Islamophobia: the new antisemitism

[Commadus]

I don't think Islamaphobia is the new anti-semitism as anti-semitism is still alive and kicking. Islamaphobia or anti islamic sentiment has risen dramatically post 9/11.

Being a muslim is the new bogeyman, the fifth column the untrusted - where muslims are constantly having to re-affirm their loyalties and dissassociate themsleves from the the radical elements.

 

[MikeUpNorth]

It seems clear to me that a distrust of all things Islam and associated discrimination is on the rise, not just in the United States but also in Europe - you only have to look at some of the recent laws that have been passed and the kind of language that mainstream politicians can get away with using to describe Islam.

However, I think there is a fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. There is an ethnic component to being Jewish, whereas being a Muslim is an opinion and neutral in respect of race. In this respect I would equate Islamaphobia more with the hatred and fear that was levelled at communists - or those suspected of being communists - in the 50s and 60s in America, rather than the oppression of inherited characteristics such as the racism against Jews/Blacks/Hispanics or homophobia.

 

[Commadus]

It seems clear to me that a distrust of all things Islam and associated discrimination is on the rise, not just in the United States but also in Europe - you only have to look at some of the recent laws that have been passed and the kind of language that mainstream politicians can get away with using to describe Islam.

However, I think there is a fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. There is an ethnic component to being Jewish, whereas being a Muslim is an opinion and neutral in respect of race. In this respect I would equate Islamaphobia more with the hatred and fear that was levelled at communists - or those suspected of being communists - in the 50s and 60s in America, rather than the oppression of inherited characteristics such as the racism against Jews/Blacks/Hispanics or homophobia.

Yes I would agree to some extent with the reference to communism, however in the US Islam seems to be closely associated with Arabs ergo the reference to Rag Heads.

However as some muslims can be identified due to their dress I would say it's not as distinct as saying it's unrelated to characteristics.

But you can change your dress but not your skin colour (unless you are MJ )

 

[sammsky1]

Anyone who has read or contributed to this thread and that has access to BBC iplayer, I ask you to make half an hour and watch this:

BBC iPlayer - Middle EastEnders

 

[MikeUpNorth]

America’s History of Fear

A radio interviewer asked me the other day if I thought bigotry was the only reason why someone might oppose the Islamic center in Lower Manhattan. No, I don’t. Most of the opponents aren’t bigots but well-meaning worriers — and during earlier waves of intolerance in American history, it was just the same.

Screeds against Catholics from the 19th century sounded just like the invective today against the Not-at-Ground-Zero Mosque. The starting point isn’t hatred but fear: an alarm among patriots that newcomers don’t share their values, don’t believe in democracy, and may harm innocent Americans.

Followers of these movements against Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese and other immigrants were mostly decent, well-meaning people trying to protect their country. But they were manipulated by demagogues playing upon their fears — the 19th- and 20th-century equivalents of Glenn Beck.

Most Americans stayed on the sidelines during these spasms of bigotry, and only a small number of hoodlums killed or tormented Catholics, Mormons or others. But the assaults were possible because so many middle-of-the-road Americans were ambivalent.

Suspicion of outsiders, of people who behave or worship differently, may be an ingrained element of the human condition, a survival instinct from our cave-man days. But we should also recognize that historically this distrust has led us to burn witches, intern Japanese-Americans, and turn away Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.

Perhaps the closest parallel to today’s hysteria about Islam is the 19th-century fear spread by the Know Nothing movement about “the Catholic menace.” One book warned that Catholicism was “the primary source” of all of America’s misfortunes, and there were whispering campaigns that presidents including Martin Van Buren and William McKinley were secretly working with the pope. Does that sound familiar?

Critics warned that the pope was plotting to snatch the Mississippi Valley and secretly conspiring to overthrow American democracy. “Rome looks with wistful eye to domination of this broad land, a magnificent seat for a sovereign pontiff,” one writer cautioned.

