Obsession the Movie, question

Look at the Chechens, Russia had no qualms about going to town on their as**s. Also, China is well know as a nation that oppresses Falun Gong practitioners, as well as Buddhists. The eastern countries don't stand for it.

As you said, the Muslim extremists know to exploit weakness, and the west has become that way. On the plus side, you guys are all free to practice Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism/Islam et cetera in the U.S.A.

I figure it's cause most of them seem (to my unscientific observation, anyway) to not care too terribly much what happens to other muslims, just what happens to their local tribe. So, the Chechens get oppressed by the Russians, and the Middle East Muslims mostly yawn and mutter about how it's terrible, and only the Chechens go to town on the Russians, 'cause they're the ones getting oppressed.

I'm sure the Pakistanis that got overran by the Chinese fought back against the local Chinese infrastructure, and most of the rest of them just ignored it.

We happen to pick on the ones in the middle east, so the ones in the middle east get mad at us. When the Russians stuck their nose into Afghanistan, they sure got a faceful of claw marks for it, aye?

The Middle East is where the oil is. Subsequently, there's a lot of money and focus there. So, when the Middle Easterners bitch and moan about the Great Satan America, it gets airplay here. When the Chechens do the same about Russia, not so much. Heck, when was the last time you got any serious news from Russia itself, let alone some backwater skunkhole that hasn't had much play since the early 2nd millennium?

What I'm trying to say is that it's not that I don't think radicalised muslims don't carry on about other countries, so much as we hear about them carrying on about us more frequently.

ilcylic: So, when the Middle Easterners bitch and moan about the Great Satan America, it gets airplay here. When the Chechens do the same about Russia, not so much. Heck

Click to expand...

This is true. OTOH, from a propaganda purpose, it makes sense to attack the USA -- attack the biggest media market; get the biggest bang for your bang.

Lucky: And socialism, wouldn't that be their #1 concern, an ideology forbidding any acknowledgment of god?

Click to expand...

From the radicals' perspective, our system -- free exchange of ideas, easy access to the economic ladder, etc. -- is far more dangerous to their goals of keeping people ignorant and angry.

Further, I dislike Socialism as much as the next guy, but it doesn't necessarily lead to laws agains religion. There are plenty of socialist nations that are neutral or friendly to religion -- Sweden come to mind. Thus, a Socialist Theocracy isn't impossible. (Besides, it's the Communists, not the Socialists, who historically have been radically anti-religion -- as opposed to the religious indifference you see in the populations of many Western socialist states, not to mention similar indifference in many Western capitalist states these days).






.

Back when the Soviets were in Afghanistan, they were the big evil for bringing "atheistic domination" into Muslim territories.

In fact, Osama/alQueda has claimed credit for destorying the USSR via their actions in Afghanistan, and we're just the next big power down on the "to be destroyed" list. So far as radical Islam's hatred of the west in particular, the biggest influence in the recent past was the writings of Sayed Qutb, a guy who lived in the US in the 40's/50's and decided we were blasphemously decandent.

Recommended reading:
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Also, China doesn't put out a bunch of movies and TV entertainment like we do. We are in the public eye you might say so we become the target for criticism.

Also, we are a free and prosperous country and dictatorial govts don't like it.

Look at the Chechens, Russia had no qualms about going to town on their as**s. Also, China is well know as a nation that oppresses Falun Gong practitioners, as well as Buddhists. The eastern countries don't stand for it.

Click to expand...

Bullseye. The Eastern is undoubtedly on the "add to global caliphate" list, but you start with the best risk/reward ratio targets. And the Western world's wealth combined with it's lack of will to defend itself makes the decision to attack it first a no brainer.

So far as radical Islam's hatred of the west in particular, the biggest influence in the recent past was the writings of Sayed Qutb, a guy who lived in the US in the 40's/50's and decided we were blasphemously decandent.

Click to expand...

Yup. The Islamist vision is not simply redress of grievances. It is about spreading Islamism world-wide. Therefore, the great superpower must be dealt with first and foremost.

China is well know as a nation that oppresses Falun Gong practitioners, as well as Buddhists.

Click to expand...

And Christians.

Umm....I think the US building and arming Israel overcomes all that has been mentioned.

China does have problems with Islamic terrorists, but not as much as the US. China is oppressive of any religion where there is a single person holding reign over the others. Buddhism is allowed, but the Dali Lama followers were not, because the Dali Lama held control over it's followers. Christians are allowed, but not Catholics (the pope). Falun Gong is a cult and like all cults has one figure head to be worshiped. It's a religion as much as scientology, barely qualified. The leader of the practice claimed if you followed him he will teach you how to fly, obtain telepathy, walk through walls and all that superman power stuff.

Christians are allowed, but not Catholics (the pope).

Click to expand...

