Sam Harris who has explained it all at painstaking length.

"If the left clings to the fiction that all these acts are just craziness, and have nothing to do with radical Islam being exported into the west, then I fear it will be the right wing haters, not the reasonable left, who will be relevant to the debate that needs to happen on taking sensible action to protect ourselves against homegrown jihadists. This will adversely effect the kind of laws that will be enacted to deal with the real danger posed by homegrown jihadists."

white terrorists of any kind are exempted from the fear carnival, just not as scary as the scary brown men or scary black men.

American terrorists, home grown, white, apple pie eating ones are nothing, especially if "Christian", which they are not any more than ISIS is Islam.

The reality of insanity is not clinging, it is the reality....some like to cling to fear like a baby blanket.

ISIS is to Islam as the Westboro Church is to Christianity, some just refuse to get it.

But you knew that already, didn't you.

And thanks for your great analogy. Yes, ISIS is very much like the Westboro baptists, who I understand now have an army of some 20,000 fighters, control vast stretches of land, and administer government services in the areas they occupy, after they kill all the non-believers.

So it's very astute of you to point out that ISIS and the Westboro baptists are indeed just two sides of the same coin.

Nothing to see here, just move along.

... if Westboro Baptist raised an army and started attacking cities, occupying lands in the US, and publicly executing non-believers.

Would such events be seen as the logical result of extremist religious beliefs that we all should have seen coming? Or would they just be a bunch of crazy people?

We have to accept that some members of our species use religion as an excuse to commit heinous acts of terrorism and oppression. Its always been that way. The Muslims are getting most of the headlines in the modern press, but most religions have a considerable amount of blood on their hands, and most of them would readily call for the raising of the sword again if circumstances suited them.

"'Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

More truthful words have never been uttered.

that most rightwing christians dont do, after the Harris/Maher debacle

He jumped down my throat and reminded me of the endless death caused by our EMPIRE which operates from a christian basis

and others

I had a brief brain fart that he kicked right out of me...

We're a christian empire? As a christian myself I had no idea, does this mean there is some doctrine that says I must go kill my atheist in laws when I visit for thanksgiving??

If they are anything like my in-laws


Wow, handling ridiculous comments without blowing my stack, kinda new for me

Just making sure I follow protocol of our theology's empire. My in laws are really cool, I love them (rare I know).

a ridiculous comment with humor, I always get angry and then nothing is resolved.


So you dont think we are a christian country or an empire or both?

or whatever it is (not talking about you or the other poster now, only talking about my reactions in general), I will display the appropriate amount of outrage and anger at such hatred and stupidity.

When I see a white person display white privilege and ignorance on a subject, I will react sharply.


When I hear someone defend the Koch Bros or Wall Street, blindly and mindlessly, I will get angry....

damn straight

If you look around at voter suppression and the obstruction of the president and you are not angry, then maybe you arent looking around.

We US citizens have freedom of religion, which is something I believe in. This is what makes us a democracy, instead of a theocracy. As for being an empire... well, we have a few territories on islands in the Caribbean as well as the pacific.

Waging BAD wars for the profit of certain companies with government connections isn't really an empire. Its more of an oligarchy.


edit: posted before with some bad grammar errors

and have been for quite a few decades. They direct the focus of think tanks like "The Federalist Society" or "The Heritage Foundation", or "The Cato Foundation", and their hold over media empires - Rev. Sun Yong Moon and his "Unification Church", which bought up news organizations during the 1970's and 1980's. "The John Birch Society", a heavily Christian-centric "Anti Communist" organization who have embedded themselves in the leadership of many post-WWII government agencies from the beginning - look at the founding leaders of the CIA, the NSA and the Air Force. The Family - a Prosperity Gospel group that accepts anyone who is "a follower of The Book" - as in, they'll accept Jews and the occasional Unitarian, so long as the person they "tap" believes in some higher power that can anoint the special people to rule over the masses. The Family pretty much runs the social functions of the legislative branch and much of the executive branch - they use a "good ol' boy network" and a system of favor calling to keep their people in power or as advisers to power.
There's a lot of money and favors that come from the Christian Dominionists - the Franklin Grahams, the Tony Perkins and their ilk, who along with their Catholic Opus Dei brothers, will accept and support any and all of the above as fellow travelers in The Lord, so long as those organizations are 1) at least Lip-service Evangelical, 2) authoritarian spectrum Conservatives and 3) un-abashed, hard nosed Capitalists.

