What makes a terrorist a terrorist?

Well, for buzsaw it certainly seems that it is. From what I can tell, he is convinced that these are the steps leading up to the end times. Even though I find his position terrifying and disgusting sometimes, I do applaud him for being interally consistent.As for the rest, all you are really saying is that there is a third option from the one I presented which is simply that the followers of Islam will live in perpetual violent suppression by Israel and that someday they MAY, but not likely, disavow True Islam (tm) according to you.Either way all three positions are still based on your unsupported, illogical, and biased views of Islam. You found one scenario that does not require a religious motivation but it is still a black and white, end-all be-all situation that does not seem to have any basis in objective reality.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

But his believing that does not mean he makes up stuff to fit it. That's really unfair. I don't see the suppression as violent, merely potentially so, and mostly a matter of world opinion being against them when it comes to terrorism and deceit. Enough to get them to give up those methods. And that being the case why wouldn't they just settle down and pursue their lives in peace? Sorry you see it that way.

I'm not sure that they are regarded as morally equal, but they are held to the same moral/legal system and Israel is held to a higher standard in many ways because they are a member of the UN. The UN is very vocal in its attacks against extremism and has been since before September 2001.

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Such extremism may threaten an entire society (Yemen), certain categories of individuals such as artists (Chad) or teachers (Egypt), or certain religious minorities (Mexico and Somalia). It is important to note that religious extremism acts as a cancer in any religious group, whatever the denomination, and that it affects the members of that group just as much as those of other religious groups.

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Moreover, the fact is that religious extremism is not yet in retreat and seems set to continue to pose a threat, sometimes to entire regions. The major religions are no strangers to extremism and are sometimes exposed to these terrorist manifestations, which spare neither Governments nor the governed. It is vital to combat this religious extremism by taking action against both its causes and its effects and by getting States to define a minimum set of common rules of conduct and behaviour with regard to it.

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And of course Annan himself:

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" Terrorism is a global threat with global effects; ... its consequences affect every aspect of the United Nations agenda from development to peace to human rights and the rule of law. By its very nature, terrorism is an assault on the fundamental principles of law, order, human rights, and the peaceful settlement of disputes upon which the United Nations is established. The United Nations has an indispensable role to play in providing the legal and organizational framework within which the international campaign against terrorism can unfold".

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Kofi Annan
UN Secretary-General
4 October 2002

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So you have gone from defending your position to promising to defend it later to claiming you have defended it to outright unwillingness to defend it?Yet you still go around making the claims you do as if your interpretation of Islam is correct and that everyone should just accept it as a premise to your argument. Well sorry if I think that is totaly crap and, I can't put it any nicer, simply dishonest.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Terrorism is a new paradigm, we have had about 500 years to work out the issues in Nation State/Nation State conflicts, and over that span of time developed both some rules all somewhat agreed to and procedures that should be used to manage Nation State conflicts. Perhaps in 500 years or so we will know how to deal with the new paradigm of terrorism.In the mean time, what makes a terrorist?I think the first point is that very seldom is a Nation State the actual terrorist organization, however Nation States do create, train, fund and encourage terrorism as a surrogate (generally seen as a low cost surrogate as well) for direct Nation State conflicts. That is not limited to Nations such as Iran or Syria, the US and other Western Nations have also used terrorists as a tool of policy to be deployed when it is desirable to allow "Plausible Deniability" or simply economics.The terrorist organizations created and supported by Nation States, such as the US created terrorist groups in South and Central America, those the US created in Afghanistan usually believe that they are self directed even though often it is simply a matter that the Nation State has used local perceived issues to further the political and economic goals of teh Nation State.Looking at the terrorist organizations themselves, usually they seem to be a tool of last resort, when the people that lead and engender the organization believe that there is absolutely no other method of achieving their goals. Almost all terrorist organizations appear to exist for a moral purpose, to right a wrong.Finally, so far it does not appear that once things degenerate to the point were terrorism becomes the norm, classic military solutions become ineffective. All solutions to such situations so far seem to have come from a combination of policing, a diplomatic discussion, and an honest appraisal of those issues, whether real or perceived, of the terrorist.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I don't disagree with you jar. I am simply challanging the answer the the question:Q: What makes a terrorist?
A: The ideology of Islam.Not only is the answer insufficient but there is a blatant bias behind the answer rooted in dogma. It is also the perpetuation of a stigma that is assumed and never defended. If we let them simply use it as a premise in these discussion then we tacitly admit that their evasion tactics have succeeded.The folks who argue on that side of the coin are trying to do so in order to focus the definition of terrorist on Moslems. They will disregard other legitimate terrorism as outliers, the nuances and nutballs of society. But for Faith and others, they believe and would like us to believe that the difference in Arab or Moslem terrorism is that it is NOT a nuance of society but rather a way of life. Their sole purpose in this discussion is the demonization of the culture and religion for probably a variety of personal purposes. The one I brought up earler about endtimes doctrine is just one that recently came to mind.That is why this thread was created to begin with really. There is no real controversy among what is a terrorist except the over generalization by the anti-Islam folk around here. The Veit Cong were terrorists, the Union soldiers in the Civil war were terrorists, Napolean was a terrorist. Anybody who has ever drawn blood or caused pain to another human being in war is a terrorist. "They" just want to paint the terrorism coming out of the middle east as Special Terrorists. You cannot bring up the word terrorist today without the imagery of an Arab holding a weapon.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Listen, Jazz, I had nothing to say to that last paragraph of abusive diatribe of yours so I simply said "Sorry you feel that way." You are out of line trying to make something more out of that. That last paragraph was out of line for starters and you are continuing your abusive rant in this one. Give it a rest.