According to Chinese govt. propaganda, perhaps. According to my sources, Christian groups that aren't wholly controlled by the govt. are often shut down and/or their members imprisoned, killed, tortured, etc. I don't know about the status of Catholicism in China, but Wiki appears to disagree with you.

Since loosening of restrictions on religion after the 1970s, Christianity has grown significantly within the People's Republic. It is still, however, tightly controlled by government authorities. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council (Protestant) and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, which has disavowed the Pope and is considered schismatic by other Roman Catholics, have affiliations with government and must follow the regulations imposed upon them. Many Christians choose however to meet independently of these organisations, typically in house churches. These fellowships are not officially registered and are seen as illegal entities and are often persecuted heavily. For this reason some meetings take place underground, coining the term "underground church". These Christians have been persecuted throughout the 20th century, especially during the Cultural Revolution, and there remains some official harassment in the form of arrests and interrogations of Chinese Christians. At the same time, there has been increasing tolerance of house churches since the late 1970s.

Chinese Christian Brother Yun's book "The Heavenly Man" achieved the Christian Book of the Year award in 2003. The book describes Yun's life from his call to preach the gospel across China and the enlargement of the house church movement.

Estimates of Christians in China are difficult to obtain because of the numbers of Christians unwilling to reveal their beliefs, the hostility of the national government towards some Christian sects, and difficulties in obtaining accurate statistics on house churches. However, some analysts have estimated the number of adherents to be about 16% of the Chinese population, 10% of which are Roman Catholic.

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#Christianity

This page has some non-Wiki links that may be instructive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_house_church

? Wiki seemed to agree with me. Christians are allowed, but they are monitored to make sure no figure heads appear. I'm not making any claims that it's reasonable, but it's not the extreme that christians are shot on sight.

Make no mistake, the final goal of the Islamists is total 100% world domination (this includes the far east).

There are several cels in the east, but their primary concern is the west ... one doesn't succeed when one fights a war on too many fronts. Plus they need the massive military might of the west to take on the east, so they figure they'll conquer us first because we're weak and won't just kill them on sight like the Chinese will do if they pull their jihadist crap in their back yard.

After they have conquered the west, they'll use the might of the former west (now under Allah's rule) to defeat the east (most likely with our nukes).

Umm....I think the US building and arming Israel overcomes all that has been mentioned.

Click to expand...

The reason it hadn't been mentioned is because militant "convert, submit, or die" Islam predates the re-emergence of Israel as a state by oh... about 13 centuries. And the Crusades by about two and a half centuries.

The radical elements never went away - they just weren't (recently, since about 1650 or so) a big thorn in our side prior to the flow of oil wealth into the Middle East. Once the money started flowing into the Middle East, we became a nice conveniently absent whipping boy so folk wouldn't look too strongly at "heeeey... the royal family is literally swimming in money and we're all living in crappy mud huts."

Wanna know where the binLadin family fortune started? *heh*
A "share the wealth with the locals" business incubator system set up by Evil Western Oil Corporations.

rkh

It has less to do with perceived western weakness than general hatred of American support of Isreal.

Many, if not most, Arabs and Persians hate Jews. They see the Jewish state as being an American construct, and lash out at the US to draw attention to their struggle with Israel.

Wiki seemed to agree with me. Christians are allowed, but they are monitored to make sure no figure heads appear.

Click to expand...

I was saying that because your statement that Catholics are not allowed doesn't square with the existence of a govt.-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. In any case, to simply say that "Christians are allowed" is terribly mis-leading. They are allowed to join a muzzled church filled with govt. agents, or to face arrest for joining any other church. And the other churches are not watched for "figure heads." That is absurd. They are watched to ensure that Christianity does not peacefully subvert the totalitarian government.

Israel is one reason, as mentioned above, but there are plenty of others:

1. the Crusades. We've forgotten about them, but the Muslims haven't. They learn about them in school and brood about them all the time. It may seem insane to us to obsess about events from a thousand years ago, but they think differently.

2. The western countries were the colonial powers in that part of the world, especially France and England. Once again, they haven't forgotten.

3. As far as the U.S. in particular, they also view our support for the corrupt and dictatorial regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as the only reason those governments are still standing. The radicals think we are preventing them from taking over in those countries. The books by Peter Bergen about Osama and Al Qaida is a good source for this. That's for the Sunnis - the Shias remember our CIA's involvement in the rise of the Shah in Iran.

4. Our modern, secular, global culture is hateful to them because it trivializes and attacks religion. Read the writings of Ibn Qutb if you want more information. He came to the U.S. to study after WW II and was horrified by the sexualized, brutal, anti-religious culture he found. His writings are the foundation of modern Sunni radicalism.

5. Our culture was just like theirs in 1400. Since then we've had the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. They've had sand and poverty.

Islam is a relgion of death. The best way to get to heaven is to die killing infidels, so they do.

