islamist extremists strike in france

[KareninsGirl]

My thoughts are with the victims of the latest barbaric act by Islamic extremists.

The world needs to wake up and defend itself.

RIP those who died and prayers for those critically injured.

at French magazine office www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30710883

But how is it possible that one religion can give rise to so much nastiness, cruelty?

Re Paris - I wasn't watching as things panned out, but am not surprised this is the outcome - it was inevitable and exactly what the terrorists wanted.

Re IS/ AQY - IS apparently posted a strange tweet about "snail eaters" an hour before the Charlie Hebdo attack. They don't need to have been working together, though. During the troubles, different republican or loyalist paramilitaries would sometimes commit atrocities at similar times in order to make sure they got media attention (and therefore members, funding etc) as much as/ more than the other lot. Could be the same here, or could be they were working together but each has to credit their particular backers. Maybe we'll find out more as the investigation pans out.

Australia? Paris? IS? Al Qaeda? Lee Rigby killer? London bombers? 9 11? Boko haram? Flogging that blogger? And it goes on and on and on

Lemony imho religion is the handy pretext for a landgrab of power, people, money and resources by egotistic, greedy, violent bs. If the religion they are using is followed in a conservative way, which necessitates ahdherence to praying regularly etc, it's easier to keep control of people, too - because so much of what they do is prescribed they don't have time or feel they have the authority to question what's going on.

But how is it possible that one religion can give rise to so much nastiness, cruelty?

The same could have been said about Catholicism and even other religions at some point in history.

Ah the blogger in SA - the sentence is the perfect example of the type of islam espoused and spread by SA, the same intolerance of questioning, querying, challenging...

Not in modern times. These are supposedly well educated people, people who had so many chances, think back about Osama bin Laden etc. young doctors going to fight for IS.that is why I don't think more education will make any difference at all.

Lewji - quite. And the grab for land and resources made while pretending to 'spread the word of god' in the Americas, Africa, Asia....

I'm sure I've quoted this before on here, but Mary Robinson once said "A society that is without the voice and vision of women is not less feminine. It is less human".

There's a lot in that, imho.

I was once a few hundred yards away when an IRA bomb went off. It didn't bother me at all. I never felt that my culture and traditions were fundamentally threatened by the IRA. I knew what they wanted and we eventually reached an accommodation.

This very different.

The accounts I've read about the Boko Haram situation say that the Nigerian military are adequately armed, well trained and numerous enough to annihilate BK - if they chose to, which they haven't.

You could make a very long list of all the countries that are being ravaged by Islamic fundamentalism. we can't go everywhere and be the Worlds policeman. We need to focus inwards on our own security. Cameron, Merkel NAND Hollander are meeting in Paris this Sunday to agree enhanced measures. Hollande is now parroting the Cameron lie that it's nothing to do with Islam, which is frankly making him look like a complete prat because nobody is buying that anymore. If he maintains this fallacy he will lose his last vestige of credibility and the French will turn to Le Pen who is already demanding the return of the death sentence, scrapping Schengen and a host of other restrictions.

What's caused this? I believe it was caused by Saudi Arabia funding the building of mosques and using them to export Wahabbism. That particular brand of Islam is not indigenous to many parts of the world that have now adopted it's structure demands of covering and restrictions on female activities etc etc. Afghanis never traditionally wore the burqa. Afghan women wore mini skirts and attended Universities. It's only since the Russian invasion and the arrival of foreign Arabian mujahideen to counter the invasion, that the Afghans have adopted this dress. Saudi Arabia publicly whipped a journalist today for criticising Islam. But no one will upset Saudi , we tried nice after Death of a Princess and had to grovel to them in apology.

We have also appeased terrorists in Londonistan in the misguided belief that if they lived here they wouldn't attack us. I cannot quite understand how we allowed Abu Hamza to close roads as he held Friday prayers in the streets.
We need to start asserting what Dave keeps calling British values but we should also be vigilant against those who cry wolf and attempt to take offence at everything as they will try to stop us.

But I think it's too late now. We'd have to take radical steps that our liberal public will not tolerate. What worries me is that we are sending more and more fundamentalists to prison for very short sentences and they will soon be back on our streets, freshly re-radicalised by the prison system and with no jobs and big chips on their shoulders. We should fear them as much as returning jihadis.

But I fear the events if the last few days have been a wake up call and we've just hit the snooze button again.

The world has always been like this Ginger the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Humans fight, it is built into us, religion just gives it a flavour/excuse. We would fight anyway and we would fight even if everyone was female (as suggested upthread).

I'm sure I've quoted this before on here, but Mary Robinson once said "A society that is without the voice and vision of women is not less feminine. It is less human".
There's a lot in that, imho.

I believe if there is an islamic reformation it will be led by muslim women for muslim women. The oppression can only last so long.

Perma
the grocer store murderer told french tv (no daily mail) they were acting for Islamic state..... So I guess you were wrong.
Maybe it's time to apologise for your vile rants towards posters who were telling you this all along.

I honestly do not mean to offend anyone here but the level of ignorance about how things really work, why you can't take words at face value is off the scale. Gain a solid grounding in world history if your intellect allows. That is the only advice I can give.

