[zookeeper]

I had a great detailed reply written up to this at 2:30 AM when I was awake from the soreness after my dental surgery, and then my daughter started puking and I closed the browser.  So this is the less great less detailed reply:

Islamic terrorists have attacked countries all over the globe; they have aimed for and received significant media attention in a few of the Western democracies in particular: the United States, France, and Great Britain.  Why?  Contrary to the rhetoric, the leadership of the whack-a-mole terrorist organizations have no illusions about "destroying" the West, nor do they intend to.  Why focus on the Western democracies with the most damaging attacks?  Easy:

1.  Russia already essentially capitulated over Chechnya.  Russian expansionism into Islamic areas is now quite low.
2.  Eastern Europe can't get its own **** together, and it certainly doesn't care to either interfere with Islamic radicals, or take in ordinary Muslims.
3.  Historically, the US, GB, and France have been responsible for the overwhelming majority of the Western interference in Islamic countries.  They were also among the most willing to take in Muslim immigrants.  Mounting terrorist attacks against these nations has already led to and is likely to increase the following chain of events that benefit Islamic extremists:

A.  Hysterical media reaction to any attack.
B.  Knee-jerk public reaction to the attack favoring a combination of increased "security state," consequently decreased civil liberties, and a measurable reduction in support for their Muslim populations.
C.  Political reaction to the public reaction.  This is how we get bad security laws, increased surveillance state, and expensive security apparatus.
D.  Increased scrutiny of all immigrants and minority populations, and especially Muslim immigrants, making it more difficult for them to flee the extremists in their own countries, and generating hostility towards even those who have integrated in their new countries.
E.  Public and political calls for reduced or abolished intervention (even in the face of human rights disasters and genocides; see most recently "Aleppo") by Western countries in areas controlled by Islamic extremists.
F.  Propaganda by Islamic extremists showing the oppression of Muslims by the West, driving greater recruitment and opposition to Western influence in their core territories, and allowing a tighter grip of control by the extremists.

Well, isn't that just a longer way (even if shorter than the original) of phrasing the same idea that the way in which a right-wing response would benefit the extremists is by acting as a propaganda tool ("look, they're oppressing us in the West") and by making it harder for their victims to get away? I don't know if the right in general wants to reduce or abolish humanitarian intervention though, so E is maybe a third.

But my point is and was simply that those are far from obvious and unavoidable results. Firstly, you just can't form policy based on whether some completely bat**** insane guys at ISIS will maybe twist your policy into some kind of propagandistic tale of oppression of the righteous. They can do that with anything anyway, because it's not like their audience gets to do or is interested in much fact-checking. Secondly, tightened scrutiny of immigrants doesn't have to mean that you just deport them right back into ISIS's hands or treat them as garbage.

The fact remains, any American supporter of - for example - Trump's immigration plans regarding Muslims or "target countries" has a far greater risk of dying from a bullet fired out of a legal gun belonging to another adherent of that ideology in the United States than they have risk of even injury in a terrorist attack carried out under the banner of radical Islam.  I don't dispute that terrorist attacks are reprehensible or that we should do our utmost to stop them, but collectively the West is beginning to lose perspective on this issue and it plays entirely into the hands of the people running the show on the other side.  While NATO has been faffing about wringing its political hands about ISIS, Assad just finished crushing his majority populace again, reinvigorating a strategic Russia ally in the region and weakening NATO's interests.

So yeah, the political "right" needs to grow the **** up and go sit on its Cold War grandpa's knee and learn about some ****ing history, because the modern right is about ready to capitulate and allow 60 years of relative global stability to crumble because they're either hiding under their beds, or pretending to hide under their beds to win political power.  The Trump's, Le Pen's, Farange's, Wilders, Leitch's, etc of the world can **** right off back into the cowardly ignorant holes they crawled out of.  Say what you will of George W Bush's idiocy, at least the man understood the basic precepts of recent history.  I like Obama, but he has presided over a period of American withdrawal from the world stage and the world is NOT better off for it.  Meanwhile, the remainder of NATO cannot go it without the United States.

I can't see any reason why you're telling me these things.