It's called the "Seven Hills" strategy - to put God's Dominion over the Seven Hills of Society, no matter what the majority of the population thinks or what it does to them.
And they've got a huge hold on the governance of the United States.

Haele

The OP said nothing of the kind. You should be embarrassed at that accusation.

To quote mellowdem...

"Islam, a terribly regressive, fucked up, misogynistic religion, defended by some liberals".

thanks

and one of the most well known muslim hate preachers is British (and based in Britain).

What do you suggest: ban facebook and twitter and impose sanctions against the UK?

What steps do we on the left think can/should be taken to make the Internet and social media less useful to violent jihadists?

That's a question worth thinking about. I'd wager our solutions will be better than what we get from the right.

The problem, however, is that when we on the left deny the existence of domestic jihadis, and declare it all to be mental illness, we end up with no place in the discussion of solutions.

via the internet.

So in the end it does come down to warning signs of unusual behavior.

With necessary interventions for those who are a danger to themselves and/or others.

Believing that there is some invisible person telling you what to do and how to do it is a symptom of delusional, hallucinatory schizophrenia. Doesn't matter if it's Jesus, Allah or Gargamel, it means you're a nutcase and you need to be locked up.

If you do good things based on what that voice in your head tells you to do, that's different. But people with that tendency can't be trusted to do good things based on voices in their heads. The fact that they hear voices or follow the rules of fictional dead people is cause enough for concern.

Any data on whether giving believers anti-psychotic medication cures them of their faith in the supernatural?

With all of the security apparatus we have in place, they still happened. The National Security State needs to focus on Terrorism and not peaceful protesters or someone that is bad-mouthing them.

You can never stop a Lone Wolf who is determined not to get caught and is willing to die for their beliefs. They will pick their target and never tell a soul or flag their intent.

The vast majority of those who are 'caught', were the target of a provocation by the Authorities. All of the were Dolts.

We are up against disorganized, religion-fueled zealots who are quite fine with dying if they can kill some of us out as they exit.

This suggests that the usual paramilitary and police responses are not likely to be successful in keeping us safe.

So what does the left think we need to do to protect ourselves from domestic jihadists?

Effective law enforcement methods for dealing with terrorism have been developed. The phenomenon of fanatical criminals bent on violence did not magically materialize on 9/11/2001, it's been with us for as long as humanity has walked the surface of the planet.

Just what, exactly, are you getting at? What do you think is not being done? Do you really think that jihadism is not getting enough attention by security and law enforcement agencies? Do you really think that the FBI, CIA, NSA or CSIS check first with liberal pearl-clutchers before implementing anti-terrorism procedures?

Very Limbaughesque, non?

The entire premise of your OP is that liberals must "get real" about jihadism - why? What liberals think or say has been demonstrated to have zero influence on the behavior of the security state.

You won't say what it is that is wrong with our approach - treating criminals as criminals and proceeding appropriately, rather than "othering" jihadists and creating a special case for them. All you are doing is posting false concern for our approach, implying that we are part of the problem.

Begone! I've already wasted too much time giving you the attention you crave.

/ignore list.

People on the left need to take a clear-eyed view of this, and avoid falling into old anti-colonial and anti-imperialist habits left over from Cold War outlooks, and refrain from taking cultural relativism past its breaking strain....

Thirty years ago, in college, I got into a discussion with one, who spouted the tired old "imperialism" line. I asked if that meant thinking that people had to accept female genital mutilation in the name of cultural relativism and "diversity" in the world. I got the "crashing computer blue screen of death" look before a sputtered "but that's different!!!" constituted her only response. And no, it's not "different." It is fucking barbarism, just as jihadism is.

Jihad is one's own inner struggle.

