Another one that hurts

Tweren't the Mormons.(Jeremiah Johnson movie reference.)

I would argue it needs to be both.We do need to have reasoned, polite argument on the topic. But that also means political correctness can't be used as a crutch to avoid the discussion. As is often the case. These acts are being committed by young, Muslim men. That is not a bigoted thing to say, it is merely factual. Which means we need to look at the core of the problem. But as I stated earlier, this needs to be a joint exercise. The Western world needs to convey its secular values and the moderate Muslim world needs to become more vocal.From the standpoint of military intervention, I still firmly believe this needs to be handled within the internal politics of the region itself, with the Western world taking a more minor role. Despite all the Boogeyman notions of ISIS, they are a fighting force of approximately 20,000-30,000 fighters driving Toyoto pickup trucks. Turkey's army alone stands at 1 million strong and has advanced military hardware. And lest we not forget, Turkey is no pushover. That was where the Ottoman empire resided for centuries.If a coalition is formed of Muslim countries that focus on ISIS itself, they can easily be defeated. But as stated before, without the paradigm shift in how radical Islam is being allowed to thrive and more efforts within the Muslim committee on curbing it at its source, we won't achieve long standing results. The roaches will merely scatter as they always do only to pop up elsewhere.

AND HOW DID HE KNOW THAT? The whole point of the parable was that the Jews and the Samaritans in principle hated one another. So the Samaritan might have rescued the Jew and the Jew might have stabbed him in the head for being a Samaritan. That's the point Jesus was making, that the two groups were involved in an ethno/religious conflict. But neither of us has proposed that you personally ought to be obliged to give your spare bedroom to a Christian Syrian woman escaping rape and murder for herself and her daughters. Or that I personally should do that. But that maybe our country could give them refuge without reference to our own spare bedrooms.And in fact ... I don't like to talk about myself ... but my wife just asked me if it's OK for us to take in a woman fleeing domestic violence into our house to live in our spare room, and I said YES without thinking about it for a second. But she might be a bad person. But that's barely a consideration. I should worry about the 0.0001% chance that this strange woman would murder me? Of course I said yes. Any good atheist would say yes, any good Christian would say yes, and apparently any conservative Christian would say: "But what if she's a Muslim with a bomb? Anyway, if she really needed help shouldn't someone else have helped her already?"

Of course, the point of the parable is to not judge people because they come from a religious class you are supposed to distrust or even hate. I have some bad news to break to you. It's not just the Muslims. It's all humans. We're all a relatively minor context change from succumbing to violence or victimhood. As the adage goes:

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Any society is only three square meals away from revolution

