Terrorist Attack In Paris

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh Tigger...

[wesw]

the old dope slap , eh?

[wesw]

...that reminds me, I should tigger hop on over to cartalk and annoy them for a bit.....

[MajGenl.Meade]

Only a bit? They should demand equal time. Or we should...

[wesw]

well if it ever warms up, or my jeep blows up, which is likely, I have a 75 ford badly in need of my attention and I ll leave you in peace for a while. until then, here I am. Friday night ad here I am....

now I m depressed

[wesw]

the hacker group "anonymous", has just declared war on the terrorists.

they have vowed to shut down all of their web activities and to get each and every one of them

I like it!

[Econoline]

Some of you seem to be missing the fact that (a) most of the victims of jihadi violence are Muslims and (b) most of those fighting those jihadis are Muslim--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and the rest of the vast Muslim populations throughout the world.

In many ways, the rise of jihad is as much a civil war among Muslims as it is an East–West confrontation: the great divide runs across religions and societies, as well as between them. After an outrage such as the one we have just witnessed in Paris, that can be hard to remember, but it mustn’t be forgotten. John Kerry, in remarks he delivered at the State Department immediately after the attack, struck the right tone. “Today’s murders are part of a larger confrontation, not between civilizations, no, but between civilization itself and those who are opposed to a civilized world,” Kerry said. “The murderers dared proclaim, Charlie Hebdo is dead. But make no mistake, they are wrong.”

[Long Run]

And your point, Econo, is what? We know the following:

1. The people who want to destroy the West are Muslim jihadists.

2. The jihadists are not a fringe group of Muslims -- there are hundreds of thousands or millions who are willing to wage war, and hundreds of millions who support them.

3. There are moderate Muslims who are the majority, and some percentage of them actually fight the jihadists.

That is why before this era, we supported the moderate regimes,even if they were brutal in their own way. Then, for our own internal political reasons, we pull our support away from such moderates, and then the moderates get overrun by the jihadists. And here we are floundering our way to a strategy to fight the jihadists without harming the moderates who live side by side -- not an easy task.

But, when it comes to protecting citizens on our soil, it is an imperative that intelligence and surveillance be concentrated on those who are most likely to inflict damage, whether that be Muslims who are close to suspected jihadists, neo-Nazis or any other group that is so identifiable.

[Econoline]

You know, LR, I think I agree with most of your post...EXCEPT for your point #2, with which I strongly disagree. I think all three sentences in it are wrong; I haven't seen any convincing evidence that the number of violent jihadists is any more than a few tens of thousands of individuals. And most of those are busy killing (and thereby alienating) other Muslims.

The "statistics" (AKA "guesses") are all over the place, but...
0.001% of muslim world are Terrorists
Europol Report: All Terrorists are Muslims…Except the 99.6% that Aren’t
Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Soil

Note I am NOT saying that there is no threat, or that we shouldn't be worried. But any strategy that does not recognize that targeting innocent civilians only leads to more terrorists and more terrorism is deeply flawed and self-defeating.

[Econoline]

The world needs more Muslims like Ahmed Merabet.

[Gob]

Dear Muslims, now is not the time for defensive posturing. Now is not time for mere condemnation of `terrorism’. We must go further. No idea, not even our religion, is above scrutiny. This principle is non-negotiable because free speech forms the basis for progress.

We Muslims know full well that blasphemy taboos exist within our communities. If we applaud non-Muslims who speak out against racism and anti-Muslim hate, then likewise we Muslims must also show solidarity & join wider society to challenge Islamist extremism & reform the blasphemy taboos entrenched among us.

Kill blasphemy taboos. Don’t kill people.


@MaajidNawaz

ETA:

Britain's fear of criticising Islam has led to a self-imposed 'blasphemy law', the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey has warned.

Lord Carey's comments come days after the brutal slaughter of journalists at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine, which printed cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed. He added that the Press should be encouraged to print controversial material, even if Muslims find it offensive.

Writing in the Sunday Times, the former Archbishop said: 'A de facto blasphemy law is operating in Britain today. The fact is that publishers and newspapers live in fear of criticising Islam.' He said that blasphemy laws were 'unjust and outdated', urging Muslim scholars to make it clear to followers that Islamic laws on insulting the religion do not apply to non-believers.

Lord Carey added that the media should be encouraged to publish controversial material, regardless of whether it will upset Muslims. 'We need not worry about taking the vast majority of Muslims with us. They are much more offended by violence committed in their name than by cartoons or images of their prophet,' he said.

ETAA

Cleric Mizanur Rahman, of Palmers Green, north London, defended the brutal murder of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo offices, saying ‘insulting Islam…they can’t expect a different result.’

Speaking to an audience in London which was streamed online to thousands of his followers, Rahman praised Al Qaeda and said ‘Britain is the enemy of Islam.’ He said: 'These cartoons is part of their own war, is part of the psychological warfare...you know what happens when you insult Mohammed.'

