Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?

I actually like the point that you're making, but the data you use to illustrate it is woefully inadequate.

Your example, the Gujarat riots. The third sentence from the wikipedia article on the subject : "On 27 February 2002, the Sabarmati Express train was attacked at Godhra by a Muslim mob.[2][3][4][5] 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were killed in the attack." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence

The aftermath of that is what you might expect. The rest of the article has such little tidbits as calls for genocide being broadcast from mosques, in code, which obviously means that muslims were planning a genocide beforehand (or they wouldn't have had time to spread the code).

The gujarat riots were an example of their standard modus operandus : small number of muslims successfully goading a large number of muslims into committing genocide, and losing the battle. I've seen groups try the same in Brussels (thankfully unsuccessfully). But don't worry, they were only trying to get muslims to shoot automatic weaponry at citizens because of graffiti on the mosque (graffiti was related to Europe). Needless to say this was officially declared "an incident of a reaction against religious intolerance". I even know why : because stating the truth had a good chance of making the muslims attack again.

Did "both sides commit atrocities" yes. However, one side can make a VERY strong case it was defending itself. Furthermore given all other incidents, from partition and subsequent genocide in Pakistan but not in India to the many other instances of violence, I would suspect that was the case even without the many indications in the article that this was a coordinated plan for genocide against hindus run from the local mosques that got out of hand.

I think you see why this is unlikely to sway my opinion. Please, do try again, because I really don't want to think islam and muslims are at war with everybody else, which can't end in anything but massive religious intolerance world-wide. But what you've given as examples does the exact opposite you intended.

On an intellectual level I concur, but I also realize that such a system is easy to game, and therefore cannot exist. Therefore group attacks, and group retaliation are a necessity, and they will exist regardless of what we rationally or morally feel justice should be. It's not a question of having this morally justified, no more than questioning the morality of a volcanic eruption anyway.

As for [1], that happened during the mughal conquest of India. Again, any violence against muslims during that time was as justified as violence against nazis was in WWII. Muslim invaders were genociding through India at the time, loss of life of that conquest, which included the building of that mosque, run from the hundreds of millions up to a billion dead. Number [4] is such a trivial event I don't get why you even mention it. Drunks do that on a bimonthly basis 200 meter from where I'm sitting. Furthermore I would like to point out that in most muslim countries, those girls would have been slowly stoned to death, as a matter of general policy.

I don't fully get the point your making. When pointing out muslim atrocities, I point to multiple religious genocides, and you say that the other side is "equally guilty" because of the destruction of a building and scaring a few girls. I hope you understand that these things are not comparable.

The point I was making with the drunks was not that those Hindus were drunk or not, the point was that their behavior was no worse than what can reasonably be expected to happen (not too often, and other caveats apply of course) where drunk people go out. Muslims would have slowly stoned them to death (and do this regularly), so again it just does not compare :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRaLcbxpIsw

> I am not sure what you mean by " Therefore group attacks, and group retaliation are a necessity, and they will exist regardless...", so I'm curious why you are singling out Islam, when group violence has been inevitable across all races, religions and cultures.

I am not singling out islam. I do not think islam is the only group that exhibits completely unacceptable violent and self-destructive behavior patterns, and I know of a lot of (small) groups that are attacked by the police/"the system", as a group, because of such behavior. Visit western Europe once, where you will find every country has it's political party "the system" attacks (ie. police, army, ... are used against that group). And frankly, they're right to do that in most cases.

Islam is the only really sizable such unacceptable group, and the only one that is a threat to world peace, not because of anything individual members do, but because of the behavior of the group as a whole, and the consequences thereof.

Once the violence grows beyond a certain threshold, the only possible reaction is retaliation against the group. You can call this tragedy of the commons, it's very similar to that. I think you may simply not have considered that such a threshold exist, and what it might be. Visit Delhi and talk to a few people there, and you will know what I mean and that India is not far removed from that threshold.

> I am not a fan of Islam. I have openly said that their book is not just stupid, but insane. I would be stoned to death too. My only point was that there is no reason to claim that Hindus and Christians are immune from becoming terrorists.

And I don't claim that any group is immune from producing a terrorists/criminals. I only claim that, with a few small exceptions, no other religion explicitly causes terrorism, genocide and worse as a matter of general policy, and celebrates it like they do. I claim that there is no choice, and a lot of lives and damage would be spared by attacking islam itself now, before they succeed at creating yet another mass-genocide. Before they cross the threshold.