If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam.

To me, that's a scary number.

Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends.

And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.

That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come to Europe by the millions.

It's not my opinion, but please don't compare that opinion with people who advocate that homosexuals, adulterers and apostates should be put to death. There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Your relativism goes too far.

[Edit] And just to make it clear, I do not believe that it is really 40% who really hold those opinions. It's probably less. I hope.

Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is immaterial, the numbers are scary.

http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-...

That's 30% declared right there, another 10% undeclared would not surprise me at all.

I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria.

But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.

"In the region", you can choose whether to send them to:

1) Turkey, an increasingly-authoritarian regime which is already overflowing with millions of refugees, making money with the fanatics and holding mainstream cultural values that tend to despise people from Syria/Kurdistan/Iraq;

2) Lebanon, a country where refugees from other conflicts already account for over a third of the total population, and which is far from stable on its own (half-run by the unofficial Hezbollah militia)

3) Israel. They don't even want "their own" arabs...

4) Iraq, another war-torn country half-owned by the same petro-fanatics;

5) Iran, which is logistically very difficult (being on the other side of warzone Iraq) and, well, not great for people running from religious fanatics;

6) Jordan, another poor and unstable country already full of refugees from previous conflicts.

7) Saudi Arabia. They're the ones funding the fanatics. Enough said.

8) Egypt. Yet another dictator, vaguely more stable, as ruthless as Assad. They also have permanent Palestinian camps which have been there for decades and clearly don't want any more.

9) Palestine/Gaza or Palestine / West Bank. Let's not even go there.

Ok, let's go further then: Libya? Sorry, other war. Tunisia? Another wobbly government, and so close to Europe to make it look silly. Georgia/Armenia/Azerbaijan? Dictators, guerrillas... Yemen? Other war. Oman? Same guy has been in charge for 45 years. We can go on, but tbh, it's all like that. Countries in the region are either f*ed up, autocratic regimes, or are actively sponsoring the lunatics. Decent people have nowhere to go.

Right now, most refugees are in Turkey, Lebanon, Germany and Jordan (not counting the internally displaced). Lebanon and Jordan in particular are completely overwhelmed. What many people (such as the UK government) suggest is to help these countries cope by sending money and logistic support.

Many refugees understandably do not wish to spend the coming years in bleak refugee camps and want to leave the region. That is very understandable and in my opinion the world should agree on refugee quotas according to population size and economic strength. The world includes the United States of America that otherwise likes to make its presence felt in the Middle East.

Also, I'd like to point out that there's no Palestinian camps in Egypt that I know of but good on you seeing through all the BS that Sisi is just another ruthless and bloodthirsty dictator who is by the way a closeted Islamist who holds equally despicable fundamentalist views but he's good enough so far in hiding them under the veneer of reformist moderate leadership.

Armenia estimated 17,000

They prefer that such migrants should travel to Europe, who are naively taking those migrants in.

Meanwhile, people die.

And as for your Israel jab, they're better to the Palestinians than the Arab states in the area are. And none of the Israelis I've talked to seem to have inherently racist beliefs but many of the recently middle-eastern Arabs do. (About the Palestinians.)

Europe fully deserves the migrant crisis. It went into Middle East guns blazing, and expects to come out of it unscathed.

And help we must. We can't sit back and watch madmen kill millions, even if doing so would spite our idiot leaders (on all sides) who caused it in the first place.

I'm pretty sure the other 99.9% are hostages, and not half as committed to the bullshit as you think, except in stockholm-syndrome ways. Soon after they weren't being killed for not being fervent, they'd be as non-religious as we are.

Bush caused most of this current ISIS problem by lying about WMDs. At that point, we're the bad guys invading on a lie. It made us afraid of and hostile towards the Iraqis which caused the Abu Ghraib treatment, etc. He didn't make the terrorists but he provided them with their recruiting propaganda, made an ideal nest, and let them crawl in. It sucks, but we've got an uphill slog because we elected someone who was fine with murdering people on a lie.

No, it's not. I have no expertise in ME affairs, do you? Who is the expert? What country has successfully demonstrated they can "handle it better"?

> Bush ... lie.

Yeah, and people died. I get it. But the next guy was elected partially because he wanted to withdraw from Iraq, and we did. Power vacuum. So we go back in and then what happens when we elect someone who wants to withdraw?

"We" didn't do "nothing". Countries like France, Israel, US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia spent years destabilising Assad and funding those "opposition groups" that eventually started the civil war. Syria originally was a USSR satellite with ambitions of regional hegemony (they basically ruled Lebanon and deeply influenced Jordan), so they had to be beaten into submission. However, there was never a real plan to get involved on the ground, that was just a huge bluff; Assad and Putin saw right through it. "We" (and French elites above all) did way too much already, and it's high time we stopped.

> The fingers of Islamist and totalitarian interference are already all over this conflict

That's really rich. "Our" best ally in the region is an absolutist monarchy running an Islamist totalitarian regime, the US just sold them a new crapload of weapons... nobody gives a shit about that stuff. What "we" care about is that the "right" totalitarian mofo is in charge, like in Egypt. Everything else is theatre and propaganda.

The real solution is less weapons and more diplomacy. Get the interested parties in a room and throw away the key until they come up with a shared plan. The US/Russia agreement is a first step in that direction, next it's for Saudi, Turkey and Iran to work out an agreeable compromise and pull their weight in the right direction. Otherwise, until countries like Turkey and Saudi keep buying IS oil and selling them weapons, you can invade a thousand times and achieve nothing except increasing shareholder value in the defence sector.

Reminds me of that Adam Curtis documentary Bitter Lake[1]. I wonder if Oil Countries are the real reason these terrorist keep appearing again and again.

I bet the moment world gets rid of oil, is the day Islamic terrorist stop appearing.

[1] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hdcji

A secular democracy requires some kind of enlightenment on the part of the people, and usually this enlightenment happens after a great sacrifice has been made (something on the level of a war of independence) or through the slow and steady movement towards universal suffrage by way of representation.

All that ends up happening when you give democracy to a population that is not ready for it are strongmen who vote themselves additional executive power through legislative hook or crook leading all the problems that a secular democracy is supposed to prevent.

Whether or not the West gets involved, one side will win or lose guaranteed. Trying to pick the least evil from the outside is an exercise in gambler's ruin.

At any rate, the 'secular' fighters are now more often called 'moderate' rebels. Hell, Al Queda (fighting in Syria as the Al-Nusra Front) is moderate compared to Daesh. Since 2012 they and other 'moderate' Islamist groups received funding and weapons from the US, UK, France, Israel, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia. Many of the arms ended up in Daesh's hands anyway. One doesn't hear a lot about the, at one point much lauded, Free Syrian Army except that many in their ranks have defected to Daesh.

The stuff I mentioned above is as close to factual as it gets in this chaotic war. The information comes from so-called reliable media sources with supporting documents provided. This doesn't guarantee absolute truth of course.

It's interesting how almost every person has strong opinions about the clusterfuck unfolding in Syria/Iraq and the role Daesh plays in it, but very few of those people actually have enough trustworthy information to make an informed opinion. The fog of war and the spread of disinformation, and just plain old misinformation, is as relevant here as in any other war.

It doesn't help that Senator McCain advocated supplying Daesh with weapons to shoot down Russian fighter aircraft and even had his picture taken posing with Daesh. The US and its allies and lackeys have a rich history supporting and arming extremely vile regimes and insurgent groups when it serves their interests.

