Is Islam bad?

[kilauea]

Religion died in the 20th century. It's just the believers are too thick to work it out yet.

(Yes that are thick - see Miron Zuckermans analysis of 63 previous studies showing a correlation between religious belief and being a thicko).

[Skykid]

Religion died in the 20th century. It's just the believers are too thick to work it out yet.

Well that's one way of putting it.

[austere]

Another Assyrian relic in Iraq destroyed thanks to the "grace of Islam" (ISIS):



Something must be said: To conquer a people, you must first take away their heritage, i.e. history. With no monumental history to look back upon, Iraq shall never rise again. Obama & co. must be smiling. This has nothing to do with Sunni vs Shia by the way, that whole narrative was dreamed up prior to 2003 in order to break up the middle east in a new map, revised in 2006:



Only hard boiled terrorists are willing to kill people based on their sect, the majority of devout Muslims though will support whatever their local sheikh screams out every Friday. It just happens that he is most likely funded by a Wahabbi organisation (i.e. Saudi Arabia). Follow the money up the trail of alliances. They can only turn their simulation into reality after enough land is soaked with their perceived enemy's blood.

[Moniker]

Obama & co. must be smiling.

I very much doubt it. He and his Democrat colleagues are getting creamed over this. In my small-ass ignorant town, folks are calling him the Worst President Ever, which is obviously ridiculous, but he's making it pretty easy for the small-minded. Folks are fully willing to lay Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Thailand, and Ukraine at his feet. That abhorrent prisoner exchange is the icing on the cake, not to mention Egypt's recent free speech gaffe, and relatively irrelevant global warming bullshit. And Hillary Clinton's *shudder* recent publicity definitely isn't helping things.

I can only assume that Democrats *want* to lose the midterm elections as part of some grand takeover scheme in 2016. Like, science fiction type shit.

[Ed Oscuro]

@ austere

So exactly what should the U.S. do here? As it turns out (again), going into Iraq was a mistake. Even if some unspecified good things happen down the road, it's been clear that we didn't have the right situations to deal with the aftermath and let it become a stable country.

If you're going to state that our goal was basically to spread chaos in the region, I'll have to kindly tell you to fuck off and mind your business. The Bush Administration was the one that needs to be raked over the coals for this mess; Obama just got stuck with it.

This is not to say that the entire country (or at least the stupid half of voters) doesn't owe the whole region an apology for unleashing the Iraq war in the first place. To some extent, there's the Afghan war as well, though that was less condemned internationally. A lot of the other stuff going on in the region has been happening with the tacit approval, at the least, of area nations, so blaming long-standing policies on Obama doesn't make sense.

[BryanM]

A closed mind will always be closed. If Obama had accepted the guy back as a head-in-a-sack, he'd be getting "creamed" over that. It's lose-lose, but one way gives you a delicious human head in a sack as a late night snack. Which is either bad or good; levels of sociopathy vary.

The generic polling data is still exactly the same. Democrats still need something absurd like +7 points to acquire the House, doesn't look like it's likely, but who knows.

[Ed Oscuro]

he's making it pretty easy for the small-minded.

It has been a rough couple months for Obama!

Folks are fully willing to lay Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Thailand, and Ukraine at his feet.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand - definitely no
Libya, Egypt - "maybe"
Syria and the Ukraine - Don't see how the President is actually responsible for these things at all, but the Administration's handling of them has not been expert.

It's important to note how strongly people are holding onto the dear ideal that the President actually controls movements in other countries. Like, we tried that for years in Iraq, and it didn't much work out well, dudez. Kinda like (or maybe exactly like, in the relevant dimension of "it's their turf, so they will fight as long as they want") Vietnam.

That abhorrent prisoner exchange is the icing on the cake

I wish they'd handled it differently, but even Lindsey Graham has noted that the President really didn't have to tell Congress. Obama didn't have any wiggle room on this one. So what most people have had to say about this was that the visuals, of Susan Rice saying the soldier served with distinction, were over the top.

Kid got disillusioned. Whoop de doo. Meanwhile, we actually got some guys out of Guantanamo Bay. Unfortunately it happens that they were possibly some of the worst of the lot, but we'll see if things change.

relatively irrelevant global warming bullshit.

