DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: hnumpah on May 12, 2016, 08:10:35 PM
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10 of the Worst Terror Attacks by Extreme Christians and Far-Right White Men
Most of the terrorist activity in the U.S. in recent years has come not from Muslims, but from radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.
By Alex Henderson / AlterNet July 24, 2013
From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, Neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.
When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.
Below are 10 of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years.
1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012. The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11 America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. Sikhs are not Muslims; the traditional Sikh attire, including their turbans, is different from traditional Sunni, Shiite or Sufi attire. But to a racist, a bearded Sikh looks like a Muslim. Only four days after 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who owned a gas station in Mesa, Arizona, was murdered by Frank Silva Roque, a racist who obviously mistook him for a Muslim.
But Sodhi’s murder was not the last example of anti-Sikh violence in post-9/11 America. On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented: he had been a member of the neo-Nazi rock bands End Empathy and Definite Hate. Attorney General Eric Holder described the attack as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred.” It was good to see the nation’s top cop acknowledge that terrorist acts can, in fact, involve white males murdering people of color.
2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009. Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have had a field day. A physician was the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.
Tiller had a long history of being targeted for violence by Christian Right terrorists. In 1986, his clinic was firebombed. Then, in 1993, Tiller was shot five times by female Christian Right terrorist Shelly Shannon (now serving time in a federal prison) but survived that attack. Given that Tiller had been the victim of an attempted murder and received countless death threats after that, Fox News would have done well to avoid fanning the flames of unrest. Instead, Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to him as “Tiller the baby killer." When Roeder murdered Tiller, O’Reilly condemned the attack but did so in a way that was lukewarm at best.
Keith Olbermann called O’Reilly out and denounced him as a “facilitator for domestic terrorism” and a “blindly irresponsible man.” And Crazy for Godauthor Frank Schaffer, who was formerly a figure on the Christian Right but has since become critical of that movement, asserted that the Christian Right’s extreme anti-abortion rhetoric “helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.” Neocon Ann Coulter, meanwhile, viewed Tiller’s murder as a source of comic relief, telling O’Reilly, “I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.” The Republican/neocon double standard when it comes to terrorism is obvious. At Fox News and AM neocon talk radio, Islamic terrorism is a source of nonstop fear-mongering, while Christian Right terrorism gets a pass.
3. Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008. On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto. Adkisson (who pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and is now serving life in prison without parole) was vehemently anti-abortion, but apparently committing an act of terrorism during a children’s play was good ol’ Republican family values. While Adkisson’s act of terrorism was reported on Fox News, it didn't get the round-the-clock coverage an act of Islamic terrorism would have garnered.
4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. To hear the Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the Army of God, a loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.
5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996. Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. Hawthorne wasn’t the only person Rudolph murdered: his bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998 caused the death of Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard) and caused nurse Emily Lyons to lose an eye.
Rudolph’s other acts of Christian terrorism include bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997 and an abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb in 1997. Rudolph was no lone wolf: he was part of a terrorist movement that encouraged his violence. And the Army of God continues to exalt Rudolph as a brave Christian who is doing God’s work.
6. The murder of Barnett Slepian byJames Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later. Kopp later claimed he only meant to wound Slepian, not kill him. But Judge Michael D'Amico of Erin County, NY said that the killing was clearly premeditated and sentenced Kopp to 25 years to life. Kopp is a suspect in other anti-abortion terrorist attacks, including the non-fatal shootings of three doctors in Canada, though it appears unlikely that Kopp will be extradited to Canada to face any charges.
7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others. Salvi was found dead in his prison cell in 1996, and his death was ruled a suicide. The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved. The Rev. Donald Spitz, a Christianist and Army of God supporter who is so extreme that even the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue disassociated itself from him, has praised Salvi as well.
8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter. Stack left behind a rambling suicide note outlining his reasons for the attack, which included a disdain for the IRS as well as total disgust with health insurance companies and bank bailouts. Some of the most insightful coverage of the incident came from Noam Chomsky, who said that while Stack had some legitimate grievances—millions of Americans shared his outrage over bank bailouts and the practices of health insurance companies—the way he expressed them was absolutely wrong.
