Jihad Watch's Spencer: "It's absurd" to think that "Islam is a religion of peace that's been hijacked by ... extremists"
February 22, 2010 4:26 pm ET
From Pam Geller's February 15 CPAC* event, "Jihad: The Political Third Rail":
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
The majority of people in all emotional groups are good people. But all groups, both sides, of all causes have nut cases that give their movements a bad name.
And come to think of it, what's your problem with Muslims blowing up their fellow citizens? Their fellow citizens are Muslims too, after all.
Second, was the IRA specifically blowing people up in the name of Catholicism? Was religion there sole motivation? If so, then you may be able to compare them to the radical Muslims.
And Muslim terrorists aren't exclusively motivated by religion EITHER, moran. That's why the ones in Iraq WEREN'T THERE UNTIL WE STARTED OCCUPYING IT. It's terrorism with specific political aims and religious window-dressing.
I think the primary motivation for the Islamic terrorists is religious. If you don't, that's your opinion.
Uh... no. You don't get your own facts, chuckles.
Opinion has to be based on fact. I bet you believe 911 happened because Al-Qaeda "hates our freedom" too...
Or for adding to the sorrows of our troubled Northern land,
But lately I've been thinking and it just won't leave my mind,
I'll tell you of two friends one time that were both good friends of mine...
Clown.
Tell me where TODAY, on a DAILY BASIS, Christians are blowing each other up in the name of Christianity?
Lord's Resistance Army - Uganda, It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Christian Holy Spirit which the Acholi believe can represent itself in many manifestations.
A group called Concerned Christians were deported from Israel on suspicion of planning to attack holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of 1999, believing that their deaths would "lead them to heaven.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism
But you seem to be using time as a basis for hate, so what? Islam has to go a year without an extremist murdering people before its on the same level of respect as Christianity?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence#Acts_of_violence_by_Christians
And where does the level start, one dead bodie?, ten dead bodies?, a hundred dead bodies?
I wanna know you're line in the sand for this, or do you know yourself?
This one is only 20ish years old,is that soon enough for YOU,K1?
When Bosnia attempted to secede, Serbia – under Slobodan Milosevic’s leadership – invaded, claiming it was there to “free” fellow Serbian Orthodox Christians living in Bosnia who were being “mistreated” by the Bosnian Muslims.
Bosnia MapBetween April 1992 and November 1995, Serbia set out to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnian territory by systematically removing all Bosnian Muslims. Serbia, together with ethnic Bosnian Serbs, attacked Bosnian Muslims with former Yugoslavian military equipment and surrounded Sarajevo, the capital city. The siege of this city was brutal, as snipers were used to shoot civilians walking in the street. Many Bosnian Muslims were driven into concentration camps where women and girls were systematically gang-raped and other civilians were tortured, starved and murdered. In the course of the war as many as 1 million Muslims in Bosnia were forced to flee their homes
TRANSLATION: I asked opopop, "Tell me where TODAY, on a DAILY BASIS, Christians are blowing each other up in the name of Christianity?" . . . but, DAMN -- I didn't think he'd actually come up with examples -- but, no matter: I'm just gonna keep my head in the sand and INSIST that the level of violence being perpetrated by Muslims in the name of their religion is worse than anyone else . . .
There are many Muslims who are peaceful and simply want to observe their religion.
I wish the bulk of our populace could understand that our policies around the world are brutal. But that systematic and pervasive degradation isn't as dramatic as people using IED explosives or cutting people's head off, so we just don't talk about that. Easy. It doesn't make the corporate owned news.
And so we get cheap bananas ;-) (Feel free to extrapolate). I say that for the benefit of KDork, et al.
Better yet, I hope he reads "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". That'll curl his toes. And maybe give him some understanding as to how we murder people and their economic systems around the world in the name of a religion called greed and avarice. Quietly, systematically and pervasively.
Even before I scrolled past this, I knew KYdork's answer would be:
'No, I didn't [insert random snarky comment here, preferably irrelevant to the discussion].
Keep also in mind:
1) The Troubles didn't involve 'brown people' killing 'white people'
2) we aren't talking about something in AMURRRIKA.. so it's less real than the TV series 24.
Wait, that probably IS it.
"we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
~
For the lovely sound of cha-ching
Bodies were still smoldering when Coulter said that, but you have a problem with her WORDS.
Right -- 'cause there's nothing like attacking a nation 6000 miles away (where none of the hijackers came from) to make up for those smoldering bodies . . .
That's the difference. Equating people in the West like Coulter who SAY things with radical Muslims who DO things is ridiculous, in my opinion.
Actually, our homegrown Christians don't have the best record with little girls either. Oh, wait, you probably don't think the Klan is racist either. Never mind.
The is no CURRENT equivalent to this is the Christian west.
Really? You have a source or some statistics for this, dork?
How is it you came by this info? Have you been associating with these Muslims? Do I need to report you to the DHS?
No.
The point is that ANY religion can be twisted and manipulated and perverted to promote hatred and justify violence. Islam isn't special in that way.
The reason why Islamic extremism has been allowed to flourish is because it's coming out of extremist Islamic societies--places where there is no such thing as freedom of thought or expression. In an Islamic society, children are fed, from birth, a distorted version of reality and a distorted version of history that fits the message of hate. They never know anything different, they never know real freedom.
