That does not refute his point unless you assume the Palestinian is Muslim and the Israeli is Jewish(religiously.) Admittedly, that is a safe assumption, but it is not guaranteed. They could both be Christian, for example.
The Islamophobia split on the left.
- Thread starter Mark1031
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In this case the assumption would be justified, but it was an example to illustrate a broader point - namely, that it's a fairly silly idea to claim to know how all members of an ethnic group think.
Gucumatz
JS, secretly Rod Serling
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I think this gets to the heart of most "religious" problems all over the world actually.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
It is more of a case the enemy of of my enemy sort of situation. For Egypt and Israel the common enemy is the Muslim Brotherhood, which formed Hamas, which is why both nations closed the border with Gaza. the result of the enemy can be show with the recent car bombing in Sinai. Jordan and Israel have a common enemy with IS and the problems in Syria, which borders both nations. The leaderships of each nation knows it is in their best interest to work with Israel, even if the general population might not.
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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In the same way Greece and Turkey are members of NATO. Israel and Egypt had a common friend - the USA - and a common enemy you pointed out earlier that made the 1979 treaty possible. Of course, it will not be reversed until there is a very acute reason to, though it is far from cozy.
Right, and I still can't quite follow what the point of your argument is.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
I'll be frank. Frank Stardust. I don't know any indigenous arabs. But still I suspect they'll not confirm to some stereotype which encompasses every arab's sentiment.
Suspect, not assume. I'd rather not collaborate with all ef up's mom.
They think of themselves in terms of family or tribal units, not countries. There is no civic identity among Arabs. That's why their nationalism is fascist in nature: otherwise there wouldn't be any nationalism.
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
even then tribalism is still prominent. I have heard stories from my dad's friends who have been to Kuwait. One of the first things they ask you is which tribe you are from, and the better a tribe you come from the better you are treated. And of course foreigners are almost completely ostracized, if not outright treated hostilely.
Wikipedia's definition of it seems pretty reasonable to me.
I can give examples in the Arab world for 90% of what's described there.
You've said that Arabs (all of them) don't have any identification with their states and then pushed upon them an identity which centres around the total subordination of the individual to the state... not to mention that you're still being incredibly racist.
useless
Social Justice Rogue
If we're to believe Mouthwash and others, Arabs are apparently driven by one thing; their hatred of Israel and that prior to Israel's existence they literally had nothing else binding them
Try reading anything I said at all. I think you're capable of it.
Oh ho ho, I was wondering how long this would take! Yes, I'm racist: I'm violating a meme against assigning characteristics to any group that isn't basically a political party, disregarding that the "Arab" identity is a modern linguistic-national construct.
It is of course still despicable for Jews to assign antisemitic intent to criticism of Israel.
I'm not a true expert in these matters. I've associated with primarily liberal Muslims. They're great - lots of fun to discuss things with, especially since they a different background than myself. The ones I've met don't read the Quran literally - but, I met them in America.
I live in Massachusetts, USA. It is one of the more liberal, better educated, and less religious areas of the country. I've generally met liberals, who believe in ideas mostly similar to mine. However, I've lived with various recent immigrants, and met many other immigrants, and their viewpoints are very different and usually fascinating. I've also done some research online, and not just mainstream news - also news for specific countries aimed at different societies.
It's easy to be swayed by the people we meet into adopting certain views that we then extend to the rest of humanity. This is an incorrect use of statistics, because the people we meet are not necessarily indicative of the overall population. For instance, many polls in America are conducted by telephone surveys of different home-owners. This will miss entire segments of society that do not have landlines, and will likely bias results.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...wireless-only-households-look-south-and-west/
Similarly, using local knowledge of religious acquaintances to sample the religious community of the world at large will meet similar difficulties- local acquaintances are likely to be biased based on the simple fact that they saw fit to go live in America (or other liberal country), or they were born and raised there.
My point is, we can't be an adequate judge of the religious views of other parts of the world without a proper statistical sampling. One way to do this would be to live in the society for a while and meet all sorts of people. Another way, though we will get far less context, is to get basic facts from polling agencies that strive to get statistically representative polling results.
For instance, on the depth of religious belief in the Muslim world:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/...ligion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/
So we can't accept the idea that only a small minority of fringe Muslims believe these things.
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Since you deem Islam to be the source of violence as you claimed
Would you tell the liberal Muslims you meet they're not following Islam, since the doctrine is supposed to be a violent one?
Or are the more obvious facts "from the real world" that the violence often has more politically aligned sources, and Islam is used as a means to sell that violence to a larger, religious public? And isn't another fact that all are Muslim, all follow Islam, it's just that there's more than one interpretation. Doesn't that lead to the conclusion that Islam is not the source but merely a tool?
No. It leads to the conclusion that Islam is a tool. It says nothing about whether Islam is a source of violence. I still claim that Islam is a significant source of violence. This is simply evident in the reasons jihadists give for their actions. Do you really believe every jihadist is lying? The thing is- they likely have similar core values to most of us, but because of certain Islamic beliefs they are twisted into considering terrorism the best means to do the right thing.
More evidence that Islam is a violent religion is given in your very reasoning. You state that it's an effective tool towards leading people to violence. Isn't that in itself a problem? Nazism was another effective tool. Why not tolerate that doctrine too?
Well, yes, there is a trend for not assigning beliefs to groups not explicitly united by beliefs, but that's only because trying to do so is stupid. If people explicitly thought that being an Arab meant hating Israel, then you'd be right, but being an Arab just means feeling a sense of common identity with other Arabs, just as being an Englishman means feeling a common identity with other Englishmen. Would you say it's correct to say that all Israelis hate Arabs?
jackelgull
An aberration of nature
It is tolerated, I mean we still have neo-nazi groups, you know? They just don't have any power in the government.
I mean socially. Go tell someone you're a neo-nazi and they'll look at you like you're nuts.
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