This is a personal attack Jazz. You can't just make up our motives for us. You've descended to trying to make your case by ranting against those of us who have this opinion you hate. Straighten up. Argue the position, not the person. You've been doing MOSTLY arguing the person on this one.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, there are people that hold the position that terrorist=muslim, but of course none of the facts support such a position. There seems to be little point in even engaging them so can we move on to what is terrorism and what can be done to make it less harmful than it is today?IMHO terrorism is a new paradigm and we need to build some set of procedures to deal with it. I think one first step is to acknowledge that terrorist behave as they do from a moral position, and that terrorist acts are not the desired method even for them.A second point to address IMHO is that in many cases, there really is a justification for their beliefs, if not for the methods. They simply see no other possible course of action.Third, one of the main tools of the terrorist organization is to encourage a response from the attacked party, usually a Nation State, that is out of proportion to the threat. That works in the terrorist favor in several ways. One is that the economic cost of the response from the Nation State is far higher than the economic cost to the terrorist organization. That places a drain on the Nation State beyond simple violence or military might, it causes the Nation State to divert resources from other, often sorely needed, tasks. In turn, that redirection of internal resources places more strain on both the Nation State and the internal support of the people within the Nation State for its governments policies.Externally, the out of proportion response tends to increase support and recruitment for the terrorists, and so even when they lose such exchanges, as they must, it increases their strength.The question then has to be directed towards what responses other than violence are open to Nation States?I think this is important particularly when we look towards Iraq, since the possibility of a civil war there increases daily, and the root causes for such a war were pretty obvious even 100 years ago, yet have never been addressed.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

How was it abusive to point out that I think your position is illogical and not based in objective reality?You are crying abuse simply to provide an excuse to avoid points that destroy your position.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

You are right. I shouldn't have said personal purposes. That was out of line. I appologize. I should have just said for SOME purpose. You DO have a purpose for your demonization of Isalm dont you?I disagree that I have been MOSTLY arguing the person. I think you are evading me intentionally as usual.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Yes, I've read a lot about it. What I've said about it I believe to be true after much reading. That's my purpose -- telling the truth about it. You keep trying to spin it some other way and demonize ME, because you don't like my opinion. You also keep picturing consequences of my opinion that I don't picture, but even after I've told you my idea of how to deal with it all, which should reassure you that I have nothing like World War III in mind (that is what will happen if people DON'T start to recognize the truth about Islam) you still denigrate me and my view of this. Evading what? I answered you very carefully for post after post. Then I didn't answer one particularly offensive paragraph and you got even more offensive. Mostly arguing the person in the last couple of posts I should have said. You'd descended to a diatribe about my supposedly illogical argument, without a shred of evidence that I was being illogical. YOu merely wanted to smear my argument. That's not exactly personal I guess but there's something about mischaracterizing one's argument in such a way that really is personal even if technically it's not.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I appologize if you think I am trying to demonize you. Sometimes in politics and religion it is hard to seperate the person from the belief.I certainly denigrate you view. I find your view to be disgusting as usual. I hope not to denigrate you and will try harder to word things as to make it clear that my objections are at your position.I think you misunderstand my reasoning for bringing up the end times rationalizaiton. I was trying to find a reason for your insistence on an insurmountable ideological source for Mid East terrorism. That was my frist crack at it and at the end of my post I explicitly said that I would like to be shown wrong.Although I was shown wrong by you on your next post, I don't think that it help the situation much. Rather you presented that third option of a constant struggle against terrorism (which will most likely include a lot of violence) for which there will either be no end or the Moslems will have to disavow their True Religion (tm) according to your description of it as imperialistic. Since this has no basis in end times doctrine, it cannot be a source of why terrorism MUST stem from Islam according to your position.After that the debate seemed to disintegrate. As it stands, your argument about the religious imperialism inherent in Islam IS illogical because you have choosen not to rebut the challenges made against your assumtions and evidence that it is. I stand by my comment in one of my recent posts where I said you have switched from promising to defend your argument later to claiming you have defended to seemingly be unwilling to defend it.The issue of the imperialistic nature of Islam has been left undefended BY YOU so expect to be challenged about it relentlessly whenever you try to use it as a basis for an argument. In this case, your argument that the terrorism will not stop because of the ideological basis that you claim is completely unsupported from its very foundation.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