The West provided the fertile soil from which Daesh sprouted and now the chickens have come to roost. Big time.

In any type of rebellion, or any other organization for that matter, the views of the group will naturally change over time to be more in line with whatever the source of funding and resources wants them to be. Let a couple of years go by with the West providing essentially no support, and all of the support coming from the Gulf Arab states with a history of exporting extremism, and naturally any moderate groups and moderate elements in less moderate groups will wither and fade away, and the extremist elements will come to the front. The more time goes by, the harder it is to find any actual moderation to back.

Whatever moderate and secular-leaning elements there may have been at the beginning, they've long since withered and died, and there isn't much of anybody good left to back, aside from the Kurds. We have the Iranian-Russian aligned Assad regime, versus the ISIS extremists so out there that even Al-Quada is fighting them. I don't see much in the way of good options now, honestly.

It might have been different if we had backed groups heavily from the start and gotten that view-shifting effect working in our favor. Of course, it also might not have. And it's hard to fault the American people for not wanting to get deeply involved in another messy Middle-Eastern war. But if you care about spreading democracy and liberal western values, this is pretty much the worst thing to do.

But EU is IMO losing just as much. The borders are being redrawn between states, there is palpable tension between EU members(Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU? If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).

> And weren't abolition of state borders and prevention of another Hitler the motivation behind EU?

That never was openly stated afaik but it would seem to be that the architects of the EU had as one of their main driving forces the fact that they wanted to re-structure the EU in such a way to avoid another war. The problem with their approach is that they did many things without sufficient buy-in of the residents and on top of that started out by setting up all kinds of irrational schemes inside the EU to funnel money to their pet special interests. If they could have waited a few decades with tricks like that it probably would have worked a lot better.

The major issue that I see with a really unified EU is that the divergence of cultures within the EU is enormous, much more so than say the Americas, where a strong federal government was the result of a large group of people uniting behind a single good cause. And even then - in spite of that much more homogeneous culture - they had to have it out in a civil war to beat the remainder into submission (and that war was a war of ideology as much as it was a war over money and power).

> If so, its failing apart (not a syntax error, figure of speech).

Unfortunately, yes, it looks that way. The Euro is quite fragile, the intra-communion tension at record high levels since the previous world-war.

Separatists may get emboldened by all this, the refugees are so much kindling on a fire that is already smoldering. It will take some really smart people with the long view to repair this.

But as all seemingly extremists becoming prime ministers, he'll eventually learn to see a bit more of the bigger picture and cool down if he gets in office.

</humor>

This is a very scared, very scary person who is pushing every emotional button available with his policies and rhetoric who has the backing of a much too large segment of the country already. If you had told me 25 years ago that this would happen in NL I would not have believed you but I'm witnessing it. This whole thing started with the murder of a guy called Pim Fortuyn, the previous populist (who at least made some sense some of the time), he would have done some damage but not enough to seriously threaten the country. The segment woken up by the voice of Fortuyn was then handily co-opted by Wilders, who is now in an excellent position to put his play-book into action. It's super scary to watch friends and even relatives succumb to this idiots words and to hear his words being echoed by people dear to you.

It's like watching a re-run of Germany, ca. 1935, and then too people were saying 'Oh, it won't be that bad, he's just going to wake up when he actually has power' and we all know how that one ended.

Again, fortunately, NL is a crappy little country, but don't forget that Hitler came from Austria, not from Germany to begin with, who knows what his plans are. There is a large body of similar minded people in Belgium, and a much larger one still in France led by one Marine Le Pen. You can bet they're planning some sort of collaboration (too early to call it an anschluss) once they have managed to capture some power.

It's like watching the periscope of a submarine moving through a flotilla of merchant boats.

That's incredibly depressing. I only know of Geert Wilders from the court case (it was part of a law class), but I always assumed he was some uber-fringe politician who would never get anywhere near high office.

The world is entering a new period of radicalization and I'm very worried about the consequences.

But then again these are just polls. And then there needs to be a majority coalition.

But it's a far cry from the Netherlands I knew in the 90's.

Back on the topic: there are some really disturbing messages on social networks and in politician mouths regarding the refugees (who are called migrants here).

And yes, the coalition is pretty much our hope right now, but Wilders is ex VVD and SP might even join (they have a lot of similar things in their programs even though they're on opposite points of the political spectrum in nl, how that happened is another story). A 'cordon sanitaire' has been discussed but it is also already being broken.

The Netherlands that you knew in the 90's is dead, 25 years of divisive politics have seen to that.

Yes, it is absolutely deplorable how our 'chosen leaders' are positioning themselves and how they use the Paris attacks as a fig leaf cover to do things they nominally would have nothing to do with, except now that it is politically expedient.

Threatening to close your border to incoming foreigners is nothing like like closing your border, enslaving locals trying to flee you, and murdering them systematically.

And there's a difference between a leader being elected once on a wave of fear and the leader declaring themselves god's representative on earth - let the slaughter begin.

There was a boat of Jewish refugees that Roosevelt hoped would be accepted to Cuba but whom the United States was unwilling to accept. 254 of those refugees ended up murdered in the Holocaust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis#.22Voyage_of_the_....

Well, only 50+ years ago there was an over 40% population in the US that thought that blacks were inferior and shouldn't sit in the same restaurants/hotels/schools with whites. In fact it was even law in some states.

Beyond that, there were about all major western countries, France, UK, Belgium, Holland, Italy, etc, that had other people enslaved in colonies up until the sixties. 2+ billion people had their countries managed by foreigners, and their fellow countrymen tortured and executed when asking freedom (and sometimes, just killed for fun).

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-...

http://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/27/how-britain-denies-its-hol...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-france...

http://www.theplaidzebra.com/human-zoos-one-europes-shameful...

Heck, even in Paris itself, the French police famously killed over 200 Algerians marching for their country's freedom in a single day in 1961 -- and it took them 40+ years, after all officials were dead or too old, to finally admit it and ask for an apology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_massacre_of_1961

These countries also thought that they should have a say as to whether a remote country should have this or that president or regime -- to the point of toppling legitimate regimes, bombing those countries, coming to assist one party or another in a civil war, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...

There have been over 2 million victims of those interventions in the last 10 years alone. Every despicable hit by muslim terrorists (and we all agree its despicable) was met with 4-5 orders of magnitude many more innocent victims on those countries.

If some muslim country managed to harm 1/100 that number of, say, Texans, where would the percentages of "tolerance" and "acceptance" towards them go?

We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.

I suspect you too have a bulging bookmark folder like I do of hypocritical western behaviour.

However the battle against militant jihadi extremists is one issue where 'we' are completely in the right. Completely.

No need to apologise for past wrongs. If we have regarded life as too cheap in the past, that is irrelevant to ensuring your own family cannot be killed.

Now prior actions of our own may have exacerbated, strengthened and accelerated the militant jihadis ( Iraq, Afghanistan ). But even without our own errors and crimes militant jihadis would have arisen eventually.

The jihadis have so many 'reasons' to kill us. If some 'reasons' did not exist because we didn't invade Iraq say, or we addressed other 'reasons' ( say for example we disbanded Israel ) there are just so many more 'reasons' left for the jihadis that single us out for killing.

Lets say Iraq was still under Saddam and Syria under Assad. No ISIS perhaps. What then about al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Qaeda in the Yemen, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah.

And the militant jihadis have found a brainwashing method that repeatably draws from a small but replenishing minority of evil, vain and stupid young people.

