To think that Islam is not the greatest threat?

[superstarheartbreaker]

Islamist extremists have given the religion a bad name. I am agnostic ( not atheist) btw and yet see religion as a deluded way of controlling the masses.
There has been some terrible Islamic extremism recently such as the recent beheadinds etc but in the past Christianity was just as violent. Northern Ireland for example.

It is religion in general rather than Islam that is a threat to reason and sanity.

Sammy

With regard to your comment about the Falklands War, that war was fought to project the people who occupy those islands. The people who consider themselves British subjects and wished to remain so. Argentina has never owned the islands.

What I don't get is the Muslim obsession with Israel.
There are far far worse abuses of human rights throughout the Muslim world (and beyond of course) but I find many Muslims to be outraged almost exclusively by Israel, sometimes believing the craziest stories and conspiracy theories. Personally I think Israel has become a scapegoat to avoid having to be introspective and address these issues.

Also strange how comparisons with the third Reich, Nazis etc are almost exclusively reserved for Israel. I never see this comparison used for any other country with far far worse situations. But of course that's just valid criticism, just coincidence that Israel is a Jewish country . As soon as someone starts with Israel=Nazis then they're either ignorant or have a political agenda imo and rational conversation is useless.

Shakshuka: The movement to rebuild a third temple on the Temple Mount probably doesn't help ( because it would involve having to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque there). There are more connections between Nazism/fascism and the conservative version of Islam as many tinpot dictators and religious leaders at the time throughout the region gave tacit support to Hitler's regime. Then again, so did others in the hope that it would facilitate the creation of Israel so that really complicates matters.

Meanwhile the rest of us just hope we don't get hit with the ton of bricks that our ancestors did in WW1 & 2. We know from bitter experience that we fight for nothing and our only reward will be generations of PTSD.

What I don't get is the Muslim obsession with Israel

Could it be that, as I mentioned yesterday, they need a focus for all that hatred? I don't imagine anyone feels that Israel are faultless in the current mess, but as you said, a lot of scapegoating goes on too ...

mimi do you mean working class British. do you mean the aristocracy not affected by poverty? not in disagreement

shakshuka what i dont get is Israel's obsession with killing Palestinian children.

How many muslims do you know who have been exclusively outraged by Israel and nothing else? I have never met a single person of religion or none, who has only ever been outraged by one thing.

Yruapita

I don't think I've ever seen the Muslim community in Britain march against anything the way they rally to anti-Israel demonstrations. I don't remember such fervor against Russia in Chechnya, for example, and certainly not against Muslim on Muslim violence such as the genocide of Shia Muslims in Pakistan which is very conveniently forgotten even though so many Muslims in the UK are of Pakistani origin. Why? Most Muslims in the UK aren't of Palestinian or even of middle eastern origin so why the obsession with Israel? I don't recall Muslim protesters ever ttacking supermarkets for stocking Russian products even though what Russia did to grozny was far worse than what Israel did in Gaza.

I can pretty much bet ny bottom dollar that if Palestinians weren't mostly Muslim or if Israelis were, the Muslim community wouldn't 'care' so much.

Heartisaspade

Very well said. Whoever uses Nazi comparisons to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is either ignorant or has an.agenda. The Israelis and Palestinians have been doing some awful things.to one another for 100 years or so but thankfully never reached the levels of the horrors of the Nazi regime or genocide.

Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Taliban, ISIS - it's fascism with a religious flavour, and fascism is always a danger. I'm not a fan of any religion but, as pointed out by progressive Muslims, Islam has not been through a Reformation nor an Enlightenment. The Arab Spring seemed like it might be the beginning on the Islamic Reformation but it now looks like it has fuelled a reign of terror.

I don't think the comparisons with Northern Ireland or the right wing of the GOP are helpful. It is just false equivalency. The religious right in America may have some unpalatable views on gay marriage and abortion but that is not the same as burying children alive because their parents didn't convert. Irish paramilitary groups did some heinous things but there was never the sense that their ultimate aim was even scarier than their terrorism, as there is with ISIS.

Somebody said earlier on this thread 'This is not the Nazis'. Well, I was watching a repeat of The World At War earlier this evening and it was chillingly familiar. I had seen the episode before and what struck me this time was the parallels with ISIS. They are not the political establishment, like the Nazis, but their treatment of civilians, the erasure of whole dissenting villages, is exactly comparable. I find it disturbing that some are questioning what ISIS are doing because the same doubts were raised about reports of persecution at the beginning of World War II. We have seen footage of women and girls being sold from cages, we have seen people being beheaded with small knifes, we have heard surviving civilians talk of crucifixions and live-burials, we have heard the words of ISIS themselves.

