Another one that hurts

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.

Neville Chamberlain was a politician during WWI. He was Director of National Service where he continuously tried to get Lloyd George to relax the rules so more men could be conscripted, even as Lloyd George refused he still organised efforts to get men to volunteer even if they were exempt from conscription, and when it became clear the Prime Minister was making his job impossible at the cost of British servicemen's lives, he resigned.He even said, "It is perfectly evident now that force is the only argument Germany understands...Heaven knows I don't want to get back to alliances but if Germany continues to behave as she has done lately she may drive us to it. "Most people think of him wrongly as a pacifist because of the Sudentland issue. When Hitler stated he would annex it but promised to go no further - this was a situation quite similar to the Crimea/Ukraine situation of modern times.Unless you think we should currently be engaged in Total War against Russia - you must think the world's politicians are all pacifists too.Really it comes down to the fact that he said in a public speech that there would be peace {he initially refused to do this but ultimately decided to tie the mission back to the Treaty of Berlin and Disraeli's comments regarding honourable peace}, and he was wrong. However, the evidence suggests he didn't so much as believe this as hope this. You can't return from a diplomatic mission that you hope to ultimately succeed and declare the other participant as a war-mongering liar if you want it to actually succeed. If he made the wrong assumptions, all of Parliament did - they were happy with the successful attempt at diplomacy - as this had been the plan for some months now. Wait for the Nuremberg rally and go meet with Hitler if war seems inevitable and hope to forestall any further territorial advances which may force a series of nations to group up and engage in Total War again. Nobody wanted that in Britain. Not national leaders, no - not usually. Chamberlain was a good leader. He got the Factories Act 1937 passed as well as Holiday with Pay Act 1938, Housing Act 1938 and his Government Act of 1929. He might be described as a liberal Thatcher.After he met with Hitler he continued the process of rearmament - preparing Britain for war but did not turn industry to wartime production as he didn't want Hitler to think he had to go to war to defend against a militarising Britain.He may have continued to fight for peace for a few months where people we skeptical, but after more belligerence Chamberlain publicly threatened Hitler with war - increased military recruitment, encouraged France to ramp up rearmament etc. He issued a guarantee to Poland - he organized military alliances to back up Poland. And when the time came, he waited 24 hours to issue a 2 hour ultimatum, and then declare war. This was viewed as weakness by Britain but France was pleading with Britain to wait a day.He declared war.He was not a pacifist. He tried to prevent WWII while preparing for it. He may have made some mistakes, but can you really hold him to blame for trying to avoid Europe falling into Total War again? Islam does not have any leaders. Nobody is required to. First - most lunatics who want to murder millions of people don't really care about what a politician said to his people with regards to nuclear weapons intent. It could be a lie to confuse enemies, it could be a lie to fool voters.You think there are many likely scenarios where the difference between someone who wants to kill millions from doing it and not doing it, would be based on comments like Corbyn's?Second: Salami tactics