[GhylTarvoke]

If you roll with the rather binary notion that Islam enforces a dress code you are immeaditely ignoring all the people who dress themselves according to islamic practice of their own volition - which in itself is a matter of interpretation. It's saying that muslim women don't have free will.

Paradoxically, sexist practices are sometimes perpetuated by their victims. Did you know that in certain African countries, most women support female genital mutilation?

[zookeeper]

Regarding the clothing ban, that's an interesting one. I would not object if Finland was to instate a bans regarding Muslim women clothing. The reason for that is simply the women rights to choose whatever clothing they want, and traditionally Finland has been one of the forerunners on women rights. So my reason has nothing to do with stopping terrorism, but enforcing the women rights for the minorities too. And yes I'm aware there are moderate Muslims who don't care about that. Those that we have do.

Interestingly, the feminist movement has also been very quiet about the women oppression by Muslim culture, although this is clearly visible for pretty much anyone looking. Can't escape the feeling they would be screaming very very loud if it were Finnish men doing this. So this double standard has to end.

Well tribalism in general has to end, I don't think the feminist movement is unique in that regard. Of course the feminist movement finds it hard to speak negatively about islam in particular, because criticism of islam is basically owned by people who tend to be very vocal about their dislike of feminism too; you wouldn't have much better luck asking those people to for example condemn gender discrimination in clergy, or sexual harassment specifically by white guys... without any further disclaimers or sarcastic remarks, that is.

As for clothing bans, it's an annoying case because obviously most women you see wearing a burkha+niqab can't have simply freely decided one day that that happens to be the style they want to sport, but also those who are being forced or pressured to wear it can't admit it. The ban on face-concealing clothing in public without acceptable reason (hard to define of course) seems like reasonably reasonable middle ground on that, whereas banning for example the burkini is just dumb. I don't think bans based on what type of clothing is thought to correlate with illegal activity really make sense. What you can do, however, is to make sure to ingrain all this nice stuff about personal freedom into kids in school so that there's a much better chance that if their parents or community try to force them into wearing something, they'll understand what's going on well enough that an outsider can actually get the truth of the matter and they can for example be taken into custody as a last resort.

[Mikes]

If you roll with the rather binary notion that Islam enforces a dress code you are immeaditely ignoring all the people who dress themselves according to islamic practice of their own volition - which in itself is a matter of interpretation. It's saying that muslim women don't have free will.

Paradoxically, sexist practices are sometimes perpetuated by their victims. Did you know that in certain African countries, most women support female genital mutilation?

And as long as we don't acknowledge inhuman religious indoctrination as a form of child abuse that will not change.

[Grizzly]

If you roll with the rather binary notion that Islam enforces a dress code you are immeaditely ignoring all the people who dress themselves according to islamic practice of their own volition - which in itself is a matter of interpretation. It's saying that muslim women don't have free will.

Paradoxically, sexist practices are sometimes perpetuated by their victims. Did you know that in certain African countries, most women support female genital mutilation?

I am aware of this.

[qwadtep]

Yes, after you have done the explaining how a religion enforcing women to wear certain clothing can be filled under equal rights between the genders - which is written as an integral part in the Finnish constitution?

Islam is not in the position to enforce anything: It is a set of beliefs, it has no pyramid power structure like the Catholic Church does, and even the Catholic Church has no power outside the Vatican. If you roll with the rather binary notion that Islam enforces a dress code you are immeaditely ignoring all the people who dress themselves according to islamic practice of their own volition - which in itself is a matter of interpretation. It's saying that muslim women don't have free will.

I'm pretty sure the end goal of Islamism is to create such a power structure in the form of theocratic governments.

[666maslo666]

Yes, maslo. Let's lock up everyone who might eventually commit an act of terrorism. That's certainly safe and will not lead to any human rights violations.

Not everyone. Legal citizens should be mostly left alone. But people like this should absolutely be locked up and deported long ago, by force if necessary.