On another occasion a court heard he told a crowd of around 300 people near the Danish Embassy in central London that British and American troops should return in body bags. The Old Bailey saw film of Rahman in which he said: 'We want to see them coming home in body bags. 'We want to see their blood running in the streets of Baghdad.' He added: 'We want to see the Mujahideen shoot down their planes the way we shoot down birds, we want to see their tanks burn in the way we burn their flags.'

Rahman also had placards calling for the annihilation and beheading of those who insulted Islam.

[BoSoxGal]

Meade, you aren't the authority on Christian belief - but thanks for your interpretation.

And yes, the fact that many Christians basically feel like it's okay to dismiss billions of people because they don't believe in Jesus Christ is to me as reprehensible as the tenet in Islam.

I shudder to consider the 'loving' God you folks worship.

I don't see how my post is hateful?

My point to Meade is that, having come from a very strong religious background (I struggled over whether to attend law school or seminary), I don't need Christianity explained to me - I'm a fairly recent convert to hopeful agnosticism, peppered heavily with skepticism.

I maintain that a God who would commission to hell the souls of billions of decent people largely over an accident of where they were born is not a God in whom I wish to believe.

Is it outrageously impolite to share that perspective in a free speech forum? If it is, how can we even contemplate 'Je suis Charlie'?

David Brooks makes some good points about this attack, and free speech in the USA:

I Am Not Charlie Hebdo - David Brooks
JAN. 8, 2015

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

Just look at all the people who have overreacted to campus micro-aggressions. The University of Illinois fired a professor who taught the Roman Catholic view on homosexuality. The University of Kansas suspended a professor for writing a harsh tweet against the N.R.A. Vanderbilt University derecognized a Christian group that insisted that it be led by Christians.

Americans may laud Charlie Hebdo for being brave enough to publish cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad, but, if Ayaan Hirsi Ali is invited to campus, there are often calls to deny her a podium.

So this might be a teachable moment. As we are mortified by the slaughter of those writers and editors in Paris, it’s a good time to come up with a less hypocritical approach to our own controversial figures, provocateurs and satirists.

The first thing to say, I suppose, is that whatever you might have put on your Facebook page yesterday, it is inaccurate for most of us to claim, Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or I Am Charlie Hebdo. Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in.

We might have started out that way. When you are 13, it seems daring and provocative to “épater la bourgeoisie,” to stick a finger in the eye of authority, to ridicule other people’s religious beliefs.

But after a while that seems puerile. Most of us move toward more complicated views of reality and more forgiving views of others. (Ridicule becomes less fun as you become more aware of your own frequent ridiculousness.) Most of us do try to show a modicum of respect for people of different creeds and faiths. We do try to open conversations with listening rather than insult.

Yet, at the same time, most of us know that provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud. They puncture the self-puffery of the successful. They level social inequality by bringing the mighty low. When they are effective they help us address our foibles communally, since laughter is one of the ultimate bonding experiences.

Moreover, provocateurs and ridiculers expose the stupidity of the fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are people who take everything literally. They are incapable of multiple viewpoints. They are incapable of seeing that while their religion may be worthy of the deepest reverence, it is also true that most religions are kind of weird. Satirists expose those who are incapable of laughing at themselves and teach the rest of us that we probably should.

In short, in thinking about provocateurs and insulters, we want to maintain standards of civility and respect while at the same time allowing room for those creative and challenging folks who are uninhibited by good manners and taste.

If you try to pull off this delicate balance with law, speech codes and banned speakers, you’ll end up with crude censorship and a strangled conversation. It’s almost always wrong to try to suppress speech, erect speech codes and disinvite speakers.

Fortunately, social manners are more malleable and supple than laws and codes. Most societies have successfully maintained standards of civility and respect while keeping open avenues for those who are funny, uncivil and offensive.

In most societies, there’s the adults’ table and there’s the kids’ table. The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults’ table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids’ table. They’re not granted complete respectability, but they are heard because in their unguided missile manner, they sometimes say necessary things that no one else is saying.

Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

The massacre at Charlie Hebdo should be an occasion to end speech codes. And it should remind us to be legally tolerant toward offensive voices, even as we are socially discriminating.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I think the point is that Christianity does share a tenet with Islam in that it does ultimately require death or conversion; on the day you Christians look forward to as paradise, we non believers will be forced to perish or convert. It's as literal as the call to convert or die in the Koran, no?

Not quite . . . Everybody gets to die once here on earth. After that, there is no "death or convert" option - the choice was made before the death part. But the non-believers will at that point admit that God is God and they've been wrong all along.

Meade, you aren't the authority on Christian belief - but thanks for your interpretation.

My point to Meade is that . . . I don't need Christianity explained to me . . . I maintain that a God who would commission to hell the souls of billions of decent people largely over an accident of where they were born is not a God in whom I wish to believe.

I like to understand. So you make a totally incorrect statement about the Bible and ask me for agreement – the word “no” followed by a question mark. In response, I relay what the Bible says… that after death (the day of paradise) there is no convert or die – everyone’s already dead.