Because you do it far more regularly than anyone because you don't bother to fact check, verify or seek confirmation. The goal of berating you for doing it is probably in the hopes that you'll eventually be cautious out of fear of being embarrassed. A daft notion of course, you have already rationalized copy and pasting quotes from any blog that agrees with you without a care. Strange that almost all of them ignore this and generally just sell vegetables or go to the office or whatever. I guess they act in ways that are contrary to their motives is expected when normal assumptions about human nature and circumstances are useless. So yeah, a blog from someone who wears a strong agenda like a badge of pride? Not a source. It might be a place to go find some interesting supportive quotes - but you have to find the origin of those quotes. IE - the source of the quote. There are way too many deliberately misattributed quotes to great men out there to spread them, and the lies of the original liar without doing some due diligence.As an honest person, this is of course, your moral duty. Your failing in it is worthy of us criticising you. The idea that something is 'ideology-driven' IS western PC psychobabble, Faith. I've told you before, but this is factually incorrect. You won't listen this time either.Taqiyya is a Shi'ite view, and it primarily allows Shi'ites to lie to Sunni's who would persecute them if they knew their religious affiliates.Sunni teaches it is better to die than lie, but if you are misleading sinners to escape their evil designs on you then it is permissible. Are you proposing genocide, then? We keep murdering Muslims until there are none left? By your own admission they never will. It's all or nothing, right? So war will never be severe enough for Muslims. we simply have to kill them into converting to Christianity. That's WJWD. What constitutes alien?It's an empirical fact that Muslims can convert to other religions, and that they can adopt western ideals. So why is this avenue blocked from consideration? I'm lost as to which cultures exactly you are talking about. Clearly evangelizing Christianity is perfectly fine with most Muslims. As an example I just came up with now - the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Indonesia. There are waves of hate crimes against Christians, of course - and over the years some pretty awful government policy against them - nevertheless, over the course of history there are millions of Christians in Indonesia who have not been beheaded, and thousands whose very job it is to evangelize!As for within ISIS, then yes it is likely to get you killed. But then, that's how Christianity won the West wasn't it? By doing it despite the persecution? It may still be possible to evangelize. If you are happy dropping bombs, why not bibles? Why not send messages of love? Why not drop raspberry pis with Vegetales and Sesame Street hardcoded onto it? Why not shower them with love, drop bouquets of flowers on them? There are ways to evangelize without concerted efforts to send people into a country. Eventually the Berlin Wall came down.Forget ISIS though, whether they are here to stay or not - we need to plan for when they aren't such a big issue again, and try to ensure that we're doing today harmonises with what we want to do after they're defeated. Unfortunately the best Christianity has to offer these days are afraid of dying for some reason. The only ideas we've really tried are variations around a theme of killing them, then arming their enemies, then killing their enemies when they get power, then arming the enemies of their enemies to help fend their enemies off, but having to kill them when they get too much power and arming the enemies of the enemies of the enemies to fend off counter attacks....I agree that isn't the way to destroy an ideology.Education, cultural exchange, showing a friendly face rather than a mean one? Sometimes that can help - it certainly factored into the fall of the invulnerable Soviet Union.The liberal western method here would be to first get a reasonable grip on what is actually going on in the region. Despite what many right wingers are saying 'Islam' is not the complete answer, and what part of the problem may be because of Islam is the same part of the problem we have little influence over. We can influence the Islam side of the equation a little. We could, for instance, not go around reinforcing the recruiters messages like you do. We, and nations, have already done this. I did it in high school when we learned about Jewish refugees. My attitude was 'whatever might be going on, we should do our best to help as many fleeing refugees as we can'. In this case, since the region was destabilized by Britain and US unilateral fuckups, and France has not been blameless - I say we should take the burden of helping the innocents who want to flee the mess.Given that the overwhelming majority of refugees have fled to Turkey and other neighbouring provinces or are internally displaced (nearly 10 million atm I believe) I think it's disgusting to see the entire EU and the US wringing their hands over the few hundred thousand that might be distributed between them.Can you imagine how America would react if New Jersey became dangerous to inhabit (ahem, you there in the back - behave yourself ) and everybody there had to leave? With open arms, I'd wager. There'd be a rallying cry of 'We can make room!', housing projects being built, whole new towns cropping up and slowly everyone would be more or less rehoused (with some expected incompetencies along the way no doubt). I'm not sure you are using the term 'PC' quite right. PC isn't about assumptions its about appearances. One should not appear to be offensive as this may result complaints from coworkers, scandals in the media etc.I'm not trying to avoid offending anybody, but I am keen to avoid making it easy for ISIS to spin things to make them look like the noble underdog with God on their side. It's a regular Dawud vs Ǧālūt confrontation, only the slingshot are automatic guns and rpgs and the giant is a wealthy military-industrial conglomeration of corporations and governments.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