Young people join ISIS not because they are "evil" (what, are they Darth Vader?). They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination. I'm not saying we should try to prove them wrong by being really nice or something, I think it's too late for that, but it helps to understand this.

ISIS gives them a clear path to rectify the situation. Terrorism is pathetic militarily, killing 100 civilians is no accomplishment. However it is brilliant strategically.

Terrorist attacks cause the western world to completely fly off the handle and give the terrorists everything they could ever ask for. So far, we've gifted them 3 countries (there's no way they could have ever invaded by themselves, but we did it for them). We've also gifted them with a huge number of weapons, which were originally intended for such entities as "the free Syrian army" and "democratic Iraq".

All of this is made possible by the cowardice of western morons whose entire education on geopolitics comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Please stop helping the terrorists.

People love this kind of fantastical good/evil stuff. Who's good and who's evil depends on what side you're on, of course. Like that Russian book I heard about that's a rewrite of Lord of the Rings from Sauron's perspective.

Look at what games boys and young men so often choose to play. When I was seven I was out in the forests with my friends with fake guns. It was really fun. Then I put down childish things and got into Counter-Strike. I loved playing the terrorists. The AK-47 was just great and the avatars looked pretty cool.

This is kind of off-the-cuff sociological speculation or something, but: religion is a very powerful aesthetic phenomenon. In combination with war, you get a combination of thrills, ecstasy, excitement, danger, meaning, and hope that's hard to beat, for certain personality types.

Look at the ISIS propaganda videos. They're not laying out a rational strategy for improving the world. They're presenting an aesthetic image, a very masculine one, full of cars and guns and desert missions and fighting and stuff. Combined with the pious literalist faith that also has its own appeal. They do offer a hope for a future world, a glorious Islamic caliphate and whatnot, probably the deserts will bloom and peace will reign and Muslim Jesus will rise from the dead.

They say things like "Are you satisfied with your shitty life in suburban London or Paris? Do you like the way people look at you? Do you feel alive? Do you love your life? ...no? Come here. We not only have an exciting virile lifestyle full of action and terrible sublime beauty, but also we are the true messengers of the true prophet and God is on our side."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

I will not speak about young people joining ISIS, but I've known people who joined or wanted to join the military strictly to kill. These folks exist. You give them a strong ideological or philosophical reason to kill for and it brings in some of those sitting on the fence. In the case of the US military, I've not known anyone who made it through bootcamp with these attitudes (though I'm sure plenty have). They actively weed out these folks because, while their main mission involves killing, psychopaths aren't usually good soldiers. Groups like ISIS have no qualms in this regard, so these attitudes will survive their equivalent of basic training.

And women can desire to kill too. Or see conservative Christian women in the US (where I am) choosing to deliberately set aside careers and other "modern" or "masculine" things for their beliefs.

I can't explain that either, seems bizarre to me to deliberately reduce your agency, but some people think it's the thing to do.

Bullshit. The people who are destroying ancient statues and slaughtering other Muslims didn't sign up for some grand scheme of bringing down the west after a reasoned argument. They signed up because they are violent psychopaths and they were given an avenue to do all of the fucked up things that struck their fancy.

I think it's more like gangs. Kids join gangs because they want to belong to something bigger than themselves. ISIS offers something similar to people who feel alienated from the West.

If they signed up because of this, boy I wouldn't want to be in their shoes once they realize their mistake! Judging by everything I read, ISIS rulers enforce a strict Sharia law, with patrols making sure everyone is using the correct dress code.

I've also seen a documentary with a woman going undercover into ISIS-held territory (I think it was by the BBC) which claimed that Jihadists that break the "law" get killed, and that in fact ISIS welcomes any reports of misbehavior of their troops and punishes them hardly. ISIS seems to be ruling their territory with an iron hand, it's definitely not the land of do as you please and kill whom you fancy.

I was comparing social attitudes not counting casualties of armed conflict and its repercussions. Comparing these two things quantitatively makes very little sense.

The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries. They don't execute European or American racists from the 1950s and they don't do it as an act of revenge for the Iraq war (that I strongly opposed by the way)

Yes. So other countries should not encourage the tolerant co-patriots of those fanatics to adopt their attitudes -- e.g. by showing a plundering, hypocritical and hateful face of western democracies that destabilize the region, arm dangerous fanatics like ISIS and Laden, meddle in their politics, pillage their resources, and while condemning backwards islamism at the same time hi-five equally backwards Saudi regimes.

Because that's what has been happening. All of these countries were much more tolerant and humane 30 and even 50 years ago.

I'm also not really sure that I'd paint 1985-era Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Death-To-America Iran as markedly better than they are now. The region has historically been ruled by despots. Western intervention has occasionally (by design or accident) made things worse, but the West has the same responsibility in the rise to power of noted humanitarian Khomeiny as France's position during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-14-African-countries-a...

You are using the "someone did some bad things some time ago (and now that I've put things into perspective for you), lets be open minded about another someone doing another something bad right now, because it's only fare!" argument.

So many misunderstandings I don't know where to start.

First, did I say anywhere "lets allow another someone do another something bad right now, because it's only fare!"?

No, and that's why you didn't directly quote from my comment. In fact in it I very precisely write: "We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.".

Second, I don't try to justify or excuse (I mean, Jesus!), just to put in perspective and explain. And one main I try to explain is that "40% of people" believing a horrible thing is neither irredeemable, nor unknown for even in our countries, even in the time of our fathers and grandfathers. Those people grew up in countries that resulted of those conditions and heard those horror stories from their relatives.

Third, as I noted it's not "some time ago", it's something ongoing. Foreign powers still plunder, meddle and hold those countries down, with unbelievably far greater blood tolls than all those attacks combined.

So, more like "If you fuck people over repeatedly, including having a history of enslaving their parents, you shouldn't be that surprised that they might come and hit you back, or that they develop a cult of hating you and what you stand for".

That's the point, you are putting in perspective unrelated things and unrelated places and unrelated times...

None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy. That's something inherent to the ideology and its resulting culture.

That's why it's called a perspective though: because it has to expand the places and times (the "perspective view") we're taking into account to explain a situation.

But while expanded, they are not "unrelated" -- the places that had those things done to them are the homelands of those people, all have ancestors, relatives and friends that suffered from those things. And similar things (interventions, plundering etc) happens to this very day. Heck, those ISIS fanatics were pampered initially by foreign powers to topple the, call it whatever but at least stable, regime.

>None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy.

When you hold people in misery, fear and bad living conditions (and poor education), don't be surprised if they revert or held closer to backwards beliefs. Carpet bombing and plundering creates more fanatics than investing or opening a school.

No. The bible says itself that those laws no longer apply.

Romans 7:6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Galatians 5:13-15 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

That never stopped Christian fanatics from selectively mix and matching the Bible.

For so-called Christians, ALL the Old Testament stuff should no longer apply when it clashes with what Christ said (which is like all of the time).

But they still prefer the Old Testament's more barbaric and base rules than what's in the Gospels.

Especially in light of this: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/17/te...

Which shows that the people fleeing are mostly Muslim. Muslims are more likely to be the victims of terrorist violence, not the perpetrators.

Having read various internet comments over the past few days, I'm doubting if that number has gone down any since then.

And to make it clear, I'm not concerned about the number of people coming to Europe. I'm concerned about the attitudes of conservative Islam, anywhere in the world.

If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.

I wonder if this is really true though. Some statistics:

https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20...