Historically, unreal suspicions were sometimes rooted in genuine and significant differences. Many new Catholic immigrants lacked experience in democracy. Mormons were engaged in polygamy. And today some extremist Muslims do plot to blow up planes, and Islam has real problems to work out about the rights of women. The pattern has been for demagogues to take real abuses and exaggerate them, portraying, for example, the most venal wing of the Catholic Church as representative of all Catholicism — just as fundamentalist Wahabis today are caricatured as more representative of Islam than the incomparably more numerous moderate Muslims of Indonesia (who have elected a woman as president before Americans have).

In the 19th century, fears were stoked by books written by people who supposedly had “escaped” Catholicism. These books luridly recounted orgies between priests and nuns, girls kidnapped and held in secret dungeons, and networks of tunnels at convents to allow priests to rape nuns. One woman claiming to have been a priest’s sex slave wrote a “memoir” asserting that Catholics killed boys and ground them into sausage for sale.

These kinds of stories inflamed a mob of patriots in 1834 to attack an Ursuline convent outside Boston and burn it down.

Similar suspicions have targeted just about every other kind of immigrant. During World War I, rumors spread that German-Americans were poisoning food, and Theodore Roosevelt warned that “Germanized socialists” were “more mischievous than bubonic plague.”

Anti-Semitic screeds regularly warned that Jews were plotting to destroy the United States in one way or another. A 1940 survey found that 17 percent of Americans considered Jews to be a “menace to America.”

Chinese in America were denounced, persecuted and lynched, while the head of a United States government commission publicly urged in 1945 "the extermination of the Japanese in toto." Most shamefully, anti-Asian racism led to the internment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.

All that is part of America’s heritage, and typically as each group has assimilated, it has participated in the torment of newer arrivals — as in Father Charles Coughlin’s ferociously anti-Semitic radio broadcasts in the 1930s. Today’s recrudescence is the lies about President Obama’s faith, and the fear-mongering about the proposed Islamic center.

But we have a more glorious tradition intertwined in American history as well, one of tolerance, amity and religious freedom. Each time, this has ultimately prevailed over the Know Nothing impulse.

Americans have called on moderates in Muslim countries to speak out against extremists, to stand up for the tolerance they say they believe in. We should all have the guts do the same at home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/opinion/05kristof.html

 

[sammsky1]

Muslims in America increasingly alienated as hatred grows in Bible belt

On the anniversary of 9/11, Chris McGreal reports from the Tennessee town where Muslims have lived in harmony with Christians for decades – but where they now feel under threat


Chris McGreal
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 10 September 2010


An opponent of the proposed Muslim centre and mosque near the former World Trade Centre in New York. Photograph: Peter Foley/EPA
Safaa Fathy was as surprised to discover that she is at the heart of a plot against America as she was to hear that her small Tennessee town is a focus of hate in the Muslim world.

The diminutive fifty-something physiotherapist, who has lived in Murfreesboro for most of her adult life, happens to be on the board of her town's Islamic centre. Now she finds herself accused of being a front for Islamic Jihad, of planning to impose sharia law on her neighbours, and of threatening the very existence of Christianity in Tennessee.

"There is something around the whole United States, something is different. I was here since 1982. I have three kids here and I never had any trouble. My kids, they go to the girl scouts, they play basketball, they did all the normal activities. It just started this year. It's strange, because after 9/11 there was no problem," said Fathy, who was born in Egypt. "In the past in America other people were the target. We are the target now. We have trouble in California, we have trouble in New York, we have trouble in Florida. It's a shame because Murfreesboro is a very nice town to live in."

As the US prepares to mark the ninth anniversary of the al-Qaida assault on New York and the Pentagon, the country's Muslims say they are enduring a wave of hostility and suspicion from some of their fellow Americans that they rarely encountered in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

The increasingly bitter dispute over plans to build an Islamic centre and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York is part of it, fuelling a debate about whether Muslims in the US put their faith before their country. Opponents of the mosque plan to mark the anniversary with a rally in New York today led by a leading anti-Islamic activist, Pamela Geller, who has the support of prominent Republican politicians given to increasingly strident anti-Muslim rhetoric. Among those expected to speak is Geert Wilders, the virulently anti-Islamic Dutch political leader.