Actually one of the best things he's done recently. It's a real milestone at only the merest GDP cost. Pretty much everybody who doesn't have their head up their ass, or live in West Virginia (which wouldn't be saved by a reversal of this decision), has praised it.

You also didn't mention the President's historic order against LGBT discrimination by contractors. That's right up there in importance as well.

[austere]

If you're going to state that our goal was basically to spread chaos in the region, I'll have to kindly tell you to fuck off and mind your business. The Bush Administration was the one that needs to be raked over the coals for this mess; Obama just got stuck with it.

You actually believe that there is only a small level of bipartisanship don't you? Yes the goal under Bush was indeed to spread chaos, but in a very controlled fashion as this Time article stated in 2006:

http://content.time.com/time/world/arti ... 25,00.html

Arab leaders, moreover, have learned to be suspicious of Rice's revolutionary ambitions — just a year ago, she spoke of spreading "creative chaos" in the region. Iraq, after all, is Exhibit A of the Bush Administration's "New Middle East," and it's a bloody mess that is growing worse by the day. Now, for Act 2, the Arabs are being told to sit quietly while Israel tears Lebanon apart, after months of watching it slowly throttle Gaza through a U.S.-backed economic blockade, and then bomb it for weeks on end.

...

Develop a Plan B

The current U.S. position is based on the assumption that Israel's military campaign will, if not destroy Hizballah's military capability, badly bloody the organization and force it to accept what it might deem as a surrender. The "cease-fire" that would eventually be agreed would then amount a mopping up operation. But it's growing increasingly unlikely that those battlefield objectives can be realized, and if not, any cease-fire would probably not be on the terms the Administration is seeking. More often than not, diplomacy results in second-best solutions. And if Hizballah survives the Israeli offensive as a fighting force, preventing a recurrence of the crisis would require engagement with the movement's external backers.

Hizballah not only survived but thrived due to their victory in 2006 thanks to strong backing by Syria. So what was plan B? Look no further than the grand "redirection" leaked out by the giant Seymour Herch:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007 ... ntPage=all

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

...

The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.

I do recommend reading the full article by the way. It's long but your comments on the middle east will be worthless without at least studying it.

By the time Bush had failed in the middle east, the same think tanks that advise Obama took the job over. The grand strategy of good ol' Zbig was employed. Guess what they recommended? Even more chaos Your government created this mess in Iraq and now want to dictate how its cleaned up? And I'm to fuck off and mind my own business?

In my small-ass ignorant town, folks are calling him the Worst President Ever, which is obviously ridiculous, but he's making it pretty easy for the small-minded

Well, let me put it this way, because you're covering the "Obama" but not "& co." part. I know Obama isn't the sole blame for all the trouble in the world. We can look at a very detailed world map, the water bodies, logistical tracks and natural resources and realise that a single man obviously can't hold all of this detail in his mind and formulate a strategy and on top of all of this, make decisions based on it and changing events. For this, there are a large amount of think tanks that feed the state department foreign and domestic policy. In the end though, Obama has to sign on the dotted line. The buck stops with Obama and he gets the blame for not reversing "long standing policies" in time and in many cases doubling down on destructive policies. Would he risk alienating his own bakers? Oh yes, but why the fuck did he take the job promising "Change" you could "believe in"? Instead, everyone got the same crap as usual.

Obama put the entire blame of the Benghazi attack on Clinton and Petraeus. They were simply carrying out policies Obama had already agreed to. That's just how it works, Petraeus was leading the CIA and Clinton the state department they answered to. Obama wasn't going to offer his own head so he cleaned out that chain of command.

Now Clinton is back-biting Obama and tried to bait him into trying to triple-down on supporting terror in Syria. He seems to have finally snapped and buried the idea that a moderate[ly Islamist] "rebel" force exists in Syria that can be armed and that can defeat the government. That's step one. Step two is to distance himself from statements made by Clinton that Maliki should step down and instead try to restablise Iraq thanks to policies he agreed to in Syria that resulted in its destablisation. Kerry is currently in Iraq and I've got no doubt he's there to deliver an ultimatum not indicate coming military support.