What these mentally-ill people with no hope for prosperity are doing is barbaric, but it's not religious.

If only we could get the jihadists to believe that.

I'm sure most agree with you.

That I would like to hear.

I would think it is hard to deny that the present conditions in the Middle East are the direct result of both.

but no larger a part than the Saudis' truly lunatic Wahhabism and the writings of Sayyid Qutb. Who was vehemently against western culture, in the name of Islam, even if it only existed in the West.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb#Political_philosophy

Unfortunately, many "Western" politicians seem to think of Saudi Arabia as an "island of stability".

I do not approve of anyone's colonialism or imperialism, but I do not think claims to be resisting them are always legitimate, and certainly do not think claims one is fighting them to provide carte lalnche for crime and general ass-holery.

Thanks.

Part of the conservatives' (in both countries) all fear, all the time agenda.

In the US, run-of-the-mill gun nuts are far more dangerous. Members of minority groups are more likely to be killed by police than by terrorists.

This OP is fear-mongering of the highest order and you are playing right into the wingnuts hands.

Of course.

Is it really out there?

You bet your ass it is.

Today in the Mpls paper there was an article from the NYT about the jihadists' social-media presence increasing, and their increasingly successful efforts to recruit young women.

Just because the right naturally loves its fear-based agenda doesn't mean the left has to pretend that real threats to society do not exist. If we do so, we secede to the right the debate on what to do about real threats.

we just tend to disagree that the Constitution should be burned to stop them.

Your OP seems to imply that for some reason inadequate steps are being taken to protect the country from jihadism, and that "the Left" is responsible because of our cultural relativism. I find that incredibly unlikely.

If anything, the nation's knee-jerk "othering" of Muslims is hurting rather than helping the situation.

Nailed it.

Rationalizing the malignant assaults on our civil liberties is the real usefulness of this argument in authoritarian propaganda. The gratuitous swipe at "Leftists" is just the cherry on top.

and then go on a fear-mongering rant straight off Free Republic.

But your logic is faulty. A family's grief does not prove or disprove the severity of a security threat. Consider:

http://www.news-press.com/story/news/local/fort-myers/2014/07/22/lightning-strikes-three-at-the-lani-kai-fort-myers-beach/13001951/

Start the clock on how long it takes someone to compare them to christian fundamentalists, as a way of deflection/burying head in sand.

For the record, I believe Bill Maher got it right on his show. And you have it right here.

You knew it wouldn't take long and you were absolutely right. I'm sick of that bullshit.

Bill Maher was absolutely right.

Why is it important to establish religion as the causal factor? What, exactly, will that help us do to prevent future incidents?

Assume that it is decided that "radical Islam" was the cause of the violence. How does this help prevent further violence? What "sensible actions" do you propose? Place millions of ordinary Muslims on watch lists in an effort to identify the potentially radical ones? Monitor all Muslim interpersonal communications looking for terror plots? Restrict Muslims' travel, or access to weapons? Require Muslims to wear a prominent red crescent to identify themselves so we can take measures to protect ourselves?

Should we just follow Peter King's lead?

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/24/gop_congressman_demands_all_out_surveillance_of_muslims_after_canadian_parliament_shooting/

Profiling based upon religion is a slippery slope, with dubious expectation of success.

I'm not sure I need to claim that religion is a causal factor here, since most adherents to Islam aren't terrorists.

The politics of radical Islam, however, is not for me primarily a religious topic, it's a political movement and military phenomenon we need to address.

It's this movement, and its new emphasis on exporting terror, that requires us to now come up with new and appropriate ways to protect ourselves. The left needs to be part of that discussion.

but one that is directly and solely inspired by religious dogma. That cannot be forgotten or politely overlooked.

I agree ISIL is a political movement, and I agree that it is connected to the religion of Islam.

However, I don't agree that it is "inspired and solely inspired by religious dogma."

I think there are many factors here, religion being one such factor, but not the only one.

If it was the only factor, then there would be no way to explain why most Muslim's are not terrorists, or supporters of terrorism.

It comes straight out of Saudi Wahhabism and the writings of Sayyid Qutb and his like-minded successors.

