People celebrate their national identity, religious identity, cultural identity and ethnic identity all in one. (United States).

Depending upon your neighborhood: 4th of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, St Patrick's Day, Dingus Day, Columbus Day. Different people celebrate New Years at different times of the year.

Labor Day is more significant to union people, Veterans Day/Memorial Day to others.

It's not about celebrating it's about respecting another's encompassing identity.

It's funny, some people think their birthday should be a national holiday, I don't give a rats ass about mine and hide from it, refuse to celebrate it.

Happy Festivus.

But the bad parts are still there. No ironclad reasoning can be given for rejecting them, and so there will always be those who latch on to the bad parts.

Religion has responsibility here, there's no escaping it.

Which, of course raises the old question of whether religion caused the societal changes or whether religion was the means to achieving independently based societal changes.

Especially in light of the truth of this:

The quote you cherry-picked approvingly

flies in the face of the well written article in 'The Atlantic',
which describes why ISIS is one of the versions of Islam.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

No surprise until one realizes you view religion flatly, placing Jim Jones on the same table as George Fox.

The fact you choose to ignore is that religions are not monolithic blocks of granite. If it were, ISIS would not be the aberration it is.

1- you make the mistake of believing the sentence you highlighted describes ISIS. That sentence leaves out one huge part of its appeal to Muslims worldwide: the Caliphate. A clear and big omission from a sentence you regarded as 'precisely describing' ISIS. Do you know Islam well?

2- your ad hominem falls flat. I have quoted a few times a very good sentence by Sam Harris (and no, I am not a fan of his) which says the word religion, like the word 'sport', is a big umbrella covering different items of different degrees of dangerousness.

3- you call ISIS an aberration. No wonder you try to repudiate it. Because ISIS shows you what happens when religious texts are followed. To the letter. ISIS is the epitome of religiosity: they have the holy book on their side. Islamic scholars are at pains to pretend ISIS is not Islamic. What is the difference between ISIS and Saudi Arabia? And if that difference was great, why did Saudi Arabia and Qatar finance ISIS and al Nosra for so long? The only reason the Gulf States are having second thoughts is that ISIS is lurking at Saudi Arabia. And opinion polls show that the population of Saudi Arabia is sympathetic to ISIS. Why? Once you have started indoctrinating the population like the Gulf States have, ISIS style theocracy is the logical next step.

ISIS is showing you what pure religion can do.
Just like Iran when it hangs its homosexuals.
Like Bangladesh where atheists are hacked to death with the police looking on.

Muslim countries have been pushed toward 'pure' religion by 30 years of Saudi financing.
What you see in Muslim countries is the result of said 'pure' religion.
And I am not the one calling it 'pure', it's just what the Wahhabi missionaries claim.

But, hey, you can try to sweep it under the rug by suggesting I 'hate Muslims'.

Which I don't.

A précis:

1. Sunnis hold that caliphs shold be elected. It is the Shia who hold that a Caliph is chosen by Allah. IS is Sunni, not Shia. I seriously doubt your sweeping statement, "one huge part of its appeal to Muslims worldwide: the Caliphate" holds water withot defining what type of Caliphate is proposed/ Is it Ahmadiyya? Is it Sokoto? Is it Ottaoman? Is it the pure Caliphate of Rashidun? Or is it one of the other dozen caliphates? I sspect there is as mch yearning among modern Muslims for "the Caliphate" as there is among modern Christians for "Christendom". Medieval studies is not political science.

2. I presume you consider this, "No surprise until one realizes you view religion flatly, placing Jim Jones on the same table as George Fox, an ad hominem. To the contrary, is a demonstrable conclusion drawn from your posts. You may either rebut that conclusion or explain your position with more clarity. Either is preferable to complaining about perceived slights.

3. I did call ISIS an aberration. Because it is. Demonstrably. Oh wait, I think your point 3 just confirmed my point 2.

1- congrats on your gish gallop. So what? If you do not know the popularity of the Caliphate dream in the proverbial 'Arab Street', may I suggest you stop trying to discuss Islam?
As for your nice attempt at smothering the point under the preciosity of what exact type of Caliphate is referred to, do you honestly believe the 'Arab Street' cares? It is a backward-looking ideal, an institutionalized 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc': Islam was conquering the world under the Caliphate of the first four 'rightly guided' Caliphs. That is the myth that is so potent today. That you should not know such a simple thing brings my question back: are you sure you know Islam well?

