billion and a half? Well, that clearly proves that they're all at fault.

 

[TSwizzle]

2 crazed brothers commit a horrifying crime..

Two muslim brothers plus the muslim that shot up the Kosher Deli and executed four people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If they were acting alone I would agree with you. We already have a dozen arrested for helping them.

A whole dozen? Out of a billion and a half? Well, that clearly proves that they're all at fault.

I never said they were all at fault.

 

[Potoooooooo]

Of well, maybe it is time for something new to take over

 

[arkirk]

2 crazed brothers commit a horrifying crime.

To some this tarnishes a billion others.

I think they are looking for any excuse to tarnish this billion.

If they were acting alone I would agree with you. We already have a dozen arrested for helping them.

The number of arrests our government makes has nothing to do with people being guilty of anything...case in point...Guantanamo. If you are an actual atheist, you had better realize that you live in a country with paranoid Christians who have historically gone to extremes, killing Muslims out of all proportions to what the Muslims have done themselves. It is a lot like living among the Hatfields (the rich side of the feud) and worrying about the Coys. Atheists should really not engage in this conflict and always represent a rational approach to mitigation of the problem...for their own good. We are being fed propaganda by the military industrial complex to keep this feud going along with the supportive manufacturers. This as boiled down to businesses keeping their shops making weapons...instead of infrastructure and goods for real people to live better.

As a result, bridges fall apart our pipes are rotting in L.A. You seem unaware of the meaning of the word...BLOWBACK.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If they were acting alone I would agree with you. We already have a dozen arrested for helping them.

The number of arrests our government makes has nothing to do with people being guilty of anything...case in point...Guantanamo. If you are an actual atheist, you had better realize that you live in a country with paranoid Christians who have historically gone to extremes, killing Muslims out of all proportions to what the Muslims have done themselves. It is a lot like living among the Hatfields (the rich side of the feud) and worrying about the Coys. Atheists should really not engage in this conflict and always represent a rational approach to mitigation of the problem...for their own good. We are being fed propaganda by the military industrial complex to keep this feud going along with the supportive manufacturers. This as boiled down to businesses keeping their shops making weapons...instead of infrastructure and goods for real people to live better.

As a result, bridges fall apart our pipes are rotting in L.A. You seem unaware of the meaning of the word...BLOWBACK.

People living in France don't have access to the sort of weapons used without extensive underworld contacts.

Furthermore, where did they get the money for it? While terrorism is cheap compared to traditional armed battle it's still more than they could afford out of pocket.

 

[bilby]

The number of arrests our government makes has nothing to do with people being guilty of anything...case in point...Guantanamo. If you are an actual atheist, you had better realize that you live in a country with paranoid Christians who have historically gone to extremes, killing Muslims out of all proportions to what the Muslims have done themselves. It is a lot like living among the Hatfields (the rich side of the feud) and worrying about the Coys. Atheists should really not engage in this conflict and always represent a rational approach to mitigation of the problem...for their own good. We are being fed propaganda by the military industrial complex to keep this feud going along with the supportive manufacturers. This as boiled down to businesses keeping their shops making weapons...instead of infrastructure and goods for real people to live better.

As a result, bridges fall apart our pipes are rotting in L.A. You seem unaware of the meaning of the word...BLOWBACK.

People living in France don't have access to the sort of weapons used without extensive underworld contacts.

'Some bloke in a bar' != 'extensive underworld contacts'. I think you fail to grasp how easy illegal firearms are to obtain outside the USA - the effect of gun laws tends to be to make criminals wary of having or using guns because of the consequences of being caught with them, rather than making it actually difficult to obtain such things.

Furthermore, where did they get the money for it? While terrorism is cheap compared to traditional armed battle it's still more than they could afford out of pocket.

You have access to their bank statements, do you? Could you share those with us?

People can obtain money relatively easily. They could earn it and save it, or they could borrow it. If I was planning a suicide attack, I wouldn't baulk at getting a 'payday' cash loan in my own name for the funds - it's not like I would be planning to pay it back, or like somebody who is happy to commit murder is going to have scruples about taking a loan he has no intention of repaying. Of course, if you are planning to survive your act of terror, you might choose to use a fake ID to get a loan - as long as fraud wasn't a big moral issue for you.

 

[Sphincterboy]

We are being fed propaganda by the military industrial complex to keep this feud going along with the supportive manufacturers.

Does the "Military Industrial Complex" pay people to attend participate in street demonstrations?

 

[untermensche]

The Muslim world can be divided into the world that existed before the US invaded Iraq and the world that exists as a result of that massive act of terrorism.

