Spring is in the air! Young hearts turn to thoughts of love, and romance flowers everywhere, even in the darkness of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. A young couple there, their union frowned upon by their families, eloped to marry anyway, a gesture I find wonderfully romantic and sweet. I’m a little biased — my own parents were discouraged from marrying by their families, and they too ran off to marry without permission (in liberal Idaho, in their case). I wouldn’t be here without youthful affection and passion!
Alas, no such happy result comes from a region poisoned by fanatical Islam. Mullahs seized the rebellious couple, issued a religious decree, and had them shot on the street in front of a mosque, symbol of their religion of peace.
I think the true symbol of their religion should be a pair of bloody corpses, dreams dead, hopes destroyed, all joy crushed.
Spring will still come and the poppies will blossom, and the air will warm and the sun will shine—but where is the meaning of it all when minds are shackled and love is shunned, when happiness is replaced with regimented dogmatism? A season of rebirth should be accompanied by an expansion of ideas and feelings and human connections, not repression. There can be no springtime for the Taliban, except as a series of dates on a calendar.
Islam is in a way much more fucked up than Christianity,with their blatant disregard for rights of women or gays.In Islam,you can really find an excuse to shoot/behead/murder anyone,anytime you like.
Very fitting in this context also this,which I linked to in another thread earlier:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3729,n,n
How incredibly sad. Religion of peace… pft.
That’s just f’ed up. Makes me more than a little freaked out to know that there are fundies here in the US who would love to institute such a theocratic nightmare.
I’m perpetually mystified that ordinary folks don’t see the connection between fundamentalist actions here and abroad. What can be done?
First I laughed at the comedic build-up and ironic twist, then raged at the inanity and senseless violence. ARGH! Damn you, PZ, damn you for playing with my damn emotions!
Sigh. Yet another article for my scrapbook titled ‘Why I Hate Religion’.
Wow, what a depressing story.
Islam is no more fucked up than Christianity; the same justifications can and have been quoted by fundamentalist Christians from the Bible.
The difference is cultural, not religious. Western cultures have become increasingly secular, and civil rights can be tracked with that fairly well. As the culture became more relaxed, religion lost power and influence. But there are lots of fundamental Christians who would love to have the death penalty for homosexuality, and a huge part of the abortion debate is actually about how abortion laws often allow teenage girls to have abortions without the consent of their parents. The difference is that Western culture doesn’t allow them to be in charge.
This is one reason (amongst many) that the so-called War on Terror can’t be won by soldiers. Soldiers play a vital role, but they can’t change the culture – at most they can create the conditions where change can occur. Cultural change happens through education and empowerment, particularly of women but of men as well.
I can’t even imagine the thought process that goes through the mind of a person who would shoot an eloping couple. How absolutely twisted inside are they to do so with a feeling of righteousness?! With all the advances that have been made for civil liberties and equality in this world, it is truly sad that this particular culture so doggedly holds on to their horrible persecutions.
This is the kind of shit that wouldn’t happen in America unless it was a gay or lesbian couple in the Bible belt.
Now this is an example of good critical thinking skills.
Only through people like PZ who share with us such atrocities and all others willing to stand against such tyranny can we even hope to prevent them here at home.
Better dead than wed?
Does the parent think there is less shame in committing murder than in having a kid get married against one’s wishes?
Truly fucked up.
Just makes the pit of the stomach sink to read that. It makes me really glad I was born in America and not in the middle east.
I don’t understand how this could ever take place. Why would anyone take a life, let alone the life of someone you love?
Of course. Human life haz zero or less value. Only dominance is what matters for this sort of vermin.
Mark my words, this blog entry and comment thread does not exist. Because as we all know PZ only ever criticizes Christianity and never disses Islam. Because he’s afraid of Jihad… or something.
I know this must be true because it is the constant and repeated complaint of Christians who post here. Therefore this entire web page is a figment of your damned atheist liberal imaginations.
Dreadfully poetic
They do not love. They own
they can not love. Only relationship they are capable of is the of owner and his property.
Of course, now I have Springtime for Hitler stuck in my head. Thank you for that.
In other news, I would have been surprised if they HAD gotten to safety. The only way we would even hear about it is because they got caught and slaughtered. If they had succeeded, word would never have gotten out. It’s horrible, but it’s most likely true.
(Yay! I made HTML tags out of logic!)
Afghanistan is a lost cause, it always has been.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/04/13/afghan.html
If they didn’t want to be treated like shit by their leaders, they would have taken care of it on their own by now. They haven’t. Doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Pull out, and send help and security where it is wanted. Fuck Afghanistan.
@KemaTheAtheist
It’s a minor point but… America isn’t exactly a haven of freedom either.
So sad!
How can that be possible…
Religious fanatics are all the same: enemies of humanity and all that is good and beautiful.
Lady Renae,
Im not sure if I get your point here.
Why are so many commenters here badmouthing the parents as being responsible for these murders, when it was the mullahs who ordered the shootings?
From the BBC story:
The same could be said of just about everyone in that province.
I have to agree with RobertDW.
While all religions are fundamentally irrational, I do not think it is possible to make the generalisation that “Islam” is more fucked than Christianity, or look at atrocities like this in isolation from other factors.
I know Muslims who are secular progressive and in most respects rational, and who not only respect human rights but fight for it. The present secretary of Amnesty International is a Muslim.
On the other hand there are Christians who if they were given absolute power in a situation as the Taliban have would act in exactly the same way against gays, atheists or others they don’t like as the Talian do.
Can you imagine what US society would really be like if a Ken Ham or one of his cronies was given absolute power over a region or people?
As RobertDW points out, what makes the difference is a strong secular society that resects human rights that has acted to curtail the extremes of religion and other things that act against a tolerant rational society.
It is also untrue that all the forms of Islam in Afghanistan have always been the most extreme. For many years before 1979 Afghanistan was a comparitively tolerant society with a substantial minority of Budhists and other non Muslims.
And remember how the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghansitan came to power – when Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Margoret Thatcher and other “Christian” leaders were happy to support them and destroy Afghanistan in the quest for a win against the Soviets.
Another toxic manifestation of fundamentalism.
This is truly heartbreaking – and frustrating for any lover of liberty. My husband and I eloped 6 years ago, but to try and imagine doing it under the fear of death as punishment?? These people must have really loved each other. It’s so very sad.
Mind you, there are all sorts of horribly depressing things happening over there every day. Is the answer really just to pull and let them all suffer for the beliefs of some? I would like to think that this country and these people can be helped.
The Christianists like to point at these stories as some kind of a defense for Christianity. (“See? We’re not barbaric like them!”) It’s not. If they had their way, the Christian Taliban would send their own moral police to execute women and gays in the streets, just to send a message to the rest of them to not forget their place.
