this is a good read, and something I pretty much totally agree with:
2 Likes
I wish it were as simple as terrorists making up their doctrines from whole cloth, but Abrahamic religions have plenty of intolerance in them. You can choose to be moderate and interpret them in one way, but you can also be more fundamentalist and take the violence or intolerance literally. Considering the way that these faiths were political as well as religious and were written in times of conflict, it would be miraculous if there werenât pretty objectionable parts.
On the other hand, there have been Muslims for centuries while terrorism of this kind is pretty modern. Practically every group of any significant size has shown itself to be capable of fundamentalist intolerance and violence, and also of peaceful cohabitation with others. I have to agree with others here that there would probably be terrorists in that region whatever the majority religion was, given the socio-economic pressures over the past couple of decades. I think religion has a definite influence (for example, I think a lot of Yazidis would be alive now if they had been considered people of the book or this distinction didnât exist), but the reason this kind of intolerant interpretation is popular is because of reasons rooted in our modern context.
1 Like
Ugh. Okay, whatever.
I posited that there didnât appear to be a way for us to come to any evidence based common understanding of reality. You didnât disagree. Good enough for me.
I posited that there didnât appear to be a way for us to come to any evidence based common understanding of reality. You didnât disagree. Good enough for me.
I do disagree with that.
You certainly didnât feel it was important enough to disagree with when you could instead be saying I was stupid for reading something non-literal from your words. And even now you donât actually say what kind of evidence would be acceptable.
For example: It it turned out to be the case that over the course of history terrorism had arisen to fight for politically and economically advantaged groups and causes about as often as it had arisen to fight for politically and economically disadvantaged groups and causes, then I would say, âI guess I was wrong about economic and political inequality being important causes of terror.â
Can you formulate a similar sentence about religion, about Islam?
3 Likes
Religion is synonymous with control. Sorry, but thatâs nonsense.
3 Likes
##FTFY
in some world-viewsâŚ
I have been known to mutter âsettlers are not civiliansâ but not loudly
3 Likes
[quote=âHumbabella, post:66, topic:70098â]
You certainly didnât feel it was important enough to disagree with when you could instead be saying I was stupid for reading something non-literal from your words.[/quote]
I didnât feel it was important enough because I felt it was more important to address what seemed to me to be a deliberate misrepresentation of my views. The short paragraph you were replying to had two sentences and you seemed to have ignored one and a half of them. Youâll have to forgive me if that annoyed me and prompted a snarky response.
As for the rest, I need to go make my dinner now so will have to come back to this thread tomorrow.
Yeah, exactly, the most important thing in the discussion, from the beginning, has been whether or not your felt people were misrepresenting your views, and you have always assumed malice when you felt you werenât understood. You said I couldnât read well. Letâs see if I can read well:
Iâm going to break this down:
- It would depend on what assumptions they were making in their research,
- usually these guys start off with an assumption of social constructionism, so itâs no surprise thatâs all they ever find.
- Not the case with everything of course, but itâs more common than not
I think (3) is meant to convey that you werenât trying to be absolute or totally encompassing in your claims, so I donât think there is much to analyze there. (1) Will be important later, but only after Iâve looked at (2).
Iâm not going to bother unpacking âusuallyâ at the beginning of (2) because the only purpose of dwelling on it would be to quibble, I feel safe assuming you mean that it happens often enough to take it into consideration. So weâll move on with the rest:
[group A] start with an assumption of [theory X], so it is no surprise they donât conclude anything other than [theory X].
Weâll set aside what A and X are for the moment, though obviously weâll have to consider their particulars later.
The challenging part of this is âso it is no surpriseâ. Letâs read the sentence, at first, to say that it implies inevitability. Then we would be reading âif you assume X, you conclude Xâ. That is plainly not true. If I were to assume that pi=4 and start reasoning, I would rapidly conclude pi!=4. So thatâs not a reasonable reading unless we know X to be true.
So letâs try âso it is no surpriseâ as meaning that it is likely but not inevitable. âif you assume X, you usually conclude X.â That is true but not interestingly true. Most physics experiments will begin with the assumption that gravity is a force that attracts masses to one another, and they wonât encounter anything in the experiment to call that assumption into question.
So letâs look back at (1). We know that (2) is there to argumentatively support the thesis presented in (1) - so (2) is either an example of a good assumption to make in research, or a bad one. I donât think I crossed a line in thinking that it was probably meant to be a bad one. So now we have to drop the A and the X and get into particulars. Because if the statement âA usually assumes X and therefore usually concludes Xâ is a true statement and an example of a how bad assumptions discredit research then it seems like either:
- X is assumed without argument to be false or otherwise problematic
- the group in question is assumed without argument to be bad at questioning their assumptions when appropriate
A is sociologists and X is apparently a very common viewpoint in sociology (or at least common enough that you says âusually these guysâ assume it) I was faced with a situation where you appeared to be saying either that sociologists werenât good researchers or that a very common theoretical framework in sociology was unreliable.
