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Good post, yes at the moment it seems to be mostly muslims who are performing despicable acts such as suicide bombing and terrorism. But you rightly say that the West have been doing similar "terrorism" for years, and not only against Middle Eastern countries (anyone remember the IRA bombings?)
And many hundreds of years ago, it was the Christians who were indiscriminately killing during the Crusades.
An important point to make is that this concept of "martyrism" and suicide bombing is an extremely new phenomenon - it only started in the second half of the 20th century, in part due to Western influences on Middle Eastern government. ......
Almost none of what you wrote is relevant to the situation today. Islam owns suicide bomber whackjobs, period. There's no rationalizing about how somehow that's the fault of "the west." It's not. It's what they do. They blow themselves up, often with NO clear purpose or goal.
It's really quite laughable that you'd try to shrug it off. Or blame it on things that have zero relation to it.
You misunderstand, I'm not shrugging it off by any means. I think it's a despicable and cowardly ideology, and I'm not trying to put the blame on anyone. I'm merely stating that certain actions by the west (specifically the USA) may well have contributed to the radical Islamic uprising that we see today.
My point was also that it is a common misconception that radical islamic attacks, especially suicide bombings are some sort of medieval ideology.
Suicide bombings are a very new phenomenon, I think the first instance where we see these types of attacks en masse, are in the 1980s during the alliance of Hafez al-Assad and Ruhollah Khomeini (who was the leader of Iran after the Shah was overthrown in the revolution). They used this new form of suicide attacks to force American troops from Lebanon.
And it is important to note how advanced the Islamic world was in the "Golden Age" (between the 8th and 13th centuries), because it shows that it isn't necessarily the muslim religion or the teachings of the Quran that are the driving force behind the radicalism we see today. At this period in history the Islamic world was seeking knowledge, and developing and translating mathematics, philosophy and science in general. This is in stark contrast to the attitudes we see today from the radical islamists.
It's no-ones fault (apart from the actual terrorists) that this is happening, per se, I just think it's short sighted to put it all down to "the Quran is bad and teaches muslims to kill infidels" (which is what many people believe).
Again, I'm not blaming anyone or shrugging anything off - I'm just commenting that it is an extremely complicated situation that has many factors which may or may not have caused it, and to just blame "Islam" seems naive. I think all religion is bullshit, for the record.
Interesting. We share many views, although they diverse from similar premises.
For example, I agree either to just blame (or not blame) Islam is naive. But similarly one cannot just throw some historical events up in the air (Golden Age, Crusades, whatever) and shout "See! what about THAT? That proves that..."
No, that does not prove anything. To actually draw cause and effect even in part takes some historical analysis and is not an easy job. Hence in many cases old historical events may simply be left out as not relevant to current.
For example, we can simply not that guys saying they are Islamic, then shouting "Allah Akbar" as they explode themselves and everyone around them, are Islamic terrorists and in the absence of any note or definitive message as to the specific reasons for their actions, we can state they are doing it as an act of Islamic Jihad related to the stated intentions of Islam to take over the world.
Pretty simple. I think it's fair what I said. If they left a note as to some political or war issue or retaliation for xyz, then that's what we accept as cause. If not, it is as I said.
Thanks for the considerate reply, yeah I think our views are on the same sides of the coin, so to speak, but we may have differing opinions on the
likelihood of what is fueling this islamic terrorism. And I am not categorically stating that the West is to blame, or anyone for that matter - I am simply trying to piece together bits of evidence that might give some insight into why Islamic terrorism is so prevalent in these modern times.
I am certainly not stating that the historical events such as the Islamic Golden Age is "proof" of anything, simply that it it was a time when muslims weren't attacking infidels as relentlessly and indiscriminately as they are now, and were looking outwards to the world around them to gain knowledge. Rather than what the extremists do now, which is look inwards and deny any facts that aren't written in the Quran.
This is just some circumstancial evidence that perhaps the actual religion/teachings are not fully to blame for
some muslims' modern interpretation of it. I agree that trying to prove cause and effect in regards to historical events is a ridiculously tricky task, but certain events can be used as evidence for a more complex hypothesis.
And I fully agree that the argument of "Well, Christians killed in the Crusades, so how is that different to Muslims killing in the modern world" is a
terrible argument - It's like saying "well Ted Bundy killed over 30 people, so why does it matter if I kill 1 person?". Stupid logic, just because someone did something worse in the past, doesn't mean that doing something sightly less worse is acceptable in the future.
I don't think anyone could say with certainty what the actual motivation of these Islamic terrorists is... for some it could be from interpretating the Quran as sacred law (even though I think the Quran does condemn suicide).
For others it could be indoctrination at a young age by elders/parents who were bombed/attacked during the first Iraq war (or other wars involving Britain/USA/other Western countries), and as a result indiscriminately hate the West. For others still, it could be a sense of not belonging or being accepted in their home country (for example British muslims travelling to fight for ISIS because they feel their homeland rejects their customs). My personal opinion is that these last two factors are a significant influence in the current reason for people to join ISIS and other radical groups.
As for you last point about suicide bombers shouting "Allahu Akbar" and then blowing themselves up, well yes, it's pretty obvious that they believe they are doing an act to please their god and gain benefits in the afterlife, while killing innocent civilians. Fucking hell, it sounds so horrific and retarded doesn't it...? And it is.
But I have a (slightly morbid) fascination as to what would actually persuade these people to commit these horrific acts. I touched on some of them above, but I'm sure there are more reasons - propaganda in the Middle East has become incredibly powerful in the last 5 years, with the advent of social media, cheap cameras and high quality editing software, producing propaganda films with high productions values. Scary stuff, just adding to the indoctrination of people who might otherwise be inclined to look up facts for themselves.
Again, my posts aren't claiming "I know the truth" like many others on this corner of the internet do, I just like to look at all the evidence and try and understand why people act the way they do. I quite often don't "believe" anything, because believing things means you are automatically shielding yourself from opposing opinions or evidence. Instead I look at things in terms of probability, and the underlying reasons that so many people act so irrationally.
Peace dude, Allahu Akbar