This is not the only sad news in the past few days. Some of you may remember the news item that Taleban enforced a complete ban on girls’ going to school earlier this year. Now
Pakistan has passed a Sharia deal with the Taleban in Swat, by way of their President’s signing a controversial bill introducing Islamic Sharia law to the Swat region. A BBC report today mentions:
It, therefore, does not come as a surprise that:
I feel sad for the common people out there, and even frustrated because I cannot see any viable solution for this Taleban-cancer on humanity. When religion poisons minds, it does a thoroughly good job of it.
And then there are opportunistic parasites, like some of the major world powers, to whom this is just politics and maneuvers, like some insane game… so that they will not come forward to help.
Newfie @ 20,
Arent you forgetting a few things here? Like,the religious indoctrination,peer and social pressure,opium agriculture,the fact that the Afghanis are not one monolithic faction of people,pretty much everything?
“They” cant take care of it,as much as Cubans today,Germans in 1933,Russians in the 40s,and any other oppressed populace couldnt “take care of it”.
Out of passion. I don’t know the people who did this awful thing, but they are human beings. They are moral creatures, perfectly capable of love. They have a great passion for their religion and the majesty of its law, which for them is part of a great seamless garment of existence. It gives them a clear sense of what is seemly and what is evil. These butchers are upright citizens in their culture and desired, amongst other things, to set an example for those who would sin.
We know these people. They are all around us. Models of rectitude, their morality distorted by scripture. Of course, they are capable of doublethink. Hypocrisy might be the only way they can function in society. Which is why we have firebreathing preachers who turn out to be gayers and staffers for ‘family’ groups who subscribe to kiddy porn.
Of course in a land where only religious and not secular law extends, we end up with this kind of barbarism. Lovers shot to death on the authority of priests. But the that which divides these mullahs and a baptist preacher is as thin as cigarette paper. Only want of opportunity prevents the one from becoming the other.
Wait till they take entire pakistan. Then strike hundred of western cities off the map ( do they have more nukes than 100 ?) Then thehelp will come. In the form of a nuclear broadside.
Well, of course they were shot! They were not of correct marrying age. He was 21 and she was 19. A proper Muslim marriage is between a man of 50+ and a child of 12.
Please don’t foist your Western ideals and judgments on them. They’re just trying to preserve the sanctity of pedo… I mean marriage.
Christianity is inherently better than Islam in this manner? Check out the list of prohibitions for Bob Jones University students.
No New Age, jazz, rock and country music. No Contemporary Christian music (e.g., Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, WOW Worship, etc.). No Televisions, DVD/videotape players and headphones.
An email account is provided for each student. Due to the flood of objectionable content coming through outside email services, students may use only this filtered campus email system.
All wireless Internet access that bypasses the BJU filters is prohibited. This includes accessing the Internet via cellular phone services (e.g., TMobile, Sprint, Verizon, etc.) and WiMax.
Residence hall students may not watch videos above a G rating when visiting homes in town and may not attend movie theaters.
And further:
Dishonesty, lewdness, sensual behavior, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversion of any kind, pornography, illegal use of drugs, and drunkenness all are clearly condemned by God’s Word and prohibited here. Further, we believe that biblical principles preclude gambling, dancing, and the beverage use of alcohol.
We want students to have wholesome social opportunities in a setting that provides accountability for biblical requirements of purity. It is with this in mind that we chaperon campus activities where men and women students are present and require a chaperon when students date or interact in a mixed group off campus.
It seems to me this isn’t all that removed from the society desired by the Taliban.
@34: No pun intended, but holy shit! So, basically, BJU is intent on keeping students deaf, dumb, and blind to the world around them.
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
inherently perhaps not, but we potty-trained them ti be better.
Whether such thing can be done with islam is an open question
This is incredibly sad. Incredibly. The saddest part, by far, is that the citizens’ (and students of the university mentioned in #34) minds are so indoctrinated and imprisoned that they don’t really stand to fight the fascism of their “peaceful” religion (and school). Sad indeed…
Why would anyone go to that school? Stupid religion.
“They” cant take care of it,as much as Cubans today,Germans in 1933,Russians in the 40s,and any other oppressed populace couldnt “take care of it”.
It takes centuries to ‘take care of it’ without outside help. I think of my native Britain. Portions of the country were still fighting a religious war only a decade ago and the divide continues, though hopefully growing weaker.
The difference can be summed up in two words: “the Enlightenment”.
In other words, the only reason Christians no longer (most of the time anyway) can behave the same way, as they once did, is that secular states, their polities and policies the legacies of the Enlightenment (or even entirely a product of it, as is the US), prevent them from doing so.
there isn’t much that I can say except all religions are a disease on humanity and it is to bad there isn’t a inoculation against them.
How can these people be the same species? The plasticity of the brain is neither good nor bad, only thinking makes it so.
I’d wager most students go willingly and out of love for their Lord. Because they believe it will equip them for the fight against a godless world. Their ministers, their parents, their church communities all validated them, told them that they had made a righteous choice.
Let’s not judge the students too harshly. I suspect most of these youngsters know no better. It will take gentle handling to show them another way. And where gentle handling does not work, a righteous bitchslapping by Pharyngulites just might.
@ 19: You stole the thought from my head. *Hums Springtime for the Taliban in Afghanistan*
#30
Not forgetting. That is exactly why Afghanistan is lost. There is no moderate voice there. Change has to come from within, and there is no serious movement for change. Karzai, is basically a Mayor of Kabul… with little control even in that city. Contain the country as best you can, but stay out of the hellforsaken place.
F*ck tha religious police
Islam certainly IS a more violent religion than Christianity, both in theory and practice. The justification for this can be found in their respective holy books, as well as in the teachings of their respective leaders. The enactment of these prescriptions, however, relies heavily on the relative destitution of the lives of the religious. In a less prosperous nation, fundamentalism (and especially the violent kind) runs unchecked to a greater extent than it does in a more prosperous nation.
This does not mean that being muslim makes one violent. It means that violence is justified more easily by islamic teaching.
I really cannot believe that the Taliban have been allowed to institute Sharia law. I haven’t been as upset at world events since Bush won his second term.
…but not to their face.
True, but the main point was the “not in the middle east.”
America is getting better though thankfully. Hopefully, the trend from the last few months is going to hold.
It gets worse. It’s parents directly not just the system.
http://www.mosnews.com/society/2009/04/13/shortskirtt/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1099447/Saudi-court-tells-girl-aged-EIGHT-divorce-husband-50-years-senior.html
I thought the main issue was characterizing that portion as “Britain”.
Containment is not possible. They already metastasized to pakistan and all neighboring countries. We either fight them there than here.
Laura (#21)
There’s nothing wrong with being self-critical – but it’s necessary to use objectivity and rationality when judging all human actions. Suggesting that state-sponsored and socially-approved murder of that young couple – is in any way comparable with our very liberal freedom-loving society is way off the mark and an insult to those who gave their lives to give us the freedoms that we so take for granted now.