On the other hand, from the fact that is in service of you advancing a sociological argument of your own about religious causes of terrorism (and supported by (3)), I know that you think that at least some sociological (or at least sociology-ish research if it is being done under another discipline name) provides reliable evidence from which we can make conclusions.
From this, it appeared to me that your found sociological research conducted within one common theoretical framework to be largely invalid, and sociological research conducted in some other theoretical framework to be largely valid. So what did I say:
So first of all, I can see something I did plainly wrong here: you donât deny that economic and social conditions are important causative factors in terrorism. I should have rather contrasted research that says that religion is an important factor with research that says it isnât, disregarding other factors.
Second, Iâve made a leap that could be considered unwarranted here. Iâm jumped from the idea that you donât appear to find [theory X] to be reliable and you donât believe [conclusion Z] to thinking that you think X usually concludes Z. Similarly, I jumped from the idea that you do find some unstated [theory Y] to be more reliable and that you do believe in !Z (and that you appear to care about evidence in forming your beliefs) to thinking that Y usually concludes !Z.
So that looked to me a lot like we had different competing theoretical frameworks that came to different conclusions and that you were only likely to accept arguments from within the framework that drew the conclusion you agreed with. In a way that isnât even an indictment. Going back to my pi=4 example, I think that p!=4 because (1) Iâm talking about Euclidean geometry; and (2) I understand enough geometry to draw that conclusion. If I saw some new framework for thinking about Euclidean geometry which showed that pi=4, I would probably find that framework to be flawed in some way, even if I didnât dismiss it immediately. That is, if you already have good reasons to believe that Y aligns better with the real world than X, then it is entirely justifiable that youâd think !Z rather than Z.
I donât know what those reasons are. You introduced a (by your assessment) common sociological theoretical framework by name and apparently dismissed it in the same breath without explanation while suggesting it is very common in the discipline. If you have evidence that demonstrates the conclusions of that framework donât line up with reality then this makes perfect sense (or even if youâve, despite best efforts, failed to find any evidence that it does line up with reality). I think classical economics is basically an ideological pseudo-science because its predictions donât pan out in reality, but if I were to dismiss classical economics in an argument, knowing that is a major academic discipline, I would at least have the courtesy to give some reason, to say that it has an evidence problem so that a person reading what I was writing wouldnât be left in a position to do all this guesswork.
Because when you dismiss a major theoretical framework or branch of academia without even saying why it might make other people think that you are some kind of ideologue, since academics are typically given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to at least attempting use evidence. I think you probably have reasons why you think one theory is superior to another. It sounds like you have probably done more reading than I have about this. But other than being told Iâm delusional for thinking different than you, and a link or two to articles that donât even really agree with what you are saying (e.g., Nawaz was careful to distinguish between Islam the religion which explicitly said was not the cause of terrorism and Islamism which he said was) I donât know what your reasons are.
But when I said, âThat reads like you are being ideologicalâ (in too many words) you said that you never said that. Of course you didnât. The thing about ideologues is that they never say they are ideologues. Still, it created a confrontation. What I should have done was found a more polite way to engage and say something more like, âWhat about the articles linked by @William_Holz made you feel that they were based on flawed research?â
What I am used to, when I am talking to my friends, is that if I say, âWow, that sounds really ideological,â the response will be something like, âOh really?â and it will be launching point for a conversation, not an attempt to start a fight. I canât act that way on the internet.
But why would I actually spend so much time trying to be careful how I phrase things when you say that people who disagree with you are basing their arguments on âwhite guiltâ. Neither I nor @William_Holz nor anyone else in this discussion said they supported arguing from âwhite guiltâ but you put that on us. If we put anything on you then thatâs all we get to talk about - how we wronged you.
Itâs just not worth doing. I appreciate that you raised the issue that many terrorist actually come from privileged backgrounds (and @albill linked to an article on a somewhat related point [very few engineers arenât at least somewhat privileged]), thatâs a useful takeaway from this discussion for me. But I donât want to engage anymore, and I donât think either of us will really lose out on anything because of that.
13 Likes
You go. You stick it to the man, man.
Why is it people who are intransigent always immediately assume that other people are the ones who are failing to get a grip on reality so that they can cling to their ideology?
Good luck, doesnât look like itâs gonna happen.
2 Likes
At last, common ground. I want to forget everything else and give you a big hug.
For me there is one very real, non-academic reason to stop using this term. Right now the world is full of people who canât tell the difference between a muslim and a terrorist. Speaking arabic on a plane can get you kicked off. In America, there is growing talk of rounding up muslims into camps, making them wear special markings, and armed patriots are posting themselves outside mosques. In Europe nobody wants muslim refugees in their backyard and the anti-islamic groups are getting bolder, progressing from threats to arson to who knows what next. Even my atheist persian buddy is having a hard time getting a date.
