Why do people find it hard to distinguish between jihadis and other people who commit acts of terrorism?

Don’t forget the Christian Crusades….

@Dutchess_III
That is like saying that since centuries ago physicians once attempted to cure sickness by bleeding and applying leeches, they should be sued for malpractice today.

In any event, Pope Urban called for a Holy Crusade NOT because of some religious zeal, but as a motivator to unite Christendom to come the aid of the Byzantine Empire which was under severe hegemonic pressure from…Islam

Here you seem to be saying that the “why” behind the act of terrorism is important, but here you seem to be saying that it isn’t.

Because profiling has come to mean a bad thing, even though it is often necessary and useful.

Like with the screenings at the airport, it’s not that likely that a 90 year old white woman in a wheel chair is likely to be a terrorist, but unfortunately for young Middle Eastern-looking males, it is their sub group who have caused a lot of damage in the U.S. so you’re darned tootin’ we need to profile, but not just with the way people look, but how they act. Police departments do this all the time when they’re looking for suspects, they don’t question or suspect every single person in the U.S., they look for likely suspects.

@thorninmud already beat me to it. It is odd that you are now going to take the “why” position.

@josie: “They are a completely different type of threat to you and me than the others because you can’t arrest them and put them in prison or execute them and thus eliminate the problem that they represent.”

Maybe you could elaborate on why you can’t arrest and imprison people who wish to do harm to other people. I’m confused.

I’d say political correctness is the answer to why people lump all the bombers together. I hope we don’t have to wait till some Jihadist gets his hands on a nuclear device and incinerates a major city before we all admit that the Prophet Mohammad preached conversion of the entire world, by cajoling where it would work, and by violence when words failed. The Koran issues a direct call to Jihad, and not just as a personal struggle against evil and sin in ones self, but as a struggle against all that is not Islam.

Pakistan is a nuclear power and there is clear evidence that their intelligence service knows of and condones—at times supports—terrorist attacks against India and Taliban activity across their border in Afghanistan and beyond. It’s hard to believe that Osama bin Laden was holed up in a military center and the Pakistani ISI had no idea he was there.

Iran supports terrorism and clearly has ambitions to become a nuclear state. Unless we find a way to curb the growing threat, it is only a matter of time till some Jihadist manages to vaporize a million or more “enemies of Islam” (meaning anyone who doesn’t submit to Sharia Law) in an instant.

Christianity has somewhat grown out of its most murderous phase, from the beginning of the Crusades through the Inquisition and the Witch Hunts, burning heretics at the stake, the horrors of neocolonialism with its destruction and enslaving of native cultures and peoples. But Christianity is still doing enormous harm with the Catholic Church opposing the use of condoms to contain the spread of AIDS in the third world and pushing for mindless reproduction like rabbits in a world already heavily overpopulated and facing existential threats to humanity from global warming, pollution and resource depletion. And don’t even get me started on the far-right fundamentalist Christians doing everything in their power to provoke nuclear Armageddon over the Temple Mount so their Jesus will come back and catch them up in the air to go to Heaven.

It’s time that rational people realize that there isn’t a place for militant monotheism in a nuclear age.

I think people lump it all together because generally human being group thingsntogether to make sense of things, to simplify thing, and to create some order in chaos. It is ok in my opinion that within a group the group cam be further broken down. For instance, we lump tgether Latin American cuntries, and middle eastern countries, and African countries, but at the same time each cuntry has it’s own identity and personality. We lump togther Jewish people, even though there are many sects, many countries of origin in the group. We group together Catholics, but the Irish are different culturally than the Italians for example.

Mass murders have some things in common. They seem to want to make a big show when they are killing people. They often kill innocent people, although within the killing there might be a specific person they are angry at. They all are worried about other people being culpable for some sort of wrong or misery, instead of just focusing on their own life.

@tom_g
Maybe you could elaborate on why you can’t arrest and imprison people who wish to do harm to other people. I’m confused.

No need to be confused.

When Ted Kaczinsky goes to prison, and Timothy McVeigh gets put to death, whatever it is in their heads that made them decide to kill innocent people disappears with their passing or incarceration. They are no longer a problem

When Osama Bin Laden, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, et al die, Jihad is still here, plus they are martyrs that inspire. It doesn’t go away because we go through the ritual of justice.

Because so many are so enlightened. Enlightened people do not believe in punishment, they are above such mundane ideas, they believe in the magic of rehabilitation.

@rooeytoo That’s a wild generalization. I consider myself an enlightened person and I certainly don’t fit that mold. I correspond with many enlightened people, and they don’t fit either. I say that’s rubbish.

Then you are an enlightened enlightened person.