Work to make America better but there’s no need to compare us to that kind of stomach-turning depravity and ugliness to do so. There are differences between cultures. Some are better than others. We are very lucky to be born into a culture where our net happiness in life is likely to be significantly greater than 99% of all humans who ever lived. Certainly criticize, but give credit where it’s due.
errata :We’d better fight them there than here.
@ Steve LaBonne:
“In other words, the only reason Christians no longer (most of the time anyway) can behave the same way, as they once did, is that secular states, their polities and policies the legacies of the Enlightenment (or even entirely a product of it, as is the US), prevent them from doing so.”
This. A thousand times over.
Why do you always have to pick on the Catholics? You wouldn’t DARE say that about Islam…
@30 and 45: I will take issue, however, with the claim that opium production is inherently part of the problem. We buy opium from Turkey and refuse to buy it from Afghanistan. Both nations are dominated by islam (albeit to different degrees).
Afghanistan produces superior opium poppies to those produced by Turkey, and a ton more of it too.
If only we would buy this opium for use in our analgesics, we would provide legitimate economic support to Afghanistan. This would stand in stark contrast to the current situation, in which the opium fuels the worldwide heroin trade instead of the pharmaceutical industry. We would be wrestling control of this important and potentially mishandled crop away from Taliban drug lords.
Similar moves could be made regarding the current situation in South America and Mexico, where the illegal trade in marijuana contributes to the gang violence which is now spilling over the border into the USA. We need to reform our drug policy domestically, so that we can combat violence abroad and curb prohibition at home.
I’m posting from Afghanistan right now. The flowers are indeed in bloom. There is a rather lovely patch of tulips on the side of a steep hill that I particularly enjoy. They also remind me of how messed up this place really is, as they are just inside a barbed-wire fence with mine field signs hung all over it. I plan on snatching a picture of the flowers behind the sign and posting it on my blog for all to see as soon as the spring showers settle down a bit. At least the flowers will stay beautiful, I doubt anyone will brave their lives to pick them.
You wonder what the other “sensible” religions think when they hear and read of such insane barbarism from other “like’ relgions. Oh no, we are not that primitive or savage. Our religion is one of tolerance and compassion. That couple will never experience that regard from a “peaceful” religion, but has paid the price for being born into it.
The only way to end the evil influence of religion is proper education, stimulating children to think for themselves. We should not send more soldiers to Afghanistan, but more teachers.
Religion of peace, my ass. Do they really think they’re fooling anyone?
What is the value of the market for legal analgesics versus illegal heroin? I cannot imagine that selling for legal opiates would bring in anywhere near the same income (or require nearly the same size production).
No offense Drosera, but I don’t think teachers will last very long over here.
…but not to their face. (with reference to “F*ck tha religious police”)
And why not?
Who gave them authority to rule the majority?
F*ck tha religious police
In the mind of this “religion of peace” nuts this is a clear case of self defense. (And your parents example -with the conspicuos result we are all enjoying- just gives strength to this view!)
boonxeven @ 59
It’s a wonder they did not uproot those flowers and be sure they would never grow again.After all, flowers represent peace and beauty, and to grow in such a hellhole is a mark of endurance despite the savageness all around them. What a contrast in disparate symbols of nature. Flowers are natural wonders of the earth, and the terrorists want to put as many bodies into it. Of course the flowers are not aware of what is nourishing their growth. And neither do the flowers comprehend the explosive death beneath them.
@60…I don’t know what world you live in Drosera, but the world I am in contains an Afghanistan that is currently entrenched in dogmatic belief structures and jihadism. Sending teachers there would just result in more kidnappings and more mullah-mediated hate-speech towards western idealogy. We need to shut the mullahs up and limit indoctrination before we can present the alternatives of enlightenment and democracy. This is done through limited military force and, most importantly, diplomacy and infrastructural support.
I agree that soldiers are not the only thing Afghanistan needs. But stability has to precede secularism in Afghanistan. Soldiers, plus economic relief and reduced government corruption, are tools for ensuring stability. It won’t be pretty, but it may have to be done. See my ideas above re: the opium trade in Afghanistan.
pffff… ive watched sitcoms about married life, sounds like they did them a favor
@62: bear in mind the actual poppy farmer in Afghanistan doesn’t see the market value of the heroin. They just sell poppies for not much. It would cost less than the current war does to just buy up all the opium poppy production and process it into medical opiates. We could use it to move current heroin addicts onto medically supervised heroin, destroying the market for the illegal stuff.
What a tragedy, and such an easily avoidable one too. All they had to do was to mind their own business. I can not be kind about this sort of evil and insanity. They are barbarians. They don’t see that their religion/ideology is extremely harmful to both individuals and entire societies. We are not perfect either, but at least we do not let religious monsters kill people whenever they like, we do not torture and we do not execute our criminals anymore.
Yes, I knew it wasn’t a very practical proposal.
Enjoy the wild tulips while you’re there. Afghanistan has a fascinating flora, I wish I could have a look myself (and I could say the same thing about Somalia, another country spoiled by the presence of too many murderous lunatics).
@62 “What is the value of the market for legal analgesics versus illegal heroin? I cannot imagine that selling for legal opiates would bring in anywhere near the same income (or require nearly the same size production).”
#69 has it right. The farmers are bullied into selling opium for cheap, and the profits are reaped by the Taliban and other groups. These profits then fund terrorist/jihadist factions.
I do not agree with SAWells, however, that we could use opium poppies to move current heroin addicts onto medically supervised heroin. We already have methodone for that, and it usually works better than just weaning addicts off heroin.
The plan would be to buy off their poppies with the condition that they revert a good deal of their farms back to grapes, raisins, or even hashish. We would offer protection from militant druglords during this transition period. The end result could very well be a more self-sufficient, economically diverse, less corrupt, and generally more stable Afghanistan. Such a transition would take time, of course. But we’ve seen how constructive policy can succeed in Iraq (at least once competent people are running things and they have clear and realistic objectives).
“Well if Love was their only armor…it did no good at all.”
Jill Sobule, “Vrbana Bridge.”
Now it sounds like you’re not just talking about sourcing the supply for current legal opiate production, but of hugely expanding the production of legal opiates as a strategy in drug treatment. That’s a much more radical proposal, and one that simply isn’t going to fly anytime soon (however rational it may be).
Part of their willingness to do this is the unshakable belief that they are sending their victims to gawd sooner. To them it’s just a punishment, not the senseless murder that we reality based folks view it as.
These whackjobs honestly think they’re doing these kids a favor by preventing them further “sins” during their unfortunate lives.
Drosera @ 60
No snide remark intended, but how come we don’t have to send teachers to Norway or New Zealand?
The only problem with that idea is that they’d probably just be shot.