Even the possibly rescinded threat by a publicity-seeking pastor in Florida to burn hundreds of copies of the Qur'an played into the hands of Islam's foes in America, despite the fact it did not garner much popular support, when it drew threats of bloody retribution from some Muslim groups abroad. All this comes against a backdrop of growing numbers of Americans suspecting that their president is secretly a Muslim – nearly one in five say that he is and many more think it likely – and diminishing support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are still proving a heavy burden in blood and money. The charged atmosphere in which the terrorist attacks will be remembered this weekend has also penetrated deep into the heartland, where hostility has increasingly shifted inward to focus on America's own Islamic communities. "It really started in May," said Fathay. "I keep asking myself, why this year? Why are they suddenly lying about us now?"

Late last year Musfreesboro's Islamic leaders announced plans to build a new mosque because the 250 Muslim families in town had outgrown the existing one. The construction plans were approved. At first, no one in the town of about 100,000 people south of Nashville said much about it.

In February someone spray-painted over the sign: "Not welcome", with the letter t shaped like a Christian cross. Fathay put that down to one hostile individual. But by May protest meetings were organised, politicians were denouncing the plans and the loyalty of Muslims in the town was openly questioned. Critics did not pull their punches at a public meeting. Among those who spoke against construction of the new Islamic centre was Karen Harrell.

"Everybody knows they are trying to kill us. People are really concerned about this. Somebody has to stand up and take this country back," she said.

Speakers accused Muslims in the town of promoting polygamy and indoctrinating the young with hate, and questioned whether they adhered to the US constitution.

George Erdel, running for a seat in the US Congress as a "Tea Party Democrat", feared that the true intent of the mosque was to impose Islamic rule. "Islam is a system of government. Islam is a system of justice. We've got people here who remember September 11 2001. These people are scared," he said. "I'm afraid we'll have a training facility."

It did not go unnoticed by Islamic leaders that some of the fiercest criticism was whipped up by candidates in this year's elections. At the forefront was Lou Ann Zelenik, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress who is a leader of the local Tea Party movement.

"This 'Islamic Centre' is not part of a religious movement; it is a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee," Zelenik said. "Until the American Muslim community find it in their hearts to separate themselves from their evil, radical counterparts, to condemn those who want to destroy our civilisation and will fight against them, we are not obligated to open our society to any of them."

Alongside Zelenik was Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the founder of a group that rallies Christians in support of Israel. Cardoza-Moore describes herself as "a leader who successfully stewards masses toward her intended outcomes".

She told a Christian television station that the plan to build a new mosque in Murfreesboro was part of a plot to take over Middle Tennessee because it is the heart of the Bible belt:

"You have Bible book publishers. You have Christian book publishers. You have Christian music headquartered here. The radical Islamic extremists have stated that they are still fighting the Crusaders, and they see this as the capital of the Crusaders."

Similar warnings can be heard in other parts of Tennessee and in states from California to New England.

The imam of the Murfreesboro mosque, Ossama Bahloul, says others have been here before. A generation ago in Tennessee black activists were burned out of their homes for agitating against segregation and for civil rights, and Catholics and other Christian minorities were targets for the Ku Klux Klan.

"It's a cycle of life. If we are really dangerous, let them close this [existing] centre too. This community did not do a single act of violence," said Bahloul. "Maybe it has a relationship with the election, maybe with the economic problems we have in the country, maybe it was September 11, but I doubt this, because why did we have a fine time last year and the year before and before that when the memory of September 11 was still fresh in everybody's mind?"

Ron Messier, a professor of Islamic studies who lives in Murfreesboro, says the mood is driven by politics. "It's happened because this is an election year and I think there were some political candidates who thought that here in Middle Tennessee a lot of people have very right leanings and they could gain some political leverage by promoting fear about people who have been here for 20 years or more without ever being an issue," he said. Yet the politicians apparently did not have to drill deep to tap into fears of Muslims, who are subject to language that would not be acceptable when talking about almost any other minority. They are helped by parts of the media. Fox News leads the charge, routinely giving a platform to those who question the loyalty of Muslim Americans and to conspiracy theorists.

