Radical Islam

Adi wrote:

Manu wrote: You don't see people petitioning Christianity to change

No, Manu doesn't see them. But other people do — in fact, other people often are those people. I think I can count myself among one of them, for all the good that will do.

The 21st century has seen an unprecedented effort to correct past wrongs of the Church, whether it was the small Episcopal church in Kansas that formally apologized for shunning black churchgoers a century ago and celebrated a service with their descendants, the Roman Catholic parishes worldwide that are slowly beginning to accept and admit their mistreatment of LGBT people, the ongoing and probably endless work to try to end feuding between various Christian denominations and so on.

And that's ignoring what has happened in theology — advances in the studies of history, anthropology and archaeology have changed Christian theology forever. Examining scripture within its specific cultural context is only slightly newer than the fundamentalist movement which only began in the 1910s. The 21st century has only brought more changes, many of which have not gone over well with traditionalists. Either way, trust me: there is no shortage of Christians "petitioning Christianity to change" — definitely not in the present day, and certainly not for the last few centuries.

I stand corrected.

Adi wrote: So does Christianity. So does Buddhism. So does [insert basically any religion, including Jediism here]. Heck, so do a gazillion different political/philosophical views. Find the right place and the right person in the world and you will find someone who is able to find an unethical/immoral interpretation of a religious belief system or any other -ism. No belief system is immune from this.

I don't argue that. I do argue that Islam right now is one of the most violent movements in the world. 75 years ago that title probably belonged to Christianity. I think sometimes, and I'm guilty of this too, we see one immorality in a belief system and put that belief on an equal footing as a belief that has many immoralities.

I don't really want to weigh in, for a few reasons, but I'll throw some thoughts into the jumble.



Who has seen the movie Fight Club? (I quite like Chuck Palahniuk's books, and yes I did have to look up the spelling of his surname)

Anyway, it's catchy innit? Great soundtrack, handsome characters, a fight against a society that doesn't satisfy you.

Good stuff.

Also, more or less every party involved is immoral, but they want to belong, and whatever is being sold is "attractive" despite the costs, for whatever reasons they have.

That is more or less how religions, movements, causes etc work - They're attractive.

There are enough people unsatisfied with a lifestyle or a society (or a perceived injustice, or a real injustice) to take up arms and fight for....something.

Whether what they want is a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) is open for debate, or what may occur if they achieve it - but for now, under whatever pretences, it is what they are willing to fight for.


What group A wants to fight for is going to be, more or less by definiton, something group B wants to fight back against (otherwise there'd be no conflict)

and so on.

Who is immoral, unethical, etc is decided by the Winner (or, in Westerns, the colour of their hats)


Any British or Americans here?

I'd suggest the American War of Independance was a fairly nasty event when it happened. No one was snap-chatting the daily details though.

I believe there's a holiday for it every year in the USA now?






On a different note - No one is harsher on "Terrorists" than their own people and governments* -

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/08/21/iraq-hangs-36-men-over-daesh-massacre-in-2014.html




*

About the tribalism thing, let's not forget that Islamic scriptures and other canonical and scholarly sources go quite a long way to reinforce the line between the in-group and the outsiders, painting them as mutual enemies most of the time and dehumanizing the non-Muslims at other times. They also prohibit various dealings and relations with outsiders on numerous occasions "lest they lead the faithful astray". It is very openly cult-like in this sense.
Now wait for a few generations to absorb that everybody else are swine, throw in a bunch of explicit commands to violence against them and a situation like we have now is inevitable. Islam is by no means the only contributor here, and as any other cult it feeds on natural human tendencies, but it is still a rather major factor, albeit perhaps far from the only one.