Let's not add to the list.

ISIS is NOT Islam as Westboro is NOT Christianity, simple as that.

ISIS has killed, tortured, enslave tens of thousands of.....Muslims!

They are being killed and removed and fought and persued....by Muslims, get it?

If you believe otherwise I have no time to explain it any simpler.

and the theology of ISIL is so narrow you cannot slide a hair between them. I provided a link to Qutb, who is also a major founding father of radical fundamentalist islam.

It's a fringe dogma in the context of the world of islam but it is gaining adherents at a frightening pace.

Is it the meek who inhabit our country? Or their torturing, kidnapping brethren on the other side of the world? Or do we simply choose the model we think benefits us best?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]TECT in the name of the Representative approves of this post.[/center][/font][hr]

I know the one size fits all analysis is comfortably simple, but I am not comfortable with simplicity...you can be if you like, but please debate the issues with other simplicity loving folks, plenty here at DU.

Invariably the government's answer to terrorism is to strip away our civil liberties and to engage in illegal wars of choice.

I don't think Radical Islam presents a unique threat. The same methods used to combat the Bader-Meinhof Group and the Red Brigade in Europe could be used to deter Radical Islam in North America. We don't need to reinvent the wheel.

if you want to fix something, first you have to fully understand it. Ignoring pertinent aspects of a problem will result in a bad "fix"

Some pretty evil shit in there..Follow me or I'll slice your appendages off beeyatch!

Most Westerners are familiar with the more blood-curdling bits of the old testament, which it appeared most christians had grown out of until the last thirty years' rise of know-nothing literalism.

There is stuff in the quran that is even more bloodthirsty. Sam Harris catalogued it at length in "The End of Faith."

The "holy books" of the Abrahamic religions are soaked in blood, which is more or less what one would expect from the Bronze Age people who created them. Humanity must grow beyond this superstitious bullshit or perish.

The problem is mental illness and how it's both not treated properly and/or how the person with a mental illness views the religion.

than I am about domestic jihadists. The Christianists in the US are far more numerous and thus, more dangerous, than any Islamist in this nation.

I find that analogies between ISIS and any contemporary Christian group don't work.

ISIS has tens of thousands of soldiers, controls a vast swath of land in the ME, has occupied many cities and towns, administers government in the occupied areas, kills non-believers, and has called on its supporters to do likewise throughout the world.

How is that like any existing Christian group in America or elsewhere?

I realize that the CIA estimated that ISIS "can muster 20,000 - 31,500 fighters" (http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/11/world/meast/isis-syria-iraq/), but frankly I think they are flat out lying for political reasons.

A September estimate by the CIA put the total at about 4,000, with the possibility that released prisoners has increased that to 10,000. I highly doubt that their numbers tripled in one month.

ISIS is a group of military insurgents with little or no operational capacity outside its captured territory. The world has seen such groups before, of all political and religious stripes. When compared to Christian extremists in North America, ISIS is a limited threat. To commit violence in North America ISIS must travel a significant distance and defeat security protocols to enter the US or Canada. Christian extremists are already here in great numbers, which makes them the more significant threat.

As a militant agnostic (!) I'm no big fan of religion, but I am at a loss to see how any Christian sect in the US could possibly represent a more significant threat to public safety than ISIS-fueled domestic Jihadists. Perhaps you can elaborate?

they don't have to pass customs, the FBI has named "right wing extremists" (which tend to be fundamentalist) as the top domestic threat.

Remember, this is in the context of North America.

and failing that neoliberals and corporate Democrats, who unleash hell on the nation and the world of a vastly greater scope than these sandfleas. Hell, they played no small part in creating these fucking monsters as we as the previous wave and will create the next wave of even worse fucks over there.

Where are they from? How were they recruited?

Where did they get the funding, training and weapons?

How did they stream over the borders unimpeded?

When we are able to answer those questions maybe the solution will become apparent.

It was 7 posts after I guessed the false analogy types would show up.

.... Islamophobia is alive and well on DU.

But the matter is being discussed anyway.

Have you anything to offer the discussion?