Much of what is called Muslim aggression is really a response to more than a decade of massive aggression aimed at Muslims.

 

[Warpoet]

Does the "Military Industrial Complex" pay people to attend participate in street demonstrations?

View attachment 2079

View attachment 2080

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Thank you for confirming everything I said in the other thread suggesting that you are only here to spread fear and propaganda and not to have any sort of intelligent discussion.

 

[Underseer]

The moderate Christians and the moderate Muslims need to join forces to stop the insanity -- would it work?

Atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali seem to think so, but a lot of the other more prominent atheists don't agree.

Personally, I don't think it's up to the moderates to save us. We need to keep criticizing them until they are shamed into behaving better or people start to leave their movement.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

People living in France don't have access to the sort of weapons used without extensive underworld contacts.

'Some bloke in a bar' != 'extensive underworld contacts'. I think you fail to grasp how easy illegal firearms are to obtain outside the USA - the effect of gun laws tends to be to make criminals wary of having or using guns because of the consequences of being caught with them, rather than making it actually difficult to obtain such things.

Guns, I agree with you about. They had stuff you're not getting from a bloke in a bar, though.

Furthermore, where did they get the money for it? While terrorism is cheap compared to traditional armed battle it's still more than they could afford out of pocket.

You have access to their bank statements, do you? Could you share those with us?

People can obtain money relatively easily. They could earn it and save it, or they could borrow it. If I was planning a suicide attack, I wouldn't baulk at getting a 'payday' cash loan in my own name for the funds - it's not like I would be planning to pay it back, or like somebody who is happy to commit murder is going to have scruples about taking a loan he has no intention of repaying. Of course, if you are planning to survive your act of terror, you might choose to use a fake ID to get a loan - as long as fraud wasn't a big moral issue for you.

The guns I would agree with you about. Not the military explosives, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The Muslim world can be divided into the world that existed before the US invaded Iraq and the world that exists as a result of that massive act of terrorism.

Much of what is called Muslim aggression is really a response to more than a decade of massive aggression aimed at Muslims.

Look at history. Plenty of Islamist violence before Iraq. It's just it wasn't directed our way as much--Iraq made them realize that we wouldn't just sit back and let them conquer the Muslim lands and so our position on their target list got moved up.

 

[untermensche]

The moderate Christians and the moderate Muslims need to join forces to stop the insanity -- would it work?

Atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali seem to think so, but a lot of the other more prominent atheists don't agree.

Personally, I don't think it's up to the moderates to save us. We need to keep criticizing them until they are shamed into behaving better or people start to leave their movement.

You make it seem that this is some kind of religious war.

This is about encroachment and interference into Muslim nations by the West and the reactions to that.

 

[untermensche]

The Muslim world can be divided into the world that existed before the US invaded Iraq and the world that exists as a result of that massive act of terrorism.

Much of what is called Muslim aggression is really a response to more than a decade of massive aggression aimed at Muslims.

Look at history. Plenty of Islamist violence before Iraq. It's just it wasn't directed our way as much--Iraq made them realize that we wouldn't just sit back and let them conquer the Muslim lands and so our position on their target list got moved up.

Much more violence from the West.

The overthrow of the elected government of Iran was violence.

The support of the Saudi dictatorship is violence.

The support of Saddam Hussein in his rise to power was violence. His attack of Iran with the support of the West was incredible violence.

It is pure blindness and bigotry to pretend this is some religious upheaval and not a response to massive violence directed against Muslims.

 

[Jayjay]

Look at history. Plenty of Islamist violence before Iraq. It's just it wasn't directed our way as much--Iraq made them realize that we wouldn't just sit back and let them conquer the Muslim lands and so our position on their target list got moved up.

Much more violence from the West.

The overthrow of the elected government of Iran was violence.

The support of the Saudi dictatorship is violence.

The support of Saddam Hussein in his rise to power was violence. His attack of Iran with the support of the West was incredible violence.

It is pure blindness and bigotry to pretend this is some religious upheaval and not a response to massive violence directed against Muslims.

Since when does muslims fighting other muslims count as Western violence? You might as well say that WW2 is an example of muslim violence against the West, because some muslims were supporting Hitler.

And the overthrow of Mossadegh happened over sixty years ago. That's hardly an excuse for any of the shit that the current Iranian regime is doing.

 

[Underseer]

Much more violence from the West.

The overthrow of the elected government of Iran was violence.

The support of the Saudi dictatorship is violence.

The support of Saddam Hussein in his rise to power was violence. His attack of Iran with the support of the West was incredible violence.