At best there was a short period of naivity. Otherwise he behaved sensibly. What would you have done differently, I wonder? How would you have persuaded Parliament? A Taliban commander is not a leader of Islam. Muslims have leaders. Islam does not.Christianity has loving ones enemies and turning the cheek. Christians have written much over the years to justify racism, homophobia, wars, torture and other atrocities in light of Christianity.A Taliban commander could of course be an Atheist who just prefers one state of affairs over another. Assuming he is a Muslim, however, I can bet a lot that he justifies his actions as being for the furtherance of peace in his lands. Well, we're not in danger of being pushed into an unavoidable war so there's no need to worry about that, eh? To be honest, I'd kind of prefer a Corbyn in charge - tempered by a parliament he must compromise with to stay in power than a Cameron with a sweeping majority. I have disagreements with both, but the kinds of things I disagree with Corbyn on I don't really see as being realistically possible for him to achieve in the one term he realistically has in him. Cameron's disagreeable policies are generally more realistic, but he does have some realistic agreeable ones too.Frankly I'll vote for neither party, but obviously we're likely to be living under one of them I suppose. Unless Cameron makes a big mess of something soon, giving enough time for the Tories to get rid and recover. I would also say that Corbyn might make a mess of things, but given what he's said so far and that he got the position in the first place - I'm wondering if there's witchcraft involved shielding him from such matters.

Wrong again. The Supreme Leader you propose makes the same category mistake as the Taliban Commander. They lead Muslims, not Islam. Why do you say this? There have probably been atheist Popes, and there have been less of them than Taliban commanders.

...and your point being?

Islamic is not Islam.

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Islam claims to be the religion of peace; it's leaders don't seem to agree.

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There are no leaders of Islam.There are Muslim leaders and Islamic leaders. But Islam does not.Should we stone adulterers to death? Some scholars say yes, others say no. It's down the individual Muslim to decide. There are often scholars who are the leading thinkers of a certain school of thought, but a Muslim can pick and choose to their hearts content. There is no compulsion, as they say.

It's your choice. You've already basically agreed with the non-semantic argument. But in a world of propaganda, words matter. You decided to tell me that you would bet I was wrong ('there are no atheist Taliban leaders.'. I'm glad my argument has persuaded you otherwise. Lawnmower, please Not a word game, you've just lost sight of the whole point. There may well be non-peaceful Atheists in the Taliban, but dollars to doughnuts, the Muslims rationalize their actions, at least in part, through 'greater good' type arguments with a view to 'long term peace'. Seems a daft bet, of course he does. Just like atheist Presidents say 'God bless America' and atheist Popes say 'in nomine padre, spiritus sanctum' or whatever they say. I'm not sure how this intersects with the discussion.Isn't it almost a tautology to say that a non religious person who has been given a position of authority that requires religious convictions - must engage in deceptions that persuade others that they have religious convictions?

Really? Here is that non-semantic argument again:

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I can bet a lot that he justifies his actions as being for the furtherance of peace in his lands.

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Well that is indeed a safer bet.

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Message 231

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The law of numbers requires the possible existence of a homosexual, atheistic, apostate Taliban leader.

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Psychopathy makes up about 1% of the human population approximately. My understanding is that religious conviction among psychopaths is diminished, or non-existent. Are Afghanistanis less psychopathic that Westerners? Not sure how it makes my argument moot, I'm afraid. If there is a psychopathic atheist in the Taliban - he may well not give a flying fuck about peace.But the Muslims in the Taliban? They probably do justify their actions as being towards the furtherance of peace.

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Islam claims to be the religion of peace; it's leaders don't seem to agree.

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a) Islam has no leaders
but if we assume you meant 'Islamic leaders' or 'Muslim leaders' then
b) They probably do agree that Islam is the religion of peace.

Hrm. You are wrong, of course. An argument I have never made so is irrelevant to your assessment. The argument I made was

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I can bet a lot that he justifies his actions as being for the furtherance of peace in his lands.

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The evidence being: universal human behaviour. Yes, it is a fact that Islamic leaders exist. It is a fact that Muslim leaders exist. I have said this before, I referred you to where I said it in my last post. Here it is again: Message 231Why would I need to? You already agreed that the law of large numbers assures us that it is possible. And whether one exists or not makes no odds to my argument. I merely mentioned it for completeness. You are the one that thinks its important to argue about it. Switch to? Have you forgotten yourself?Let's jump back to Message 206 where we learn that that has been what the argument is about since the beginning. You know when you do maths, and you check you work afterwards to make sure your answer makes sense?You know that trying to understand the motivations of strangers over the internet is much more difficult than most maths you've likely ever done?Yeah - you should have run this by your sanity checker when you reached this conclusion. It's so utterly wrong, I would be excruciatingly embarrassed. What reality? Have you just gone back to start of the argument again? I am confident that many of the perpetrators of the Paris massacre believed that their actions were for the greater good in bringing about world peace. You've confused evidence with excuses. I have no idea how. I think you may have grown emotional. No. I'm proposing about 1% of them. You can tell I am doing that because I said