So Tim Janger is either Burning Umbrella or AnthonyK, or perhaps both.
The Loyalist majority would disagree with you. Yes, there are questions of nationality and human rights tied up in there, but religion remains the primary engine of conflict. The fear of a religious majority losing its power to a demographically and politically resurgent religious minority.
If you all want to help change things from the inside, donate to the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan. They need all the help they can get.
http://www.rawa.org/index.php
I’m instantly reminded of this. Especially the part about lovers being free to walk in the streets.
There is an unfortunate line that can be drawn between our foreign policy and the spread of insidious Saudi theology.
A smart idea. I think it was David Galula who noted that in counterinsurgency a military clerk wielded more power with his pen than a soldier on the ground, or that a Sergeant-medic was worth a platoon of riflemen. The soft power of policing, training, social affairs and humanitarian aid is something the NATO powers do fairly well and is the resource that President Obama has been calling upon France, Germany et al to wield.
I should add, it’s a translation, so it’s a little bulkier than the original.
So what you’re saying is that the tulips have formed a symbiotic relationship with the landmines. :-)
Holbach@76,
Well, we do have to send teachers to Norway, to teach them to stop killing whales. But that apart, the necessity just appears to be more urgent in Afghanistan. No country is perfect.
For Indus #84
I almost spit my soda onto my keyboard, you caught me off guard.
I wonder what benefit the mines get out of it?
Drosera @ 85
Yes, it is tragic for a country so highly civilized and worthy that it has to resort to the eventual extinction of a species. The same can be said of Japan, another country I regard highly who also is bent on wiping out the decreasing cetacean species. We can only hope that if not by international pressure, then perhaps a regarded realization that they are furthering the extinction of a species, they will quit this practice and permit a species older than us to live unendangered. I will still prefer these two countries over that islamic cesspool any day despite the unnecessary carnage of whales.
Hard power without soft power works rather badyly.
Soft power without hard power doesn’t work at all. (Or at least after the first goon picks up the first board with a nail in it)
T_U_T – Yikes, I hope your #32 was not meant seriously! Pyrrhus would have been proud.
This kind of action and the attitudes that allow/endorse it inform very clearly where the temperament of the judeo christian muslim god came from. These cultures represent an archaic form that is less but still represented in ours.
Robert Estrada
God damn, what a bunch of dicks. I guess this is Islams’ dark ages. What do you do with society that kills a young couple in love and feels righteous about it? I couldn’t imagine how this type of society will ever come along peacefully.
In this case, as in the case of many other conflicts around the world, I’m not sure that religion and nationalism are all that separable.
Earlier Tulse mentioned the rules at Bob Jones University. I think the rules are part of a of scam. Not that the rules don’t actually reflect their own twisted values, but I’m sure that they actually expect and want some students to break these rules. As soon as they break them, the students get kicked out of school and the school retains the tuition. This very thing happened to a co-worker of mine. Her parents sent her to one of these Christian colleges. One night she came back late from a date and was expelled.
unfortunately, incompetence and cowardness of pakistani army( they already lost a large part of the country and were forced to sign a humiliating
capitulationpeace treaty ) makes talibani pakistan a real fearsome possibility. The rest will just follow. Those monsters will inevitably use captured nukes against our cities leaving us the only option of retaliatory strike.As to whether or not Islam is more fucked up than Christ Inanity, I have been thinking about this for a long time. I noticed some time ago that even other atheist Pharyngulites seem to feel that Islam is somehow quantitatively “worse”. I don’t think it is, really, and moderate Islamists suffer tremendously by having their viewpoints promulgated by the most extreme radicals.
It is interesting to note that Islam is 600 years younger than Christ Inanity. So, to be fair, compare modern Islam with the Christian faith circa 15th and 16 centuries, with the crusades and inquisitions and wars of succession.
Of course, all the Abramic death cults are fucked up!
in the 15th century crusades were only a distant memory. Renaissance was at full gear. There were still religious wars, but the scientific revolution was just at the horizon. It was the age of Leonardo da vinci and Copernicus. There is nothing like that in contemporary islam
Oh, and T U T, you are coming across as a paranoid warmonger, all too happy to bring nuclear death to entire nations. I detect a faint, yet utterly unmistakable, whiff of racism to your posts on this thread. Maybe I’ve got you wrong, but you sound unbalanced, bordering on unhinged.
And outright support for the extremists — remember that Pakistan essentially created the Taliban, and there is still a great deal of sympathy for it in some circles of the government.
@ Mike in Ontario, NY
It is unfair to compare modern islam with 16th century christianity, because the moral zeitgeist at that time provided the broader context in which events took place. Age of the religion has nothing to do with it. With your reasoning, we could say that scientology is the most ethical and morally prescriptive of all religions. We KNOW that is not the case.
As I said before, modern islam is to a great degree embedded in horribly impoverished societies, which accounts for some of the disparity between the behaviors of its adherents and the behaviors of christians. But that doesn’t account for all of it. Their texts are much more prescriptive of violence than christian texts. Ultimately, I think that the best index of a religion’s capacity to produce violent adherents is it’s “holy” books. In that respect, islam is more “fucked up” than xtianity.
No, Mike, I am not happy. I live in a capitol of a NATO country, one that joined US in their iraq war. Not right in the center, so if the horrible scenario I wrote would come to happen, I would die a slow cruel death by radiation. Do you really think I am happy to bring nuclear death to entire nations, if my own would be one of them ?
the word you are looking for is ‘scared almost to death’. Because that is how I feel each time I read about taliban advances. day after day week after week
now, tell me whether I am paranoid, or you blissfully ignorant : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/world/asia/14punjab.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hpw
Fuck Islam, fuck Quran, fuck Mohammad. How is that for an insult to Islam?
#34
Ah, I know all about that one. You see, one of my son’s friends was telling about his brother, who drank the Jaysus juice and hooked up with John Hagee’s Cornerstone. Or as I call it, HorrorCrock.
Anyway, the brother apparently met a girl at church he liked, and wanted to date. Well, first they had to ask permission of the church for this. Then they had to agree to a “group date.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t the good kind of group date. All of the males met 2 or 3 chaperones at the church, and the Romeos loaded into the back of a minivan,. Then the chaperones drove around the city to round up the ladies. Girls in the front seat, guys in the back. Dates couldn’t sit next to each other.
Then they went to a Jumpin Jaysus Jubilee, then for coffee to yak about how much they loved Jaysus, no chance to talk about seeing if they might have a chance to love one another. They were not permitted to touch each other in any way.
Then the girls were dropped off. The guys were permitted to take the girls to the door, but not touch her beyond shaking hands in farewell. Then the guys were dropped off.
Now if somehow a couple decided to get married after going through this nonsense enough times, they would have to get the church’s permission to marry.