So you reply that I’m not the authority etc. and I agreed with you – the Bible is the authority and I explained my previous answer more clearly.

Now you say (in reference to my answer to your question) that “I don’t need Christianity explained to me” – despite having asked me a question to begin with – and then you make yet another thoroughly incorrect statement about Christianity which means you kinda do. Or perhaps I’m the one that needs it explained to me. (This isn't the place but I'd argue that God doesn't send anyone to hell - people choose their own destiny)

Where in the Bible is it taught that in Christian belief God sends people to hell based on where they are born?

You've said it and I'd like to know where it is to be found. Thanks

[BoSoxGal]

Oh for pity's sake, Meade, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, I'm surprised by your inability to see beyond your own faith.

People who are not Christian live day by day in community with people who are, and who believe those non-believers are going to hell, or purgatory, or in any way will be dead and tree food when they, the Christians, experience the most joyous moment of their religious prophecy.

Do you get now the point I'm making?

Let's move past the minor distinctions between how you were taught Christianity v. how I was taught it v. how millions of other were taught, and get to the larger point of what Christianity says to the non-Christians who exist as neighbors to it.

[Gob]

AYAAN HIRSI ALI: If we acknowledge that there is an infrastructure of indoctrination into the young hearts and minds, hearts and minds that are vulnerable, that are impressionable, of young men - mostly young men, but also of women, and that we have allowed this infrastructure to seed in the West and to thrive; if we come to terms with the fact that this is and has been going on for a long time, that we need to dismantle - you asked for practical solutions. We need to dismantle this infrastructure of indoctrination and replace it, replace it with an infrastructure where we inculcate into the minds and hearts of young people an ideology or ideas of life, love, peace, tolerance.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Let's move past the minor distinctions between how you were taught Christianity v. how I was taught it v. how millions of other were taught, and get to the larger point of what Christianity says to the non-Christians who exist as neighbors to it.

Well... oddly enough I thought it was atheists who espouse the idea that everyone is tree food and that's that. Christians believe that any non-believer can be saved and that God calls them to that salvation. I'd expect the second to be a more cheery kind of neighbor than the first.

I think I've lived amongst people of all manner of belief and disbelief - the Moslems think that unbelievers are goners (but the people of the book might be redeemed); the Buddhists (some kinds anyway) think it's a big merry-go-round until we are all absorbed into nothing and everything; Jehovah Witnesses think that Christians (and everybody else) are going to miss out big time on all the happy days and so on. Somehow we've all rubbed along quite well.

It seems to me that what we think cannot hurt another - what we do about what we think, that can be a problem.

It seems as if you were taught that there is a geographic God who doesn't save people in some country or other (unspecified). That is a singular teaching - one I've not heard of before. If that is what the Bible says, then that's not minor at all - I should become an unbeliever too.

It appears to be an unworkable belief since there are Christians in all countries of the world. Many, many of them live as a minority and are only too well aware of what their neighbors' faith says to them.

[RayThom]

... I believe we all land up in the same special place -- dead. Call that place whatever makes you feel good while living your life within the confines of your own belief system. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, Limbo, Nirvana, Paradise, Ozone, or the Space-Time Continuum? Take your pick, it's merely semantics that divides us all. Words -- nothing more, nothing less.

You need faith, I need proof. Prove otherwise to me and I'll convert to whatever you espouse. That's my promise. In the meantime, I live my life hating no one. And isn't that exactly what your Jesus wants from all his followers? Why must it be people like me that so often leads the way?

Oh, God bless America.

[oldr_n_wsr]

People who are not Christian live day by day in community with people who are, and who believe those non-believers are going to hell, or purgatory, or in any way will be dead and tree food when they, the Christians, experience the most joyous moment of their religious prophecy.

What Christians believe about the fate of non-believers matter not at all. Their faith says that God is the ultimate judge.

[rubato]

And your point, Econo, is what? We know the following:

....

2. The jihadists are not a fringe group of Muslims -- there are hundreds of thousands or millions who are willing to wage war, and hundreds of millions who support them.

No, what we know is that there are tens of thousands of terrorists if you sum up Al-Shabab, Isis, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram &c. A small number in relative terms and they are stretched to support even that number.


And we also know from Somalia that if you remove obstacles from communities who are trying to support themselves that they stop tolerating Al Shabab.



yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

Well... oddly enough I thought it was atheists who espouse the idea that everyone is tree food and that's that. Christians believe that any non-believer can be saved and that God calls them to that salvation. I'd expect the second to be a more cheery kind of neighbor than the first.

well Meade, I think that depends on who you contact; there are many Christians who believe that god will save on the persons god has chosen to save from the beginning of time (and inscribed their name in the "book"). these include many more mainstream christans such as those ascribing to calvanist theology (including traditional presbyterians and dutch reformed, along with many evangelicals; I believe its also contained in Wesley's writings on mothodism). Taking that to its logical conclusion, we are saved or doomed from birth or before, and that only those who god has already predestined will accept the "call". Not universal by any means, but I think fairly common.