This week Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of New Republic, an influential Washington political magazine, wrote that Muslims were unfit for the protections of the US constitution. "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the proposed New York Islamic centre] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood," Peretz wrote. "So, yes, I wonder whether I need honour these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

Peretz was swiftly denounced by some prominent American bloggers, among them Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon.com. "Bigotry against Muslims and Arabs is one of the last acceptable forms of overt bigotry that is tolerated in American political culture. If you look at the things that he said and replace the word Muslim or Arab with Jew or even Christian, those comments would be completely career ending and reputation destroying," he said.

While Peretz was vigorously criticised on blogs, mainstream newspapers that regularly denounce racism and antisemitism stayed silent.

Two weeks ago someone set fire to construction equipment at the site of Murfreesboro's new mosque. Some in the town were outraged, but not Kimberly Kelly. "I think it was a piece of their own medicine. They bombed our country," she told The Tennessean newspaper. Two days later about 150 people turned out for a candlelight vigil in support of the Muslim community on the steps of the local courthouse.

Many in the town say they have no problem with the new mosque. Among them is a woman called Bonnie who works in a local bookshop and lost a stepbrother in one of the World Trade Centre towers.

"I don't have a problem with them opening a mosque in New York, just not two blocks from where my stepbrother died. But here doesn't bother me because everybody has a right to practise their religion. They've been here, they're quiet. They haven't bothered anybody," she said.

Muslim leaders are careful to say that the hostility has come from a vocal minority and has prompted an outpouring of backing from non-Muslims. The Islamic centre has a "wall of support" with messages from people who say they are Christian and have sons fighting in Afghanistan.

The burning question for many Muslims in Murfreesboro is whether, once the political calendar moves on, they will again be left in peace or whether relations have been poisoned for years to come. Perhaps they can draw comfort from August's primary election for Congress. Zelenick was defeated, along with most of the other politicians who made Islam an election issue in Tennessee.

 

[holyland red]

2 Muslims travel 13,000 miles across America, find an embracing nation - CNN.com

 

[jdmufc]

this koran burning thing is pathetic, whats the big deal??

its not like this is a whole nation saying "lets burn the koran", its a poxy little church with about 30 members,surely everyone can accept that its just a few crazy people,every religion has them and they are mostly ignored so lets not make this out to be something that it isnt.
I´ve lost count of the times i´ve seen muslims on tv burning flags and effiges,i dont blame all muslims for this,its just a few crazy people, simple as that.

some muslims seem to revel in this everyone hates us attitude,get over it as most of the world doesn´t give a feck!!

 

[sammsky1]

this koran burning thing is pathetic, whats the big deal??

its not like this is a whole nation saying "lets burn the koran", its a poxy little church with about 30 members,surely everyone can accept that its just a few crazy people,every religion has them and they are mostly ignored so lets not make this out to be something that it isnt.
I´ve lost count of the times i´ve seen muslims on tv burning flags and effiges,i dont blame all muslims for this,its just a few crazy people, simple as that.

some muslims seem to revel in this everyone hates us attitude,get over it as most of the world doesn´t give a feck!!

Yep, its the bloody Muslims fault.

 

[Alex]

this koran burning thing is pathetic, whats the big deal??

its not like this is a whole nation saying "lets burn the koran", its a poxy little church with about 30 members,surely everyone can accept that its just a few crazy people,every religion has them and they are mostly ignored so lets not make this out to be something that it isnt.
I´ve lost count of the times i´ve seen muslims on tv burning flags and effiges,i dont blame all muslims for this,its just a few crazy people, simple as that.

some muslims seem to revel in this everyone hates us attitude,get over it as most of the world doesn´t give a feck!!

I have to agree jd

 

[Spoony]

It seems clear to me that a distrust of all things Islam and associated discrimination is on the rise, not just in the United States but also in Europe - you only have to look at some of the recent laws that have been passed and the kind of language that mainstream politicians can get away with using to describe Islam.

However, I think there is a fundamental difference between anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. There is an ethnic component to being Jewish, whereas being a Muslim is an opinion and neutral in respect of race. In this respect I would equate Islamaphobia more with the hatred and fear that was levelled at communists - or those suspected of being communists - in the 50s and 60s in America, rather than the oppression of inherited characteristics such as the racism against Jews/Blacks/Hispanics or homophobia.

