What would be a good response to the Paris attacks?

[r16]

It is most certainly an option. Simply inform the Russians that they can either join our coalition or cease any operations in the area.

uhm , why ? It's the inconvenience of Russian presence that the Americans are forced to fight ISIL . As such Putin says hundreds of trucks are smuggling oil . America goes and says they destroyed 100 . Putin then says they destroyed 500 . This p_ssing contest is to the benefit of entire mankind , right ?

 

[CavLancer]

Particularly the truck mechanics.

 

[r16]

strategy sites are already lamenting the change of direction . You see , not even Sunni Arabs in Syria like ISIL and the attacks on oil "refineries" were clearly interwined with strategic guidance . As recruitment would fall USAF would come knocking down a "refinery" and another family would sent sons to ISIL to earn a living . Wholesale attacks , while increasing recruitment now , should be better in the long run . Especially now that there is "competition" , namely Russians . While rather blunt when compared to the finesse of USAF , the uncalculable advantage of Russians is that they haven't sold their allies yet , at least on the same scale as Americans do .

 

[CavLancer]

Allies? Are you referring to the old Warsaw Pact? No, can't be, they're all US allies now. Actually I think the reason the Russians want to keep Assad around is that Putin gets lonely without any friends to play with.

 

[r16]

allies denote partners for the duration and not sacred type as in Westerners . Even if the Russian help has been kinda useful in the 0.4% of the country so far taken back by Damascus .

 

[CavLancer]

Partners for the duration? Of what? I can make a long list of US allies that have been allies since WW1. How many allies has Russia had so long?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Spoiler :

 

[red_elk]

Yeah, we'll create our own Caliphate, with blackjack and hookers.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I am all for it!

...unles you mean THIS blackjack:


Link to video.

 

[red_elk]

I am all for it!
...unles you mean THIS blackjack:

It's White Swan actually.
Our NATO partners always had a habit of calling white things black and vice versa

 

[Ryika]

I guess you missed the post just before yours...

Actually, yes, I had already started typing before that post was made. But I don't see how that's an argument. There is a scale between "They want to kill as all!" and "All Muslims are our best friends forever!" and there's a lot of material to have an unfavorable view of on that scale.

If that is supposed to be argument, the conclusion doesn't follow from the premiss. (Not to mention that Christians rarely distance themselves from bad things other Christians do, simply because they are not part of that particular brand of Christianity.Terrorism, by the way, has no religion. It's a political method.) Seeing as most victims of supposedly Muslim terror are in fact Muslims, the whole argument - such as it is - falls flat on its face.

The argument still works and it would still work, even if all Muslim Terror were 100% done against other Muslims. Even if Muslim Terror was done 100% against Animals it would still work, because you don't have to be the target of someone who's doing something bad to be worried about the person doing something bad.

Daily Mail... That's nice. Of course Muslims in Britain are an insignificant minority. But that apart, I think you will find that people in general don't really have a positive attitude of homosexuality. This is why we have laws.

76% of the overall British population says that society should accept homosexuality. (Only 18% are strictly against it)

Is it? A 600 interviewee sample isn't even remotely statistically significant. It seems to me people who view Islam in a negative way are looking simply for ways to confirm such prejudice.

A sample size of 600 isn't that small. Yes, it is not big enough to come to a final conclusion on the exact numbers, that's why I mentioned the sample size in the first place. The sample size is still big enough to conclude that there is a trend that strongly points into one direction.

Anyway - I actually looked for a survey with a bigger sample size, but all I could find were some small ones, all with similar numbers. If you think these numbers are wrong simply provide a survey big enough and with the numbers you want to see. I couldn't find a proper one, so the ball's on your court.

And again:
I'm not saying that people should become prejudiced towards their fellow Muslims just because they come to the conclusion that globally a lot of bad stuff is done in the name of Islam. The last thing I want to see is a "racial war" against Muslims (who are not a race), that would just radicalize people on both sides. But you can't expect people to accept your premise that the Muslims living outside of Muslim Countries are the true Muslims and the Muslims in other countries are just misguided people who don't know what true Islam is. That's just nonsense.

 

[aelf]

Okay, that example was probably a bad one, I admit that. Even I don't agree that when the corrupt organization that is the church lays their hands on children that doesn't have anything to do with Christianity as a whole.

But that doesn't really translate into what is happening in Islam, given that in many Islamic countries homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and other forms of prejudice are rampant. Not only that, but in the minds of many, people who draw pictures of the prophet, people who want to leave Islam and women who have sex before marriage are to be killed. All of this can be and is being supported by citing their holy book.

So these people clearly are part of what is bundled under the banner of Islam.

Let me burst your cute little Western bubble a little: Most of the world is homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic. It's also racist.

There are societies that are explicitly not Islamic where these problems persist, no matter the general level of education.