9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984. One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.
Robert Matthews, who founded the Order, got that name from a fictional group in white supremacist William Luther Pierce’s anti-Semitic 1978 novel, The Turner Diaries—a book Timothy McVeigh was quite fond of. The novel’s fictional account of the destruction of a government building has been described as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995. Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. Neocons will claim that bringing up McVeigh’s name during a discussion of terrorism is a “red herring” that distracts us from fighting radical Islamists, but that downplays the cruel, destructive nature of the attack.
Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history: 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured. When McVeigh used a rented truck filled with explosives to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, his goal was to kill as many people as possible. McVeigh was motivated by an extreme hatred for the U.S. government and saw the attack as revenge for the Ruby Ridge incident of 1992 and the Waco Siege in 1993. He had white supremacist leanings as well (when he was in the U.S. Army, McVeigh was reprimanded for wearing a “white power” T-shirt he had bought at a KKK demonstration). McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001. He should have served life without parole instead, as a living reminder of the type of viciousness the extreme right is capable of.
Alex Henderson's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, Creem, the Pasadena Weekly and many other publications. Follow him on Twitter @alexvhenderson.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-worst-terror-attacks-extreme-christians-and-far-right-white-men
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Nice four decade collection.
Want to bet that this score is equaled by Islamists during the next month ?
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Should I go back and add every murder and mass murder committed over the last few years in the US by non-Muslims? Let's see, Columbine, Sandy Hook....My point is, it ain't the religion that's responsible for the murders, it's the individuals. But it's a waste of time and effort trying to explain that here.
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Should I go back and add every murder and mass murder committed over the last few years in the US by non-Muslims? Let's see, Columbine, Sandy Hook....My point is, it ain't the religion that's responsible for the murders, it's the individuals. But it's a waste of time and effort trying to explain that here.
Yes.
You should examine your own point well enough to defend it .
With Islam the religion is a big part of the problem.
And also the scale of these two problems is not equal.
Somalia and Sudan are as wrecked as they could be without extinction .
And Islam is the justification.
Boko Haram will kill you for being educated , which is not a standard Islam tenant , but they lead on the strength of their peoples understanding of Islam.
Timothy McVeigh had help, but not a nationwide or world wide organization, for him it was individual.
The suicide bombers of Bagdad are striking three a day today , how is that organized?
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it isn't even close....the guy lives in fantasy land
he is basically an apologist for the world's most prolific murderers
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/attacks.aspx?Yr=Last30
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I'm not sure what your point is, H. Do extremists of all stripes commit atrocities? I don't think anyone is denying that. Shall we add how many murders occurred in the city of Chicago alone the last month? I mean, murders occur, by all manner of folk. But if you're trying to compare Christian extremists with Muslim extremists.....both extremes will kill. The issue is perspective, as in who's doing what, in what #'s. As Plane helped demonstrate, the amount of "terror attacks" by "Christian Extremists" over a few decades is matched, and then some, by Muslim extremists, in no more than a month.
So, again, what exactly is the point you're trying to drive home?
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it isn't even close....the guy lives in fantasy land
he is basically an apologist for the world's most prolific murderers
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/attacks.aspx?Yr=Last30
I traveled in and out of the Middle East for years, worked, ate, slept and socialized with Muslims, sat and discussed everything from politics to religion to just about any subject you'd care to name with them; I've slept in princes' palaces, working mans' apartments, and Bedouin tents in the desert, walked the streets of their cities and strolled through their bazaars. I never once felt threatened or felt like anyone was out to harm me because i wasn't Muslim. Ever. But here, in my own damned country, I've been called a traitor and worse for opposing rushing blindly into a war based on false information, opposing the invasion of a country we had no business invading, and opposing the needless death and destruction it brought about. I've seen people on forums like this all across the internet posting bogus misinformation and lies about Islam and Muslim people, and other gullible little frightened people taking this bullshit and passing it on as fact. CU4's latest post, taking an obviously criminal act and using the fact it just happened to be committed by a Muslim in order to try to smear an entire religion, just pushed the wrong damned button for me.