Needless to say, after living a secular life before getting jesus, the fundie dating experience woke up the kid to ugly reality. He ran from Cornerstone and did not look back.
Anybody who says Christianity is just as bad as Islam has no sense of proportion. Maybe in the past, but today there is an order of magnitude difference.You might as well say the sting of a bee is as bad as the bite of a puff adder. Both are poisonous, but one just hurts while the other kills.
I am in agreement with Richard Dawkins #104. The only fair judge of any religion is by the behavior of its faithful. All the faithful, moderate and extreme, good deeds and bad, considered together and weighed in balance as much as is possibility to do so.
In the world today, there is nothing, nothing, not even among the most rabid of the rabid fundamentalist Christians, that compares, in quality or quantity, to what is happening in Islam.
Maybe Christianity was once just as bad, but that was some time ago. Maybe, without the fetter of liberal, post-enlightenment society, Christianity would again be just as bad, but that is a hypothetical.
If Islam could evolve to be like Christianity is today, and Christianity stayed unchanged, (and both religions remain equally widespread), the world would be ten times a nicer place to live, on average.
Amphliox, I think you are right about the quantity, but not about the quality. Rabid fundamentalist Christian cults include David Koresh, Fred Phelps and all those others. Abortion clinic bombers, gay bashers – outright murderers. You know what they’d do if they gained power. You can see a bit of it in El Salvador – brief outline here http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/11/required_reading_prolife_nation.php. That’s Christians with power.
re #20
“Doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.”
I believe repeating this bullshit should be the definition of inanity.
#85 and #87
You have GOT to be fuckin’ kidding me!
Driving cetacean population towards extinction? Talk about talking out of your ass! What is it with Americans and the holiness of aquatic mammals? One thing’s for sure, it’s got nothing to do with rational thinking and science.
We do not kill whales on sight, the hunt is thorougly regulated, the quotas based on sound population estimates produced by scientists. How, pray tell, is a quota of less than 2000 animals out of a population of 250 000 driving something to extinction?
I rather eat whale meat (rather delicious actually) than factory farmed meat any day. It is healthy as well.
I hate to disagree with Richard Dawkins, but I must. Islam is in itself no better or worse than Christianity. It used to be that Christianity was the ugly religion and Islam the enlightened one; those roles reversed not due to changes in the religion, but changes to the culture.
I’m not trying to paint Islam in a good light here. Do I think fundamental Islamic culture is sick and evil? Yes, I do. But I think the same of fundamental Christian culture. There is nothing I’ve seen in Islam that I haven’t seen advocated by some Christian preachers (that sick basted Phelps comes to mind). The difference isn’t a difference of extreme, but of numbers and power – the fundamentalist Christians are fewer in number and have less power than their Islamic counterparts.
The worst part about branding these acts of examples of their religion (as opposed to their culture) is that it allows an avenue for the behaviour to spread. Notably both Malaysia and Indonesia (the largest Islamic country on Earth) are seeing rising tides of fundamentalism, because (in part) this negative behaviour is being labelled as Islamic rather than, say, Arabic or Afghani.
We can not change the religion. We can change the culture, or more precisely allow the suppressed parts of the culture to emerge, by changing the power balance.
Every time I hear “religion of peace” and Islam (submission) in the same sentence I get a bit of an irony attack.
Sure, it’s peaceful — as long as you submit. Give away your rights, freedoms and even your thoughts. Get on your knees and bow down to the chunk of meteoric rock in the name of an imaginary figure. Is Christianity any different ? Not really.
Both seek to control. If the United States were a theocracy as many wish it were, many more murderers would cloak their crimes in religious zealotry.
#85, #87: this is a science blog, right? A biology blog, even. And you talk about “whales” as “a species”… if you’re that ignorant, no wonder you think they’re all threatened by extinction.
#109 – You are right about Islam in the past, but the Islam of that past really bears very little resemblance to the Islam of today. But I do not think you can make such a distinction between “culture” and “religion”. Religion is a subset of culture, and the two are inextricably linked.
But what exactly is ‘religion’ really? The core beliefs are a set of myths and fantasies. The doctrine merely the accumulated self-serving declarations of generations of despots. The only measure of any religion that bears any relevance to reality is the behavior it inspires among its believers. Nothing more and nothing less. And it is my opinion that the evidence is undisputable that, taken as a whole, the sum total effect of the believers (all of them together) of Islam is several orders of magnitude more harmful than that of Christianity, at this current moment in time.
It is not invalid to separate religions into subcategories, like “fundamentalist” and “moderate” and “enlightened”, but since it is a continuum of behavior, where do you draw the line? If you define it specifically by the behavior itself, then of course, fundamentalist anything will all be exactly the same, because you have defined it that way, and while it is not wrong intellectually to do so, in doing so you easily mask the reality that the cumulative effects are vastly different for each group because you do not account for the prevalence, relative power, the ease with which that subgroup is allowed to act within the cultural milieu, etc.
It is not any individual’s, or group’s, beliefs that matter, as beliefs exist only within the brain of the individual person. The only thing that matters is how they behave, and impact that behavior has on the rest of the world.
T_U_T #99-101: Does Pakistan have the missiles with the range to hit the targets you mention, and if so, how many? And how capable would a Taliban like fundamentalist anti-education anti-science government be in assembling the technology and building more? And how likely would it be that the rest of the world would sit idly by and let them do it? And what is the capability and likelihood of the rest of the world curtailing this capability before any missiles are launched?
Maybe I’m out of date here, but my understanding was that the majority of Pakistan’s arsenal was midrange stuff, aimed at India and China and Afghanistan. I’m sure they have some long range capability, but I’m also fairly certain that all the other nuclear powers know exactly what capability they have in this regard, and possess contingency plans to take it out if need be.
At any rate, even in the event of complete Taliban takeover of Pakistan, although conflict would I think in that case be inevitable, I don’t think we should necessarily jump straight to despair and envision an escalation immediately to nuclear confrontation as the only way things might play out.
On regards the quality vs quantity of “Islam” evil versus “Christian” evil, I think this case is an illustrative point. Both sides call for the murder of homosexuals, atheists, and other outgroups. Both groups call for, and practice, violent aggression against established elements of secular power, etc.
But among Christian fundamentalists, a case like this one, of a relationship opposed by the community/family? Public ostracism and expulsion from the faith group, yes? Social and financial pressure, yes? Murder even, in secret, yes.
But murder brazenly out in the open, with the full official sanction of religious leaders, in full public view, and proudly acknowledged? I know of no Christian fundamentalist equivalent. And in contemporary Islamic culture, this kind of thing is routine.
(I conceded that I could be skirting close to a variant of Godwin’s law here, in that there may well be an example out there I don’t know about)
Re: “What is it with Americans and the holiness of aquatic mammals?”
Have we learned nothing from Star Trek IV?
