Muslims kill more Christians, this time in Pakistan

[viper37]

Besides, there are more terrorist attacks committed by leftists and ecologists than muslims.  Now, if you tell me we should get rid of the hard left and the crazy greens, I'm listening

I don't know of any terrorist attacks committed by an ecologist.  Is this like a mad scientist sort of thing?

My numbers are out of date, religious-based terrorism is dominant, but the other forms are still numerous:
https://www.europol.europa.eu/content/european-union-terrorism-situation-and-trend-report-2015

[viper37]

Besides, there are more terrorist attacks committed by leftists and ecologists than muslims.  Now, if you tell me we should get rid of the hard left and the crazy greens, I'm listening

I don't know of any terrorist attacks committed by an ecologist.  Is this like a mad scientist sort of thing?

I don't know man. Take Dian Fossey--disappearing into the jungle like FARC or some other radical group. She even met a violent end. In interviews she said she was there for the gorillas, but do you know she never actually wrote that she was there for gorillas? If she did I bet she would have spelled it "guerillas".

Bombing pipelines is peaceful work, I guess.  They have noble intentions, so they should be forgiven.  Kinda like what all those people supporting ISIS tell themselves

[Razgovory]

Ecologists are scientists.  They study organic systems.  You are thinking of environmentalists.  I hate when I have to explain my jokes.

[Berkut]

If you're looking for facts, you have to look at the number of islamic terrorists vs the number of muslims in the world today.  Even if there were 1 million ISIS fighters, that's still a small fraction of the total number of muslim practionner.

This is such a stunningly bullshit argument. It is really quite incredible.

TThe fact that only some small fraction of Muslims are terrorists is exactly to be expected given the problem state. Nobody claims, or thinks, that all Muslims are terrorists, so pointing that tautaology out is hardly interesting.

What we do know is that Muslims, compared to other religions, tend to have much more intolerant views and are more accepting of violence as a means of furthering their religion. That obviously manfests itself from very peaceful Muslims on one end, through a range of more tolerance for and approval of violence down to the small few (but still more than enough to cause incredible anguish) willing to actually enage in violence, and the even fewer who are willing to engage in violence we characterize as terrorism.

It is trite to point out that other religions, believ systems, etc. also have this same curve. But the number at each point in the curve are radically different. You can certainly find some Christians in the world who think women should be second class citizens. So you easily respond to this criticism by pointing that out - but there is a huge difference between the percentages, and those differences matter. Some rather disturbing fraction of Muslims worldwide think it should the the law that people like me should be put to death. Whether that number is ming bogglingly disturbing, or just pretty darn frightening isn't really the point. The point is that it is the case that this particular religion has a very different in scale level of tolerance for social norms that we would, and should, find completely intolerable.

Now, back to your demand that the relevant fact is that only very few Muslims are terrorists.

Bullshit - that is NOT the relevant fact.

The relevant fact is that nearly all violent terrorists today are Muslims. *That* is the relevant fact.

Let's use an analogy. Let's say we were concerned about a recent rash of cars starting on fire and burning up everyone inside. Kind of a new thing, although certainly in the past there were cases of it happening as well of and on.

Let's say we find that last year this happened 1000 times. Very alarming! Now, they start doing some investigating, and low and behold, it turns out that of the 1000 cars that burst into flame last year, 992 of them were Fords! Holy crap!

Of course, YOU would argue that there are some several million Fords out there, and only some tiny fraction have burst into flames, so the fact that 99% of them were Fords is completely irrelevant, and we should totally NOT look at Fords as the potential problem, because most Fords don't burst into flame.

Rather, we must look into some deeper, more profound explanation.

Also, there was this one time 100 years ago where a car once burst into flames before Fords were even invented - what about THAT! Hah!

Now, if you want to argue that people should not assume that all Fords will burst into flames, then THAT is a reasonable argument. Of course, in this case, nobody is assuming that all Muslims are terrorists, so it is hardly relevant.

But if you want to understand Islamic terrorism, you would be a fool to pretend that the beliefs of the people engaged in the terrorism have nothing to do with their actions...even when they tell that is exactly why they are doing the things that they do.

[Berkut]

Well of course. It is not like 200 years ago Islamic terrorism was a thing. It is a crisis in current Islam though and must have an Islamic solution.

The Barbary pirates were the Islamic terrorists of their day.

Suleyman, Saladin and Barbarossa were the original Islamic terrorists.

And Richard the Lionhearted as well as Guy de Lusignan, noble heroes?

WTF does whether they are noble heroes or complete assholes have to do with anything?

What are you trying to prove here - that there are other assholes in the world and throughout history?

Who are you arguing with?

[dps]

Some rather disturbing fraction of Muslims worldwide think it should the the law that people like me should be put to death.

Berkut I'm sure that we can find people of all faiths who think you should be put to death.  In fact, I'd say we can even find atheists who think that you should be put to death.   

[LaCroix]

The relevant fact is that nearly all violent terrorists today are Muslims. *That* is the relevant fact.