You can all take your bigoted anti-Muslim right wing bullshit and shove it up your ass.
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How is pointing out the ongoing RISE in radical Islamic terrorist attacks and killings "bigoted anti Muslim right wing BS"? Is that not happening? Is there some rise in Christian terrorist attacks that isn't being reported?
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I pointed out on another post that it's all more from culture than religion these seemingly extemist muslim groups. Ex the burqa is not muslim it has no mention in the koran and only a minority wears them. Isis action is not islam and the majority of people they kill are muslims but we here still blame the whole group. Notice no mention these group are a problem to muslims themselves and never think their not supporting but just powerless .
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I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat myself.....I blame those who have taken the Koran, and mutated its message, to fit a perverse Islamic ideology. Basically a form of Islamic Fascism. Not an entire race, not even an entire religion. But I have to disagree with you Kimba, in that its indeed religion driven. Religion fuels martyrdom. When you have a belief that your acting with your God's authority, it allows one to justify any act of terror, and any number of killing
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But are they using god when they attack other muslims? I have no doubt its used to attack westerners but the land taking and killers people of thier same faith is where I think it's cultural and nothing to do with islam. I did not came up with this on my own I learned this from an interveiw with a observer who liveed there for a decade .
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The fact is that these attacks are provoked more by culture than religion, and the idea that Islam is the root cause gets us nowhere, since there is no chance that 1.2 billion people can be converted to some other more peaceful religion or exterminated.
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it isn't even close....the guy lives in fantasy land
he is basically an apologist for the world's most prolific murderers
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/attacks/attacks.aspx?Yr=Last30
I traveled in and out of the Middle East for years, worked, ate, slept and socialized with Muslims,
I have been there too, perhaps not as much as you, but let me add Sudan to the places where a stranger can be treated hospitably by Muslims , when I was there I traveled to Suyakin by myself and spent some time at the "Expat club in Port Sudan. The expats that spent a lot more time than I had no complaints.
Even in Syria, where hell is currently in session , I would expect a strong majority to be in favor of peace and hospitality.
Don't rebut a point that no one wants to make.
With a fact that is so patently untrue.
When Europe was on fire seventy years ago, was the majority of persons there really at fault?
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I'm not sure how many times I have to repeat myself.....
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Are you blue in the face yet? Have you repeated yourself until you are blue in the face?
If so, keep repeating until you turn indigo.
Surely the truth of what you claim is related to the number of times you repeat it,
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And the waste of bandwidth contiunes
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But are they using god when they attack other muslims?
Absolutely. ANYONE, that hasn't converted, or hasn't agreed to be subjugated by their mutated version of Islam
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It's Islam Stupid
I make no apology. Indeed, after the downing of the Russian airliner over Sinai, the bombing of a peace rally in Ankara, the mass shooting in San Bernadino, last week's lethal blast in Istanbul, and this week's attacks in Brussels (to name but a few of the better-known instances of the reportedly over 3,000 Muslim-related terrorist attacks in over 50 countries and the resultant 30,000 plus fatalities perpetrated since then), what I wrote over a year ago is just as relevant today as it was then.
Islam is to terrorism as rain is to flooding.
Of course, there is much truth in the claim that most Muslims are not actively involved in terrorism.
However, while this claim is factually correct, substantively, it is meaningless.
Indeed, for anyone, with a reasonably informed grasp of world affairs and an iota of intellectual integrity, the answer to whether Islam and violence/terrorism are causally connected should be unequivocally clear. To ask whether Islam is associated with terrorism is a little like asking if rainfall is associated with flooding.
After all, if one in six people in the world is Muslim, then five out of six are not "right" Accordingly, if there were no inordinate Islamic affinity for violence/terrorism, the number of Muslim acts of terrorism should be one-fifth that of non-Muslim terrorism ? i.e. if Islam had no greater propensity for terrorism, one should expect non-Muslim acts of terrorism to be five times those perpetrated by Muslims.