(I *HATE the registration policy; I can easily forget what I have to say in the time it takes to sign in!)
I would be amazed if Dr. Dawkins has not heard of The Lord’s Army, a pentecostal militia in Africa every bit as bloodthirsty as the Taliban.
No, you’re not paranoid, just gullible.
amphiox #114
Pakistan doesn’t have missile that will reach much further than about 1000 km. However, missiles aren’t the only delivery system available. Take a nuclear warhead, stick it in a container, send it on a ship to any port, put it on a truck, and drive that truck into any city. It’s a lot slower than a missile but probably even more accurate. And if I can think of it, you can be sure the thought has passed through the minds of people who might want to punish the unbelievers.
One of the most dangerous things to do is underestimate an enemy. Anti-science is one thing, but warrior cultures have always been fascinated with weapons. Having a group of warrior fanatics get the necessary education to build bigger and better weapons is entirely possible.
I’ve served in Afgahnistan and it is always sad to see this coming out of this country.
Amphiox, that’s more or less my point. Christians without political power do not brazenly murder. But *with* political power, there’s no doubt in my mind that some sects would. Keeping fundies out of power is essential, no matter which religion’s fundies we’re discussing.
I remember reading “Charlie Wilson’s War” about a year before it was made into a movie. What struck me was the brutality and violence endemic in Afghanistan. As much as one tries to feel sympathy for the underdog, the tribes of the region invariably present themselves as much more barbaric and vicious than even the Communist hordes. Given enough power, it is obvious that the “freedom fighters” that the US supported would have killed orders of magnitude more Afghani people than the Soviets ever did.
It doesn’t even have anything to do with religion, although religion provides a great excuse, but the region known now as Afghanistan is, as Obi-Wan would say, a “wretched hive of scum and villany”.
I say we just build a huge wall around the region, enforce a strict “no planes, rockets, or cricket balls hit too hard” zone, and let the vindictive, vendetta-obsessed yahoos retreat into their little valley strongholds.
savve@108 & amhovgaard@111,
Are you by any chance Norwegian?
Thought so.
Even if certain whale species were not facing extinction, the barbaric way they are slaughtered to provide for your whale steak alone is enough for me to condemn whale hunting. And we all know that this quota system provides a perfect cover to hunt theatened species as well. Learn to live without your whale beef. Yes, I am sure the meat is delicious. Maybe that of your grandmother is too.
threatened species
2 in Dearborn, 2 in Afghanistan…
2 “different” religions?
The distinction is completely trivial.
What counts is that they both certainly know how to show everybody Who’s the Boss, don’t they?
Religion of any stripe is all about dominion, and is the Scourge of the Earth.
RE Islam vs Christianity
Playing devil’s advocate, I must say that as a tourist you are as a rule much more safe in islamic countries like Indonesia and Malaysia than in catholic ones like Colombia and Brazil (if we disregard incidents like the Bali bombings). This is not because there would me more police on the streets in those islamic countries, but because the people really appear less inclined to steal, mug, rape and kill. I believe most of the people in Congo and Rwanda who are so fond of committing atrocities are Christians (but not True ChristansTM, of course).
ampihox:
Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that the Taliban, and Islamic terrorist groups generally, are made up of stupid ignorant people. One of the scarier aspects of it is that engineers (as in, people holding university degrees in civil, mechanical and electrical engineering) in particular are over-represented in terrorist cells. They don’t tend to be the suicide bombers, that’s true, but that’s largely because their cells recognise the value the engineers provide and don’t send them out on suicide bombing missions. Instead, they tend to design the bombs and IEDs.
Furthermore, if they assumed power in Pakistan, it’s reasonable to assume the current existing trained scientists and technicians who look after the nuclear weapons will do what they are told by the terrorist nutcase with the guns.
I’m not saying that the Taliban would use nukes if they got control of Pakistan. But you can bet your arse that they would have the capability.
[citation needed]
I’m not a professional researcher, so I tend to rely on Google to find again snippets that I read once some time before. Here’s the first one I found. :)
http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellanea/archive/2008-02-18-engineers-vs-sociologists.html
For the more serious version, try this one: http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf
Hmmm – Emmett, I just posted two links for the citation you requested, but it got held for moderation; we’ll see if they turn up.
But in the meantime, google “Engineers of Jihad”. For further reference, and to expand past Islamic terrorists, it’s well known that communist terror cells in Europe were sourced mainly from universities. (Find your own references, please… this really is established knowledge)
Even if this turns out to be the case, I think the more likely explanation for the disproportion would be that it’s the religious people choosing engineering rather than it being engineers choosing religion.
Or, if it is the latter, perhaps it’s because the religious recruiters targeted people with the skills they needed.
Wowbagger, you are right – it’s a mixture of both of the explanations you provide that is posited in the study I found.
What it comes down to though is that Islamic terrorist groups do have access to the engineering expertise they need for the tasks they take on. Just ask the soldiers serving in Iraq about the expertise that goes into making IEDs, for example.
And they also seem to be over-represented (or at least are more vocal) in creationist circles. Coincidence?
You know what else are over represented in terrorists cells?
Assholes.
T U T, with apologies for my harsh tone toward you, I am no wide-eyed Pollyanna blinded by optimism. I read the Times article you linked me to, but I just don’t buy into all the fear-mongering. What you’re advocating is the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. See how well THAT is working out? The Bush/Cheney war has done nothing but increase the levels of fear, hatred, poverty, and instability, giving rise to more terrorism. It’s like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.
“Fighting them there” is a perverted mantra. Fear-mongering and manipulation of people’s biases in nationalistic fervor is how governments justify obscene levels of “defense” spending. Our best defense against real, actual terrorists is good old-fashioned police and intelligence work. We need to go back to treating terrorism as a law enforcement issue instead of a military one. Build trust, infiltrate, monitor, arrest, try, convict, and imprison.
And I disagree with Richard Dawkins in his assessment that Islam is worse than Christ Inanity. It is merely a matter of which was worse in which periods in history. I would agree insofar as one seems a whole lot worse than the other at this moment. I would say the difference is measured in degrees, not orders of magnitude.
It is just a working paper on the Oxford U. website: they never got it published it in a peer-reviewed journal. After being widely excoriated for it, Hertog says (in an interview with IEEE Spectrum magazine): “Looking back, we never should have put the paper on the Web. It put us on the map, but not in the way we wanted to be.” and “Look, we did not say engineers have a terrorist mind-set … we said that engineers tend to be politically to the right and more conservative than other graduates. You can therefore infer that their radical fringe is closer to those of religious groups.”
Nevertheless, I’ve given it a quick peek. I’ll read it in detail when I get time. Still, I have a few nit-picks.