While Anders Breivik was shooting kids on the island in Norway, the Norwegian media were speculating that it was most likely perpetrated by muslim extremists. Even though we've historically had way more examples of terrorism perpetrated against immigration related targets by right-wing Norwegians (which was the case with Breivik as well).

The average Norwegian won't remember any of the mosques, immigrant reception centers and immigrant stores that were bombed in Norway in the past. I guess terrorism is quickly forgotten when it isn't your own group that is targeted.

Nonetheless, Breivik, unless I'm wrong about it, was not part of a movement trying to dominate the world and install a Christian kingdom, so ISIS differs from the white "movement" in that regard.

In regards to the current discussion, I am not sure which side of the argument I am on. I am not a Muslim so I can only comment from what I see from the outside. I have Muslim friends who are not at all sympathetic to ISIS or any of its friends, so I don't find it hard to believe that most Muslims find ISIS reprehensible as most Christians found Breivik. However, I have the opinion that nations in the region need to step up because ISIS threatens their freedom. There needs desperately to be a fight against ISIS in the form of a fight against their ideology... a movement that teaches that hatred and intolerance is not the way of Islam. I am not a Muslim, so I have no right to demand that of my Muslim brothers and sisters, especially as they've endured much in terms of discrimination in France (as that fascinating New Yorker pointed out) and elsewhere, but the ideology of hatred will survive bombs and invasions, if not be inflamed by it. The only way we can defeat ISIS is to defeat their message.

The biggest difference is - for want of a better word and I'm really sorry about using that term in the current context - because of their ability to execute. They would if they could, they just can't.

And in this simplistic scenario, why would you posit is the reason they "can't"?

US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists - see the numbers of people injured and killed by various mass shooters or clinic bombings.

How is that a fair or even interesting comparison, though? Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. Islamist terrorists aren't otherwise expected to be agents of the government charged with using physical force to protect the laws. Islamist terrorists target innocents in a deliberate effort to maximize damage and loss of life. Body counts tell almost nothing of the story in an honest comparison of the threat from police officers vs Islamic terrorists.

US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists

This is a slightly more interesting comparison, but even then you have to look at who the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are watching to understand that Christian extremists are individual actors who target specifics like abortion providers. They're not looking to take down all of Western society. They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer.

So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) - but that doesn't mean that they're the same level of threat in a strategic geopolitical sense.

True disturbingly often for police officers. About half the people shot and killed by police in the US (about 500 people per year) have mental illness. Compare that rate with the rest of the western world (less than 100 people since 2000) where people with mental illness tend not to be murdered by police. Even if we remove all the mentally ill people with guns from those numbers (to make the weapon use comparable across countries) we see very many more people killed in the US than any other western nation.

And if you want numbers for innocent people shot by officers with poor aim, well, they don't keep numbers so you can't get accurate stats. Here are a few: https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-yo...

> So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11)

I'm not excluding 9/11. Christian and right wing extremists have killed more than 3,000 people in the US in the 19th and 20th century. At least 3,500 black people were lynched, for example. We've seen in this thread people claiming that Islam has centuries of violence, so let's go back 200 years and see who's being killed and who's doing the killing. Black folks are being killed, and Good White Christians were doing the killing.

> They're not looking to take down all of Western society.

Sure they are. "NEW WORLD ORDER" and "THE JEWS DID IT" and "FREEMEN ON THE LAND" are all about how corrupt the current system is. Read the Unabomber manifesto. That's all about overthrowing the system.

> They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer.

There's no point having this discussion if you're just going to shift the goal posts to keep redefining what terrorism is or what extremism is or what atrocities do or don't count.

No, they aren't. Christian extremists include organized extremist groups, including those that have been behind or sheltered abortion clinic attacks (e.g., Army of God), and also much of the militia movement (large segments of which are Christian extremist groups with apocalyptic views.) Sure, there are apparently lone wolf attackers (just as there are among Islamic terrorists), but they generally turn out to have both pre-attack affiliation and post-attack shelter from organized extremist groups (just as is true among Islamic "lone wolf" terrorists, though fewer of them have the opportunity for post-attack shelter.)

And there have been a number of investigations and arrests connected with these groups and specifically addressing them as organized, active, violent extremist groups. However, unlike international Islamic groups, they don't get reported in the media, in part due to media bias, but in part due to the fact that the FBI (and DoJ more generally) don't put out press releases for the arrests the way they do with Islamic terror investigations and arrests, and on the occasions when they do, they don't highlight the organizational links in the cases.)

This may, for the government at least, be part of a deliberate strategy to avoid aiding the growth of homegrown domestic terror groups by avoiding giving the specific groups visibility, but it has the added effect of misleading the general public about the nature of the sources of organized violent extremism threatening the United States.

What information sources do you follow that indicate that Christian extremism is even remotely as great a threat as Islamic extremism? When I look at the FBI most wanted terrorists lists and other sources, I see a complete dominance by Islamic terrorist groups.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/23/fbi-c...

Contrary to your claim that the DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism, I've noted several efforts by the administration to "talk up" domestic terrorism and downplay Islamic terrorism - then when pressed on who these domestic terrorists are, administration officials have been at a loss to name any specifics.

Actual statistics on who kills Americans in America.

> When I look at the FBI most wanted terrorists lists

That tells you which individuals the FBI sees the most value to the policy objectives set by their political leadership to draw public attention to.

It doesn't tell you anything about relative risk of classes of terrorists. At most, given complete trust of the judgement of the FBI and assumption of their policy objectives being aligned with risk to Americans and assumption that there are no factors other than risk weighing into what they draw public attention to, it gives you information on the relative risk attached to individual terrorists. But, even then, if there are relatively fewer Islamic groups posing danger to Americans, and each of those groups is more dependent on a narrow set of senior leaders for effectiveness, then members of Islamic groups could be dominate the 10 most wanted list by being the individuals responsible for the most risk, even while Christian groups are collectively responsible for greater risk.

> Contrary to your claim that the DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism

I didn't claim that DoJ is downplaying domestic terrorism.

What I stated is that they don't issue press releases as frequently, and don't highlight organizational ties in the press releases they do issue, for the actual specific arrests or specific investigations of homegrown Christian terrorists in the way they do for arrests or specific investigations of Islamic terrorists tied to international groups.

This is actually in tension with the DoJ's portrayals of the overall risk from domestic, non-Islamic groups (I suggest a possible motive for this inconsistency in my early post, though that is pure speculation.)

Edit: Not sarcastic. Something like the FBI's list that someone else shared, of the group responsible for US terror attacks from 2002-2005.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/the-terrorist-threat-conf...

> At the same time, the United States also faces significant challenges from domestic terrorists. In fact, between 1980 and 2000, the FBI recorded 335 incidents or suspected incidents of terrorism in this country. Of these, 247 were attributed to domestic terrorists, while 88 were determined to be international in nature.

> Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat. Two of the seven planned acts of terrorism prevented in 1999 were potentially large-scale, high-casualty attacks being planned by organized right-wing extremist groups.

And that's a discussion that has been had many times over, it's as boring to me as vi versus emacs.

Terrorist is a relative term, it mostly depends on which side of the fence your bed currently resides and what your personal belief system is.

I see precious little difference to an attack on Fallujah to 'liberate' it and an attack on Paris to murder a bunch of people. In both cases lots of innocents will die and the world will end up a substantially worse, not better place for everybody afterwards.

While you can point out differences in their justifications, you can't pretend their actions are unrelated.