You can argue all you want for the technical correctness of the term. Fine, I donât care any more. But you can hardly deny at this point how easily the phrase is misinterpreted. If âislamic terrorismâ is accurate, âsalafist terrorismâ is more accurate, and Iâm struggling to conceive of a context in which it should not be the preferred term.
Nobody disagrees with the term âsalafist terroristâ. Not muslims, not even the terrorists themselves. If we can all agree to use âsalafist terroristâ instead of âislamic terroristâ then maybe we can stop arguing over what to call the thing and move on to discussing what should be done about it, which to me is a far more interesting subject.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
7 Likes
Section 31 is like a blindfold.
Iâm a ten, but absolutely not a nine or an eight. That would be unethical. Also Iâm a three, four and seven. Also, I would rather kill an innocent person than cause them torment for the rest of their life. Iâm not sure this chart works for me?
Good to see yer gir icon around here again, though!
You do sometimes think too hard. 
But I never said I was a one or anythingâŚweâre all broken toys and there are plenty of people who are far more appropriate to defer to than I. The key is knowing when weâre not to be trustedâŚsomething thatâs sadly not rewarded in our society.
Itâs good to be back, I had a few things to get together!
5 Likes
How on earth do you have the energy?
4 Likes
I am frequently awed by humbabellaâs flair for being correct at great length. (Canât put smilies cos my stupid phone browser shits itself if I try and my comment disappears, so imagine a friendly smiley)
3 Likes
I gave this some thought last night, and I guess all I can say is thanks for pointing this out. Above I brought up other examples of people saying, âTheyâre not a real [Muslim/Christian/Whatever]â but even if I can find internet articles saying, âMormons arenât Christiansâ and âMormons are Christiansâ I canât think of any time Iâve ever heard anyone say, âself-identified Christian,â about a Mormon or anyone else. All religions of even moderate size are going to have internal squabbles about who is a real adherent, but we seem to reserve the term âself-identifiedâ for religions that seem âexoticâ to us, not for individuals who seem to fall into weird fringes of their religion.
Saying âself-identifiedâ has this weird arrogance built into it, âI get to decide what religion other people are, but thatâs a weird religion I donât know anything about, so Iâm going to flag the fact that the only thing you have to do on is the word of the adherent, rather than relying on my expert judgement.â It makes me think of purposefully gendering people with the wrong gender: âI get to decide what gender everyone is.â
So I see how it marginalizes the religion, not just the person. I can only imagine as a white (there I go assigning a race to you from a black and white photo) Buddhist youâve had some personal experience with others having opinions about whether you know what religion you really are. I think of the looks I get when I tell people my sister is a Wiccan priestess.
You have no idea how much energy it was taking me to not write that. If I didnât have to do things like hold down a job and maintain at least workable relationships with other people, Iâd spend all of my waking hours screaming about the implications of things that other people said.
9 Likes
2 points:
In Christianity, if you self-identify as Christian by claiming Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you are one. Thereâs no ambiguity in the scriptures on this. The Catholic Pope or the Mormon Patriarch can bar you from attending their rituals, but they cannot make you unchristian - only God the Father can do that, even Jesus canât do it (thatâs in John twentysomething, I forget). And God doesnât do that, although he clearly can.
Although itâs true that âself-identifiedâ has been used as part of odious smear campaigns, itâs also a useful descriptive term - it means that you believe youâre repeating what a person claims about him or herself, and not relying on third parties to tell you what you should believe about that person.
1 Like
I do believe that @anon50609448 needs to add that to her profile page, stat. Because itâs the truth. she constantly blows me away with her smarts!
4 Likes
Thatâs your idea of Christianity, but people have fought long, bloody battles over whether this is true or not. I will say, though, that there is obviously a difference between Christianity and some other religions in this respect - I think that most contemporary Christians would agree with you, whereas there are religions that you actually have to pass trials to enter or that you have to be born into. But, to use the extreme example I keep bringing up, if someone thinks Jesus was actually an alien and that heâs returning in his mothership soon, are they really a Christian? I mean, they accept Jesus Christ as their personal saviour, but you donât even agree with them about who or what Jesus Christ is. If I said, âI accept Jesus Christ as my personal saviourâ but I by âJesus Christâ I meant my cat*, I think a lot of Christians would question the validity of my Christianity. And in subtler version of that space there is a lot of room for people to quibble (or kill one another).
The conclusion I arrived at after thinking about what @albill said was that essentially it is a term that seems to be reserved for religions we feel uncomfortable with. I agree that sometimes it is worthwhile to indicate that you are letting someone else speak for themselves rather than putting words in their mouths, but Iâm not going to do so with that particular descriptor anymore, because I think it imports a meaning that I hopefully donât mean.
Itâs funny how these things work. Whenever you are in a conversation I try not to say too much because you actually seem to know what you are talking about and so Iâm afraid of being exposed as a fool who just knows how to talk a big game. Not fishing for complements, I would destroy myself in an argument, and itâs like Iâm always nervous that someone else will notice all the problems with what I am saying.
* There is no goddamned way Iâd ever own a cat
4 Likes