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I know what you were saying with regard to Dr A's point. However - it is worth noting for the record that changing the parable to the 'good Muslim' would make the original telling of the story clearer.In any event, the Samaritan was dealing with a potentially dangerous needy person. Faking the need for aid in order to better ambush benevolent travellers would not have been unheard of. Furthermore, I'd rather a 1,000 people died in terror attacks every year than turn millions of needy people away at the door.The maths is simple: Millions of homeless refugees will suffer more than a 1,000 deaths a year.And unless you think that we should value ourselves more than others, I'm baffled how the same fears that inhibited Jewish refugees in the thirties and early forties are still overcoming people's compassion. But then - we're human so maybe I shouldn't be confused. Christianity is as much about spreading itself to all corners of the world as Islam is.
The war by demographics is more or less how Israel was formed and expanded its borders.However, a global caliphate is not a stated goal of Islam. It is a stated goal of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and some other notable figures, along with their followers. I have tackled this on this forum. So let's address this concern. I'm not going to worry about where this number came from. But let me ask some questions about this fact, necessary if we are to address it. I have my answers but why do you think 25% think this way?My understanding of your position is that your response is going to come down to 'the teachings of Islam'.OK. This means that you have a position that can be supported with evidence. Can you provide any evidence that suggests that throughout all of history and regardless of geographic location or political events, that this number remains constant? That is, if I were to poll 100 Muslim Indonesian businessmen, or Australian fishermen, or American school teachers today, I'd see approximately 25% of them have homicidal opinions (assuming honest answer. I'd see the same if I were to look at people born in Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Somalia or Nigeria. Whether it was 10th Century or 21st?If it varies by any significant degree - what causes the variation? And why is it not closer to 100%? So we shouldn't take the injured man into the Inn because the people who are already there might object to his nationality, or religion, political position or preferred football team?Any way: Jewish refugees were refused entry into the US as they fled from the Nazis for much the same reasons as you are spouting off here - we don't like Jews, they might spy or sabotage for the enemy etc etc. Shame. Shame.These are people, Faith. Regardless of faith or creed, they are people. With families. They need somewhere to be. Some nations refuse their entry, some nations are no real escape.Given how many people the Syrians have lost to this madness - are you really suggesting we chicken out of helping the survivors because a measly 6 score people died?120 people dying is inconsequential. To worry because a bunch of morons with guns and improvised explosives mostly killed themselves in a night of inefficient mayhem would be foolish.Let's talk about a real problem for a capital city. Such as the Blitz. 18,000T of explosive was dropped on London over about 300 days. About 30,000 people died. That's about 1 Parisian attack per day. The Blitz however, did significant damage to infrastructure and residential capacity and so on. As miserable and expensive as it all was, it really didn't advance Hitler's objectives even after such a sustained effort that on balance, cost him more than it gained him. And he had organisation and mass production to offset costs.So why are we so worried about these kinds of things? Their only success is in provoking visceral reactions from the pampered limp-wristed fops in Europe, of justifying maniacs in Russia, or allowing the Eagle in the west to pillage with impunity. This will justify their own next wave of stupidity and be used for propaganda purposes to find appropriate troops. Alone, even the worst terrorism has so far offered has been basically useless. Only our reactions can really hurt us in the medium to long term. You either win in the very short term or risk being drowned by little mops and be left praying that the wizard comes in.Alternatively, stop hacking and try and learn some magic pronto.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

How about stop supporting terrorist nations/dictators?

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UK training Saudi forces used to crush Arab spring
UK training Saudi forces used to crush Arab spring | Saudi Arabia | The Guardian

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Saudis’ UK-made war jets outnumber RAF’s
Saudis’ UK-made war jets outnumber RAF’s

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Britain urged to stop providing weapons to Saudi Arabia
Amnesty calls for suspension of arms transfers as group says it has evidence of war crimes in Yemen conflict
Britain urged to stop providing weapons to Saudi Arabia | Arms trade | The Guardian

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Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country
Iraq crisis: How Saudi Arabia helped Isis take over the north of the country | The Independent | The Independent

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You missed one:

"We have met the enemy and she is us." (This could be its own long thread. Very long.)

Can't leave this one out. Filthy ****.

Well..Yes. But if we broke all ties with Saudi Arabia, pulled all Western troops out of Middle Eastern nations, ended all drone and plane attacks and evacuated Israel of Jews so that it could be completely reclaimed by Palestinians - I still don't think that would stop ISIS pursuing their aims as they would consider all of that little more than a decent start to the new world order they desire.

But of course it has.

Well yes that is the difference but is it enough for self-absolution? Intent doesn't offer much of a defense to the drunk who accidentally kills someone even if he tries really hard not to. The intent of the shooter doesn't make any difference to the shot at. I agree that the two are not equal but I would say that they are equally bad. I am not opposed to snuffing out some of these guys in the face of impending attacks if we can but we are way to ready to forgive ourselves for all of the collateral damage that we do. I can't see why it should be ok for our govt's to do things that no decent human would do.

...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

John Quincy Adams: Winston Churchill: It's ideology that drives the believers in Islam, not circumstances, not political circumstances, not economic circumstances, not human qualities or lack of them, just the ideology. You can't deal with an ideology by focusing on circumstances, or by reasoning with its adherents on the basis of any philosophical or moral system outside that ideology.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The John Quincy Adams "quote" is listed as bogus (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:John_Quincy_Adams) and reported to actually be by one Joseph Blunt in "The American Annual Register" (1830). The misquoting is attributed to Robert Spencer (1995).Your sources are lying to you yet again.

And in the Churchill quote, you left out the ironic part:

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... ; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

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Ironic given how much "true Christians" hate science and seek to destroy it.