Amri arrived for the first time in Europe in 2011 on a refugee raft[55] at the island of Lampedusa. He lied about his age, pretending to be a minor, and was sent to the temporary migrants reception center on the island.[56] At the center, according to Italian security officials, Amri "took part in a particularly violent riot, when the center was set on fire and several people were injured" and was sentenced for it and robbery[57] to four years in prison, which he served in two jails in Sicily.[56] Amri was released in 2015; according to Italian officials, the Tunisian authorities refused to accept his repatriation to Tunisia, and it is believed that he went to Germany around this time.[56]

In Tunisia, Amri was sentenced in absentia to five years in prison, "reportedly for aggravated theft with violence".[58][59] Prior to that he had been arrested several times for possession and use of drugs.[60] According to his family, he drank alcohol, took drugs and was initially not religious, but had been radicalized in Italian jails.[57][61] The man arrived in Germany in July 2015 and applied for asylum in April 2016. He used at least six different aliases and posed as a citizen of Syria, Egypt or Lebanon. He reportedly had tried to recruit participants for a terrorist attack since the spring, and once tried to buy a pistol from an undercover police officer. He had been overheard by the German intelligence offering to carry out a suicide attack,[62] but the German authorities had decided not to arrest him because they deemed him a mere errand boy.[63] In Germany he was involved in a bar brawl and drug dealing; later he was involved in a knife attack over drugs in July 2016 and disappeared after police tried to question him.[64] Three weeks before the attack Moroccan intelligence warned Germany about the terrorist attack planned by him.

European anti-terror security, border security and immigration control is like that of a failed state. It basically does not exist in any meaningful sense (with the possible exception of V4 countries).

[The E]

Yes, maslo. Let's lock up everyone who might eventually commit an act of terrorism. That's certainly safe and will not lead to any human rights violations.

Not everyone. But people like this should absolutely be locked up and deported long ago, by force if necessary.

Fun fact: Amri was scheduled to be deported, but couldn't be because Tunisia claimed that he wasn't a Tunisian citizen. The necessary paperwork only arrived after the attack already happened.

[Grizzly]

Yes, after you have done the explaining how a religion enforcing women to wear certain clothing can be filled under equal rights between the genders - which is written as an integral part in the Finnish constitution?

Islam is not in the position to enforce anything: It is a set of beliefs, it has no pyramid power structure like the Catholic Church does, and even the Catholic Church has no power outside the Vatican. If you roll with the rather binary notion that Islam enforces a dress code you are immeaditely ignoring all the people who dress themselves according to islamic practice of their own volition - which in itself is a matter of interpretation. It's saying that muslim women don't have free will.

I'm pretty sure the end goal of Islamism is to create such a power structure in the form of theocratic governments.

All abrahamic religions refer to a kingdom of heaven in their teachings (which is why we have a christian theocratic party in our parliament), but I am really uncertain what this has to do with the decision whether or not to wear a headscarf and whether or not the state should interfere with that decision. Just because Iran does it doesn't mean that we should do the same.

[Mikes]

Well ...  Germany is now introducing it's own "ministry of truth" errr ... "defense center against disinformation" - and no that is no joke lol: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/die-bundesregierung-will-vor-desinformationen-schuetzen-14589726.html.

So maybe soon we won't have to worry about terrorism anymore ... :cough:

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

All abrahamic religions refer to a kingdom of heaven in their teachings (which is why we have a christian theocratic party in our parliament), but I am really uncertain what this has to do with the decision whether or not to wear a headscarf and whether or not the state should interfere with that decision. Just because Iran does it doesn't mean that we should do the same.

Islam is not Abrahamic save perhaps in the loosest sense, in that the Arab peoples seem likely descended from Ishmael. But Islam came LONG after the establishment of both the Jewish faith and Christianity, around the 7th century A.D at the earliest, and, according to some sources, was possibly instigated by the Catholic leadership trying to create a friendly religion in the region by sending nuns out to contact likely fellows such as Mohamed and influence them with ideas that would be friendly to Rome so that Roman Catholicism could take over the Holy Land. Additionally, this "Allah" they operate in the name of is not the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, but rather an idol. That black stone in Mecca that all the Muslim pilgrims kiss because Mohamed did so? That's the last idol left from a shrine that was full of them before Mohammed destroyed all of them except the one he already worshiped, which means this "Allah" is in fact a demon false god, just like Dagon of the Philistines, Ashera(Ishtar), the Baals, Renphan/Moloch, or any other figure followed in pagan religions.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic_religions

