New Jerseyites have alway been jealous of New Yorkers.
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Oh, spare me!
The âsplinterâ in your eye?
Trump is the ideal GOP candidate. Heâs everything youâve embodied for decades now, without any superficial veneer of credibility.
The GOP IS Trump.
If you donât support Trump, itâs time for you to start asking yourself some tough questions.
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Why do Republicans nowadays lack respect for authority figures (such as teachers) and the self discipline to pay attention in school and do their homework correctly and completely?
William F. Buckley, Jr. is rolling, very stiffly, in his grave.
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To be fair, I think Christie would be more than happy for Queens to be attacked. And the rest of the boroughs too.
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Has the President been âignoring radical Islamâ, or just the phrase âradical Islamâ?
Osama bin Laden was not available for comment.
Seems to me the President did address it.
Do you want to address all religious violence, or just violence perpetrated by Muslims? Christianity has a long history of perpetrating unspeakable atrocities in the name of a peaceful savior (John 11:35), and Muslim theologians are not even in agreement over what âjihadâ means (a struggle against unbelievers, or an internal struggle against sin)-- the problem here is that it becomes a theological argument, and there can never be an agreement when all the various sides think they alone know godâs will. You may as well ask a Mormon and a Catholic to agree on whether drinking wine is a sacrament.
By focusing anger on the entire religion we are turning peaceful Muslim allies into potential enemies.
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This picture just never gets old
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holier than thou graphic.
Please Stop.
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Wow.
Makes me wonder if Trump isnât running out of spite, and nothing else.
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How many of you think ISIS is not Islamic?
President Obama has said it isnât.
If these acts where being committed by fundamentalist Christians, I wouldnât have a problem saying that we have a problem with fundamentalist Christians.
Why canât he acknowledge the obvious?
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As made clear in the 2 year old article you link too, the President was speaking to whether the actions of ISIL were representative of Islam, which of course they are not.
âISIL is not âIslamic.â No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISILâs victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state; it was formerly al Qaedaâs affiliate in Iraq and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syriaâs civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq-Syrian border. It is recognized by no government nor by the people it subjugates.â
âISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple, and it has no vision other than the slaughter of all who stand in its way.â
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Which fundamentalist Christians? Youâre aware that there are multiple flavors of them, right? Or would you gladly just lump them all together without a thought?
And just how would labeling it as that help? Itâs not as though you can determine whether someone is a âfundamentalist Christianâ on sight.
As for whether or not ISIL is Islamic⌠Muslims have been saying that ISIL is not Islamic for years. If your hypothetical âfundamentalist Christiansâ were being roundly condemned by other Christians for acting directly in contradiction to the faith they claimed, would you really still call them that?
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Was halfway through drafting a reply to this, then realised it was an elderly and not very relevant article, so cancelled out.
But yeah, those Daesh-holes are less Islamic than I am and my last contact was Islam was the HSP I had sometime last year.
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Donât fall for the sound bites; Obama knows better than most people exactly what ISIL is. More than anything else, it is an organization that is a product of the sociopolitical environment in which it was cultivated. ISIL is not Islamic in the sense that most Muslims are against their world-view.
Itâs no different than âChristianâ terrorists being denounced by most of Christianity. For example, the KKK is nominally Christian, but it would be extremely myopic to attribute their origins and ideology solely to Christianity, as doing so ignores all the other (and likely more important) factors.
But hey, who has time for nuance when we got HIGH ENERGY and MAGA!?!?
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For the record, Iâm an atheist. I think all religion is bullshit. I was using âfundamentalist Christiansâ as a generalization. My point is that one should call a thing what it is. I could have as easily said Buddhists. Then they would be âradical Buddhist.â Not all Buddhist but the fucked up oneâs who go around killing people.
What I object to is this definitional game as a way of determining âtruthâ. âNo real citizen of Los Angeles would drive a Yugo. Since you drive one, you are not a real citizen of LA.â Neat trick, even though I live in LA and drive a Yugo. But this is the logical fallacy that the President engages in when he says " no real religion condones the killing of innocent people." Thatâs bullshit. First off, who determines that? And Religion has done that for eons. All of them. They all have killed innocent people. And itâs a simple trick. Labeling people you want to kill as sinners or guilty of offending god. So ISSI can kill homosexuals at will because they are not 'innocent" but guilty. And ISIS killing gays is a logical off-shoot of a religion that believes that to be gay is not only a moral sin but a crime. You can go to jail for it in almost every Islamic country. And in some they can âlegallyâ kill you for it.
And speaking of Buddhist, if you are a Muslim and wanted to become a Buddhist â Thatâs a crime. In almost every Islamic state you can be jailed for it. And in some you can be put to death for it.
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These arguments, even when stated by the President, are kind of weak. ISIL is Islamic in the sense that it frames its philosophy in Islamic terms. It may not be an Islamic philosophy that many Muslims can agree with, and it is deeply rooted in its socioeconomic context. Like practically every other religious group ever.
Seriously? This is literally a No True Scotsman argument, and a terrible one. Practically every religion has condoned killing people that other groups would call innocent. Especially Abrahamic religions. Many victims of Christian violence were Christian too.
This is how many groups gain power and become states. Many made claims to moral authority over a region before they gained political power over that region.
This would not be a problem in the long term if ISIL could hold on to power. Look at Saudi Arabia.
This is just inaccurate.
None of this means that ISIL represents Islam or any large group of Muslims. But they do recruit from among Muslims, with some success. It doesnât matter whether most Islamic groups denounce it or not - Protestantism was denounced as heresy too. There is no pure Abrahamic religion that is free from violence. âNo true Islamâ is a meaningless statement.
How about extremist [philosophy/religion]? At least then itâs clearer that these donât represent people who are accepted by most of the group.
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You mean the âJ. V. teamâ ?
I know Obama said he didnât have a plan yet for dealing with ISIS. Did he come up with one? Is calling them ânot Islamicâ part of that?
And yet that is exactly the assumption underpinning the fomenting anti-Islamic sentiment in the US and abroad that Obama is clearly trying to dispel.
His choice of words is deliberate and careful to make this point.
Attempts to criticise this speech as displaying some sort of âno true Scotsmanâ fallacy, such as you argue here, miss the point fucking spectacularly.
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It is a textbook no true Scotsman fallacy. It would be difficult to find a better example. The fact that some westerners consider ISIL to be a true picture of Islam does not make them right. It doesnât make the idea that it has nothing to do with Islam right either. There is no nuance to these statements at all.
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