First, in their sample, between 48% and 69% have higher education (depending on whether the 78 for whom they have no educational information is included), and they note that educated people in general are over-represented in militant groups, but then seem to go on to compare the proportion of engineers (their definition of “engineer” includes computer science and architecture!) in the sample with the general population (in their home countries, corrected for the popularity of the different degrees there) and find that engineers are 2-4 times more likely than the general population to be jihadis. Oddly, they don’t seem to do the same calculation for all the other degrees, nor do they lump in loosely-related disciplines: for example, psychiatry is excluded from “medicine”, which seems rather odd if architecture and computer science are “engineering”. In short, their definition of “engineering” is broader than their definition of other fields, and the comparison to the same baseline is not presented for the other fields.
Second, I take issue with their conclusions, their “reason why engineers are over-represented”, which ignores a number of alternative explanations. For example, many of the jihadis in the sample were involved in terrorist activities in countries other than their country of origin, including the 1993 and 9/11 WTC attacks. Who would find it easier to get a visa to enter the target country? If you were Osama bin Ladin, who would you send to the US? Someone from an internationally highly mobile profession who can very easily get a visa, probably.
and
That occurred to me too: maybe engineers are just better jihadis (in terms of producing IEDs or rockets, an engineer is surely a valuable asset), and rise through the ranks faster than uneducated cannon-fodder. Thus professionals useful to the organisation end up being a) targeted for recruitment, and b) higher-profile individuals for whom data are more likely to exist. Engineering is also a very high-status profession in the Islamic world, much more so than in the West, making it more likely that Hamas would brag about their engineers on their website (another source of data for the study). These factors might contribute to the higher prevalence of doctors in the study too (also useful and prestigious).
But, amazingly, Gambetta and Hertog summarily dismiss “Selection based on technical skills” in 4 short paragraphs with reference to the predominantly uneducated working-class make-up of the Saudi insurgency, LTTE, ETA, and the IRA — all domestic terrorist organisations for which the data were gathered in a very different way.
In short, it seems to me like there are confounding factors that should have been identified and corrected for. The authors seem to me far to quick to attribute the “over-representation” to sociological and psychological factors, such as marginalisation, deprivation, frustration, and “engineering mindset”, without correcting, or even identifying, bias in the data or entertaining plausible alternative explanations.
From the abstract:
Oh, science, engineering, and medicine, eh?
Maybe because left-wing violent extremists are usually revolutionaries in their own countries and don’t need visas?
So, far from being “established”, Engineers of Jihad is unpublished and highly controversial.
And, yes, I’m biased (but at least I know it). I’m an engineer, a left-wing liberal atheist engineer. One who’s pretty sick of seeing the Salem Conjecture presented as if it were fact, and engineers constantly dismissed and labeled as creationist wingnuts, with concomitant gratuitous insults; take this, for example (found online):
Where I got my bachelor’s, EE was more-or-less universally accepted to be the toughest programme, closely followed by physics and mathematics, then chemistry, computing, etc. Biology was considered to be at the bottom of the STEM programmes in terms of difficulty, yet I don’t go around posting gratuitous insults and put-downs about biology graduates. Yes, I understand the frustration when some dickhead creationist engineer shoots his mouth off, but why must the reaction be “stupid fucking engineer” when Behe isn’t a “stupid fucking biochemist”, Kenyon isn’t a “stupid fucking biologist”, and Meyer isn’t a “stupid fucking philosopher”?
It seems to me that there’s a entirely unustified latent anti-engineering snobbery and prejudice that is way out of proportion to the relatively small real problem of vociferous creationist wingnut engineers, which I acknowledge, but not to the extent that it should be acceptable to slag us off as a group.
But maybe I’m just hypersensitive.
Thus spake Rev. BigDumbChimp, OM:
That, I can agree with :o)
#135: s/far to quick/far too quick/
to make preemtive war against taliban in 2009 you would need a time machine
if you want call something fear-mongering you will have to show that the fear is not justified.
which war ? In iraq ? Sure. In afganistan ? Afganistan was completely under taliban controll, and guess what ? They started the war. Not Bush.
Just where in my short post I did all tyhse things ?
Not going to work if the terrorists have entire state under their control, with its nuclear arsenal.
DUH !
Let me first say that those who dismiss engineers as stupid are indeed stupid themselves. You know, neuroscientific theory is often implemented by engineers. Building brains on computers doesnt sound like a trade that attracts idiots.
Regarding the war in Iraq:
While the manner in which the war in Iraq was conducted was largely irresponsible (especially at first) and flagrantly violated the constitution (a event that is not unprecedented, btw), a few points being made on this forum are untenable or false.
False assertion #1: The war in Iraq is separate and distinct from the war efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aka the war on terror.
Truth: So-called “insurgent” forces, including Al-qaeda, do not see it this way. Saddam Hussein acted as a “host and patron” of radical islamist forces. British intelligence claimed Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Hussein violated his cease-fire agreement with Kuwait by collecting weapons made illegal by that agreement. He frequently hampered the efforts of inspectors. The taliban do not recognize the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. To them, this is cosmic struggle, not merely an international one. It’s time we all recognized that the borders in the middle east are useless with respect to the war on terror.
False assertion #2: The war in Iraq was unjustifiable.
Truth: The Bush administration was unable to competently justify the war in Iraq, and kept switching mission objectives. Iraqi citizens indeed required liberation from a Baathist Dictator, who employed WMD’s against his own subjects. Despite the largely irresponsible manner in which it was conducted, the war in Iraq, to any critical thinker, was justifiable before it happened. Like I said, that doesn’t mean we went about it the right way.
Let’s keep in the pharyngulic spirit and try to avoid dogma, even if it comes from the left. Some wars are indeed justified. Some things are worth fighting for, or for that matter, against.
As I understand it, Hussein’s secular government was actually quite suspicious of fundamentalist Islam, because it threatened him and the Baath party control of the country. There is, as far as I know, little evidence that there was any substantial radical presence prior to the war — of course, the situation after is far worse.
All true as far as it goes, but hardly provocation for invasion.
True, but that has absolutely nothing to do with justifying the invasion of Iraq, as neither the Taliban nor Al Qaeda had any real presence there prior to the war.
For all that you wrote above, you didn’t actually offer any actual justification.
Let me ask this: Do you think the situation in Afghanistan, the country out of which Al Qaeda was based, would be as bad as it is today if the US had not been distracted by the war in Iraq?
Point 1: Like any dictator, Saddam Hussein was suspicious of anything that could distract those disposed to religious zealotry from worshipping him. But that didn’t stop him from acting as HOST AND PATRON of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, one of the worst of the worst fundamentalist muslim terrorists, not to mention that he met with Bin Laden’s military chief, Saif al-Adel (Muhammad Ibrahim Makawi), who asked him to coordinate the entry of al-Qaeda operatives into Iraq through Syria.
So when you say “There is, as far as I know, little evidence that there was any substantial radical presence prior to the war — of course, the situation after is far worse,” you ignore this fact. Unless you want to argue that these people entered Iraq and met together without the government knowing, then it doesn’t get much more substantial than that.