I don't think this is true

http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf

[Jacob]

Christian on Christian violence is still more or less the norm in parts of Ireland.

Is that actually true?

Marching season still gets pretty rowdy, as I understand it: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/13/orange-order-marching-season-begins-northern-ireland

Also, the problem with the "other religions do it too" argument is (1) an issue of scale and (2) the fact that you have to reach back centuries (at least in the case of Christianity) in order to find remotely comparable examples.

That kind of depends on where you're going with the "other religions do it too" argument.

If, for example, you're countering an argument that "there is something unique about Islam - independent of time, location, or external factors - that makes it inherently more violent and prone to terrorism" then that's not a problem at all; you can freely refer to acts followers of other religions - including Christianity - have carried out in the name of their faith or cause in different times and locations, or in response to different external factors. There's no problem with the argument in that case.

Similarly, if you are arguing that there are other factors in play (whatever those factors may be) then you can usefully refer to other examples - including Christian ones - that share those factors even if they're further back in time.

That said, I'm curious what you mean by what you have in mind in terms of scale and remotely comparable examples when you speak of comparisons.

Certainly, the terrorist acts and brutal murders associated with "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland are not exactly centuries back; neither are the actions of the ETA.

The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka are not particularly Muslim, nor are the Sinhalese majority population; yet the Tamil Tigers carried out something like 374 suicide attacks (and some say they were the ones who originated the concept of suicide bombings). That conflict ostensibly only ended in 2009 which is less than centuries ago.

The Rwandan genocide didn't involve any Muslims. To the extent the ethnic cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia did it was mostly as victims; there was plenty of nominally Christian on Christian violence there. While rating atrocities are pretty pointless IMO, it's in the same ballpark as the terrible things Daesh is reported as carrying out which makes it hard to argue that that sort of thing is inherently Muslim somehow.

Speaking of groups explicitly claiming Christian motivations for terroristic brutality, the Lord's Resistance Army seems to fit the bill pretty well. Similarly, the string of abortion related bombings and murders in the US (and elsewhere) seem to indicate that a Christian framework can be used to justify terrorist actions.

If we look at the various insurgencies, dictatorships, paramilitary groups, and organized crime lords in South and Central America we see plenty of wanton killing and terrorist acts - some of them on quite a large scale - and some of it quite recent too.

So if the argument is that there is something special about Islam to engender suicide attacks or a willingness to murder and terrorize people seen as enemies, then there are plenty of examples in very recent times not involving Muslims in any shape or form.

Now, it is true that unlike Mexican drug lords or ethnically driven conflicts in Africa or elsewhere, the terrorism hasn't targeted the US or the West (other than the ETA targeting Spain and France, the IRA targeting the UK, and various anti-abortion terrorists choosing local American targets etc) - while the current crop of radical Islamist terrorists have declared the West "the enemy".

But given that this is a relatively new development (i.e. radical Muslims have not been targeting the West with terrorist attacks for particularly long), and given that there's little specifically Muslim about the terrorist violence itself (since match for match equivalents can be found in non-Muslim contexts pretty much across the board), it is perhaps not completely unreasonable to look for other indicators beyond religion.

Not a popular view on languish, of course.

[Jacob]

But if you want to understand Islamic terrorism, you would be a fool to pretend that the beliefs of the people engaged in the terrorism have nothing to do with their actions...even when they tell that is exactly why they are doing the things that they do.

So, having listened to practitioners of Islamic terrorism what do you understand about them?

[Berkut]

But if you want to understand Islamic terrorism, you would be a fool to pretend that the beliefs of the people engaged in the terrorism have nothing to do with their actions...even when they tell that is exactly why they are doing the things that they do.

So, having listened to practitioners of Islamic terrorism what do you understand about them?

Lot's of things - did you have something specific in mind?

[Berkut]

If we look at the various insurgencies, dictatorships, paramilitary groups, and organized crime lords in South and Central America we see plenty of wanton killing and terrorist acts - some of them on quite a large scale - and some of it quite recent too.

And if we were talking about what should be done about Mexican drug cartel violence, it would be foolish to claim that since rampant violence has happened where drugs were not involved, we should ignore the drug trade as a primary motivating factor in that particular violence.

[Berkut]

The relevant fact is that nearly all violent terrorists today are Muslims. *That* is the relevant fact.

I don't think this is true

http://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf

Here is a nice one:

16/12/14 Iraq Fallujah 150 / — ISIL Assailants killed 150 women who had refused to engage in a jihad marriage.

Nothing to do with religion, of course.

[Martinus]

When I read Jacob's and viper's post, I almost can't wait all those refugees the man-child prime minister Trudeau is planning to bring to Canada start to blow shit up. But that would be petty.

[Jaron]

Western civilization is under siege and the Jacob and vipers of our lands are laying out the welcome mat.

[The Brain]

The idea that the ideologies of terrorists don't have anything to do with terrorism is a bit weird, and hard to take seriously.