Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
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Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
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Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#2Just an aside, but Mr. Zunger is a large reason why I continue to spend any time following anything on Google+. He writes on all kinds of topics regularly (most are non-political), and is worth following.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#3The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems while touting climate change is both silly and goes against the stated goals of the essay to not tout slogans as solutions. Otherwise, it's a pretty good take on the situation.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#4A serious question which I'd love to hear opinions on:
Why are immigrants to the US from Mexico viewed so differently from immigrants in Europe? Or are they treated the same?
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#5The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems while touting climate change is both silly and…
It's more like he is implying that something like Da'esh will exist no matter if Islam exists or not. Their brand of violence is not rooted in ideological beliefs but rather psycopathic killing for killings sake. That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic. The other issues of famine, fear and a power vaccume are more likely the reason they can last for so long. Groups like this in the United States tend to burn out very quickly or reduce their violence to attacks on rivals and divirsify their actions to more capitalistic actions.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#6> Charlie Hebdo's targets ...
Who was it that killed who again?
>Charlie Hebdo's targets weren't simply religious extremists preaching from Saudi mosques; they were a portrayal of the French Muslim population as violent extremists, the dangerous other.
It sounds like the author is saying that the satire cartoon invented "racism" against Muslims. But the cartoon "targets" proved the magazine absolutely, positively, bona-fided-ly correct. They proved Charlie Hebdo right.
>You sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. What did you expect was going to happen?
So the author actually blames religious attacks on the act of people talking about it happening. In some circular way, the cartoon magazine created religious violence?
I cannot fathom how the author would explain religiously motivated violence in places where a satire cartoon isn't there to talk about it.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#7The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems while touting climate change is both silly and…
> Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception
Exactly. For example, the US and Saudi supported "rebels" in Syria are Sunnis. Assad is Alawite Shia, Iran too. Now look at who's with whom. ISIS are inspired by Wahabi teaching, which was effectively able to grow thanks to Saudi Arabia and Oil, but consider any Muslim who's not ready to accept Wahabi view apostate, that is, somebody who is, according to their religious views, to be killed(!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism
The chaos in Iraq after US invaded to "bring them democracy" resulted in de-facto war between the Shia who got to the power and Sunnis who lost the influence. Yemen, where Saudi Arabia performs military actions now, has large Shia population.
Etc. It sounds complex, but it's not, once you understand what's going on and see how obviously groups support or fight one another exactly based on the religion, you can't even imagine that people can ignore the predominantly religious background for the most of the conflicts.
If you don't make a difference between Sunni, Shia and Wahabi, it's your problem, but people lose lives because of that in the Middle East, in hundreds of thousands.
Which is not to say that it's not even much worse (proportionally) for minorities like smaller religious Muslim groups and even worse for Christians there.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#8A serious question which I'd love to hear opinions on: Why are immigrants to the US from Mexico viewed so differently from immigrants in Europe? Or are they treated the same?
I guess it depends on who you ask. Some of us are afraid that they'll rename Los Angeles to something Hispanic-sounding.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#9The author is implying that Daesh or something like it would/could exist without religion and specifically without Islam. I doubt that. Also, just because there is Muslim on Muslim violence doesn't mean that Islam isn't the cause of it. Wars between different factions of the same religion are the rule, not the exception. So ignoring religion as a cause of these problems while touting climate change is both silly and…
It's more like he is implying that something like Da'esh will exist no matter if Islam exists or not. Their brand of violence is not rooted in ideological beliefs but rather psycopathic killing for killings sake. That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic. The other issues of famine, fear and a power vaccume are more likely the reason they can last for so long. Group…
> That Islam allows a way for them to recruit does not mean they are Islamic only opportunistic.
Simply wrong. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabism The ideology existed longer than the specific group called ISIS. They just dialed it to 10 what was always more and more cooking for the last few decades. That they are a bit more extreme than how Al-Quaeda is perceived in the West now doesn't mean that the exact Islamic ideology wasn't fully formed before, including the treatment of those with who they fight.
The reason why they call themselves "people of hadith" is because they really believe to just repeat what their prophet was doing, and that that is the major goal of a true believer. It's in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadith that they can read about every beheading and stoning performed by Mohammad. They just literally ask themselves "What Would Mohammad Do" in the sense that they "reject the use of Hellenistic philosophical discourse "(kalam)" in favor of strict textualism in interpreting the Quran."
Pretending that all this doesn't exist (on rejecting to learn) won't help anybody understand what's going on.
Re: Yonatan Zunger about the Paris Attacks
#10A serious question which I'd love to hear opinions on: Why are immigrants to the US from Mexico viewed so differently from immigrants in Europe? Or are they treated the same?
Immigrants from Mexico don't follow a religion that instructs them to kill.