This is not the case. Terrorist attacks committed by adherents of Islam far outstrip those carried out by non-Muslims.
Eerie sense of inevitability
It would therefore seem that, in stark contradiction to the dubious precepts of political correctness there is little choice but to accept the commonsense conclusion that there is a wildly disproportionate causal connection between Islam on the one hand, and acts of ideo-politically motivated violence against civilian populations, i.e. terrorism, on the other.
Try as one may, there is no way that, in the modern world, any other faith/creed can be associated with such violence/ terrorism in scope, size, frequency or ubiquity of occurrence.
Without wishing to appear smugly insensitive, the carnage at Charlie Hebdo, the butchery at Bataclan, and the bloodbath in Brussels could hardly be deemed unexpected.
Quite the contrary, for decades the ominous writing has been on the wall. Tragically it has been studiously ignored, sacrificing lives on the altar of the false deity of political correctness.
This week's bloodshed in Belgium was the latest link in a gory chain of violence, committed by the followers of the prophet, in his name, across the continent and beyond.
This, coupled with the burgeoning Muslim urban enclaves, ungoverned and increasingly ungovernable, in the heart of European capitals, the unchecked extremist indoctrination, and the return of battle hardened jihadists from the killing fields of Iraq and Syria, imbued with ISIS-compliant ideology, imparted an eerie sense of inevitability to Tuesday?s blasts.
Horrors of intra-Muslim strife
But as appalling as Muslim violence against non-Muslims might be, it pales into insignificance when compared to violence between Muslims.
It would be impossible to give a comprehensive survey of the intra-Muslim carnage that has raged and still rages across vast swaths of the globe, from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the islands of Asia-Pacific. A brutally condensed synopsis will have to suffice.
Even before the unspeakable barbarism of al-Nusra and ISIS began to sweep across much of the Levant, and the ghastly savagery of Boko Haram and al-Shabaab ravaged huge stretches of Africa, merciless massacres of Muslims at the hands of Muslims abounded.
For example, in the almost 10-year Algerian civil war, internecine frictions between rival Islamist factions resulted in massive fratricide with a death toll reaching, by some estimates, 150,000. Acts of unimaginable brutality were perpetrated, with entire villages wiped out and victims bodies mutilated.
Likewise, regular bombings of markets and mosques across countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have produced massive loss of Muslim life at the hands of belligerent brethren, yet hardly generate a footnote in the mainstream media. The intra-Muslim conflict seems so intense and complicated that even a reasonably informed layman would find it almost impossible to figure out who is killing whom, and why...
As a gauge of the scope of the slaughter, the Pakistani site Dawn (Jun 17, 2013) reported in a post titled "Islam at war with itself" that al-Qaida affiliates and other extreme Islamist groups ?have perpetrated indiscriminate violence against civilians... resulting in over 48,000 deaths...
The majority of Muslims...
The pervasive violence in the Muslim world inevitably raises the question of the general character of Islam, and the kind of behavioral patterns it seems to generate.
It also raises the thorny question of minority actions vs majority inaction.
Thus, while Abu Shehadeh is probably right when he claims that only a minority of Muslims are engaged in abhorrent acts of terrorism, it is highly unlikely they would be able to sustain this activity without the support ? or, at least, the tacit approval ? of much larger segments of the population.
Even if the majority does not actively endorse the conduct of a delinquent minority, there is little evidence of effective disapproval, let alone active opposition to it. So, although, as Abu Shehadeh contends, it is difficult to formulate accurate generalizations for 1.5 billion people, several edifying measures are available that paint a daunting picture of the views held by much of the Muslim world.
The Pew Research Center has conducted numerous in-depth surveys across much of the Muslim world. Its findings show solid ? at times, overwhelming ? majorities in many countries (and significant minorities in others) in favor of harsh corporal punishments (whipping/amputation) for theft/robbery; death by stoning for adultery; and death for apostasy.
With such a propensity for violence as a widely accepted cultural norm, it is not implausible to assume that wide sections of the Muslim population would not find the use of violence and terrorism overly incompatible with their core beliefs.