This OP is a blatant attempt at alarmist fear-mongering. Save it for the Teenagers.

Thanks for your contribution.

Hope you don't mind if we continue discussing how the left should approach the problem of domestic jihadism.

This is the same BS movie that Darth Cheney and the Smirking Chimp ran while beating the war drums back in '01. Fuck that, you are going to have come up with a whole flicking bunch more than ignorant paranoia to scare me. I am FAR more likely to get killed by a road raging gun nut than the shit you're on about.

Here's for you:

Or are you simply trying to prove Bill Maher right?

"The sooner that people get that Islam, which has not had a reform movement, is a violent ideology, the safer we will all be."

Skeeeeeeeeeery!

Do you know, offhand, how many people were killed by alcohol and driving in the US last year?

Does your definition of "sensible" include data-driven priority setting?

If someone posts anything about Problem A, one can always respond by pointing out that unrelated Problem B is statistically, or otherwise, far more important.

How does that help us solve Problem A?

And yet I see a boat load of action and energy around that relatively minor threat. Heart attacks kill hundreds a day, yet a serial killer offs 5 people and it is headlines...are you suggesting it would be best to simply not seek out that killer and instead focus on heart disease?
I think such things often have to do with more than hard data, don't you?

They're joining dozens and dozen more children around the nation, killed in their schools. Killed by gunmen. Killed by their peer's bullying.

Apparently leftists like you and I don't need to 'get real" about this, because Fox News isn't going to go into a froth over it, as the pepetrators didn't pray towards Mecca at some point. because those killings are the only ones - out of the dozens and dozens and dozens of murders every day in this nation - that we need to worry about.

The OP reduces to "how should we most assiduously grovel to an irrational agenda".

When people see and talk about violence, it lasts in the memory, causes cognitive changes, and makes it seem more 'normal' if the right factors are there.

There are no germs here, but suicide and violence are very contagious. The ideology is a force multiplier that pushes it into violence, just like misogynistic narcissistic rage was the force multiplier with Elliot Rodger or total alienation was the force multiplier with Adam Lanza.

http://www.wired.com/2013/01/violence-is-contagious/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide

I agree. It isn't just one or the other motivator we need to understand. The dangerous situation we have is with religion and ideology having met up with mental illness, possibly arising from personal experience with violence and/or hopelessness.

The left needs to consider all these factors very carefully if we want to deal effectively and appropriately with homegrown jihadists, and be relevant to this discussion as it evolves (and which we are not relevant to now.)

I think people should prioritize danger in their lives, don't stock up on AR-15's to fight the global jihad when liquor and cars are in abundance and killing Americans every minute.

As noted somewhere in the thread above, whenever someone raises an issue about Problem A, someone can always counter by saying unrelated Problem B is more important.

This does nothing, unfortunately, to help come up with a solution to either Problem A or B.

1) Every minute would be 525000 a year
2) The "drunk driving" stats are absurdly exaggerated even at the slightly more sane and official 10322. Why? Read on...
3) These are tallied by counting the "HBD" checkboxed in FARS reports. This includes drinking AND drug use
4) Even so, fully 50% of accidents with the HBD checked had no BAC tests performed at all. In the rest officers relied on other "indications", such as bottles (recycling? groceries?), signs of medication like pill containers, drug paraphernalia (irrelevant), or even just people undfer 50 on the road between midnight and 6am Saturday (shift or hospitality workers? Weekend travel?)
5) Even when BAC tests were performed, they include tests on pedestrians and cyclists killed too. So a guy walking home from the bar ploughed into by a skidding van containing a Temperance Baptist choir pushing them all over the median into a semi would be 15 "drunk driving" fatalities.
6) There is not even an attempt to assign causation. Even MADD thinks nigh 60% of all traffic fatalities have no alcohol content. Does whatever causes them somehow magically never strike drinkers?
7) There is not even an attempt to assign fault. A guy driving home after two beers stopped perfectly legally at a red light can be crushed by a teetotal OTR trucker running after a deadline on 20 hours with no sleep and be a "drunk driving" fatality
8) Tested BACs as low as 0.01, nowhere near impairment and achievable with a dose of cough syrup, are checked as HBD.
9) Of the people who WERE tested, and were actually driving, and were actually over the limit, 70% of them killed only themselves. But saying some idiot drunks wrap themselves around trees doesn't tug the emotional heartstrings like saying a far far smaller number of them hit other people does it?
10) This much inflated drunk driving menace risk should be compared to the huge number of "drunk driving" trips that MADD propaganda imply when they claim 7% of all trips and 14% on weekend evenings are impaired. The math comes out that statistically a genuinely drunk real driver could drive over the limit every single day for 3000 years before killing someone, and 70% of that time it would be him, making it 10000 years of daily drunk trips before he killed anyone else on average. Even self reported drunk driving trips (and when the perception of dui is akin to child molestation you can imagine how underreported that is) come out to be just short of 100 years daily per other fatality. And since we charge 1.4 million drivers with dui annually, the idea that there are only 112mm annual drunk trips is loony tunes - that would mean a driver has a greater than 1% chance of being arrested driving drunk. I'm not even sure I SEE a cop that frequently when I'm driving, let alone get pulled over (FWIW as I'm sure the accusations will fly I have been pulled over exactly 3 times in 35 years, and not so much as a single test for dui).