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Psychopathy makes up about 1% of the human population

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Given the situation - I'd expect there to be maybe as many as 4% psychopaths in the leadership. Psychopaths regularly lie about religion in a bid to gain power and money. My point was that there is motivation for people who don't give a crap about God to join a religious organisation, kill and rape their way to the upper echelons. All I was saying is that these kinds of people don't necessarily give a crap about peace.

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A Taliban commander could of course be an Atheist who just prefers one state of affairs over another. Assuming he is a Muslim, however, I can bet a lot that he justifies his actions as being for the furtherance of peace in his lands.

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If you just paid attention to the discussion, we wouldn't have these embarrassing moments. Islam does not have any leaders. Islamic leaders mostly probably do want peace, on their terms.I said this, as a 6 word interjection into a larger post about other issues as a minor correction. As I said: words matter in propaganda. Islam and Islamic are different words with different meanings.Christian {person who believes in Christ}: Muslim
Christian {property - it is a Christian text, the King is a Christian monarch, today is a Christian holiday}: Islamic
Christianity: Islam
Christendom: ummahChristianity doesn't necessarily have to have leaders, but it can and has and does {Catholicism must have a leader}. Islam can't, and hasn't, and doesn't.

I'm surprised you managed to say as much as you did. Who would have thought there was mileage in arguing that the word 'Islam' is the same as the word 'Islamic'Maybe one day we'll find ourselves arguing about the fact that Lovecraft and Lovecraftian are not the same things. An a Lovecraftian book is not Lovecraft, though it might have been written by him, but it might not.You probably think that Brobdingnagian things are actually the land of Brobdingnag.I wonder if there is confusion of atheism and secular? Wow. Despite me explicitly stating that you had this embarrassingly backwards, you still want to embarrass yourself with this?OK.1 There may exist atheist Taliban leaders
2 Taliban leaders are Islamic leaders
3 I concede that these Islamic leaders probably do not care for peace.It's not a subtle point. It's a concession in the direction of YOUR opinion. This is me, taking a step towards your position. Its astonishing that you want to fight me on it so much. I told you that MY argument would not be affected by the absence of such a being, and I was being serious, but you insisted I support my position.I did this by offering 'pscyhopathy', a medical condition affecting about 1% of the population, though which typically finds itself slightly overrepresented in certain types of organisation. I didn't propose, as you keep saying I did despite me telling you explicitly that I didn't, 'hordes of psychopaths'. I was simply saying1. Psychopaths is exist in humans
2. Afghanis are humans
3. C1 There are psychopaths in Afghanistan
4. Psychopaths can be charismatic/charming
5. Psychopaths enjoy manipulating people, have no empathy, and enjoy power
6. The Taliban is an organisation where one can manipulate, kill and rape and earn some good money in the process
7. C2 The Taliban is attractive to psychopaths who have no qualms about lying about religious affiliation if it means they get ahead.
8. C3 There are probably psychopathic Taliban leaders
9. C4 Some of them may not believe in God, or if they do - it is likely diminished and their religious perspective, if honestly lay bare, may be unrecognizable as Islam to Muslims.
10. Taliban leaders are Islamic leaders. Even the atheists, should they happen to exist.
11. Conclusion: Therefore some Islamic leaders may well not care about peace.Again - the fact that my argument is supporting something you said, it is odd you have spent so much time constructing a nonsense argument, put it into my mouth, just so that you can rail against its inanity. If we are being this short sighted - nobody wants peace. We want to kill our enemies - they want to kill theirs. We all hate peace. And I believe them. But what's their goal?I'm going to take them at their word. I'm going to believe that Islam is a motivating force in their behaviour.Islamic armed action, aka jihad, is waged in order to bring about the greater peace. ISIS and their ilk have interpreted the 'oppressors' which are the typical quranic words to justify violence as being everybody but them. In their view they are ultimately removing the oppressors from the world so that the ummah can live in universal peace forever in harmony with Allah.Something which you regarded as plausible when I first raised it, and I'm now simply confused as to your position with regard to it. How likely do you think it actually is that a sincere Muslim Taliban leader justifies the violence he commits and orders others to commit, using 'greater good' and 'for justice' and 'for peace' style rationalizations?