2- it was evidently an ad hominem as you were not making a point or an idea, but asserting your -erroneous- assumption of what you thought my opinion on religions was.

3- ISIS is an aberration because you say so? And despite the fact-filled paragraph I wrote and which you do not even bother to tackle? Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever you say, rug.

1. Do tell. Describe the 'Arab Street'. Is it a street you'd find in Djakarta or Lagos?

2. "you decreeing things by fiat don't make them real". I will only note that calling something an ad hominem - again - does not rebut the description.

3. ISIS is an aberration because it is a very small entity within a much, much larger structure. Science!

1- The Arab Street in Lagos? Do you need an atlas?

2- Contrarily to you delivering ex cathedra pronouncements, I explained in my post #8 why you had committed an ad hominem. You may try to disprove my point though.

3- "ISIS is an aberration because it is a very small entity within a much, much larger structure." What can I say but ROFL?

Let's see all the different levels at which you are wrong here:
• First, there's your absolute definition of an aberration: So Science PhD's are an aberration because they are a "very small segment within a much, much larger population"?
• Second, there's your relative definition of an aberration: ISIS controls a territory with 7-8M people. That's 0.5% of 'Muslim' countries. When one starts getting 0.5% of something, it's a tad more than an aberration.
• Third and last, there's your global definition of an aberration: 10% of the rest of the Muslim world 'completely' or 'somewhat' supports ISIS. That's 160 million Muslims. A rather sizable aberration, one might say.

Again, in view of your 'ISIS is an aberration comment', in view of the facts detailed above and of my post #6 pointing that ISIS shares the same theology than Saudi Arabia, are you sure you know Islam well?

http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2011/01/31/myth-arab-street

As to the rest of your post, you're gyrating over the same drain.

Bravo to you: you found one site which interprets the cliché 'Arab Street' in an odd and biased way.

Other than that, I note you had nothing to answer of substance.

Absence of point taken.

http://lclab.berkeley.edu/papers/arab-street-published.pdf

From the introduction abstract:

That is the current usage, and the one I used.
If academics like those of your paper wish to make that usage evolve, more power to them.

Congratulations of hoisting high and proudly such a colored red herring.
Confucius. Finger. Moon.

It was right there at the beginning of the article. In italic.

There are all sorts of privileges, aren't there?

Generally speaking, in the discussion we had started -until you felt a need to sidetrack-,
the precise definition of the metaphor 'Arab Street' is a minor side issue which you raised.

Nice red herring.

Now you found a source where two authors give argue that this metaphor can be seen as degrading. It is their opinion, and not a widely distributed one. But since their article was one of the first hits after "Arab Street in Singapore", you are now plunging with delight into their thesis.

Yellow sardine, yoohoo.

Punctuated with smileys.

I'll talk to you again after you recover.

of Christianity, Catholicism and the like are the modern remnants of religions that were once practiced with mostly control in mind. Doubters were murdered, the books were kept away from the populace, and entire populations were wiped out for believing the wrong way.

You can't separate modern religion from the past because it really hasn't been that long since that stuff was happening, and it's creeping back in. Oh, and some places it never really stopped.

It's like slavery (Another thing religion encourages) in America we ended the African slave trade in the 1860's. That's about 150 years ago, not far at all (Some people are still fighting that war even). And even though we have the emancipation proclamation, slavery is still very much alive, from servants, to the sex trade, to student loans, to the prison industry, people have found loopholes to essentially own people.

So no, it's a religious thing, always has been, and until the extreme parts are expunged from holy books and forgotten about, it always will be.

Just a thought.

remind me of the myriad of explanations for mass shootings - all of which pretend that the absurd nearly unregulated access to "military style" weapons has either nothing to do with it or is somehow an immutable fact.

so any distinction is lost in the end except by saying its cultural is saying religion has had even more negative influence.

That people create a (religious) world-view not because they are trying to find sense and order in a chaotic world but because they have malicious intent?

cheers, Maggie

repeatedly chanting "Separation of Church and State! It's Constitutionally correct!" at every religious extremist and wannabe extremist...

It's one of the right things to do. I have not heard the phrase very often on any news outlet... but it was mentioned in the last episode of the Klown Kar Kavalcade a couple nights ago as though it were the scourge of the nation.