Attempts at apologetics: The "colonialism" canard
Numerous attempts have been made to explain away much of the prevalence of violence in the Muslim world and its conflict with the West.
Arguably the most prominent among such apologists was none other than President Barack Obama. In his 2009 "Outreach address" in Cairo, he offered the following explanation for the sad state of affairs between the West and Islam which, he alleged, followed "centuries of coexistence and cooperation."
(Yeah, right!). Obama suggested that "more recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims."
This of course holds no water.
For while it is true that much of the Middle East was under imperial rule for centuries, this was mostly Muslim imperialism ? i.e. the Ottoman Empire.
After all, with perhaps the exception of North Africa, Western colonialism was imposed for a relatively short period after World War I, and ended soon after World War II. This hardly seems sufficient to engender the obdurate Islamic enmity we see today.
So if complaints are to be lodged regarding colonialist deprivation of Muslim rights and opportunities, shouldn't they be directed at the Muslim imperialists? Curiously, the crucibles of today's most extreme anti-Western Islam were barely touched by colonialism, the Arabian Peninsula and Iran.
Although neither has endured any imperial including Western rule of any consequence, the former birthed the Sunni-derivative version of Islamic radicalism and the latter the Shia-derivative.
Clearly, this fact sits uneasily with the diagnosis ascribing ongoing tensions between Muslims and the West to colonial injustices.
No cries of "Kill for Krishna"?
Moreover, one might well ask why the iniquities of colonialism have not afflicted, say, the Hindu majority in India, certainly ?denied rights and opportunities? under the same yoke of British imperialism, no less than the Muslims in adjacent Pakistan.
Yet, in stark contradiction to the bloodcurdling yells of Allah-hu-Akbar (Allah is great) so frequently heard as a precursor to some act of Muslim-related atrocity, we somehow hear no cries of "Kill for Krishna" or "Ganesh is Great" from embittered Hindu terrorists, blowing themselves up in crowded buses, markets, cafes and mosques.
Nor do we see aggrieved devotees of Shiva embarking on a global holy war, dedicated to the subjugation of all to the Hindu creed.
So why has India, to a large extent, been able to put its colonial past behind it, and become a vibrant economic juggernaut? Why has it not allowed itself to remain tethered to its past and mired in fratricidal frustration that has so beset its Muslim neighbor, Pakistan? After all, since by far most victims of Muslim violence are other Muslims, rights and opportunities allegedly denied by foreign occupiers seven decades ago seem an unpersuasive explanation for Islam's current conduct.
Modernity as culprit?
Some have tried to contend that the onset of modernity and globalization has created a sense of threat to Islamic values, which has precipitated tensions with the West.
Thus, in Cairo, Obama suggested that "the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to Islamic traditions."
This, too, is difficult to accept.
After all, Islam is the youngest of all major religions, founded centuries even in some cases, millennia after Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Why would the newest religion find that the developments of modernity threaten its traditions in a manner that, apparently, does not threaten the traditions of faiths far more ancient? Why do they not generate the same tensions with the West that we find in the case of the Muslim faith? Could it perhaps be that Islam is fundamentally incompatible not only with modernity, not only with anything that is not Islam, but even with variations of Islam within itself?
Indeed, as the previously cited analysis in Dawn lamented: "From Aleppo in Syria to Quetta in Balochistan, Muslims are engaged in the slaughter of other Muslims. The numbers are enormous.... Millions have perished in similar intra-Muslim conflicts in the past four decades. Many wonder if the belief in Islam was sufficient to bind Muslims in peace with each other."
Grim, gory future?
I concluded my January 2015 column with the following caveat: "Europe in general and France in particular are on the cusp of a grim, probably gruesome, future."
Today this is even more pertinent for Belgium.
