Ed Dawkins on Allahu Akhbar

aleCcowaN said:
[Íñigo Montoya][Grammar Nazi] principle ... principle ... PRINCIPLE!!! (principal: the most important; principle: the origin, the departure, the foundation)[/Grammar Nazi][/Íñigo Montoya]
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pssst... Don't look at the thread title too closely.:D
 
theprestige said:
Thanks, but I'm pretty sure we already knew that the Muslim call to violent death takes the form of invoking the name of their god. I'm sure I did, anyway.
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Let's not forget the Christian battle cry of "God Wills It!" during the Crusades....
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Anything uttered during a murder is a call to death pretty much by definition.



Nor do ordinary muslims need your guilt by association. Obsessing over a common phrase because it is also used by bad people is alienating to ordinary people, plain and simple.
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I think it's called "Religiious Bigotry".
 
TubbaBlubba said:
... if those tiny extremist murder factions are literally all you know about. If not, it's a selective reading on its usage.



I don't think they see them as their "co-religionists", nor do I see what the problem of feeling alienated by extremist groups is, as opposed to alienation from a wealthy Western country. Let me explain to you some basics on Islamic extremist ideology: Most major extremist groups (e.g. ISIS, Al-Qaeda) justify their actions by appeal to Sayyeed Qutb's concept of Jahiliyya (Ignorance) as explained in his magnum opus "Milestones" - easily the single most influential text on Islamic extremism. Briefly, Qutb's idea, developed during his bitter imprisonment in the 50's and 60's, was that there were hardly any Muslims any more, they were "ignorant" of Islam, much like those before Muhammad. Therefore, a vanguard of ultra-Salafi Muslims would be justified in waging jihad on them, in order to restore Islam and bring about Qutb's utopian Sharia state.

If this sounds familiar, yes, it is pretty much an unabashed ripoff of Lenin's Vanguard Theory. Qutb received some education in the West; he was a pretty weird guy in many regards and felt extremely alienated by it, setting the stage for his development as a hyper-radical. Much of "Milestones" that deals with the theory of statesmanship reads like it was cribbed from his class notes on Enlightenment Thinkers 101, mixed up with a healthy dose of Marx, Lenin and Carl Schmitt, unified and flattened out by Qutb's appeal to his peculiarly conceived utopian Sharia state and Salafi lifestyle as the answer to any complexities.

So before you go around handing out guilt by association to Muslims, perhaps consider where the foundational motivations of Islamic extremist groups come from. Hint: Not much of it is from traditional Islamic texts.
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ANyway,if you look at history, Christians got no business accusing other religions of being intolerant and of killing for their faith.
 
dudalb said:
I think it's called "Religiious Bigotry".
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There's at least a sprinkling of racism, too.

It reminds me of people who get angry when people near them are speaking to each other in a language they don't understand.
 
dudalb said:
ANyway,if you look at history, Christians got no business accusing other religions of being intolerant and of killing for their faith.
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Oh, sure. Thing is, the waging of "jihad" to expand the "abode of Islam" goes back to the early 9th century (extrapolating wildly from the famous Sura), and a plethora of wars up to and including World War I have been framed in terms of it. The basic idea is that the world under Shari'a is a predictable one of order and rule of law; the world outside it is one of chaos that needs to be put into order. I like to compare the idea to Aquinas' Just War Theory, or even Neocon interventionism when I'm in that mood.

What Islamic extremists are doing though is openly waging jihad on other muslims. This has certainly happened historically, but usually it has been an after-the-fact framing. Your average medieval Emir, Sultan or Padishah would most likely have found the notion abhorrent.

In this way, "jihadist" ideology contained a key innovation in its vanguard theory of an Islamic renaissance.
 
I think we all agree that religiously motivated mass murder is a bad thing.
I don't mind that Dawkins says that.
I'm not even shocked that an elderly Oxford don considers his culture to be superior to all others.

The disappointing thing is that... the tweet just isn't nearly as witty, acerbic or eloquent as Dawkins thinks it was.
 
Undesired Walrus said:
Nail on the head.

In addition Dawkins doesn't strike me as a man with the most diverse of tastes. I can visualise his reaction when his radio gets stuck on a station specialising in Hip Hop, for example. "But it's just people shouting vulgarities Glenda!"
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*Lalla. AKA "Romanadvoratrelundar", AKA "Romana II".
 
TubbaBlubba said:
This one might be more familiar in its recency: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_mit_uns
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Or the lovely spectacle of Catholics and Protesents killing each other in the name of Jesus in Northren Ireland...
(Yes I know Irish Nationalism was also involved, but it is indictive that the cleavage on Nationalsim pretty much followed the religious cleavage).
Or Christians slaughtering Muslims in Bosnia not so long ago.....
 
dudalb said:
Or the lovely spectacle of Catholics and Protesents killing each other in the name of Jesus in Northren Ireland...
(Yes I know Irish Nationalism was also involved, but it is indictive that the cleavage on Nationalsim pretty much followed the religious cleavage).
Or Christians slaughtering Muslims in Bosnia not so long ago.....
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I mean, it's not a Worst Religion contest. Jihadist terrorism a la Al-Qaeda is a peculiar phenomenon of the past 40 years that must be understood on its own terms and which cannot be directly translated into Christian equivalent terms. Ultimately its roots lie, I would argue, in anticolonial movements, which also turned their agression on fellow Islamic movements deemed too willing to accept "Westernness" (e.g. "The East has Muslims but no Islam; the West has Islam but no Muslims" as one reformist said).

It taking roots and the broad failure of democracy in the Muslim world lies at least partly in the failure of moderate/secular muslim politicians to create an acceptable vision of a modern Islamic society that went beyond "Who can give the biggest middle finger to the British?". The turf wars between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. and the Arab League's inability to deal with Israel in a sensible manner (never mind the establishment of Israel in the first place and the lies of the British to Sharif Hussain) seem to have cemented the level and type of violence.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
I think we all agree that religiously motivated mass murder is a bad thing.
I don't mind that Dawkins says that.
I'm not even shocked that an elderly Oxford don considers his culture to be superior to all others.

The disappointing thing is that... the tweet just isn't nearly as witty, acerbic or eloquent as Dawkins thinks it was.
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Or even spelled correctly, which Arabic speakers in the comments pointed out..........
 
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