according to some sources, was possibly instigated by the Catholic leadership trying to create a friendly religion in the region by sending nuns out to contact likely fellows such as Mohamed and influence them with ideas that would be friendly to Rome so that Roman Catholicism could take over the Holy Land. Additionally, this "Allah" they operate in the name of is not the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, but rather an idol. That black stone in Mecca that all the Muslim pilgrims kiss because Mohamed did so? That's the last idol left from a shrine that was full of them before Mohammed destroyed all of them except the one he already worshiped, which means this "Allah" is in fact a demon false god, just like Dagon of the Philistines, Ashera(Ishtar), the Baals, Renphan/Moloch, or any other figure followed in pagan religions.

Citation(s) needed, preferably from neutral sources.

[Det. Bullock]

All abrahamic religions refer to a kingdom of heaven in their teachings (which is why we have a christian theocratic party in our parliament), but I am really uncertain what this has to do with the decision whether or not to wear a headscarf and whether or not the state should interfere with that decision. Just because Iran does it doesn't mean that we should do the same.

Islam is not Abrahamic save perhaps in the loosest sense, in that the Arab peoples seem likely descended from Ishmael. But Islam came LONG after the establishment of both the Jewish faith and Christianity, around the 7th century A.D at the earliest, and, according to some sources, was possibly instigated by the Catholic leadership trying to create a friendly religion in the region by sending nuns out to contact likely fellows such as Mohamed and influence them with ideas that would be friendly to Rome so that Roman Catholicism could take over the Holy Land. Additionally, this "Allah" they operate in the name of is not the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, but rather an idol. That black stone in Mecca that all the Muslim pilgrims kiss because Mohamed did so? That's the last idol left from a shrine that was full of them before Mohammed destroyed all of them except the one he already worshiped, which means this "Allah" is in fact a demon false god, just like Dagon of the Philistines, Ashera(Ishtar), the Baals, Renphan/Moloch, or any other figure followed in pagan religions.

Yeah, yeah, same old anti-catholic conspiracy bull**** ("They have relics! And statues of Saints! So they worship idols! Clearly it's Satan guiding them! They aren't real Christians!" et cetera), this time mixed with islamophobia.

[LaineyBugsDaddy]

Funny, I didn't mention relics or saints. That said, I find it most odd that in the Ten Commandments pamphlets handed out by people trying to get folks to come to a Catholic service, they leave out the one about graven images and split the last one, about coveting, into two. The version of the bible they use doesn't do that, but their 10 Commandments tract does. I'm not saying they're not Christians. I am not the Judge of them. That job belongs to Almightly God. There are things I find to be of concern, though. Like the aforementioned tract, or the claim, despite biblical evidence to the contrary, that Peter was the first pope. (Hard to be a celibate supreme pontiff when you're married. Peter's wife is never mentioned, but early in Luke, they are at the house of the mother of his wife. Yes, the Bible documents that Peter had a mother-in-law, and a man would have to be a fool to have a mother-in-law without having a wife.) So I am wary of Catholic doctrine. If it matches scripture read in straightforward manner, fine. But it's definitely an "eat the meat and spit out the bones" situation.

[Grizzly]

Which makes me wonder why you used the idolatry angle to harp on Islam not being a True Religion(tm) despite it's rather notorious stance against idolatry.

[Dragon]

If anything, Islam is closer to the ideas from the Old Testament than modern Catholicism. It can be debated whether it's a good thing or not, but Islam did away with many things that caused difficulties and splits among Christians, such as trinitarism, saints and so on. I'm not fond of religions in general, but Islam is definitely "better designed" than Christianity. It still has many flaws, but it did patch some notorious holes and seems to be doing better in the modern world, as far as general adherence to the rituals goes. Less so to principles, but every religion that tells its followers not to be morons and assholes is going to have this problem, because some (well, most, actually) people just can't be helped.