In the large, one side wants to impose rule based on beliefs about what an omnipotent sky person wants and is willing to sacrifice innocent lives (even celebrate such sacrifice) to do so. The other side wants to propagate individual liberty and democracy and takes great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.

In the small, things don't always play out quite like this, but to draw equivalence between the two sides is morally abhorrent.

You talk a lot about not having a clue on "the reality of the conflicts" and yet, you are unable to take a step back and look from the perspective of someone completely alien to the situation.

America has, time and time again, used and abused its armies for strategic and economical purposes (The "if you have oil..." meme has been beaten to death, hasn't it?). It certainly is willing to sacrifice innocent lives as long as it doesn't make the news - which it doesn't because of how hostile the entire country is to muslim ideals. And I've heard more than once the term "God" being thrown around by US politicians to justify these things. Does all of this ring a bell to you?

One of the sides is certainly a lot more barbaric than the other, what with the beheadings and what not... but whether your family is dying to american bombs or to barbarians doesn't really change squat for the victims. With the exception that one of them is actually less destructive - take a guess which?

[0] Since we're talking about countries with backwards ideologies, how is it that it's political suicide to be an atheist in the US? We have plenty of them in France and nobody gives a shit...

Edit: I'll add to this... It's really hard to take a step back and picture yourself as being the bad guy. It's nearly impossible, in fact. You are raised on one side of a conflict and you simply do not have the full picture unless you've yourself lived on the other side or been with people on the other side. But try to understand this: In these wars, there's no "bad guy and good guy". There's two bad guys and a lot of followers who have been completely brainwashed to think the causes are worthy.

Wars are not about justice. They're not about spreading culture, be that culture islam or democracy. We'd be at war with North Korea if they were about any of those things. Wars are strategic, and always about taking something away from the enemy, be it territory, riches or political power. The two sides are equally bad, and the civilians/soldiers on both sides only see how evil the other side is - they don't get to see the evil of their own.

We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread.

EDIT: Sorry for making this personal. Some details removed.

That's rich, given that you all but dragged the whole thing out in the first place.

If you're ready to call me 'ill informed' and you're unable to see that to victims of war it hardly matters whether the perpetrator is two old white guys praying in an old building for guidance or some Imam in a mosque who by remote control pull the trigger then indeed, I should have left this well alone. But trust me, as long as that is a thing that can not be discussed with some dispassion this mess will not end, it will only get (much) worse.

Embrace the occasion to reconsider whether it's actually ill-informed, then. :)

To clarify what I was saying before, I don't mean to say that "God" hasn't been the main driver for wars and terror before. My point is that it's usually just an excuse, so that more may join the cause.

If you want to wage war on Madeupistan and 95% of your country is hardcore vegetarian, it's easier to get followers if you tell your people you're spreading vegetarianism than if you tell them you want their unobtainium mines.

> We're hardly going to be able to tease this one out over a Hacker News thread.

Wanna try twitter? #140characters

This is why you're wrong. No, the leaders (whether it is the politicians or the military command) don't care about civilian casualties unless there's large vocal resistance.

Displacing democratically elected leaders like CIA has been doing? Lying about WMDs like with Iraq? Being careless in general? Refusing to change, justifying collateral damage with unproven "national security"? Doing nothing to avoid civilians from being harmed? They're not bothering to ensure the military knows what areas to avoid and confirming who's who before bombing. They so obviously put profits first, and care more about having puppets in the governments than about the people. (It is even more obvious in the case of Russia's support of Assad.)

NSA have even admitted they kill on metadata = the position of cell phones, with as much accuracy as programs like COTRAVELER can give you when you have no clue who's who. Guess why so many weddings have been hit? Because somebody 2-3 degrees off from the suspect suddenly meets a hundred people including more people linked to some other suspect. So they bomb the place.

US = an nation state with an identifiable military subjected to rule of law

>and both sides are very clearly not very precise in who they actually target (the bombing on Doctor's Without Border, anyone?). Both sides cause tons of civilian casualties

For better or worse the US is operating on intelligence specifically designed to avoid/minimize civilian populations, which is very difficult when IS doesn't wear military uniform (as required by the laws of war to distinguish military actors from civilian populace) and hides among civilians. I don't know if it is "tons" or what that even means in relation to human death figures, but I'll concede it happens, still it should be defined as collateral damage because the goal of US operations is not to kill the civilian populace but those individuals bearing the most responsibility.

On the other hand IS specifically designs its quasi-military attacks to be inflicted directly on the civilian populations with the goal of maximizing civilian casualties.

These are not just differences in justifications, but differences in actions...at least according to the law. Now I could see your issue if the US was secretly funding, training and arming non-identifiable combatants and recruiting/embedding them all over the globe to specifically orchestrate indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations.

When you're under attack from a vastly superior military, your options for response are very limited.

It's hard for us in the US to even conceive what it would be like to be in that situation. The only analog is a War of the Worlds style invasion by aliens.

[1] and I still hold the idea that I held in 2003, that the Iraq war was a completely idiotic veture

Al Qaeda had very specific grievances. They wanted US troops to leave Saudi Arabia, where they first put bases before the Persian Gulf War.

(Aside: Bin Laden offered his irregular forces to Saudi Arabia to help defend the kingdom from Saddam. He was rejected. That pissed him off some, but the presence of infidels in the land of Mecca pissed him off even more.)

Not saying terrorism is a legitimate response, but it's much more explainable than "they hates us for our freedoms."

That was a position used to justify action, rally supporters, and which was quite overtly an instrumental (rather than terminal) goal in their grand strategy --- which was -- like that of Daesh -- to achieve a pan-Islamic caliphate.

(It's worth noting that al-Qaeda was formed several years before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait that prompted the creation of those bases, and adopted the position of opposing the bases after the Saudi government turned down bin Laden's offer for al-Qaeda fighters to defend the Kingdom against Iraq in favor of accepting aid from the United States. And both al-Qaeda's long-term goals and their anti-Western rhetoric existed before those bases.)

> Not saying terrorism is a legitimate response, but it's much more explainable than "they hates us for our freedoms."

Sure, but not for the reasons you propose: al-Qaeda's opposition to the West is because their strategy for achieving dominion in the Islamic world is the time-tested strategy of totalitarians everywhere -- sell the target population on the threat of an external enemy, and use that to sell the idea that the totalitarian leaders and their proposed system of rulership are necessary to combat that external threat. Its not a response to anything the West does, although anything that the West does that creates (or can be fuel for propaganda to create) widespread grievances (legitimate or not) in the populations in which al-Qaeda seeks to establish its caliphate will be leveraged. Daesh is much the same in this respect.

Back in 1991 after Saddam invaded Kuwait, I remember thinking "why the hell do we have to solve the problem? Why not force Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States to take responsibility for their security?"

Practically all the Islamist terrorism that the US has experienced since then has flowed from that decision.

The likelihood of terrorism should be part of any decision making process when it comes to the Mideast, no different than estimating potential body counts from land invasion.

At least Eric Shinseki wasn't afraid to estimate the real costs of the Iraq war.

al-Qaeda has for more than a decade overtly targeted China over its policies in Xinjiang, and the Chinese government claimed that the East Turkistan Islamic Movement behind many attacks there was tied to al-Qaeda (and, indeed, some senior leaders of that organization were killed in fighting against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.)

BTW if you ever go to a Uighur restaurant try the horse. Tastes like chipped beef.

