Religious extremists in 3 faiths share views: report

Source: Reuters

Religious extremists in 3 faiths share views: report

Wed Jun 13, 2007 5:48pm ET144

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil" and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters. It said extremists from each of the three faiths often have tangible grievances -- social, economic or political -- but they invoke religion to recruit followers and to justify breaking the law, including killing civilians and members of their own faith.

The report was commissioned by security think tank EastWest Institute ahead of a conference on Thursday in New York titled "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization." The report will be updated and published after the conference....

(edit)

...Harvard University lecturer Jessica Stern, the conference's keynote speaker, spent five years interviewing extremists for her 2003 book "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill." She said it was dangerous for U.S. President George W. Bush to use terms such as "crusade" or "ridding the world of evil."

"It really is falling into the same trap that these terrorists fall into, black and white thinking," Stern told Reuters on Wednesday. "It's very exciting to extremists to hear an American president talking that way."

(more at link)

Read more: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-06-13T224549Z_01_N13366859_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-EXTREMISM.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

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I'm sure a lot of us here have already figured this out, but I'm sure it will come as News to American Fundamentalist and Extremists.

Link to page 2: <http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-06-13T224549Z_01_N13366859_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-USA-EXTREMISM.xml&pageNumber=1&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage1>

will come unglued if you try to compare them to Muslim extremists.

I know. I do it all the time. }(

Try writing "Atheism is a Religion" -- almost anywhere on the Internet.

"Science is a Religion" works nearly as well.

The mere fact that I wrote these phrases here is probably enough.

:evilgrin:

--p!

:nuke:

The nuke symbol, I take it, means that one or both of those quotations made you extremely angry -- in spite of the context.

--p!

(I thought that little sequence of posts was hysterical - thanks!) :rofl:

Pretty simple, huh?

Once you're better than others, the others simply don't matter. If you're an extremist, they're deserving of marginalization or worse.

Certainty is a nasty thing.

Big surprise.

religion they espouse is irrelevant to the horror and evil they represent.
They all use religion as a means to an end...and it is always VERY bad news for those who are the targets of their insanity.

What is particularly horrifying about what BushCo has done to this planet is that he has helped to bring the fanatics that were once marginalized, into the mainstream. This is true in all three of the faiths mentioned in the OP.

I cannot help but believe that it was done intentionally, knowing that it would cause international conflict, and that all his cronies would be making money from the wars that would result.

they use their belief in a vengeful god against others who believe in a compassionate and forgiving god.

...to the video if you want to watch it on-line:

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/view/>

It's called: "Israel's Next War?"

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/israel/>

Yup...religion is a real turn-off.

Ex-Nazi Popes, Crazed Saudi Royals, Usian Oil Barons and their 'Prodigal Son',Globalists, Bullshit Left 'Labour' Parties, general debasement of the public airwaves/debate and an endless future of racist genocidal war as far as the eye can see...

"ridding the world of evil" -- that should have been the first alarm bell for sensible people.

in common with each other than they have differences"--

like, they all hate gays and women, they all fear sexuality, they all love high-powered weaponry and explosives, yet seem to think that a flash of nude breast on a tv screen will cause the sky to fall, and they all seem to have this pathological control-freak NEED to tell everyone else how to live their lives...

....pointing that sort of thing can be construed as "religion-bashing" :eyes:

Like you, I'm not bashing religions or the religious. I'm saying that religious extremists are dangerous. They share authoritarian views and they share an authoritarian fear of anyone or anything that differs from what they have determined is "normal." That's why they all hate feminists and gays and educated, independent people - too scary for the religious extremists to think about.

But you said all that and much more.
Wish we could recommend individual posts... Yours gets mega-votes from me!

Humans are born to love dogma, and also born to feel deep hatred of anyone who doesn't spew the same dogma.

... God is just an excuse to do the bad stuff that they already wanted to do. It just so happens that Muslim, Christian & Jewish believers happen to have the same roots, so they all think alike. What this article somewhat mentioned is the bad stuff done in in the name of Hindu, Greek, Roman, Japanese, Chinese, Incan, Aztec and just about every other people's God in the history of religion. Mostly it is political, economic or social and they just USE religion to justify their behavior.

But I do agree that certain "buzz words" just set each other off (Muslim, Christian & Jewish extremist); Especially when they believe martyrdom is the path to righteousness and heaven.

I just don't blame God for the bad stuff that people do anyway; God or no god, they would do it anyway! Not really God's fault, no matter what god we are talking about.

K & R - Good post!

Scott and Appleby are the main editors of this series from the Univ of Chicago.

The studies' findings concerning the typologies of fundamentalist movements is quite revealing.

When lecturing on the topic, I often find that the wind is taken out of the anti-Muslim brigade when they realize the numerous similarities among various faiths, etc.

Stern's work appears to cover the top 3, but the same "beliefs"/methods can be found in many other world belief systems.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Complete/Series/FP.html

Because you know they only have two options, and when are clever enough to see one fail they only have one other place to land.

Case in point David Horowitz, he flips from an extreme lefty when he sees their flaws to extreme righty.

Where will he go when he sees the flaws of the right? He can't go back to the exteme left, he's already found them flawed. Therefore he must not allow himself to see the flaws of the right.

I believe he is incapable of seeing the vast area in between.

Edit: excellent post K & R

as an 'abomination'. So they have more in common than they'd care to admit.

"Forced moral equivalency is immoral, and that is exactly what Jessica Stern is promoting. The silence of Muslim clerics in the face of Muslim violence is well-known. But when it comes to killing abortionists, the Catholic clergy have an impeccable record. It should be noted, too, that as the New York Sun pointed out today, rabbis everywhere condemned Yigal Amir's 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—the very incident that Stern cited as an example of Jewish silence.



"To begin with, there has not been a single abortionist killed in the U.S. since 1998. When there were killings in the mid-1990s, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, chairman of the Pro-Life Activities of the bishops' conference, said that such shootings make 'a mockery of everything we stand for.' When there were two killings at Massachusetts abortion clinics, Cardinal Bernard Law not only denounced them, he ordered a moratorium on sidewalk protest vigils outside abortion clinics in Boston. Cardinal John O'Connor's response in New York was profound: 'If anyone has an urge to kill an abortionist, kill me instead.'



"Just this week, a report of Muslim violence against Iraqi Christians was released. The study, Incipient Genocide, describes in detail 'the deaths of Christian children--including babies--laypeople, priests and nuns who were burned, beaten or blown up in car bombs throughout the past few years.' Moreover, Christian girls are being raped and having nitric acid thrown in their faces for not wearing veils. And the Muslim silence is deafening."


http://www.standardnewswire.com/news/486241233.html