BTW, "Allah" means just "God" in Arabic, nothing more, nothing less. If this is idolatry, so is you talking about "Almighty God" and not "YHWH" or "Adonai". If you were speaking Arabic, you'd use the same word if you were talking about Christian or Jews, too. The only reason it's used in English is that it makes it possible for Christians to single out Muslims as worshiping a different god (not a new idea, though, this dates at least as far back as the crusades). Doing away with translations is another big innovation of Islam over Christianity, even though it did invite some abuse of that sort. Just look up a list of common translation-induced misinterpretations of the Bibile to get an idea of how important that was.

[Det. Bullock]

Funny, I didn't mention relics or saints. That said, I find it most odd that in the Ten Commandments pamphlets handed out by people trying to get folks to come to a Catholic service, they leave out the one about graven images and split the last one, about coveting, into two. The version of the bible they use doesn't do that, but their 10 Commandments tract does. I'm not saying they're not Christians. I am not the Judge of them. That job belongs to Almightly God. There are things I find to be of concern, though. Like the aforementioned tract, or the claim, despite biblical evidence to the contrary, that Peter was the first pope. (Hard to be a celibate supreme pontiff when you're married. Peter's wife is never mentioned, but early in Luke, they are at the house of the mother of his wife. Yes, the Bible documents that Peter had a mother-in-law, and a man would have to be a fool to have a mother-in-law without having a wife.) So I am wary of Catholic doctrine. If it matches scripture read in straightforward manner, fine. But it's definitely an "eat the meat and spit out the bones" situation.

Last I checked, my catholic bible approved by the C.E.I. ("Conferenza Episcopale Italiana", the Italian Council of Bishops) has everything.

Neither protestant nor catholic doctrine are straightforward, for the simple reason that if you take the bible literally things have a tendency to get quite horrific, nonsensical or both.

The relics and saints are the major argument of the protestant bigots that accuse catholics of idolatry.

Popes and the catholic clergy in general could marry for the first few centuries (after all Paul himself he said celibacy was preferable rather than a full obligation), they decided to go full celibate because bishops started to create dinasties and the secular authorities didn't like that so it was either let the kings and emperors nominate the bishops or renounce the right to have families to maintain a minimum of authonomy from secular authority, which was later dressed up with theological justifications as it usually happesn with religion: see slavery in the US.


Regarding the pamphlet: I have no idea about US catholics, I live in a 90% catholic country so I cannot say anything sure about pamphlets (it's usually Geova's witnesses who hand them here, they are considered supremely annoying by essentially everyone), but I kinda get that in a pamphlet they might give only the main bullet points instead of the literal excerpt from the bible since it's quite long-winded and in Sunday school the part about graven images was considered part of the first commandment.

[Grizzly]

@Dragon - It should be noted that translations were only introduced into christianity with protestantism due to the catholic church using the Vulgate, which was in Latin, a language nobody spoke at the time: The courts had switched to french as their lingua franca, and thus Latin and knowledge thereoff was exclusive to people who could get into university and/or the church (eg nobody could take the priests to account). Although muslims generally recommend that people read the Quran in Arabic, translations are not prohibited and perhaps more importantly: Arabic actually is a language that is spoken by a lot of people.

[MP-Ryan]

You can be assured that MP-Ryan reply is mostly wrong. Him praising Bush is a huge red flag, as it was his foreign policy that is to a large degree responsible for this mess.

LOL.  The last 150 years says hello.  The last 46 or so years is coming over to party.  This is no more Bush's invention than 9/11 was Clinton's.  It took a very long stretch of screwups and shortsighted policy to produce this mess, which brings me to...

The main strategic goal of islamic extremists is to spread backward MENA brand of islam worldwide in order to ensure a fat future recruitment pool all over the world. They want to go from a MENA power to a global power. They need to be contained before they can be destroyed.

Due to open border policies, committing terrorist attacks in the West is actually extremely easy and if ISIS truly wanted to, there would be attacks every week. All they have to do is walk over unchecked and start shooting or driving into people. Thats the state of security currently. The fact that there are no attacks every week shows that the terrorists are showing restraint, and the cause is probably them being afraid of triggering a nationalist backslash prematurely, which would be bad for their long term plans.

No, the fact that there aren't attacks every week is because (1) the security services are doing their jobs, (2) radicalization rates are still quite low and recruitment outside core countries is difficult, and (3) even IF they were able to surmount 1&2, launching widespread attacks will ensure they'll be enduring not only the continual drone-launched Hellfire rain, but ground forces actively hunting them.  Islamic State in particular is a shambles of a ground organization that has a few tens of thousands of active members.  They're already being steadily wiped out by the closing noose from Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Western assistance.

