Volitions Advocate on 15/11/2015 at 22:19
I don't know what Stefan is getting at when he's talking about genetics, but most of the rest of the things he said I'm in agreement with. He's Canadian by the way. I'm not an islamaphobe, and I think refugees are important to house, but he's right about one thing. If you want to talk about an idea contrary to currently popular opinion, there is no discussion. You automatically get derided and all of that hate that you are accused of harboring come raining down on you from the armchair pundits, from the internet thought police. I would love to talk about gun control in this situation. I mentioned it in the aftermath of the Hebdo attacks. I was torn apart on this very forum. No discussion. I'm just wrong. No discussion.
People who get angry at those who try to throw up a dividing wall of "us vs them" are equally as guilty of the same type of hate when they try so hard to put the same wall between the political right and left. I'm not terribly partisan, but I've found that most people I talk to, especially those opposite the spectrum from myself, ARE. Detrimentally so. No discussion. Just ranting and screaming from every angle. At least Stefan wants to talk. I know I'm fucking sick of all the diametrically opposing internet memes flooding my facebook. There's no room for somebody who wants to talk. Not in this current dialogue. And the Left is as equally guilty of it as the Right.
I'm sick over what happened in Paris. (Again!) And of what happened in Beirut. I'm so sick thinking about it can't work on my Masters thesis, which is what I'm supposed to be doing right now rather than posting here. I can't clear my head to work on it. It's awful. Who want's to talk about it? Who wants to slam the door in the face of somebody with a differing opinion than their own?
Medlar on 15/11/2015 at 22:30
Good to see you post raph o/
catbarf on 16/11/2015 at 14:57
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
I would love to talk about gun control in this situation. I mentioned it in the aftermath of the Hebdo attacks. I was torn apart on this very forum. No discussion. I'm just wrong. No discussion.
I was one of the people who said that that was the wrong time and place for the discussion, not that you were wrong, because the thread was about expressing solidarity and had remained mostly apolitical. If you'd gone and started a separate thread about it I'd have been willing to contribute.
That said, this thread's already going down the road of finger-pointing and accusations of oil greed so at this point might as well throw gun control into the mix. I am interested in hearing your thoughts.
fortuni on 16/11/2015 at 18:33
My heart goes out to everyone affected by the events of the weekend in Paris
The sad truth is this continual terrorism against the west will eventually lead, I fear, to a Third World War....the West against the Muslim world, and who will most lose ? ....the innocent civilians, those who have no desire to harm any one else in this world. Will ISIL be destroyed in this coming war, maybe, but the cost to thousands of soldiers and civilians is frightening, the destruction of cities and culture unacceptable, and the end benefit to everyone will be questionable.
Why O Why is mankind so stupid, especially bearing in mind we think we are the most advanced species to ever have walked upon this planet......we're not
heywood on 17/11/2015 at 01:22
Since we're not limiting this to sympathy now, I have a couple of points where I disagree with Stefan Molyneux.
Substance aside, I find his presentation style to be very annoying, insufferable even, and he has made a brand out of calling a spade a spade. So if he complains about people being blunt and dismissive, and calling him out as an Islamophobe, to me it's just the pot calling the kettle black. If he really does want to talk, well that's a surprise to me, because the impression I get is that he just wants to rant and preach because that's what brings in the page hits and YouTube views.
Also, I cannot believe that migrants and refugees who are Muslim and/or Middle Eastern are categorically incompatible with Western society. He paints the Middle East and Islam with a broad brush, like it's a big monoculture. The Middle East is a large region with a lot of ethnic, cultural, geographic, and even religious diversity. And there is a lot of diversity in belief and practice within the big tent of Islam. Like Christianity, Islam is a collection of different religions with a common origin. So the generalizations bother me.
Certainly there are some practices that ARE incompatible, such as holding Sharia above civil law and denying rights to women, but as long as immigrants are willing to accept living in a multi-cultural society governed by Western liberal systems, there isn't necessarily any problem with compatibility. And the vast majority of them who are seeking entry seem willing to do that, so it doesn't seem very fair or right to categorically reject all Muslims that want to live in the west because terrorists are predominantly Muslim. After all, one of the biggest selling points of liberalism is that it is a framework that allows different cultures and religions to coexist. It doesn't even require cultural integration. We have Quakers and Orthodox Jews and Sufis and Sikhs and people living in monasteries and so on which maintain separate and unique cultures without presenting a threat to society.
Molyneux seems to be advocating withdrawal and isolation as the best strategy for dealing with the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Middle East. That to me sounds like a really dangerous idea. I think that if the rest of the world turns its back and tries to isolate itself from the Middle East, the existing governments will be so weakened that ISIS or some other Wahhabist or Salafist movement is guaranteed to sweep over all of the Sunni lands. A massive regional Sunni-Shia war follows, using all those nice arms they've been buying from us and the Russians and Chinese and probably with Israel joining the fray too. Meaning way more people will die, and it will get bad enough that we'll be back in there again anyway trying to put out the fire. So I think that staying involved in the Middle East really is the lesser of two evils. It's better for all the worlds powers to cooperatively manage a complex and ugly situation than to just let it explode.