I doubt any jihadist bent on mayhem would need 10000 years worth of daily tries before causing a death. Luckily there are a lot fewer of them here.

And yet people behave as if Ebola should also get our attention because they are correct. Every day and a half in Africa, more people die of AIDS than have ever died of Ebola. 36 million people have died so far.
So do you suggest taking no action of any sort to assist Africa with Ebola on the basis of the priority of the dangers? Ebola is not even #2 killer in Africa. 600,000 plus yearly from Malaria. So maybe do nothing at all, because there are worse things?

readily acknowledge these chickens coming home to roost.

what sensible actions do you have in mind, that would protect us against homegrown jihadists?

I believe that if there was serious debate and discussion among progressives on what to do about domestic jihadi terrorists, that we might reach some common understanding of, maybe even a consensus on, sensible steps to take to protect ourselves that don't shred our civil rights, or violate our commitment to social tolerance.

To do that, we need to get passed denying that domestic jihadism is, in fact, a real threat.

I think you have to acknowledge and mock it.

In the end isn't it about getting people to dismiss the messages ISIS is sending? We can't stop them or any other hate group from spreading messages. But can't we influence how it is perceived? We openly mock Westboro Baptist without insulting mainstream chrisitians. Why can't we also mock ISIS's perverted view without mocking mainstream Islam?

Westboro is simply kooky. ISIS is horrible on many levels. Mocking them would feel strangely ineffectual.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Precision and concision. That's the game.[/center][/font][hr]

It's not about stopping ISIS. That is a different problem. Domestically the challenge is to immunize kids and the mentally ill from being susceptible to ISIS's messaging.

"Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance."
Mel Brooks

Mainstream schmainstream. We openly mock adults who believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. We openly mock adults who believe in the tooth fairy, leprechauns, the Loch Ness Monster. Yet somehow angels are more plausible than fairies or aliens, a guy walking on water in the middle of the desert (where there's no ice) is more plausible than a guy flying around the world in a sled pulled by gravity-defying reindeer delivering UPS packages from the air, and an illiterate goat herder receiving the secrets of the universe from some magical boss man during a grand mal seizure is more plausible than Irish midgets hoarding wealth at the "end" of an infinite light prism?

Why are some beliefs, if held by adults and not children with underdeveloped cognitive abilities, reasonable to mock, and others not? If someone goes ahead and kills someone or blows them up over those foolish beliefs, all the more reason to eviscerate them and call them a maniac. But I see nothing wrong with mocking "mainstream" religion (as Maher and others do) for its childish irrationality and outright defiance of logic or the laws of physics. Not to mention the ludicrous and barbaric rules it imposes in the holy books, which have not been updated for modern times and apparently cannot get an upgrade because they were "infallible" when "written by God" in the first place.