Everyone criticising Obama in the media is deflecting the real reasons for the utter chaos the middle east is facing. If there's one "master mind" to blame, it's the American-Polish grand strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski who innovated the use of Islamists for geostrategic shifts in the favour of the US, but he doesn't make the decisions. Obama does. That's why I'll continue to attach Obama's name to all of these events, he's not going to divorce himself from the blame he partly deserves.

[austere]

An illustrative caption via @seatofmars off twatter: "A small minority of Muslim extremists execute an apostate, while a large crowd of peaceful Moderates enjoy it"



As far as I can tell no one is forcing them to watch. The photo claims that it is from the countryside of Aleppo in Syria. This is why we can't have nice things.

[Bananamatic]

A lot of people enjoy watching sick shit on Liveleak and worldstarhiphop too
I know I do

[Lord Satori]

An illustrative caption via @seatofmars off twatter: "A small minority of Muslim extremists execute an apostate, while a large crowd of peaceful Moderates enjoy it"

(image)

As far as I can tell no one is forcing them to watch. The photo claims that it is from the countryside of Aleppo in Syria. This is why we can't have nice things.

Disgusting. It's because those huge crowds are there in the first place that these things happen. Also there are like 10+ people there carrying multiple weapons. Wtf, you're executing one guy.

[jonny5]

A lot of people enjoy watching sick shit on Liveleak and worldstarhiphop too
I know I do

+1

Don't forget /b/

[neorichieb1971]

I think Islam is just like any other people/place/race.. good and bad.

If your talking wars and politicians... Just turn off the media. Let them kill each other and let us all be ignorant about it. I just don't see any intervention thats going to change anything. Britain can't get over the USA calling our sport soccer, Japanese men treat women like pets and Islam will be at war until the end of time. Some things will never change.

[Jonathan Ingram]

And in my opinion, if they are guests in the nation that have let them in, rioting over a cartoon is not the best way to say "thanks for letting us get out of our cruddy countries, and live in this nice Western country".

How convenient. Let's export capital worldwide with the intention of extracting monopoly superprofits for our own benefit, construct sweatshops all around the world and make people in places like Bangladesh work for $37 a month so we could afford our Nike and H&M shit on the cheap, but if they come to our country, it's "be thankful for being let in or GTFO".

I just don't see any intervention thats going to change anything. Britain can't get over the USA calling our sport soccer, Japanese men treat women like pets and Islam will be at war until the end of time. Some things will never change.

Things do change. Tens of billions of Saudi and Qatar oil money as well some CIA support on the side elevated the militant Islamist groups to the position they could never dream of reaching a few decades prior. In Afghanistan the aid for everyone's favorite gun-toting Allahu Akbar types kept pouring in even after the trashing they received at the hands of the secular government's forces during the Battle of Jalalabad. Mohammad Najibullah would attest to that if he hadn't been castrated and hanged.

[Lord Satori]

I completely forgot about their whole thing with Islam's founder, Mohammad. They seem to hold him in higher regard than Allah, their actual god, which really pisses me off. You don't see Christians naming all their boys Jesus.

[President_Obama]

Anyone remember Mahabharat? I used to love watching that the day after a bit of raving. What religion was this shit?

[Xyga]

You don't see Christians naming all their boys Jesus.

I wonder, how many Christian Hispanic men have been named Jesus over 2000 years ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A

[BulletMagnet]

They seem to hold him in higher regard than Allah, their actual god, which really pisses me off.

I'm not Catholic, but I seem to recall that they're frequently encouraged to pray to either Mary or one of the saints instead of God himself - someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

[BIL]

Jebus is interchangeable with the man upstairs and their friendly ghost pal in many Christian doctrines anyway! One up the bum no harm done as they say in choir practice.

[Lord Satori]

You don't see Christians naming all their boys Jesus.

I wonder, how many Christian Hispanic men have been named Jesus over 2000 years ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A

I've always considered it a different name because of a different pronunciation, but that's just me.