Islamic Leaders lead people in accordance with the principles derived from Islamic texts which contain the words of the Prophet of Islam.Islam is ultimately sola scriptura. The split between Shia and Sunni was primarily over who should succeed in leading the ummah. Nobody is the director of Shia or Sunni Islam. Each individual member makes their own decisions based on listening to their Imam, reading various scholars held in varying degrees of esteem, and making their own conclusions. Schools of thought inevitably appear, and these schools may have a 'most respected scholar' who is a thought leader for a time. But nobody has any claim to be the leader of anything other than Muslims.Compare and contrast with the Pope. The Pope is God's representative, divinely selected, to pass on God's message to the people and to shepherd them etc. He is a defined leader of a religion.The Queen is anointed and has a crown put on her head. The Crown is the head of the Church of England, which she so becomes through divine magic when the Archbishop puts it on her. OR something. In practice, British monarchs delegate all that to Archbishops, but that's a relatively modern evolution.The Mormon church has leadership that is able to make doctrinal declarations that are considered binding.Islam doesn't have anything of this sort. No individual, or group of people, have an basis - within their religion - to claim definitive absolute authority on the subject of Islam.Here are the best candidates I can think of:The twelfth Imam - leader of Shia Islam. But he's dead (or in occultation at least).
A Caliph - kind of complex issue. A pretty good candidate, but caliph's are spiritual and political leaders of territories rather than the religion itself. Their word might be legally binding, but not binding on the Sunni faith itself. The Ottoman's might, at some periods, been credibly able to claim authority over the entire 'ummah', or at least the Sunni globally. So maybe, but it's with a bit of squinting.
Aga Khan IV and other Ismaili Shia leaders - OK OK. I won't argue that these are basically identical to the Queen and the Pope - but I'm pretty sure this group was pretty far from Tangled's mind when he made his declaration.

I didn't insist on the definition, my initial comment was six words in a 700 word post. That was what people wanted to focus on so I have just replied to what people want to ask me.I did make my point by relenting to Tangle's point: The point is that Islamic leaders do actually want peace, that's what they'll likely believe. It is what they say.

You are the one that is challenging me. I am just responding to your challenges. For the record, you still managed to get my position wrong. Taliban leaders are Islamic leaders. Even the atheist ones, should there be any. Does this mean I have to spend the next 10 posts explaining that the word 'if' represents a conditional? That this condition was based on my characterisation of your position 'if we are being as shortsighted as you have just been...' means that I was actually accusing you of taking a position that ultimately equates our actions.But really, if this isn't apparent by this explanation - just give up. It's not all that important because: Excellent? See? You agree with me!

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Islam claims to be the religion of peace; it's leaders don't seem to agree

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And my point? It's leaders do seem to agree after all, and you were both semantically and pragmatically wrong when you said this earlier.

Sorry, I thought you understood the argument you were agreeing with.Humans rarely think of themselves as evil. The homophobes in think they are being morally good by discriminating against homosexuality as it might help 'correct' their sinful behaviour or it is bad to give blessings to such behaviour or what have you.No doubt psychopathy reared its head in the Nazi leadership, but I am sure that many of those people really believed that the Final Solution would bring prosperity and a lasting in Europe and whatnot.Murderers often think their victim deserved death and killing them was for the better. It serves as justice, harmonizes peace between gangs, shuts that bitch up or whatever other stupid rationalization. here is a summaryYour next sentence was

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. Just as no doubt both Sunni and Shia Muslims do, when they pause from boughts of kicking holy shit out of each other.

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I'm not sure how this should have illuminated me that you were only talking about brainwashing others rather than their beliefs directly, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Sorry, I rejected it as stupid and pointless.The real matter here is the Parisian bombing, associated attacks and what the best response to them should be - in the short and long term. I can't speak to military strategy, but I know that a military response against ISIS cannot be the only plan in dealing with the crisis.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.