Finally, Molyneux's view is predicated on the assumption that if we leave them alone, they will leave us alone. I do not think that is true. I see some parallels between the rise of fundamentalist Islam and the beginnings of the big socio-political movements of the 20th century, fascism and communism. One parallel is that the leaders of these movements practice extreme authoritarianism. Another parallel is that they appeal to youth, particularly youth who are disaffected or highly idealistic. More importantly, these movements exhibit a viral sort of expansionism. I don't think they will stay put. Ignore them and they will just keep growing in strength and in spread outside of the Middle East.
icemann on 17/11/2015 at 07:06
The main thing is that we should never hold hate / anger against Muslims in general based on the actions of a minority, as that is EXACTLY what ISIS wants us to do.
They (ISIS) have next to no chance of convincing the majority of Muslim people to join them, but if we persecute them (Muslims in general) when they've done nothing wrong, then in doing so we'll create the very thing we are trying to prevent.
Gryzemuis on 17/11/2015 at 14:09
I don't care about Islam at all.
Just like I don't care about religion in general, at all.
It's boring and irrelevant. No god exists. All religion is bullshit and lies.
Unfortunately, to understand all this stuff about the Middle-East and Islam, you need to understand a few things. The main thing is: there are Sunni Muslims and there are Shia Muslims. The difference is bigger than the difference between Catholics and Protestants. In Europe, we've had centuries where Protestants and Catholics were fighting each other to the death. It is no difference in Islam. Most conflicts in the Middle East are Sunnis against Shia.
But of course, that is not where it ends. Sunnis and Shia have lots of sub-factions. E.g. Assad in Syria is a Alawite, which is a sub-faction of the Shia. He is supported by Iran, which 100% Shia. The rebels (ISIS and all the other rebels) are Sunnis. They are paid by, and given weapons by Saudi-Arabia. The Saudis are Sunnis. Turkey are also Sunnis, so they back the rebels too. They won't admit it, but Turkey would rather see ISIS win, then Assad. The Saudis started the whole civil war in Syria, and are still actively supporting anyone who fights Assad, including ISIS. This is painful for the west. But because we need oil, and because the Saudis are in bed with the US government, nobody talks about this. The Saudis started a civil war in Syria, they back the rebels. And because of that, the west has to support the rebels too. Even when it is obvious that 1) many rebel-factions are evil as hell, 2) starting a civil war should never be an option to change something.
The Saudis are Wahhabists. Also called Salafists (Wahhabism is an even more extreme form of Salafism, wiki tells me). Wahhabism is the sub-faction of Sunni-Islam that is aggressive as hell. It is the Salafists that want to spread Islam all over the world. That want Sharia-law everywhere. That suppress women, gays and everyone they don't like. It's the Wahhabists that want to start wars. It's the Wahhabists that want to kill all ex-Muslims that denounce Islam. It's the Wahhabists that want to kill all non-Muslims.
But in the media, hardly anyone talks about Sunnis and Shia. Why ? Why do the media talk about Muslims as if every Muslim is the same ? As if Salafists and Wahhabism doesn't exist ? Is it because the Saudis are Wahhabists ? Because the its the Saudis that are at the root of all the bad stuff ? It would be so much better to make that distinction. It would make it more clean that you don't need to fear your Turkish neighbor who has lived here for 20 or 40 years. But that there are people (Wahhabists) that are totally unlike your Turkish neighbor. And we can't ignore those guys. We can't pretend that all Muslims are equal in this regard. Why is this ignored in the media ?
catbarf on 17/11/2015 at 14:56
Quote Posted by Gryzemuis
But in the media, hardly anyone talks about Sunnis and Shia. Why ? Why do the media talk about Muslims as if every Muslim is the same ? As if Salafists and Wahhabism doesn't exist ? Is it because the Saudis are Wahhabists ? Because the its the Saudis that are at the root of all the bad stuff ? It would be so much better to make that distinction. It would make it more clean that you don't need to fear your Turkish neighbor who has lived here for 20 or 40 years. But that there are people (Wahhabists) that are totally unlike your Turkish neighbor. And we can't ignore those guys. We can't pretend that all Muslims are equal in this regard. Why is this ignored in the media ?
Interesting point. It's also easy for the public to view Middle Eastern Muslims as violent savages fighting amongst themselves when people don't understand some of the ethnic and religious factors at work. Like, it should have been obvious that a Shi'ite government in a predominantly Shi'ite country (Iraq) with a history of oppressing Sunnis wasn't going to work out, and the instability of the resulting Iraqi government shouldn't have been a surprise. And yet the takeaway a lot of Americans seemed to have from the whole Iraq affair was that the Iraqi people can't form a government and should be left to their own devices. Whether that's the best course of action or not, people attribute the failure of the Iraqi government to Muslim and Middle Eastern culture rather than to a broken political system.
It's not like this issue is unique to the Middle East. Ethnic tensions led to the Yugoslavian breakup after all, and tribal identity is still a strong issue in post-colonial African politics. Yet the approach to those issues has never seemed as heavy-handed as the way we treat Muslims as a monolithic group and argue over whether Islam supports violence or terrorism.
nicked on 17/11/2015 at 18:31
Why? Because words like shi'ite are hard, and "All muslims are terrifying suicide bombers" is the quickest way to sell newspapers.