Jebus is interchangeable with the man upstairs and their friendly ghost pal in many Christian doctrines anyway!

This pisses me off as well. Jesus goes from being a saint during his lifetime, to "Wow, he must've been the son of god because his body is gone" (even though he probably wasn't even dead), to "ZOMG JESUS AND GOD ARE ONE AND THE SAME". So basically they consider God to be his own son. I don't know what's up with his family, but there's something wrong with that.

[Mortificator]

I've always considered it a different name because of a different pronunciation

Different pronunciation than what, English? They didn't exactly speak English in ancient Jerusalem.

[BulletMagnet]

If memory serves "Jesus" itself is something of a messy leftover from the translation into Greek; his given Hebrew name was either Jeshua or Jehoshua, though it's impossible to know for sure which one. Presumably Christianity at large decided to keep Jesus because there are one or two others in the Bible who go by the Hebrew names.

[DEL]

BulletMagnet wrote:

I'm not Catholic, but I seem to recall that they're frequently encouraged to pray to either Mary or one of the saints instead of God himself - someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

You are right. Often described as 'Mary Worship'. The Catholic religion is more pagan than we are led to believe.








https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbxov7CVi8
Apologies for using RT as a link.

[BryanM]

Which is a pretty good policy to have. You don't wanna be one of those pesky god botherers do you?!¿

[President_Obama]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNykvWgy2OA

[Moniker]

I'm not Catholic, but I seem to recall that they're frequently encouraged to pray to either Mary or one of the saints instead of God himself - someone correct me if I'm wrong on that.

Raised Catholic. Praying to Mary or the saints isn't worship in the same way as a prayer to Padre, Fili or Spiritu Sancte. It's more a matter of 'honoring' them. Interlocution is close but not quite right either, even though that's the way it reads if you're looking at the actual language of the prayer. It's more that Mary or a saint represents a godly virtue, so you're sort of praying to a particular facet of God. That's how my catechism characterized it anyway.

Protestants do largely view this type of prayer as idolatry, however.

[Moniker]

You don't see Christians naming all their boys Jesus.

I wonder, how many Christian Hispanic men have been named Jesus over 2000 years ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZR58d77a4A

I've always considered it a different name because of a different pronunciation, but that's just me.

Indeed in America, and apparently most non-hispanic countries, it is viewed as poor taste to name yourself after God. Cf. "He's Got Game." However, Catholics are required to name their children after canonized saints, which makes it pretty similar to Muslim naming conventions. Aren't many Muslims named "Allah," to press your point. Also, plenty of Christians and Muslims named Christian/Christina or Islam, respectively.

Jebus is interchangeable with the man upstairs and their friendly ghost pal in many Christian doctrines anyway!

This pisses me off as well. Jesus goes from being a saint during his lifetime, to "Wow, he must've been the son of god because his body is gone" (even though he probably wasn't even dead), to "ZOMG JESUS AND GOD ARE ONE AND THE SAME". So basically they consider God to be his own son. I don't know what's up with his family, but there's something wrong with that.

Pre-revision, Matthew never declared Jesus to be God, and Jesus never refers to himself as such in any of the Gospels. That's why there are Unitarians (probably the most logically-minded of Christians). The idea of Jesus being fully God and Man, and the Holy Trinity in general is a theologically rich subject, however. Not that I believe any of the nonsense, but a very many intelligent people (I encourage you to read Milton) were able to reconcile these conundrums in very elegant, and dare-I-say admirable ways.

Tl;dr - you're talking shit. Do some listening.

[BIL]

Plz properly arrange those quote tags before I get disappeared by the C of E, Moniker-san >_>

[Moniker]

Plz properly arrange those quote tags before I get disappeared by the C of E, Moniker-san >_>

Yeah, sorry about that. Fixed.

[Lord Satori]

Tl;dr - you're talking shit. Do some listening.

I knew when I was posting that I wasn't being accurate, and I already knew that Jesus didn't declare himself God. (he never even said he was the messiah, iirc) My point was that his status has been exaggerated ridiculously over the years. Though I didn't know that Catholics were required to name their children after saints. That's an interesting bit of info.