Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I am doing no such thing. If extremist thoughts weren't tolerated by any muslim communities, would it be as safe to recruit in those communities? Do you think that the idea that any criticism of Islam or the prophet exists only in those places where it's literally against the law? Are you saying that other muslim communities with ties back to those places don't adopt those attitudes?

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I guess I don't see this as a Muslim thing. The guy you quoted above was talking about condemnation of an atheist in Egypt, which seems to me to be a very different thing than purported tolerance for Islamism on the part of moderate Muslims in the West.

I don't see the evidence that moderate Muslims tolerate the extremists. The extremists who commit crimes often seem to be disaffected younger men with a raft of other problems -- criminal history, lack of prospects, etc. -- who often were not raised as Muslims but turned to radical Islam after many other troubles. They often don't even seem to be that religious.

And to be clear, I have been specifically reacting to the notion that moderate Muslims should denounce the Islamists. Not sure you're suggested that, either.[/QUOTE]

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I'm not sure I'm following you. In your prior post, you said (in part):

My problem is in your jump from the first paragraph to second. The Sheikh is talking about how the Egyptian state (the judiciary) reacts to atheism ("his heresy"). You then say, "[i]f moderate muslims believe that people who criticize muslims should be punished...." (emphasis mine) But I don't think moderate muslims believe that people who criticize muslims should be punished. At least not moderate muslims in the West; at least not the ones I know.

What you are describing, it seems to me, doesn't have to do with the religious beliefs of moderate Muslims. It has to do with relatively illegitimate governments in the Arab world that have turned to Islam for legitimacy, and how they handle their weakness. If the Egyptian government were legitimately elected and accepted by the Egyptian people, it wouldn't have these issues. But it isn't, and Islam has a lot more legitimacy there than the government does.

You say, "if extremist thoughts weren't tolerated by any muslim communities," but I'm not sure what that means. Anyone can start a mosque, and a wingnut with a beard can find disaffected young men and become their religious leader. This happens because other muslim communities aren't interested in that kind of extremism. Was Tim McVeigh tolerated by his white, Christian communities? Did they even know what he was thinking?

Like RT, I see these attacks much more as expressions of troubled individuals who express their anger in Islamist terms, rather than indications of some sort of more widespread pathology in those with Muslim beliefs.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

By the way, if you go back into Boston's terrorist past, to include things like the weatherman incidents, for example, the common thread in all of them is some connection to area colleges or universities, not religion. Maybe some of the onus here falls on places like Brandeis or Harvard, that have spawned terrorists like the weathermen and unabomber.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Cambridge Rindge & Latin? UMass-Dartmouth?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Well, if we're identifying communities they're a part of, yes.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

If I had any money to gamble, I'd bet big I could find at least 10 examples of terrorist acts by white Christian terrorists, even if I limit myself to just one Klan lynching.

Deeper.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

now we are going in circles. a majority white christian country empowered the FBI to try to stop the Klan. so now it's your turn.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

"Terrorism" is what we call violence aimed at political ends by non-state actors. Western governments use violence all the time, but it's not "terrorism." Are you looking for a historical explanation of why it is that Christians exercise political power in Western governments?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Egypt: majority Islamic country whose government has outlawed political Islamic organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and is engaged in widespread crackdowns on them.

Russia: majority Christian country whose government is sponsoring terrorists in the Ukraine. Downed a plane recently, you might have heard about that.

What are we trying to show here, anyways? That both Christians and Muslims engage in terrorism, and that governments of both countries will repress terrorist organizations? Really? You need that demonstrated?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I have no idea what you are trying to say, so I'll just not respond. This is now the same discussion we had the last time there was some horrible Islamic terrorist attack. What has been missing from all the blogs you posted and all the posts you/RT/Wonk/GGG have posted is a complete lack of what to do- lots of what we shouldn't do, and what we can't expect to happen from moderate Muslims, but nothing as an alternative. Maybe if one of tried to answer that at least we won't be snapping at our tails.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Frankly, I think I'm done with this conversation. Your tendency to overlook the central theme behind my argument in favor of an approach that completely compartmentalizes a section of a conversation into something so narrow that you can say, "I don't think that that's right," makes it so that I don't really want to bother.

I've given you an example of something I thought was pretty similar. Instead of talking about it, you decided to seize on one part of one post in our discussion to try to focus your argument on how that single example (Egypt) couldn't relate to anything else. Whatever.

If you want to argue that there is no moderate muslim support for the idea that muslims (or anyone else) should be punished for blasphemy and that that support isn't the basis for (i) laws in many places (from Afghanistan to Egypt to Pakistan to Indonesia to wherever) criminalizing it (whether you base your argument on what the "muslims you know" think or not) and (ii) the attitude that it is okay to go out and murder someone who commits it in other places--even if carried out by crazies, then I'm done with the conversation. Pointing out that this idea is common in muslim communities the world over isn't even controversial.

Hell, maybe we just have a different idea of what a moderate muslim is.

I have conceded that there are many problems that have led to extremist thought. I have not once said that you or anyone else is wrong about the many problems that create extremists. I find it highly annoying that you refuse to acknowledge the possibility of something other than your own limited opinion, even when I have posted articles (today and the last time we discussed this) in which actual muslims say the very same things I am saying. I'd post more, but what's the fucking point?

So let's be done with this.

TM

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

Russians shot the plane down to advance Christianity, or perceived Russian interest?

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

This is a very serious issue, I think. For most Westerners, a moderate Muslim is simple a Muslim who (a) is westernized or (b) may not be westernized but is aligned with the West (e.g., the Saudi state). Some people mean (a), some (b), some both (a) or (b). But if I point, for example, to an Islamic woman who wears a veil and is happy to defend the practice, she may not be viewed as moderate regardless of her other beliefs. Likewise, someone who supports any Islamic elements in state law, even if limited to, for example, marital law as applied to Muslims, will be viewed as immoderate, even while someone supporting a Jewish state in the same sense will not be viewed as immoderate.

Re: Is Ted Cruz Satan? Discuss.
 

I think this sums it up right here:

The problem is islam in the same sense that the problem facing Palestinians is the jews, or the problem facing publishers in Texas is the capital "C" christians
who sit in their living rooms, read manuscripts and count the number of times someone refers to Charles Darwin.

It all comes down to people who are alienated. They have no way they can see of getting out of an untenable situation. What do we do when we are faced with the untenable? We turn to whatever purports to answer the unanswerable.