@josie – I think I get what you’re saying. I think I agree. But it’s important to point out that the ideas floating around home grown terrorism aren’t isolated to the person who commits the act. When someone kills a doctor who performs an abortion, or bombs a federal building, we know where this stuff comes from.

Militant Islamists are no different from militant nationalists, militant neo-Nazis, militant Marxists-Leninists and others, when they commit terrorist acts, in the sense that they do it in the name of a greater cause. Militant Islamists are different from all these other terrorists in the sense that they do it in the name of a religion.

We have no problem criticizing Nazis, but we find it difficult to criticize Muslims. As I said before, we need to take a deeper look at the root causes of terrorist acts such as the Boston Marathon bombing, and when we do this we are facing an inconvenient truth, which Irshad Manji calls ‘the trouble with Islam today’. In the modern Western world, almost all liberals, but also many conservatives, reject this inconvenient truth out of fear of political incorrectness. By doing so we confuse multiculturalism with blind multiculturalism.

I support multiculturalism and I love diversity. But there needs to be mutual respect between cultures.

@mattbrowne Actually, Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, and the worship of Kim Il Sung are all just state religions. Hitler, a Catholic choir boy in his youth, may or may not have believed in what he preached, but preach Jesus he did. He played upon both the majority (49%) Lutheran and minority (45%) Catholic hatred of Jews as a tool to consolidate power and enforce obedience to his will.

@ETpro – I would use a slightly different wording: these kinds of political belief systems resemble religions. Both can be used like drugs.

Here’s a short snippet from an interview with Hamed Abdel-Samad, a German-Egyptian political scientist and Muslim:

“Islam has no convincing answers to the challenges of the 21st century. It is in intellectual, moral and cultural decline, and therefore a doomed religion, without self-awareness and without any options to act. The decisive element is the general lack of direction and backwardness, which often lead to an aggressive fundamentalism. This sets the general tone. There are differences between Islamic countries, of course. But whenever Muslims seek to introduce Islamic studies into European schools or try to obtain nonprofit status for an Islamic organization, there is always talk of one Islam. The minute someone attacks the faith, they resort to a trick to stifle the criticism and disingenuously ask: Which Islam are you talking about? Why is this so? In a sense, Islam is like a drug, like alcohol. A small amount can have a healing and inspiring effect, but when the believer reaches for the bottle of dogmatic faith in every situation, it gets dangerous. This high-proof form of Islam is what I’m talking about. It harms the individual and damages society. It inhibits integration, because this Islam divides the world into friends and enemies, into the faithful and the infidels. Therefore I advocate a milder form of Islam. My dream, in fact, is an enlightened Islam, without Sharia law and without Jihad, without gender apartheid, proselytizing and the mentality of entitlement. A religion that is open to criticism and questions. A religion that can evolve.”

@mattbrowne I have to ask why this guy believes in the Prophet Mohammad if he rejects what the Prophet said. He claimed in the Koran that he was laying down the Total truth from Allah (read El, Elohim, Yahweh of the Trinity as you wish). He claimed the he was the final fulfillment of God’s message to man. He didn’t get around to explaining why it would take an omnipotent, omniscient being 3,000 years or various revelations to get his message right, but he did claim that his version on it was the only Total and correct version.

Two things flow out of believing that. First, it it was true, then there was no need for, or even possibility of, humanity progressing beyond what Mohammad revealed in the Holy Koran. And second, the Total happens to be the first five letters of totalitarian. Any state truly based on the Koran will be a totalitarian state and any believer that actually believes what Mohammad said will be a fundamentalist through and through.

So as admirable as Hamed Abdel-Samad’s lament may sound, at its heart, it makes no sense. It’s like saying that I believe in Jesus because the Bible says it’s so, but I don’t believe anything the Bible says.

@ETpro – He doesn’t reject what the Prophet said. He disagrees with an Islamist interpretation of what this means for us today. He believes that Muslims too have the capability to evolve. To me what Hamed Abdel-Samad says makes total sense.

So he basically resorts to the same arm waving away of logical contradictions that Christians and Jews employ. While that’s a big improvement, why not admit that if you know the book is wrong about many of its basic tenets, it could not possibly be the inspired word of the omnipotent, omniscient creator of the Universe?

We have no right to look down on people, who were born into societies 3000 or 2000 years ago. These people were the products of their time. From today’s point of view they replaced evil rules with slightly less evil rules. Later, ancient Judaism was replaced by Talmudic Judaism, a big improvement. The views of Jesus was a big improvement. Basic tenets were gradually replaced by new basic tenets. This continued over hundreds of years and eventually led to the scientific revolution and the declaration of universal human rights. It led to Martin Luther King and nonviolent resistance.