Part of the reason why you don't see many American extremist Christian terrorists is because we live in a secular society--we're not forced to believe anything as far as religion goes. We have the ability to make up our own minds. If you look through history, violent religious fundamentalists don't often spring from secular societies.
How about this one just a heart beat ago!
The thing it was Black on BLACK Genocide!
Strategies of Slaughter Rwandan
In the first days of killing in Kigali, assailants sought out and murdered targeted individuals and also went systematically from house to house in certain neighborhoods, killing Tutsi and Hutu opposed to Habyarimana. Administrative officials, like the prefect of the city of Kigali, ordered local people to establish barriers to catch Tutsi trying to flee and to organize search patrols to discover those trying to hide.
By the middle of the first week of the genocide, organizers began implementing a different strategy: driving Tutsi out of their homes to governmentoffices, churches, schools or other public sites, where they would subsequently be massacred in large-scale operations.
And isn't it nice that with the ridicolous response of basically "Our bad" by Irish catholic officials, Pope Benedict hasn't been gracious enough to, as far as I know speak, or even visit Ireland, to you know, reassure people and I dunno, even act like he gives a sh!t.
But of course, Dork will claim they're not christians, they're Irish, but if a priest in Ireland does something good, oh then it has nothing to do with ther nationality, its all their religion. Bullsh!t. No wonder why people are turning away from that loada crap.
Sorry, rant over
For the sake of making sure I'm understanding you right, Jihad can mean striving for a moral and virtous life, spreading Islam (no not by blowing things up), as well as terrorism.
Liar.
Wow, the new GOP is worse than Hitler, Pol Pot, and Stalin combined!
LOL, you need help
I don't think there's a single cop or FBI Agent or any other law enforcement officer we might need to detect any "terror attack" in the planning or stop it in it's execution, who thinks in such idiotic terms as "jihad" or "extremists".
Truly, the officials who we'd want to prevent such things, they think in terms of explosives, and how they can be purchased or made, and how they might be smuggled onto an airplane.
They think also in the same way about firearms and other weapons.
They know that the single most important factor in all of this, supreme above all other things, is intelligence, because the people who might want to commit an attack of this type, they're actually a very narrow class of people in the world, and it's of the utmost importance to track them and their activities, and know where they are, especially to know if they're in the U.S.
Not a single person who we'd rely upon in these matters, to prevent an attack, ever thinks in such idiotic terms as "jihad" and "extremism".
Only idiots like the ones in the video clip, and like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and just about everybody in their administration (who never protected a single American from any thing whatsoever), those are the only kinds of idiots who think and talk in terms of "jihad" and "extremism".
Give me intelligence, and give me reliable informants, and let me track the murderous bastids should they step foot in the U.S. (which should never happen), and you can keep all the talk about "jihad" and "extremists", because it helps no one understand or do anything in these matters, and stops nothing.
What is so bad about acknowledging jihad as their motivation?!
Yeah -- Bubble Boy Bush:
"You're either for us, or you're against us."
Look at the news today, the Najibullah Zazi pleaded guilty for planning to blow up the NY Subway.
When asked why he did it, it wasn't a Jihad or some religous motivation, it was actually plain and simple... “I would sacrifice myself to bring attention to what the United States military was doing to civilians in Afghanistan,”
So let's dial down the hate speech. Let's stop the holy war. Blackwater did enough damage in that area so let's stop with the Christianity vs. Islam crap, because I don't have a dog in the fight, I'm neither.
So why attack their faith?
(Hint - it's not to kill people)
Sorry, but the terrorists do have religious motivations.
When Scott Roeder shoots Dr. Tiller at his church, were they religious motivations?
I think their religion dictated the manner of protest or in Roeder's case, justified his actions, but I don't believe the religion was the cauase of the action.
What these idiots at CPAC are trying to say is that Islam is the cause of terrorism.
(Hint - Bin Laden actually told us)
Islam specifically forbids the killing of civilians when waging war.
Like a lot of other ugly times in history, this is about people using religion to justify their actions, nothing more.
Anyone who uses violence against civilians, to make a political point, is a terrorist. By buying into their religious justifications you are only propagating, and giving credence, to their falsehoods.
I suddenly flashed back on the Buddhist Monks during VietNam.
Perspective? Proportionality? Now Julia, you know those terms are anathema to wingnut extremists . . .
Rather than looking only at the most radical elements, it would be far more instructive to leave the major religions, political parties, and even financial institutions alone in pursuit of radicals of all stripes, many of whom will stoop to violence if it suits their ends. What they claim to be fighting for is irrelevant and misleading. What they really want is power.
Politics has the 'carrot and stick' in this (the Real) world
Religion has the 'carrot and stick' in 'the next' world (Heaven and Hell)
Muslims also regard Jesus as a prophet, believe in pretty much the same version of Genesis that Christians do, and the stories of Noah, Moses, etc.
None of the world's major religions, to me, seem to be "religions of peace." None of them seem to have a problem disobeying "Thou shall not kill."
Yep just ignore Christianity! The history of that religion FAR destroys any religion on extremism!
SMH!