Russia has also been mentioned on this thread. I think the turn Russia has taken under Putin is a threat but I think the difference between the Islamic State and Russia is that the former has no fear of mutual self-destruction. If ISIS gets hold of nuclear weapons, biological weapons and dirty bombs they will use them because their own people are expendable and the whole point is dying for the cause.

I remember studying the Reformation at school - auto-da-fés, the Inquisition, witch-trials, it all seems so distant. I can't believe this shit is coming back so strongly in my lifetime. Why can't the Middle Ages fuck off and leave the rest of us to become more like Scandinavia? I want progress not a bunch of fascist blokes doing what fascist blokes have always done.

What it comes down to for me is the West does some horrible things to its own citizens, the West commits some terrible acts abroad, there is some awful stuff about the West and a great deal that needs to change about the West but if given a choice between living in the West and living in the Islamic State I would a million trillion times rather live in the West. We are way too capitalist, misogynist, racist and conservative for my liking but, for all that, we are still light years closer to the way of life I would choose than the Islamic State. If it comes down to a choice between the flawed Western values that we currently have and the values of the Islamic State I would always defend Western values. I think this postmodern 'all arguments, and all values, and all ways of life are equal' is a crock of shit.

Agree with that absolutely Dexter

Actually around 40 million Europeans died during WW2 - 6 million Jews and 32 million non-Jews ... not six million of each.

Sorry- 34 million non-Jewish Europeans

OP, if militant Christians were currently beheading people in the name of Christianity, hoping to form a "Christendom" whereby everybody would be forcibly converted to a violent, oppressive interpretation of Christianity, then I would agree with you but Christianity went through a reformation a few centuries ago and most Christians (emphasis on most) take the bible metaphorically not literally. I think Islam is a threat along with lots of other things.

I agree about the obsession with Israel, you only have to look at the other threads on here.

Dexter agree with your posts.

That's hardly fair. The threads regarding Israel have been in response to recent events, namely Israel's disproportionate response to Hamas attacks, and it's hardly just Muslims who are "obsessed" with Israel. Lots of non-muslims are appalled at the idea of hundreds of children suffering, hundreds of children who are hemmed in on all sides and have nowhere else to go.

yes but it isn't equally balanced, and the reporting has been very one sided and the anti semitism and in Europe has been awful even though it is nothing to do with them. I agree about the marches.

you are not getting the same response to the Rotherham men or Isis

It was me who said they're not the Nazis, but that was in the context of evaluating the threat to the UK. The Nazis were an existential threat to Britain -- had things gone differently, the UK might have become another province of Nazi Europe. ISIS has nothing like that level of threat, they cannot invade or send missiles or threaten the country's existence. I do think it's important to keep that in perspective.

A lot of my work deals with atrocities. ISIS are on the extreme end, but they have a lot of company, and from across the spectrum. Have we already forgotten about the Sierra Leone amputation spree? the Mexican cartels who behead people and drown them in acid? the Khmer Rouge?

What they have in common is not Islam but some kind of justifying ideology, whether it's religious or political or cultural. So I think it's shortsighted to see Islam as the threat. People are the threat. If they didn't have Islam, they would use something else. What we need to do is combat the people and their twisted ideology, not target a religion that hundreds of millions of people practice peacefully.

Obviously the Christian right in the US are not going around beheading people. That's because they live in a peaceful democratic state with rule of law and great prosperity. They're not living in countries where people have been slaughtered for years on end. If that does ever happen in the US, I guarantee you the far right will be doing things just as evil as ISIS. The context is not irrelevant.

I think they could become a threat to the UK, maybe not now but in 50 years'. They want to spread Islam.

Islam and Christianity are the only two religions that have a militant policy of conversion. I think all the violent Islamic groups that have sprung up in recent years have a fascist ideology and they do want to gain power and spread. I think the men who join ISIS enjoy the power, the sadism and the control and want more of it. ISIS are rich, they have oil money and are being funded by god knows who, and if they did get their hands on nuclear material I think they are suicidal enough to use it. It may not be the UK or the US they attack but what about the people in Israel or Turkey or Greece or Serbia?

Shakshuka - totally agree with everything you wrote. Well said.

Dexter - re: christian militant policy, do you mean in the past?