I would of course argue that a dictator willing to break cease-fires, spit in the face of the UN weapons inspectors, act as host and patron to terrorists, and deploy chemical weapons against his own people, needs to be taken out. Not to mention the fact that he attempted to assassinate the President of the United States!
Perhaps those offenses are not egregious enough for you; after all, we didn’t FIND weapons of mass destruction. And what reason have we to doubt the sincerity of Saddam Hussein? I mean, he TOLD us he wasn’t seeking them.
We are (and should be!) fighting totalitarianism and theocracy wherever it lies. Above you’ll find my justification for operation: Iraqi Freedom, which as I see it is one component of this global struggle against totalitarianism.
Point 2: His violation of the cease-fire was not the only justification for invasion I provided. Consider what I’ve written above to be my further elaboration of my justification.
Point 3: I used the fact that the Taliban do not recognize the border there as evidence that the “wars” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq are all part of the same conflict, not as direct justification for the “invasion”.
And so, regarding your last question, I reject on aforementioned grounds the premise that the war in Iraq was a distraction. They are all part of the same conflict. If we focused on Afghanistan first, Iraq would be worse off during that time. We actually focused on Iraq first, so Afghanistan was worse off during that time. Our military, as huge as it is, cannot tackle everything at once.
I don’t want you to read these justifications as evidence that I agree with the manner in which these conflicts are conducted, btw.
Liar
Reality
So much for the saddam – zarqawi link.
What? People are still arguing for the Saddam/al-Qaeda link? You’ve got to be kidding me.
First of all, don’t call me a liar. “Liar” implies I intend to obfuscate facts. It is not the same as “mistaken”.
Second of all, I was not even mistaken. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was first the leader of Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, a group separate from al-qaeda. His organization joined al-qaeda and became “al-aqaeda in Iraq”.
He knew al-Zarqawi was there, and didn’t even try to deport him, never mind hand him over. Saddam did not, as far as we know, provide weapons, money, or supplies to Osama bin-laden. But he did harbor terrorists in his country.
And so,
I repeat: “…a dictator willing to break cease-fires, spit in the face of the UN weapons inspectors, act as host and patron to terrorists, and deploy chemical weapons against his own people, needs to be taken out. Not to mention the fact that he attempted to assassinate the President of the United States!”
So you are for invading North Korea?
I am not arguing for a substantial link between al-qaeda and Hussein. I realize no one reads long posts except the primary debaters.
But anyway, this is getting off-topic. Main point: Sharia law=bad.
Regarding tendency towards peace:
Secularism > Christianity > Islam
I am not sure about North Korea. Their leader is clearly a theocratic maniac. It would be a much messier job, since NK is much more powerful than Iraq.
Tough decisions all around.
Nonsense, as least as far the “we are” part. Has the US invaded Zimbabwe? Somalia? North Korea? Burma?
So, to be clear, you are not arguing for a substantial link between the organization that attacked the US and the leader of Iraq. If that’s the case, what possible justification was there in the context of responding to 9/11 for invading Iraq?
Theocratic? Are you sure? I thought he was an atheist.
Mike:
This quote from the article was also interesting:
As American drone attacks disrupt strongholds of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas, the insurgents are striking deeper into Pakistan — both in retaliation and in search of new havens.
“Doctor, it hurts when I do this…”
Yes you are, by including Saddam’s meeting with Bin Laden’s military chief in a list of significant events (and also by failing to note that Saddam basically told al-Qaeda to go screw).
Wrong.
To any critical thinker? LOL. Bald assertion, not supportable. The Bush administration used 9/11 as an excuse to do something they’d been planning to since the 1990s. The invasion of Iraq (go ahead, slap whatever PR label you want on it) was a distraction from the war on terror, from tracking down Osama, from liberating Afghanistan from the Taliban, from reaping the beneficial harvest that dismantling the Taliban would have produced.
The fact that you’re even considering the invasion of NK as a possibility is, to any critical thinker, frightening.
(Incidentally, I’m not arguing that regime change in Iraq was not a desirable outcome, only that the invasion was, for a wide variety of reasons, ill-considered and poorly justified from the get-go.)
Kim Jong-il is the stand-in for the real leader, his dead daddy. Again, he’s a maniac. I’d call it theocracy, but slap whatever PR label you want on it.
I’ll restate my point about Hussein and terrorists. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the leader of Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, a group separate from al-qaeda. As leader of that group, he was allowed entry into Iraq and, from within Iraq, organized the export of al-qaeda members into Iraq. This all happened under Saddam’s nose.
You’re right that it’s nonsense that we are fighting totalitarianism wherever it lies. I mis-typed. I did mean to say that we SHOULD be fighting against totalitarianism wherever it lies. Not that we actually ARE. My bad.
“The fact that you’re even considering the invasion of NK as a possibility is, to any critical thinker, frightening.”
I never said I would consider invading that country. I said I wasn’t sure what to do about them.
BTW guys, I’m new here…how do you include quotes from previous posts as indented sections in your own posts?
Ahnald. Let me see if I understand this.
North Korean is officially an atheistic, communist regime that includes freedom of religion for its irreligious, Buddhist and Christian citizens. Its fearless leader is an atheist, but no, wait – he’s “theocratic” because YOU say so?
Why not take the cleaner route and admit that you were dead wrong? Or half wrong, anyway. If he’s “clearly” anything, I’d go with “maniac”.
You’re undecided, therefore you’re considering it. If you’d ruled it out, you would have said so. Be honest, or you won’t get any respect here. And if you backpedal long enough, eventually you go over a cliff.
You’re right about Saddam having dealings with terrorists, but not with al-Qaeda. He used them to his advantage in local and internal affairs. He deserved what he got, but he was never as big a threat to the U.S. as the Bush administration depended on everyone believing.
To indent text, use the [blockquote] tag. Be aware that blockquote eats single newlines, and double newlines screw up the spacing a little. The [p] tag works a little better, but blockquote does have limitations when it comes to blocking more than one paragraph. Be sure to use angle brackets instead of the square brackets shown above. And remember: Preview is your friend! :-)
Here’s another article
Afterward, when the demonstrators had left, one of the madrasa’s senior clerics came outside. Asked about the dispute, he said it was between professionals and nonprofessionals; that is, between the clerics, who understood the Koran and Islamic law, and the women calling for the law’s repeal who did not.
No, those women understand just fine. They understand that the law treats them as property, deprives them of the right to their own body, denies their right to employment or occupation and generally makes them subject to their husband’s in everything, including what they wear (for example, a woman can be forced to “make herself up” or “dress up”).
What the male cleric refuses to understand is that the women don’t believe the law to be just, and the fact that it’s been approved by Koranic scholars doesn’t change that.