Rule of law does not excuse or lessen atrocities, it defines them. Moreover, the laws of war are specifically designed to lessen/avoid atrocities by limiting: 1. When a nation-state may engage in the use of armed force, and 2. How a nation-state may actually use armed force.

Having an open mind, I ask you to look within and ask whether the US is specifically targeting civilians, or has simply targeted military actors hiding among civilian populations? No matter what you answer, you must acknowledge IS is responsible for planning/executing military style attacks against civilians specifically.

We can agree to disagree, certainly there is nothing wrong with an all life is sacred approach, but you should not feel deeply disturbed that the law distinguishes between responding to a military attack with the use of force targeted at those most responsible and a non-state actor engaging in terrorist/quasi-military attacks against civilian populations?

Are you saying that codified law is the only thing that determines what is and isn't an atrocity? As in, anything that's legal isn't an atrocity? I certainly do not agree with that.

> Having an open mind, I ask you to look within and ask whether the US is specifically targeting civilians, or has simply targeted military actors hiding among civilian populations?

I don't have any clue, but I don't think that's the primary concern. I think there can be unacceptable civilian casualties even if there is a legitimate military target in the middle of civilians.

> No matter what you answer, you must acknowledge IS is responsible for planning/executing military style attacks against civilians specifically.

Of course, but why is that relevant? The existence of a worse actor does not make the acts of another actor more excusable.

> We can agree to disagree, certainly there is nothing wrong with an all life is sacred approach, but you should not feel deeply disturbed that the law distinguishes between responding to a military attack with the use of force targeted at those most responsible and a non-state actor engaging in terrorist/quasi-military attacks against civilian populations?

That's not what disturbs me. What disturbs me is the notion that a formal law in any way determines the acceptability of a violent act.

It matters here because my top level comment was a reply to someone emphatically stating there is no difference between the actions of the US and IS and I disagree. I believe there is a difference in the actions of US and IS, I used the law to distinguish between two acts. If someone said there was not a difference between the act of 1st degree murder and manslaughter, I would disagree and turn to the law to give examples of the differences.

>That's not what disturbs me. What disturbs me is the notion that a formal law in any way determines the acceptability of a violent act.

No doubt, to many laws of war is an oxymoron. However, the laws don't determine what the acceptable violent acts are, instead humankind determines what is not acceptable based on International consensus and through the treaty/UN we codify it into law.

One example, humans decided land mines as a weapon of war were to indiscriminate and had potential to far outlast armed conflicts and were outlawed by treaty and then codified into a UN Resolution, every year since then annual deaths of landmines has decreased from ~10k/year down to ~3.5k/year. Moreover, often times these laws of war have nothing to do with violence, but make sense such as requiring all military actors in armed conflict to be identified by uniform so as to be distinguished from civilians. Other laws such as Arms Reduction Treaty lead to Russia/US disposing of some combined 50-60k nukes.

Oh of course, they're the same thing.

Bombing civilians (without those being the explicit target) in a military context is exactly the same thing as just invading a concert room or shooting randomly at people

You're missing the context and the intent, just that. But I can see your ideology prevents you from seeing that

Pick some, they're all true.

Bombing civilians in a trumped up war about resources is to the victims exactly the same as shooting randomly at people. Ditto blowing up weddings with rockets, killing a few hundred thousand civilians to stop them from subscribing to another ideology and so on.

All of these activities are deplorable. I'm all for national defense, I'm not a pacifist (try harming me or someone I love and see how that ends) but at the same time I'm all for restraint and very careful consideration of the consequences of actions.

Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris. Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still. And only when and if you've identified root causes can you go and attack the problem.

Attacking Iraq on false pretexts after 9/11 was a step on the way to Liberating Fallujah (or should that be 'wiping it off the face of the earth') which indirectly led to the US leaving Iraq which led to a power vacuum which led to on the raid of Mosul by IS which was one step on the way to IS becoming more coherent which was one step on the way to a bunch of murderers shooting up the Paris nightlife.

It's not that hard. Context and intent are a lot more complex than they seem to be at first glance, ideology has precious little to do with it.

Depends on the way to go.

If you're going for 100% freedom of speech then you'll have to accept things like the WBC or Neonazi hate speech

Now if you're going for what happens in Europe then going agains hate speech should work for all forms of hate speech, including hate towards any groups and the country itself. Tolerance goes both ways.

> Note that there is a fairly direct line between the Iraq invasion (which France was adamantly against, remember the 'surrender monkeys' and the 'Freedom Fries'?), and the attacks in Paris.

Yes, and I agree with the correlation, but they were against it and got the short stick first.

So damned if you do, damned if you don't? Might as well do it then

> Action begets reaction, so before you react without considering the consequences you should hold still.

I agree. But you can't predict all consequences. Saddam was a ruthless dictator but he kept the other ruthless wanna-be dictators in check.

I'm fine with that. I'd rather have such sores out in the open than underground where they can rot and fester that much more efficiently.

It also shows them for the idiots they are instead of being able to isolate their wanna-be company into a nice little echo-chamber.

This is absolutely, truly, astonishing.

Imagine if a drone from Saudi Arabia or better yet Assad's Syria swooped into your community looking for, the leader of a US infantry commander, and instead blew up a wedding party. And not just once, but dozens of times over the course of years.

How would you feel about that? Would you want retribution?

Would you want to spend time debating what a "terrorist" is?

Before Japan's surrender they were planning kamikaze operations against the US invaders and believed casualties might be in the millions. They had already launch 2,000 kamikaze operations to that point in the war.

Hirohito ordered his people to submit, and the US allowed him to stay on the throne as a reward. Most of his generals were executed.

If Hirohito himself had been executed, it wouldn't surprise me if there had been a horrific backlash against the occupiers.

I don't know why you mention Vietnam. From their perspective, Vietnam won the war. More importantly, they got the US to do what they wanted: leave them alone.

One intends to cause terror, the other to hit military targets (against a certain government).

Who mentioned values?

To your question though, the French resistance during the second world war could easily have been called terrorists, as could the American revolutionary army.

It's absolutely not inconsistent to hold the view that Islamically-inspired terror is a big problem for the world, whilst simultaneously holding the view that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. I don't know why anyone would think otherwise.

Nobody in this thread has suggested this

> ... declare all Muslims want me dead ...

nor this.

I think one of the major issues is defining peaceful and non-violent. From my personal experience (I am from a Muslim country), I have seen many Muslims who would not commit violence themselves, but they do not have any trouble if some extremists commit violence. Some would even give moral justification of the violence. In our country's atheist community we commonly joke "Extremists want to kill us, Moderates want Extremists to kill us". FWIW, apostasy is punishable by death in some Muslim countries.

To sum up, almost all the Muslims are non-violent, but how many of them are truly peaceful? You will be very surprised to know the number.

There are over 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide [1]. Size estimates for the terrorist groups are: ISIS (52k - 258k [2]), Al Qaeda (19k-27k [3]). There are others, but I believe these are the main ones that people are talking about when worrying about terrorist threats abroad. We're talking about 1 in 5,600 to 22,535.

My humble opinion is that the terrorist threat worldwide is indeed significant, but if you think that it is a problem with Islam, then you are playing right into the hands of the extremists, who want (and they have publicly published these intentions) to divide the world into two camps that hate each other. The more hatred you direct towards Muslims, the more you drive them apart from you. ISIS's stated objective is basically world war - they want you to hate Muslims, so that Muslims feel like they have nowhere to go in the Western world.