Seriously, they don't NEED A REASON, it is something they are doing. We are trying to look for reason where there is none.

What is the cut off age to join the Military??????
Those "people" piss me off......

I think it's important to remember that it's not plain Islam, but the combination of Islam and Fascism* that's the real enemy.

Click to expand...

Kindly remember this. Remember this site exists only because of the time and dedication of a Muslim man.

-K



*Personally I don't think I'd call the Sharia-crazy nutjobs "fascists" as such, but that's another discussion for another time.

We call it Islamo-fascism because we don't understand it in any way other than to couch in that set of terms.

These people, the Extremist Islamic Forces are not fascists. Fascism is an ideology based around the idea of the state as the supreme "it" to be followed in all things. It generally will depend upon racial factors, or on old "glory days" as a factor, but generally religion is far, far away on the list of things fascism cares about. And, religion is only usefull, only allowed if it meets the needs of the state.

Fascism is also about partnership. Partnership of corporations with the government in an unholy alliance. So that business, "captains of industry" can acquire with the force of government what the state's businesses cannot acquire via the free market.

By this set of definitions, especially the second, America has far more a fascist system than the Muslim Extremists.

No, Islamic Extremism is based upon Theocracy.

To the Western mind, whether European which acts as if G-d and religion and belief are quaint at best, and laughable at worst, or American, in as much that we don't care what your relligion is, and we all wish for government and religions to stay away from each other, and making choices for each other, Islamic Radicalism is alien to us.

Islamic Radicalism is about an interpretation of the Q'uran being the way all mankind is supposed to live. That interpretation is to be spread by any and all means, including the sword, until the whole world is Muslim.

The world is to be ruled by "wise men." Imams inspired by Allah, with the proper interpretation of the Quran. Men, while not on par with Mohammed, nevertheless fellow travellers on a similar path. This is the essence of Theocracy. This is the essence of what the Extremist Muslims want.

The questions of trade, military policy, normal local, national, and world politics are irrelevant compared to their interpretation of the Q'uran. We think about socialism, or communism, or capatilism. They think about the Quran. We think about internationalism, and protectionism. They think about the Quran.

Obviously, such a worldview is easily manipulated by evil men with evil intentions, but look at the history of Christianity, and you will see the parallels. Eventually Christians quit acting crazy, pulled themselves together, and advanced their cultures and society. Muslims can do the same, but only if they and only they kick the extremists out.

Every time we interfere with that process, we give the extremists ammo, and help recruit members.

Instead, let them sort it out. Yes, if the extremists win, we have a war on our hands, but by attacking Muslims who aren't extremists, we only make the Extremists look more attractive.

mordechai -

Thank you. That's quite possibly the best summation of the nature of the problem I've yet read. Some folks take several hundred pages to say essentially the same thing.

That said, I'm not certain I agree with your proposed solutions. We've already seen (Beirut Marine barracks [Reagan], Mogadishu [Clinton]) that when we give up ground we embolden the radicals, rather than calming the moderates. At this point I'm cautiously embracing the Whittle Doctrine (they might not like carrots, but nobody likes a sharp stick in the eye) - though I'm not comfortable with saying I've studied the issue enough yet to be sold on the approach.

I just know giving up, going home, and letting Syria and Iran "help stablize" the current situation is like handing a loaded gun to a man who just threatened to blow our brains out.

-K

I'm not suggesting we just pull out of the region entrely and say, "Well, have a nice day folks."

I'm suggesting that we address the terrorism problem, and the extremism problem for what it is. A conflict within Islam itself.

Terrorists with bases of support in Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Pakistan attack us, and we attack.... Iraq?

No. The best thing we can do is to try to economically attack the terrorists. It is indirect, it is safer, it benefits the moderates, and best of all it isn't obvious.

Find alternate energy sources, break ties with the Middle East. We do that, and the funding for terrorism goes away. The moderates and the extremists have an even fight on their hands. And, best of all, no US troops are on the ground for the Extremists to say "Look we told you so!"

In the meantime, I suggest we keep our ears and eyes open. Keep spies in the Middle East. Be prepared to assassinate people who still want to attack us if possible.

The place the US can get screwed in all this is if Europe becomes "Eurabia."

As I said, this still could end in a bipolar world of an Asia-West Alliance against the Muslims. Frankly, I haven't got the answers. These are all loose theories. But what I know is that what we are doing isn't working.

And it is pissing off people that we don't have to piss off and helping the enemy.

There are several cels in the east, but their primary concern is the west ... one doesn't succeed when one fights a war on too many fronts. Plus they need the massive military might of the west to take on the east, so they figure they'll conquer us first because we're weak and won't just kill them on sight like the Chinese will do if they pull their jihadist crap in their back yard

Click to expand...

Such a defeatist attitude. You truly believe that a bunch of barbarians firing AKs into the air have the power to conquer and subjugate the entire western world?