Muslims have always and forever come from a range of sects, cultures and differing identities - they have never seen themselves as a monolithic group. Why don't you ask them? Even if you go into remote parts of Sub Saharan Africa you will see 2 or 3 groups coexisting side by side.

Please do not be ignorant enough to fall for the western perpetrated lie that they are one monolithic block which has amalgamated mindlessly into a big, killing machine. Do you not live in multicultural communities or travel the world to see this for yourselves?

I'm sure I've quoted this before on here, but Mary Robinson once said "A society that is without the voice and vision of women is not less feminine. It is less human".
There's a lot in that, imho.

I believe if there is an islamic reformation it will be led by muslim women for muslim women. The oppression can only last so long. - Exactly right. I think people underestimate the impact that feminisms around the globe have had on cultures. I, too, believe that Islamic reform will be driven by feminism.

Perma - Please do not be ignorant enough to fall for the western perpetrated lie that they are one monolithic block which has amalgamated mindlessly into a big, killing machine

Let's take another example. Not everyone in the UK is homophobic - and we generally live peacefully alongside gays, etc.. However, there is enough in our culture to enable people to be homophobic, ranging from big, overt actions to the minutiae of daily life. Of course not all Muslims are the same, of course there are differences between groups and identities. These have, and always will be multiple in their nature for any individual. However, there is plenty of violence in Islam as an ideology - individuals can choose to uphold it or not - but the fact that Islam has violence in it (and peace, of course) remains the same. It's the violent bits of Islam that need reforming, just as the homophobic bits of our culture need reforming, not the individuals themselves.

Another way of saying this is that if there were no homophobic bits to our culture, then people wouldn't be able to be homophobic. If there were no violent, misogynist, etc. bits to Islam, then people wouldn't be violent or whatever in the name of Islam. Reform will come when these things are recognised, accepted by large swathes of that population and fought for.

Assuming that there's going to be reform is a very Westernised view of history that's been discredited. And assumption that history is a linear process in which we will inevitably just improve and become more enlightened as things progress.

We can be dragged backwards. And we can be kept there. We can't just assume progress any more.

Courts of human rights and supranational institutions are by nature progressive. Groups of armed men seizing territories, proclaiming themselves leaders and making up law & religion as they go along are by nature regressive.

History is neither.

One thing we could consider doing is what Singapore does--have quotas for social housing and state schools which state that no more than a certain % of the residents of a social housing neighborhood or children at a state school can consist of any single minority group. So, you cannot have more than 30% (just to pick a possible figure) British Bengali or 30% British Pakistani or 30% Polish etc. etc. at any single school.

This can be incredibly helpful for preventing stigmatization, ghettoization and "white flight," assisting with integration (which is NOT the same as assimilation), and helping make sure that children from different backgrounds mix with each other and have a chance of getting into a decent school; also, it means that students of the majority ethnicity have more chances to spend time with children from minority backgrounds. It actually would create genuinely diversity in schools and neighborhoods (rather than separate monocultures). Something like a 30% ceiling would be helpful.

The quota system is probably one of the reasons why Singapore has quite a lot of immigration yet remains a very cohesive society. It might sound a bit heavy handed, but the reality is that if people have a tendency to seek out others who look like them, and then before you know it, the trend will snowball and you end up with highly segregated schools and neighborhoods. It may be that governments have to give people a push in the other direction.

Yes, 'progress' is a Western concept, with its attendant notions of improvement, betterment, linearity (intimately linked to Science). It's probably better to talk in terms of change. However, that is what I used to think. More recently, I have returned to the concept of linear improvement. Scientific advances do exist and are better than they were previously. Women's rights are not just different in different societies - in some, they are better.

Newstatesman - it won't work. Was tried in the Netherlands, it miserably failed. They even bussed children out of affluent areas to schools in deprived areas. Affluent people have human rights too so this never stands up in Court as the Dutch finally understood.

Reports on twitter that teh commissioner in charge of the investigation has been found dead in his office/suicide? has anyone else seen this on the news?

Fourmummy I agree with you totally. We shouldn't be afraid to say that the way we do things such as the way we treat women is better. But we can't just assume progress will be made and maintained unless we are prepared to defend it against those who want to destroy it.

Re quotas in social housing. Where I live at least there seems to have been an unofficial policy of doing the exact opposite for quite some time.

There are estates where everyone housed is white, and others where they are overwhelmingly Pakistani or Somali or Caribbean. Multiculturalism isn't working, it's creating a divided mistrustful society. We need to start building a society with shared common values that are set in stone and reject those who oppose them. And equality for inherent characteristics such as sex, sexuality and colour are important to that. But voluntary characteristics like religion can't supersede them. We can't carry on saying that religion is an excuse to treat others around you less favourably. That has to be rejected.

Quotas for schools/areas so people mix is a good idea. I don't see why we can't since if we ditch the EU we can change the law so it is legal, but I despair at the thought of trying to explain to any our leaders why we should do it. I can see the worried looks as they call for polls to see if this increases their election chances.

I think we need a completely new government first. We need people who are not professional politicians, because for someone who has dedicated their life to staying on the gravy train the best plan is to do nothing until someone else is in charge.

And if we do nothing then sometime soon there will be Muslim controlled areas of the UK with borders patrolled by tanks. Both to protect us from them and them from us.