[0] http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/01/08/3609796/islamist-t... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7552225/terrorism-europe-chart

(and you can add a big chunk of green for France November 2015 now too)

Your third point I responded to in another reply.

I find this comment very strange. It's as though I can't acknowledge that Islamic terror is the biggest violent threat facing Europe whilst at the same time not hate muslims (?!?!?! how can anyone do that ?!?!?!).

You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the government has a similar concern for white supremacists.

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists

And they were in fact doing more, but a lot of it (along with funding) has gone by the wayside since 9/11.

If those white people were part of a religious movement indiscriminately targeting the larger society, then of course they would be labeled "terrorists". Do you have an example of where I'm wrong?

calling the president a terrorist

If you'll recall, the White House referred to the GOP as suicide bombers over debt ceiling negotiations. That's political posturing when either side does it and has little to do with legitimate use of the word "terrorists" in the context of labeling organizations seeking to maximize loss of life and destruction through surprise attacks on civilians.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Confederate_flag_controve...

Edit: spacing

Furthermore, it makes sense to start post-9/11 since "we're in a different world now" and all that rhetoric that politicians have been spewing since. This is about today's political context, where 9-11 was the defining moment.

Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppression too? Because from the extermination of 6 million jews down to colonialism, slavery, the pogroms, nukes on civilians, gulags, the massacre in Manchuria, 2 world wars, etc, most western and asian countries don't look that good either.

Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?

They were "westerners" only in their nationality not in their ethnicity. For some western societies it's difficult to imagine the difference, but it exists -- not everybody gets assimilated to the culture he lives in, especially if there's another culture he feels he belongs to by inheritance.

For those of people (who are not the majority of ISIS, but a small minority) it's about a twisted idea of revenge for what happened and happens to their (origin) countries and to people of the same faith there, and how the west views and treats them -- not about struggling with poverty.

However, in actuality, libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is very clear about what its core foundations are. And you'll only find the left-libertarians that are very wishy-washy about their beliefs such that each one has their own definition of "stuff I like, and not stuff I don't like".

Open inside (market place of ideas, secularity, people generally subscribing to the live and let live) and open outside - welcoming, letting people join or willing to help people that are not from that society.

Wanting liberal, secular and socially oriented Europe inside and sealing the borders and isolating oneself from the human suffering outside is definitely lacking empathy, but not incoherent position.

We've been refugees, have taken in refugees, have been a battle field and have waged war with neighbors and overseas creating battle fields elsewhere.

An isolationist strategy is given that history to me morally bankrupt and not an option, even if the position is coherent I find that for me personally that's not a road worth walking due to the inherent hypocrisy that would require.

There are no good answers right now. We are very deep and there will be a lot of pain in the coming years. Everything else is wishful thinking.

ISIS and their ilk kill far more Muslims than any other group.

What would be those means employed by non-Muslim radicals to effect social change?

I'm inclined to say that urban warfare and terrorizing an entire population with open aggression tactics are not among them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army

All these are fairly recent examples of non-Muslim radicals attempting to effect social change by the same means Muslim radicals use to try and effect such change in Western countries. That they have not succeeded in building a near-nation state out of that terrorism is largely due to the higher stability of “Western” countries compared to the middle east, though, depending on whom you ask, they were quite successful in Ukraine.

I see this line of argumentation regularly, but since those movements were brought down with significant police and military operations, I don't see them as good examples for why Muslim extremism should not be brought down by police and military operations. There are other reasons, but this comparison doesn't qualify.

I remember the centre of my local town being blown to shit when I was a teenager.

1996 is not that long ago. You really shouldn't discard it as 'the past'. What's funny is, large segments in the US actively supported these terrorists. All their rhetoric and they're just as guilty.

There's much less logistical support for various left-wing movements. After 2001, American authorities no longer approved of funding and supporting IRA operations in Britain so any hopes of "military" achievements by Irish nationalists dwindled. Also support for ETA and similar movements in Europe have declined.

RAF (Red Army Fraction) and various Arab groups used to work together; that seems nowadays negligible. But jihadist violence has increased its profile.

Yes, but I would say that the hope of any "military" achievements by IRA (in the sense of aggravating so much violence as to make UK give away North Ireland) was lost as funding and arms dealing was more difficult and surveillance more effective. So it was good sense to stick to the Good Friday agreement.

At which point does 9/11 not matter anymore?

Also, I have reservations including nationalist movements and lone-wolf ops in your rebuttal as the underlying nature of the struggle is completely different than that of the Islamic terrorism. You could reason with a radical nationalist and persuade them to explore other options than an armed struggle to reach political goals but good luck trying that with a faith-driven, theology-loving radical who thinks he's on some divine (read: apocalyptic) mission to cleanse the masses of their imaginary sins.

Though here that's beside the point. The Paris attacks were not because France is a free country, but because France was bombing Daesh. This is more like the Lockerbie bombing than like some sort of "clash of civilizations" that so many are implying

What a disgusting rationalization of the indiscriminate killing of innocent people.

"An online statement said eight militants armed with explosive belts and automatic weapons attacked carefully chosen targets in the "capital of adultery and vice," including a soccer stadium where France was playing Germany, and the Bataclan concert hall, where an American rock band was playing, and "hundreds of apostates were attending an adulterous party.""

Oops, they were actually "carefully chosen targets". That's better.

[1] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/isis-statement-france-to...

I think ISIS is a horrible, horrible movement that should be destroyed. But their strategy has been very consistent: attack countries that attack them.

They left Russia alone until Putin decided to bomb them. It was only a few weeks before they blew up a Russian airliner.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/kidnapped-frenc...

I'm not arguing ISIS are good people. I'm arguing that, if you don't want to be on the receiving end of terrorist attacks from ISIS, the best way to do that is to stop bombing them.

Otherwise you should assume that they will happen as a matter of routine.

Thus validating the terrorists' approach. They use fear as a means of control and, according to your argument, it is an effective approach. I don't know what the answer is, but I do not think that allowing marauders to wander around the world staking claim to peoples' land is acceptable. Much less when they commit so many atrocities along the way.

If the choice is to: a) stop bombing and be hopeful that the terrorists will go away or b) try to stop the raping, murdering, and other atrocities via violence... I know where I stand.

You may know where you stand, but dollars to donuts you don't know what your government is doing in your name.

I'm not "blaming America first." I'm asking that we behave like adults and take responsibility for the consequences of our behavior.

World's largest arms importer: Saudi Arabia ($4,243,000,000 in 2014)

To me, these are scary numbers.

> When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious. – Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...

http://www.us-sabc.org/custom/news/details.cfm?id=1645

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Whether their armed forced are capable is, sadly, depending on your POV, another story. Like in most autocratic societies, a strong military is seen as a threat to the leadership.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense

Germany will spend at least 8000 million euros for refugees this year (2014 it were about 2400 million euros).

If there is any relation between exporting arms and the number of refugees, this is not only a humanitarian, but clearly a financial disaster.

DoD spent about $115B in 2013 and budgeted $100B in 2014 for procurement (PDF source: http://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudge...)

That's a lot of weapons.

I wish Pew had interviewed Christians in the same countries at the same time and asked them what they thought should be done to homosexuals.

It would be interesting to see what we could glean about Christianity.

However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years.

True, but I think it's more complex than that.

First, I do not think the Vatican automatically represents the most conservative brand of Christianity; not at all times, anyway. Not now, for example. Second, beheadings seem rightfully barbaric and horrendous to us, but as terrible as they are, I think their impact is superficial in a way (though obviously not to their victims, and please make no mistake: I do not wish to live in a country that beheads people!). ISIS beheadings are a matter of form, a propaganda tool; a way to shock the West into action, and the local population into compliance.