"In East Asia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and other forms of prejudice are rampant, so it's absolutely natural not to trust East Asians. I mean, there are Buddhist monks advocating violence in Myanmar!"

Yeah, conservatives are dicks. It's not just Muslim fundies.

 

[Ryika]

Let me burst your cute little Western bubble a little: Most of the world is homophobic, misogynistic and transphobic. It's also racist.

There are societies that are explicitly not Islamic where these problems persist, no matter the general level of education.

"In East Asia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny and other forms of prejudice are rampant, so it's absolutely natural not to trust East Asians. I mean, there are Buddhist monks advocating violence in Myanmar!"

Yes, that's true and can be seen in the survey I linked above.

But what's the argument? Nobody is claiming that the people living in Africa aren't true Africans and that I have to accept that true Africans are not homophobic because the people who have (or were) moved to western countries are less homophobic, so why is this double-think expected when it comes to Islam?

Yeah, conservatives are dicks. It's not just Muslim fundies.

In many cases these are the same. In any religion. Outdated texts have outdated values.

 

[aelf]

Err, what? People are saying that it's wrong to generalise to Muslims or to Islam as a whole the actions of a few who claim to be true Muslims. If people, especially Muslims, disagree that those bad eggs really are true Muslims, who are you to say that they are wrong?

The proper comparison is if you're claiming that East Asianness of Africanness entails being homophobic and you don't believe people who say that that's not true because you know that much of East Asia and Africa is homophobic.

 

[Ryika]

Err, what? People are saying that it's wrong to generalise to Muslims or to Islam as a whole the actions of a few who claim to be true Muslims. If people, especially Muslims, disagree that those bad eggs really are true Muslims, who are you to say that they are wrong?

That would only work if you claimed to know that people who have a bad view of Islam have this view because of Terrorists and not because of the overall state of Muslim-controlled countries.

I mean, let's stick with homophobia for a clear-cut example. Except for Western Countries a large majority of Muslims everywhere is homophobic and justifying their views with the holy texts that clearly support their view of the world (which is hardly surprising given that these texts are horribly outdated and yet seen as "infallible") - is that not a good reason to say: "Well... I don't quite like the values they have."?

 

[aelf]

I, too, don't like the values that conservatives have.

But that's beside the point. Are you going to start suspecting all of East Asia, East Asians or 'East Asianness' because of the values that are predominant in that part of the world?

 

[Ryika]

I, too, don't like the values that conservatives have.

But that's beside the point. Are you going to start suspecting all of East Asia, East Asians or 'East Asianness' because of the values that are predominant in that part of the world?

That's a loaded question, nobody was suggesting that we should be worried about all of <anything>. Quite the opposite, I said a few times now that we should be very careful not to over-generalize.

And nothing of that changes that if a majority of Muslims in Muslim countries say they dislike homosexuals, want to stone people who leave Islam and punish people who draw the prophet, it is just completely normal and to be expected that many people who think that all of this is stupid will be like: "Whoow, that's bad." and end up having a generally unfavorable view of Islam. That does not mean that they have a negative stance towards every single Muslim, that just means that the overall balance tends towards the negative side.

That's the same for any religion. If it turned out that the majority of Buddhist now are people who think that homosexuals should be skinned alive and start justifying that by ancient texts then yes, the view on Buddhism will also change quite rapidely.

 

[aelf]

So do you think it's normal for people to have an unfavourable view of East Asia/East Asians for similar reasons? Do you think that is actually a thing?

 

[Ryika]

So do you think it's normal for people to have an unfavourable view of East Asia/East Asians for similar reasons? Do you think that is actually a thing?

Again, East Asia is an area on the map, Islam is a religion. That's not the same thing.

We currently don't have any religion (or any other belief system) on the world that is used to justify that kind of prejudice against people by a majority of it's followers (/edit: Or at least none of the big ones do). If there were, then yeah, it should totally be handled the same way, people should be very worried about how that religion is being used.

Overall though, yes, I think if East Asia is indeed a place full of prejudice, then people should totally have an unfavorable view on that area. I do not believe in "That's just their Culture!" if that's what you're getting at.

The reason why the negative view on East Asian Countries may very well be because we don't really have to actively deal with them. If we suddenly had people from China suicide-bomb our cities - even if it were just a few extremists - then yeah, people would probably be more aware of the things that happen in China that they disagree with.

 

[aelf]

Why are you making a distinction between a religion and an area that has shared cultural norms? What exactly is so different between the two that allows you to generalise about one but not the other?

And then you go on to contradict yourself by saying that people "should" generalise about East Asia if the situation is really that bad there. I'm telling you, when it comes to prejudice, it is.

But that's not all. You then offer a reason for why people treat Islam in a special way: It's because they have to live with Muslims. So there we have it, the reason why we're even having this conversation: Islam is being singled out simply because people's attention are on it, and not because it's necessarily any worse than some other grouping of people.