In 500 years from now, people might be shocked about some of @ETpro‘s views expressed here on Fluther, or my views expressed here on Fluther. God obviously chose creation as work in progress instead of instant perfection.

@mattbrowne Here we go again. The scriptures are either the divinely inspired and therefore prefect-for-all-times work of an Omniscient, Omnipotent and timeless Creator, or they are the work of evolving men. You keep insisting that the book is both, but it cannot. It logically MUST be one or the other. The evidence is overwhelming it is the later.

I am anxiously awating @mattbrowne‘s response to this and your other post on another thread challenging his views, @ETpro. @mattbrowne‘s always so very thoughtful and intelligent, I am really interested in what he has to say about your posts.

@bkcunningham I’m surprised he hasn’t weighed back in with both fists flying. Must be busy with other things.

I am not insisting that it is both. All holy texts are written by humans. They are not perfect. Divinely inspired does not mean God is the author of these texts as if he dictated them to some human messiah. ‘Divinely inspired’ is a vague term. It doesn’t have a clear-cut meaning. Fundamentalists will tell you that every word comes directly from God. Enlightened believers won’t. But from that you can’t conclude that holy books are “wrong”. There was a time when the Hebrews believed in an evil God telling them to commit murder. This was documented correctly. Interpretation and meaning of words, phrases and texts should not be confused. Maybe this article can help

“The Bible is no longer regarded as the unquestionable authority (blue), but rather as the witness of people, which can and must be handled like any other literary document (orange). For modern theologians God does not rule over the world, rather, he is in the depth of reality. Creation did not take place in seven days at the beginning. It is executed daily in every millisecond, as God is the living power of evolution [ultimate explanation of natural laws]. He is not only to be the found in the breadth of the cosmos, but also in the depth of the human soul. And Christianity is no longer the one and only way to salvation, but one path amongst many, which finally leads to the same goal, the merging of God and man. The myth is important as a foundation. Every person will be born in beige, and the biblical myths are good and appropriate at a certain phase in development. But most people in our cultural circle have developed far beyond blue towards orange, green and yellow. Religion must keep up with this development. This it can do, if it allows itself to change.”

The article explains the Spiral Dynamics colors.

http://www.ievolve.org/tag/god-9-0/

This thread is about jihadis. They are stuck on level three (red).

Most non-believers here on Fluther think that believers never evolved beyond level four (blue).

@mattbrowne It sounds like you are a deist and not a Christian at all. Jesus made some pretty specific claims. You are telling me you believe in him, you are a Christian thanks to his revelations, but you think he was wrong about much of what he said? On what basis, then, do you believe in him. If not through the Bible, a personal epiphany?

@ETpro – Which specific claims are you referring to?

@mattbrowne He claimed to be the creator. He claimed that every jot and title of the Law and the Prophets was still in force. He claimed that if you go into your closet and pray in secret, then God will reward you openly.

And since your previous answer implied that evolving Christianity can set aside any provisions of the Law and the Prophets, like stoning to death for trivial crimes, slavery, bashing babies heads on rocks, etc.; how about answering you question above. If… “you think he was wrong about much of what he said? On what basis, then, do you believe in him? If not through the Bible, a personal epiphany?”

@ETpro – Are you referring to Jewish biblical law? As in

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_Mitzvot

@mattbrowne No need to reach that far. The Law and the Prophets in your own Old Testament list a long series of things that are abominations before the Lord, and they call for stoning to death all who commit these heinous acts. Such abominations include homosexuality, wearing PremaPress clothing (mixed fibers), eating shellfish, eating pork or meat from any animal with a cloven hoof, and planting different colored flowers in your spring garden (mixed seeds). Meanwhile rape was fine so long as you married and ruled over the woman, and slavery was OK.

Note that God said that animals that chew the cud are OK to eat, and in that list he included rabbits. Apparently omniscience doesn’t cover such topics as taxonomy.

Jesus said that every bit of that is still in force.

@ETpro – It’s not that simple. We have to distinguish between the content of the Torah and Jewish biblical law. Besides, why would Jesus support the call for stoning to death? This would contradict everything else he said. The Old Testament is cruel. It describes how the people viewed the world at the time. The New Testament also features content that we reject today, such as slavery or silencing women in church. Christianity is what Christians make of it. Zealous atheists like to focus on the evil part the Bible to show their own superiority and depict Christians as arbitrary. We Christians have to live with this. Plus I don’t see any reason why deists can’t be Christians.

Enough said.

@mattbrowne This is useless. I tire of your arm waving. We are not talking the Torah or Jewish Rabbinical Law. As I noted above, these are things written in the Christina Bible.

Indeed, enough said.