It is pure blindness and bigotry to pretend this is some religious upheaval and not a response to massive violence directed against Muslims.

Since when does muslims fighting other muslims count as Western violence? You might as well say that WW2 is an example of muslim violence against the West, because some muslims were supporting Hitler.

And the overthrow of Mossadegh happened over sixty years ago. That's hardly an excuse for any of the shit that the current Iranian regime is doing.

America overthrew a democratically elected government and installed a dictator to rule over Iran. So because the dictator was Muslim, we have no responsibility in this?

We support the Saudi government and keep them in power. We have no responsibility for the things they do because they are Muslim?

We helped Saddam when he was in power. We take no responsibility for that because Saddam was Muslim?

Your reasoning is bizarre.

 

[untermensche]

Much more violence from the West.

The overthrow of the elected government of Iran was violence.

The support of the Saudi dictatorship is violence.

The support of Saddam Hussein in his rise to power was violence. His attack of Iran with the support of the West was incredible violence.

It is pure blindness and bigotry to pretend this is some religious upheaval and not a response to massive violence directed against Muslims.

Since when does muslims fighting other muslims count as Western violence? You might as well say that WW2 is an example of muslim violence against the West, because some muslims were supporting Hitler.

The West overturns the democratic government of Iran and this results in religious fundamentalists taking power.

The West supports Saddam Hussein's rise to power then supports him in his invasion of Iran and then supports both the Iranians and the Iraqis in that devastating war.

How is all this violence of Muslims against Muslims not because of Western interference?

And the overthrow of Mossadegh happened over sixty years ago. That's hardly an excuse for any of the shit that the current Iranian regime is doing.

The only reason we have the current regime and not a democratic secular Iran is because of Western interference.

The US invades Iraq and destroys the nation. Suddenly things that hadn't occurred in Iraq in centuries, like suicide bombings, begin again.

How is this not the fault of Western interference?

How is ISIS not the fault of Western interference?

 

[Jayjay]

Oh? And remind me again where your evidence is that it was the Muslim community, as in average French Muslims, who instilled in the Charlie Hebdo shooters the idea that it's OK to shoot cartoonists and policemen?

Oh, that's right, you never presented any despite my repeated demands because you don't have any. Just like you don't have a fucking leg to stand on here and haven't from the start.

The Charlie Hebdo shooters did not simply emerge out of nowhere; they followed a long path of radicalization that took one of them to prison and into contact with some of the most violent Muslim extremists in France, or the world, and at least one went to Yemen for training from al-Qaida. The people who carry out these attacks usually fall into a pattern very similar to this one, and there's rarely evidence that it's the mainstream Muslim community that pushes them down it. You sure as hell haven't produced any.

It's the mainstream muslim society that is a fertile breeding ground for the extremists. The imam that got the Kouachi brothers on the path of radicalization was, whiel being shunned from some mainstream imams, was still just able to basically allowed to operate unchallenged. When you have a religon that is based on a badly written poetry collection about a warlord, with plenty of passages that can justify violence, and you are convinced by your peers that anything some guy wearing a robe and a scraggly beard says is word of God, the radicals will flourish. It doesn't hurt that infidels are constantly vilified by the mainstream islam.

Ask yourself, why don't the catholic extremists who had at least as much cause to be offended by Charlie Hebdo as muslims, never got anywhere near as far as the muslim extremists? It's because the path to radicalization within the Catholic community is much harder than it is in the muslim community: it's much harder to pretend you are a catholic preacher because the organization of the church is more institional, and it's much harder ot try to convince possible recruits to overlook the passages about non-violence. I think that even the Kouachi brothers were initially against violence, but their preacher managed to convince them why it's justified, just by arguing from Koran... that shows that the safeguards against violence are paper thin in Islam.

Oh please. Do you think the perpetrators chose the target randomly? It just happened to be a satirical magazine, and might as well have been a bicycle shop or a supermarket? It's obvious that the attackers were acting in defense of their religon, and how it perceives such cartoons. The catholic church has sued Charlie Hebdo twelve times, but how many terrorist attacks did the catholics stage? Zero. It's not simply being offended, it's that Islam tends to have dim view of freedom of speech, or rights of infidels in general.

"Islam" does not have a singular view on anything. Large numbers of Muslims may have been offended by the cartoons; so what? It does not rationally follow that this means that they support the murder of the authors, far less that they're collectively responsible for it. The only real question is why you can't comprehend this.