Well, I'm not sure a communist would've been stopped at an airport during the early 20th century based on looks, clearly there's a lot of racial profiling regarding Muslims. But race is something that an encompass many things and not just ethnicity - I mean race? how far back do we go? Being Jewish for example isn't just solely down to DNA either(unless were talking specifically about Ashkenazis, Sephardis or Mezrahis), how can a ginger bloke(Jewish) from Eastern Europe have the same ethnic background as a Yemenite Jew? but clearly there is a link....religion. And I don't think being Muslim is a choice, most people are born into the faith and it's clearly become a part of their cultural make up whether they're religious or not. Call it generations of indoctrination. But it goes beyond being just a matter of faith.

 

[holyland red]

Being Jewish for example isn't just solely down to DNA either(unless were talking specifically about Ashkenazis, Sephardis or Mezrahis), how can a ginger bloke(Jewish) from Eastern Europe have the same ethnic background as a Yemenite Jew? but clearly there is a link....religion.

Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes ? PNAS

 

[Spoony]

Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes ? PNAS

Share, yes, but clearly European groups have mixed with local populations. And that's my point, it's not about DNA but a common culture rather than ethnicity. Or else I'd still be Jewish because my forefathers were Jewish, Mr Holyland.

 

[holyland red]

Share, yes, but clearly European groups have mixed with local populations. And that's my point, it's not about DNA but a common culture rather than ethnicity. Or else I'd still be Jewish because my forefathers were Jewish, Mr Holyland.

It appears that mixing with the local European populations was less significant than you were implying with that example. You can see higher genetic affinities between your ginger Askenazy Jew and North African Jews than to his fellow ginger Europeans.

 

[Alex]

Yeah I have seen studies on stuff like that, it is absolutely amazing when you think of the geographrical distance between some jews for a long time, and the amount of genetic material they possess. Shame better studies couldnt be done, fecking Hitler.

 

[Nistelrooy10]

It appears that mixing with the local European populations was less significant than you were implying with that example. You can see higher genetic affinities between your ginger Askenazy Jew and North African Jews than to his fellow ginger Europeans.

Look at Germans on that map, they're on +39. It's a sign. Perfect race.

 

[Spoony]

It appears that mixing with the local European populations was less significant than you were implying with that example. You can see higher genetic affinities between your ginger Askenazy Jew and North African Jews than to his fellow ginger Europeans.

Maybe, but my point stands. Whatever that was.

By the way, have you seen a The Incredible Human Journey? Brilliant series. We can all call Africa the motherland.

 

[holyland red]

Maybe, but my point stands. Whatever that was.

By the way, have you seen a The Incredible Human Journey? Brilliant series. We can all call Africa the motherland.

Does that mean the Palestinians can fulfill their so-called "right of return" by going there?

 

[Spoony]

Does that mean the Palestinians can fulfill their so-called "right of return" by going there?

Funnily enough I was reading the article you linked, apparently Palestinians, Syrians and Jewish populations share a common gene pool. So basically you can all feck off back to Africa. But yeah we're all related, even Scousers, Holy.

 

[holyland red]

Funnily enough I was reading the article you linked, apparently Palestinians, Syrians are Jewish populations share a common gene pool. So basically you can all feck off back to Africa. But yeah we're all related, even Scousers, Holy.

Funny, isn't it? After all, all the shit here is domestics. I bet many Palestinian Arabs had Jewish ancestors who were forced to convert to Islam during the Arab conquest.

Going back to Africa is not on. We want CL football here, and we are already stretching it a bit as things are.

 

[Spoony]

Funny, isn't it? After all, all the shit here is domestics. I bet many Palestinian Arabs had Jewish ancestors who were forced to convert to Islam during the Arab conquest.

Going back to Africa is not on. We want CL football here, and we are already stretching it a bit as things are.

Well, they assimilated or Arabised the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. So it's only natural Jews and other people of the Levant were assimilated too.

 

[Raoul]

On reflection USA's constitution is fair and possibly the best around. However, I again repeat the media is feeding the frenzy by giving platform to bigots on all sides.