Of course, a really GOOD way of causing the first two factors to turn in favour of radical Islamic militant organizations is for the West to do exactly what you prescribe.  See also: every internal terrorist insurrection in Western Europe in the last two hundred years.

Also, whats with that whining about Assad? You really want Bush 2.0, dont you? First deal with ISIS and other islamic extremist groups, and then you can worry about the likes of Assad, who are by far the lesser evil in the region.

But whatever, western EU is trying your approach, Trumps America and eastern parts of EU will instead wall off and tighten immigration policy, and we shall see who has bigger problems with muslim extremism in a decade or two..

^ Ways I know you don't have a clue about geopolitical security and history.  ISIS is a goddamned sideshow; they're trivial in the grand scheme and don't pose even a remotely existential threat to any Western country (of course, do what the far right wants, see their recruitment expand, and that factor will change).  The current major threat to global stability's name beings with R and ends with ussia.  Putin is expansionist, unpopular at home, and happy to go adventuring to spread influence and bring in money.  Syria landing back in the hands of Assad is a major coup for the Russians, and a major blow to Western interests.  Islamic militants are bred from regional oppression and insecurity, and guess what Assad represents.  It's no coincidence that both Afghanistan and Iraq have seen sizeable reductions of Islamic radicalism in their democratically-controlled areas which are continuing to expand.

ISIS is not a meaningful threat to the West, and so long as Western countries don't start bring the instincts of their nationalists into law, recruitment will remain low and ISIS will remain trivial.  Actually, ISIS will be gone entirely in short order as long as the West doesn't do anything spectacularly stupid, but Islamic radicalism will inevitably rear its ugly head under a new name.  Regardless, a minor threat to the populace of Western countries so long as we don't start doing our recruitment for them.

On the other hand, allowing the present state of affairs to continue the Middle East is going to ensure this problem never goes away.  We're not going to see Assad gone anytime soon thanks to the West's utter failure in Syria, but with luck we can keep Turkey from tipping and continue to see gains in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The fact that you're ignoring the far bigger picture to wail about ISIS and European immigration speaks volumes.

[MP-Ryan]

But my point is and was simply that those are far from obvious and unavoidable results. Firstly, you just can't form policy based on whether some completely bat**** insane guys at ISIS will maybe twist your policy into some kind of propagandistic tale of oppression of the righteous. They can do that with anything anyway, because it's not like their audience gets to do or is interested in much fact-checking. Secondly, tightened scrutiny of immigrants doesn't have to mean that you just deport them right back into ISIS's hands or treat them as garbage.

Instead, the right-leaning elements in several NATO countries are proposing a completely reactionary set of policies that are guaranteed to play into the recruiters hands.

I've said before and I'll repeat that I have absolutely no problem with enforcement of immigration law or national borders; I have a major problem with policies (e.g. Trump's proposed "Muslim ban" during the election) that are guaranteed to repress existing minorities, reinforce stigma, breed resentment, increase radicalization, and ultimately act as a recruitment mechanism.  De-radicalization programs work; clamping down on innocent refugees and legitimate immigrants doesn't.  NATO countries *have not* been hit by a major *homegrown* attack by radical Islamists yet.  So far its been single actors with limited organization and fairly low casualty counts.  It's really easy to make that change.

I can't see any reason why you're telling me these things.

Because while the right-leaning politicians of the West have been busy foolishly hand-wringing about ISIS, they have entirely abdicated their much more rational actual policies concerning geopolitical stability and civilian protection, and Syria is the first real example of the consequences of that particular idiocy we've seen.  Unless NATO pulls its collective heads from its collective asses, it won't be the last.  You think Syria created a refugee crisis in Europe?  Watch its neighbours.  For that matter, watch Iran and watch Turkey.  Syria just taught every would-be authoritarian that, as of 2016 and for the first time in more than 30 years, you can slaughter opposition and civilians alike by the tens of thousands with the entire world watching it happen on live TV without consequences.