Islam does have quite a singular view on a lot of things. Being offended by cartoons of Mohammed is one. It's not that the muslims themselves would probably be offended, but it's that their religion tells them to be: in order to be good muslims, they have to hate the cartoons. It's brainwashing, but it works. And once you instill that hatred into a billion people, it's hardly surprising that some of them will resort to violence, even though the majority might say that they are against it... all you need to trigger it is for some Imam to say the opposite, because the entire community is conditioned to believe whatever nonsense the Imams say the Koran says.

Your comprehension of how religions, and ideologies in general work, is what is baffling. I've given plenty of examples of how the same mechanism works in other societies and belief systems.

And again you try to twist the analogy by claiming as if I am comparing muslims to Nazis. As I said, the analogy is pre-WW2 average Germans to modern muslims. It's not the comparison that is shit, but your deliberate misunderstanding of it.

You're playing disingenuous games. Either you're arguing that the Muslim community instills the idea into people that it's OK to murder cartoonists and police, in which case you are comparing the average Muslim to a Nazi, or, you're just spouting a bunch of vague and incoherent ranting about how Muslims take offense to the cartoons, and they do bad things in other countries, therefore, they're responsible for incidents like this. Which is bullshit that no rational person will accept no matter how many times you repeat it.

Islam is a global ideology. The muslims going on killing spree in Indonesia or Niger of course doesn't mean that the French muslims would do the same, but it does show that it's not Islam that's stopping them.

Nonsense. The catholic church took offense also, but that doesn't make them guilty by extension either. The rason why muslim community should be pressured to fix their thinking is that while they do have a thin veneer of not advocating violence, they are also failing pretty badly at it, and are taking a much more vocal attitude against whom they perceive to be infidels. And if your community is looking extreme next to the goddamn Catholic Church, one of the most batshit insane organizations in history, then you have a problem.

Show us the evidence that it was this Muslim community you're referring to which instilled the "ideology" of murdering cartoonists and policemen into the shooters.

I've asked you repeatedly to do this, and despite lots of bluster and loaded rhetoric, you haven't.

I've done it many times. Most recently in the beginning of this post, but let's try it again: the muslim brainwashing makes people susceptible to being manipulated by extremists. Even moderate muslims support the same brainwashing, even though they might superficially denounce outright murder, and that's the issue here... not that the moderate uslims themselves would go on killing sprees or praise the killers when such incidents occur.

A few posts ago I pointed out that it is the self-identification of muslims that makes them feel conflicted.

Yes, you claimed that. You've claimed lots of things in this thread, and most of them have been wrong. The far more rational explanation is mine: Muslims don't feel conflicted so much as constantly under threat from people like you, who paint them with an absurdly broad brush and blame them for transgressions that they did not commit.

Do tell, how are muslims threatened by "people like me", which I presume refers to people whom you perceive to be vilifying muslims? To me it seems that you are on th ebrink of getting it finally, but for some reason, you can only apply the reasoning to non-muslims.

Of course, I am not vilifying muslims as a group. I am vilifying their religion and the lies peddled to them by their religious leaders.

A muslim who is not practising and doesn't do much more than superficially wear the brand name is not going to be bothered as much as someone who actually tries to follow his religion. Hey, maybe for some non-observing muslims this might be a final straw to deconvert, more power to them. But it's really the fundies who are going to struggle with congnitive dissonance over the incident... one one hand, they don't like violence, but on other hand they constantly vilify blasphemers and infidels. So they need to resolve this moral conflict somehow, and they do get defensive about it, but that discomfort that they are feeling doesn't come the evil oppresive society putting burdening them, it comes from their own crackpot belief system and how it conflicts with their own personal morality.

I'm sorry, did you think I or anyone else was interested in your unsubstantiated, uninformed, sweeping generalizations about how an entire group of people think?

You claimed that most of the world's Muslims condemned the cartoons, but now say that only those who are truly religious (those who attend sermons, apparently) would be offended, and thus be part of this group "instilling" values that somehow enable people to murder cartoonists and policemen.

But in France, that number is a mere 15 percent, and you've still given no logical explanation as to how those 15 percent are actually somehow complicit. So no, sorry, nothing went over my head. My characterization was exactly correct: you shot yourself in the foot because you either aren't paying attention or just don't know what you're talking about.

In fact, it's become clear that you haven't known what you're talking about from the start, and are more or less making it up as you go. You appear to be responding not out of a desire to have any kind of rational, intelligent dialogue or to better understand these issues, but out of some misplaced sense of moral outrage, which you are apparently dumping on the Muslim community even though you clearly know nothing about them and probably have next to no personal experience with any of them.

Are you done frothing in the mouth, and ready to address the actual points being made?