In it I cautioned that European leaders should heed the clarion call from someone who has intimate first-hand knowledge of Islam ? the Somalian-born former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali, forced to flee to the US because of threats from Muslims who objected to her caustic criticism of Islam: "Islam is not a religion of peace. It's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means it can. Every accommodation of Muslim demands leads to a sense of euphoria and a conviction that Allah is on their side. They see every act of appeasement as an invitation to make fresh demands." (March 21, 2009) Europe will ignore her dire diagnosis at its peril. Unless it faces up to the bleak realities confronting it and tailors its policies accordingly, the consequences will be, indeed, grim... and gory.
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Europe will ignore her dire diagnosis at its peril. Unless it faces up to the bleak realities confronting it and tailors its policies accordingly, the consequences will be, indeed, grim... and gory.
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Yes, indeed.
Europe needs to exterminate Islam entirely.
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Actually, that'd be only those who have taken its cause as a justification by killing anyone that doesn't convert
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but doesn`t this logic about islam to terrorist means the irish are also terrorist also?
and how do we know the attacks on fellow muslims are because it`s a refusal to convert.
I`m against this wide sweep about islam because it`s very counter productive to a solution. it give a message to people trying to stay alive they are supporting thier enemy. it kinda lookslike we`re encouring isis to grow
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but doesn`t this logic about islam to terrorist means the irish are also terrorist also?
One is religion based, the other is simply geography
I`m against this wide sweep about islam because it`s very counter productive to a solution.
I don't support a broad brushing of an entire religion either. However, current reality demonstrates that these growing terrorist acts by radical Islamists are growing & spreading. And trying to either ignore that fact, or try to imply that "Christian extremists", are somehow just as bad and problematic, is what's truly counter-productive, IMHO.
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The battle for Northern Ireland has always had a religious aspect to it.
The British identified Belfast as a place with good resources, and took place in the 1600's, after England had become Protestant.
http://philnorf.tripod.com/scottish.htm
Free land was offered two Scots of the Lowlands in County Ulster. The Catholics were driven away and replaced by Scots, as Scots-Irish are known in the UK and the US. The Protestants were always given the best jobs and treatment until pretty recently/
The Catholics say Derry and pronounce the name of the letter H as haitch, and the Protestants call the city Londonderry and say aitch. And of course , there are the surnames.
They stopped killing one another perhaps 20 years ago.
The Protestants celebrate the defeat of the Irish on the 12th of July with an Orangeman's Parade, Protestants are told they get a bonus if they can break the head of the big bass drum. There uis a song about the rivalry calle "The Old Orange Flute" you can google.
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A lot of things have a "religious aspect". Where's the growing Irish threat?....to match the supposed growing Christian threat??
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no idea how it ended but had a roommate from there and he gave me no indication the feelings between the two waned that much. lets just say heathrow airport is not solely concerned about muslims today
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Religion in Ireland was once at the center of the politics and the culture.
Today's Irish increasingly are ignoring religion. They do not attend mass, they do not pray and then they think of the Holy Mother Church, they think of the Magdalene Sisters who enslaved young women in 7 day a week unpaid labor in their laundries. They think of the same wicked nuns forcing pregnant teenage girls to sign their babies over to the Order to be sold the $1000 a piece to Americans for adoption.They think of priestly buggering of altarboys. They think of the bad old days when the British colonial tyranny was replaced by the Church and they say"Oh, bugger, those days are over, sure they are, and good riddance."
I have Irish ancestors, so =Irish history is interesting to me. See the film The Magdalene Sisters, and Philomena. Read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes and Tis.
The Northern Irish Protestants are also realizing how to be a part of the New Europe, the old prejudices need to be forgotten. And only a few IRA Provos remain.
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no idea how it ended but had a roommate from there and he gave me no indication the feelings between the two waned that much. lets just say heathrow airport is not solely concerned about muslims today
I can buy that. especially the part where it apparently ended......still waiting for the links to the growing rage of global Irish terrorist attacks.
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Is isis global?
I know the taliban is but not sure about al queda
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Is isis global?
Radical Islamic terrorism is
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Neither of these is "global" unless having a member who might be able to buy a plane ticket.
Tonga, Chile and Moldova are particularly safe.
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Islamic terrorist attacks, in the name of Islam, are occurring across the globe.....i.e. GLOBAL