Very true. Most instances of publicized discrimination are a result of attitudes perpetuated by the generalizations inherit in media reports. The press routinely cover the controversy because it gets them higher ratings.

 

[Neutral]

Muslim clerics kicked off US flights
May 9, 2011 - 1:53PM

Three imams including a US-born Muslim bound for a conference on Islamophobia were kicked off US domestic flights out of security fears, clerics and an airline say.

Two imams boarded a flight from Memphis, Tennessee, to Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday only to have it return to the terminal so they could be put through "additional screening", said a spokesman for Atlantic South Airlines (ASA), the Delta Connection airline operating the flight.

"We take security and safety very seriously, and the event is currently under investigation," spokesman Jarek Beem said, adding that the men were put on the next available flight.
Advertisement: Story continues below

ASA is investigating the incident, "and we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused", Mr Beem said.

US-born imam Al-Amin Abdul-Latif of Long Island was barred from boarding an American Airlines flight from New York to Charlotte late on Friday and told to return to LaGuardia airport for a morning flight on Saturday, only to be refused boarding again, without explanation, his son said.

"This morning we get to the airline, and the ticket agent told my father that the airline does not want him to fly. Those were her exact words," Abu Bakr Abdul-Latif said.

"There was nothing he could do," said the son, who travelled on to the Charlotte conference without his father.

Masudur Rahman, a permanent US resident from India and former Memphis imam who teaches Arabic at the University of Memphis, said he and another cleric, a US permanent resident from Egypt and dressed in a shoulder-to-ankle Islamic robe, were pulled off ASA flight 5452 and cleared through new security checks.

"But when we went to re-enter the plane, the Delta supervisor said 'Sorry, the pilot is not allowing you to enter,'" Mr Rahman said.

Delta negotiated at length with the pilot, noted Mr Rahman, who said he was told that "some passengers might be uncomfortable" with their presence on the plane.

"I think they were obviously upset to the extent that they were inconvenienced, but, you know, they understand what's going on in the world and particularly in the heightened sensitivities after the death of Osama bin Laden," Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told CNN.

Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda chief who orchestrated the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, was killed on Monday by US commandos in a daring raid deep inside Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda acknowledged their leader's death, and has vowed revenge on America for the killing.

The imams were heading to the North American Imams Federation conference entitled "Islamophobia: Diagnosis and Treatment".

AFP

Read more: Muslim clerics kicked off US flights

As long as I'm not getting blown up....

 

[Maroon Lucifer]

Who is this guy Pat Condell?

 

[Nucks]

Honestly, the sooner people realize that most people are stupid, the sooner you can discount them! The issue is that our chosen form of government unfortunately caters to the semi-retarded masses.

 

[Nucks]

The USA aspires to be the most advanced, principled and civilised country in the world. And in many instances in history, it has proven this. The only topic that matters right now is can the USA extend all its values and principles to its Muslim citizens, like it does to its Christian, Jewish and Hindu citizens. If it can't, then the American experiment has a huge flaw.
.

The USA has never been the most principled or civilized country in the world though it will tell everyone it can that it is. It was one of the last countries to give up slavery in the West. It was essentially an apartheid state until 50 years ago. It's penal system is farcical.

To the second bit of that paragraph, the USA does extend all of its values and principles to its Muslim citizens, just like it does to every other group of people living in it. It is the very freedom it extends to all groups, that allows these sorts of issues to spring up. The freedom of demonstration, politics, speech and what not, by granting people these freedoms, you are ALWAYS going to have to deal with dumb-asses who will try to ruin it for everyone else.

The problem with the United States is that it is essentially two separate countries. The Civil War may have forced them together, but Reconstruction failed, clearly.

 

[Nucks]

Check out the wars and atrocities of the last century. You'll be proven wrong buddy.

This is disingenuous. Claiming that it was the most bloody has absolutely feck all to do with religion or lack thereof. It has to do with the increasing sophistication of weapon systems. In short, the full mechanization of warfare in addition to the rapidly exploding global population.

The ability to field larger armies relative to population, able to cause unimaginable destruction compared to previous centuries is the cause of the bloodiness and scope of the 20th century wars.