But as for actual damage, compare their beheadings with the damage caused by some Christian leaders of First World countries who have been bombing cities in the Middle East and causing a lot of deaths. These conservative Christians sometimes describe themselves as "born again", surround themselves with religious phraseology, describe their wars as Crusades and name them with Biblical sounding names (Righteous Fury, Infinite Justice, etc, etc), feel their countries have a God-given right to shape the world as they see fit. Wouldn't people living in a city bombed by a Western country consider themselves the victims of Western religious zealots?

And if, say, we know Obama and Bush are NOT the same, are we not making the mistake of thinking every bellicose Muslim is exactly the same terrorist fundamentalist that cannot be reasoned with and must be exterminated? Maybe there are shades of gray with them, just like it happens in the West?

Absolutely, and from my perspective, some western nations (in particular the US) do have the problematic tendency of voting Christian fundamentalists into positions of power.

There's a debate to be had how much of the blame for past actions should go to religion, and how much to worldly motivations, but there clearly was an element of that (remember Gog and Magog?).

But talking the long-term perspective, religious 'nones' are on the rise in the western world, even in the US.

Wrong. The beheadings are the things Mohammad did, as written in their holy books, so they just do that, following their role model even without the cameras.

It does have something to do with religion, but only because that is being used as _motivation_ to do bad things which isn't inherit to just Islam. I mean, Klu Klux Klan

> Klan members had an explicitly Christian terrorist ideology, basing their beliefs in > part on a "religious foundation" in Christianity. The goals of the KKK included, > from an early time onward, an intent to "reestablish Protestant Christian values in > America by any means possible", and they believed that "Jesus was the first Klansman."

What this is about is radical _people_ finding whatever motivation they can do to force _their own views_ onto the world.

What is your motivation in protecting islam? Why the finger pointing to Christianity and other religions? Sure, they also got problems, but do we currently really have a huge problem with those religions? What you are doing is like saying: "Well national socialism isn't that bad because other totalitarian ideologies also are stupid. Look at communism and how many dead people resultet because Stalin distorted the true teachings of marxism. See, national socialism isn't the problem."

I'm not trying to protect Islam or bring Christianity down. I honestly don't care either way about any of them. What I'm trying to explain that blaming Islam is the wrong thing to do, is pointless, and if anything it helps disenfranchise the at-risk, on-the-fence-extremeists who are (getting) upset at how everyone else deals with their religion.

Wrong again. You're not actually comparing. Go to the sources. It's not about "looking hard" it is on almost every page of Quran. Please try the reading sample, Sura 9:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/pick/009.htm

All those are considered to be the direct words of god by Muslims. As long as they declare them so, the problems will remain. But suggesting them not to declare that is probably worse than suggesting to the Catholics to give up having the Pope. They surely need some kind of reformation. Unfortunately, "back to the original texts" can't be the basis of reformation as they are really filled with violence and intolerance. The only reformation that isn't disastrous for humanity can only be "don't take these original texts too seriously." Other Abrahamic religions managed to move in that direction, for Islam it's going to be much harder.

What I don't understand is that effectively not a single person of those who claim that there is equivalence in the holy texts of different religions try to read them themselves, because once they'd read they would not be able to even say such sentences like "if looking hard enough."

Recommended reading: "The Phony Islam of ISIS", http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/wha..., on the dangers of believing there is a literal, undilluted interpretation of a contradictory holy text.

(I'm an atheist, by the way. Not a Muslim.)

What "this" you mean? What I've written is true, specify what you doubt. Now...

> Or maybe they modernized their religion

There's no "modernization" as such but not every branch is as fanatic as the Wahhabis, the official branch in Saudi Arabia, and the direct religious base for ISIS. Saudis Invest billions in spreading their fanatical Islam branch.

> Why aren't they killing infidels left and right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Saudi_Ar...

"The death penalty can be imposed for a wide range of offences[4] including murder, rape, false prophecy, blasphemy, armed robbery, repeated drug use, apostasy,[5] adultery,[6] witchcraft and sorcery[7][8][9][10] and can be carried out by beheading with a sword,[11] or more rarely by firing squad, and sometimes by stoning.[12][13]"

> Recommended reading: "The Phony Islam of ISIS"

Balderdash, the whole article. One more writer speaking from his ash instead of reading any primary source. How do I know? Because "the Quran is" "a complex and nuanced text that deals with legal, moral, and metaphysical questions in a subtle and multifaceted way" can be claimed only somebody who never read it himself. Nuanced my foot.

I've given one link (Sura 9). Read it and say what's nuanced there. Here another, Sura 111:

"The power of Abu Lahab will perish, and he will perish. His wealth and gains will not exempt him. He will be plunged in flaming Fire, And his wife, the wood-carrier, Will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre."

That's the whole Sura 111. What's nuanced about that? Reading Hadith, you can find that Abu Lahab was Mohammad's uncle who didn't believe in Mohammad's "I've received the message form god" pitch.

And that Sura was from the "peaceful part" of Quran(!). Fire of hell for unbelievers is preached in almost every Sura! Almost only those which are bad retellings of some less drastic Old Testament stories can happen not to mention at least "fire" or "hell" for "unbelievers." I don't care how nuanced is if they should pray five or 18 times per day, the view of unbelievers, Christians and Jews is very clear and repetitive.

> 27 Then he said to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. 29 Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”

For another,

> 20 When the trumpets sounded, the army shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the men gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so everyone charged straight in, and they took the city. 21 They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

...I'm afraid that your crusade of trying to prove Muslims violent by reading passages from Quran is not terribly persuasive, to anyone who have read the Old Testament. If you really want to persuade others, you will have to search harder.

Or read the "Gospels" from New Testament for the "deeds of Jesus" especially related to stoning:

http://biblehub.com/niv/john/8.htm

and compare with the "deeds of Muhammad" as told by Hadith:

http://quotingislam.blogspot.co.at/2011/06/muhammad-ordered-...

Yes, many Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia support ISIS; it's well-known this is a major source of funding. But how is this a counter to the fact the vast majority of Muslims -- are you aware that not all Muslims are Wahhabis, live in Saudi Arabia or, for that matter, are Arabs? -- are NOT trying to murder nonbelievers?

"Balderdash", you say about the article "The Phony Islam of ISIS". But what you say flies in the face of everything we know about religious texts; that they are anachronistic and self-contradictory in multiple places, and there is NO single interpretation of them. Evidently most Muslims choose not to acknowledge the part about spreading the word of Mohammed by the sword, or maybe you secretly believe they do -- all of them! -- and that they are biding their time?

The author argues that some parts of the Quran contradict other parts; that there are treatises and purported quotations of Mohammed that are meant to explain the Quran, but themselves are subject to interpretation and to varying degrees of reliability. I don't know about you, but I tend to trust the word of someone who studies religion for a living and specifically Islam to have read the Quran. Are you sure it's all "balderdash" and that this professor who teaches religious studies at college "has never read [the Quran] himself"?

But mostly I trust the reality of a world in which most Muslims are not trying to murder non-Muslims. I don't even need to appeal to authority here, just to reality.

After you read enough to have your view based on your own experience, also try to find out how many of those who believe claim those aren't the actual words of god but "some old contradictory texts." (As far as I know, only "apostates" dare to do so, once you read the original, you'll know why.)