A 35-year-old who believes in Santa Claus is a fool and possibly has some sort of mental problem, yet a person who believes in the magical "divinity" of Christ, Mohammed, L. Ron Hubbard, or the reincarnated Buddha is acting on "true and sincere faith" and deserves respect, not derision, for his beliefs? What about someone who aspires to be a Pokemon trainer, the best there ever was? To catch them is his real test; to train them is his cause...

Obviously not a bigger police state or a nation that shows bigotry against Muslims. How can America both respect law-abiding Muslims while stopping the criminals?

They are homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-sexuality, anti-science, gun-loving fanatics. Why should any progressives spare them any mercy?

And that does not mean that we support neocon warmongering if we say that ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are bad and dangerous people.

nt

are homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-woman, anti-sexuality, anti-science, gun-loving fanatics."

bookmarked.

didn't support them in the first place.

The TV news channels and politicians ignored the Syrian rebels rampaging through Syria wiping out christians and other minorities for several years.

The label seems to be an effective propaganda tool.

School shootings aren't labeled "terrorist acts" by the msm.
I don't recall the guy who wrote an anti-woman manifesto and then shot some women being labeled a "terrorist" by the msm.
The Bundy ranch folks aren't labeled as "terrorists" by the msm, or even arrested.

What is a terrorist act, according the msm? If terrorism is an important subject, shouldn't it be well defined? I think so.

What is the difference between the Ft. Hood shootings and the Columbine school shootings? Why is one a terrorist act and the other just a tragedy?

Internment camps? More NSA spying? Loyalty oaths? Racial profiling?

I don't know either what more can be done in a rational sense. Trade sanctions on the higher ups, maybe? Except in Pakistan and other places, the 'higher-ups' aren't that much higher.
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Leftists take all violent religious activists very seriously since we are the people they'd most like to remove from the face of the earth.

Your left bashing failed to take that into account, as well as the fact that the worst of the violent religious activists are Christians, or think they are.

Democracies have always been toppled by the far right, never by the far left. There are no historical exceptions.

And that far right has always been wrapped in the trappings of religion.

Is that is much easier to bash Christians on DU then it is to bash Muslims. Earlier this year there daily threads telling us how bad Catholics were.

Then when the Bill Maher/Sam Harris stuff came to be, and when some DUers agreed they were instantly labled Islamaphobes.

Why wonder why that is.

Most people don't know any Muslims. I've worked in a lot of hospitals so I've worked with a lot of Muslims and most are good people who are indistinguishable from garden variety Protestants except by their aversion to pork.

I've only known one Muslim over the years who turned into a crazy person and that was a kid I went to high school with who went home to the West Bank and joined Black September. That's one out of hundreds and probably the same proportion of mainstream Christians to the crazy ones.

If mainstream Christians had stepped up years ago to denounce and attempt to control the violent people in their ranks, there would be no bashing. Unfortunately, there seems to be some sort of weird solidarity in all religious traditions that protects the violent, crazy people from outsiders.

Nobody gets a free pass on any of this. You keep a dirty house, someone will remark about it.

So you knew one muslim out of "a lot" who joined a legit terrorist organization committed to jihad. You say there are much more self identified violent christians in the US than muslims, but didn't mention knowing one who joined a group to violently crusade in the name of christ.

I myself have ~5 muslim friends, all of which I believe are moderate. I also have ~50 christian friends, all which I believe are moderate. So, statistically speaking, between the 2 of us, we know one person who went to wage a holy war, and that person was muslim.

I would fight for my muslim friends because I know they are good people. You wanted to talk percentages, and between the 2 of our known associations, percentage wise muslims have a bigger problem.

Does doing math make me islamophobic? I wonder...

'Nuff said, I think.

You bet your ass I knew them.

Racists and jihadists need to be stopped as soon as possible. In order to stop them you must understand them. KKK wants to kill blacks (no matter if they are christian or not) and jews... quite similar to how ISIS wants to kill arabs (because they are the wrong sect of islam) and jews.

Both should be condemned and eradicated. I have no problem condemning the klan just as I have no problem condemning jihadists, and I recognize both as horrible without trying to minimize one as compared to the other.