I have given plenty of support for my view of Islam on other threads, and so has Buz and so did Canadian Steve, and you just don't like any of it, usually don't even seem to get it. Many people who ought to know about Islam have been quoted and you just don't like any of it. There are always others who can be quoted in rebuttal, saying other things, and you like those arguments better and that's that. So as far as I can see, it's been defended over and over and at this point defending it further is unnecessary and your accusation that it hasn't been is just your way of dismissing it. People here seem to like to win arguments by insinuating that the opponent hasn't made their case when the truth is that the case has been made quite well but you don't like the case so you declare your own case the winner. And "declare" is the right word. Declaring the other in the wrong, their argument illogical, their case unproven, etc etc. Lot of declaring goes on around here as if it amount to an argument.Nothing I could say would convince you. So all I'm doing is reasoning things out on the basis of my understanding of Islam. Again, proving my understanding of Islam to you is a lost cause.I didn't misunderstand your reason for bringing up the end times scenario at all. You simply refuse to recognize that Buz and I arrived at our view of Islam honestly, so you have to come up with some kind of "motivation" for why we have this wrong view of it and you concluded that the end times supplied this motivation. This amounts to little more than dismissing our view. The fair thing to do would be to treat us as holding our view honestly. What do you mean "help the situation much?" If it's true it's true. If it's the best that can be done, then it's the best that can be done.However, constant vigilance is what I said, not constant struggle. There's a difference. And just because it might require constant vigilance doesn't make the idea wrong. You seem to be implying some such thing. And I merely mused about how an enforced peace MIGHT lead some Muslims to pull away from the violent side of Islam, but also said that I expect fundamentalism never to go completely away. That is certainly correct. None of it has anything to do with end times doctrine.

There is a standing open challange for you or buz or CS or anyone to address the issue of the context of verses used to justify the claimed religious imperialism.I could have just missed it when one of you met that challange. This all could be an honest mistake and I could be the one that needs to eat crow. All you would need to do it find the link to where you or someone else has done this. As far as I can recall, I have read all the threads on this forum where this issue has been brought up and I have never seen an advancement of that issue. The argument has been stuck there ever since it was first introduced. I can tell you right now that that is not true. Granted, I am skeptical of your ability to support such an extreme position but I am quite convincable as I imagine many other people are who challanged you and others of similar agreement on this issue.You on the other hand, often admit that your position is based upon revelation and is therfore unassailable. I have never said such a thing. Therefore I should be the one worring about how nothing I could say would ever convince YOU that you are wrong based on what you yourself have proclaimed. I never said that the basis was dishonest. Just that it was my opinion based on what I had read. Buz has directly said that it is his belief that the trouble in the MidEast and the end times were related. I think that makes sense for someone who holds a literalist position. I may not have phrased it as diplomaticaly as I could but I was ASKING you if that was the case for you as well. I don't see how it could be given your premise of an imperialistic Islam. As long as there are fundy Moslems willing to kill then there will have to be violent suppression. You have expressed this opinion directly in the past. It was recent so I can try to pull the quotes if you like. It is wrong if the basis of the action is that Islam is NOT necessarily imperialistic. It is also suspect to assume that if the opposition is supressed to the point that they give up the violence that they would not be True Moslems (tm).If, like I believe, it is only a subset of extremist Moslems and disenfranchised Palestinians who resort to the violence then there is other solutions than constant supression. For the simple hope that this offers alternatives to your seemingly unrealistic solution, this position should merit more examiniation.In the end, terrorism is happening on both sides because any war is terrorism. Because one side is using more gurilla tactics and world politics while the other just had bigger guns does not change this basic fact. Innocent people on both sides are dying unnecessarily. People are living in their homes (or refugee camps if you prefer) in fear of the other side.I agree with you that we need to stop the terrorists. I just don't apply that lable to only one side.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)