How is Hitler any different than any number of pre-20th century rulers. If anything, Hitler was the natural progression and the logical outcome of European thinking. Hitler wasn't the first ruler to hate Jews, he wasn't the first ruler to want to exterminate them or drive them out of Europe. He wasn't the first ruler to want to wage aggressive wars of conquest. Hitler simply progressed from theorizing and talking about, to actually attempting. That Hitler was not religious doesn't matter. How are his motivations different than any random French or Spanish King? At the end of the day, rationalizations are just that, a French king invading Italy to conquer a kingdom and claiming it is the will of God, exterminating entire towns along the way, is no different than Hitler invading Poland and exterminating entire towns along the way. Their reasons for doing so are fundamentally the same no matter how you dress them up.

 

[Nucks]

Most of them? Certainly. Most of them had nothing at all to do with religion. The World Wars, various stuff happening in China, most of the big European struggles between 1400 and 1800, etc. My point was just that some of them were largely religious, and quite a few others were made worse by the polarizing nature of religions.

But I do think it's become a bit too common to claim that some wars (like the Crusades) weren't really religious at all, at heart. Which it clearly was, even if lots of other factors played into it.

The Crusades had two threads to them. The purpose of the Crusades were not religious, they were completely political. The language of the crusades absolutely WAS religious but when you think about it, this makes sense. Religion was involved in every single aspect of society, the best way to drum up support then by the Pope and the rulers of Europe was to put it in religious context.

Ultimately their purpose was not religious however, it was about money, and it was about unifying Europe against an external threat real or imagined didn't matter. Christians slaying Christians was a crime and the inability of the Pope to stop this and to protect Christians, in this case from other Christians becomes the catalyst. Christians slaying heathens however, and seizing the most important trade route in the world, suddenly, adventurous Christian European countries had a perfectly acceptable outlet for their violence.

 

[Adisa]

It's a crisis and it's being tolerated.

 

[Dave89]

We need to pretend Jeremy Corbyn is Islamophobic to make the press care about it. Currently their only problem is they they don't think the tories are sufficiently Islamophobic.

 

[cesc's_mullet]

Whilst extremists and fundamentalists are around there will always be islamophobia.

 

[That'sHernandez]

Whilst extremists and fundamentalists are around there will always be islamophobia.

There are plenty of extremist and fundamental Jews occupying Palestinian lands in enclaves, which are considered illegal by the UN in fairness. They get far less traction in the media.

 

[Kaos]

Whilst extremists and fundamentalists are around there will always be islamophobia.

And what radicalises these extremists?

Kids aren’t born wanting to grow up to become ISIS militants.

 

[FlawlessThaw]

Whilst extremists and fundamentalists are around there will always be islamophobia.

Think there will always be islamphobia regardless.

This is like blaming anti-semitism on Israel existing.

 

[cesc's_mullet]

And what radicalises these extremists?

Kids aren’t born wanting to grow up to become ISIS militants.

Lots of things radicalize them. Right now I imagine the largest cause is the constant warfare and systematic bombing/destruction of their lands, and the resulting indoctrination.

 

[Adisa]

Thread.

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[shamans]

And what radicalises these extremists?

Kids aren’t born wanting to grow up to become ISIS militants.

They are if they're in these war torn poor areas. This type of argument is that same as why black people become criminals

 

[shamans]

Whilst extremists and fundamentalists are around there will always be islamophobia.

And while there's Islamophobia fundamentalism will always breathe and thats the unfortuante cycle people dont understand.

 

[shamans]

this koran burning thing is pathetic, whats the big deal??

its not like this is a whole nation saying "lets burn the koran", its a poxy little church with about 30 members,surely everyone can accept that its just a few crazy people,every religion has them and they are mostly ignored so lets not make this out to be something that it isnt.
I´ve lost count of the times i´ve seen muslims on tv burning flags and effiges,i dont blame all muslims for this,its just a few crazy people, simple as that.

some muslims seem to revel in this everyone hates us attitude,get over it as most of the world doesn´t give a feck!!

Yeah feck wanting a society where everyone's religion is respected.

 

[Simbo]

Is there a word for being anti-christian yet?