Best thread resolution EVAR!
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[quote=âWilliam_Holz, post:115, topic:70098â]
- Youâre repeatedly trying to make Islamic terrorism âspecialâ or âmore importantâ in a specific way then terrorism in general.[/quote]
In the abstract itâs not any more special than many other religions, in fact in many ways the Old Testament is objectively more awful than the Koran (in terms of the punishments and commandments dished out by god). Though one thing the Koran has the other religions donât is a warlord prophet who enslaved people and had sex with a child (contrast to Jesus and Buddha), and this is a problem when the life of the prophet is supposed to be an instruction in how to live the perfect life (this fact is currently influencing the behavior of ISIS members, this cannot be denied). Thankfully Iâm not the first person to notice this problem: see this and this.
So I donât think that Islam is fundamentally more problematic than any other religion.
The only real way in which I think it is in any way special is in a contingent historical sense, it just happens that at the moment there is a significant minority within Islam that holds some pretty dangerous beliefs, this was the same with many other ideologies in the past (whether religious or not), and may well become the case with other ideologies in the future, but hopefully will be less true with Islam in the future (and great credit goes to those who are capable of doing something about this).
- Adding the âIslamicâ prefix, while technically accurate, has proven repeatedly in this country (and others) to cause other individuals who do not understand how terrorism works to engage in phobic behaviors and even cause great harm to individuals just because they have been associated with âTerrorismâ because they are (or just âlookâ) âIslamicâ
I donât know if thatâs true, allowing bigoted people to frame the debate, while most non-bigoted people are busy ignoring many of the important factors, may well have lead to an increase in general discrimination though. Even if this was true, one obvious way to counter it would be to stop being hypocritical, e.g. call out Christian terrorism when you see it.
So, with all that in mind ⊠when do you think itâs important to be called âIslamic Terroristsâ (your starting point, letâs not let the goalposts get moved until weâve moved past that step)âŠor do you agree that âIslamic Terrorismâ is just as well left off the public lexicon with the evidence of damage we have.
Itâs an accurate description to use when a terrorist bases their actions on Islamic doctrine to an important degree. And again, I donât agree thereâs evidence itâs correct use is a major cause of âdamageâ. Depending on the situation it might be better to use more specific terms, Islamist, Jihadist, Salafist, etc.
Or is it more important to you that we, or certain public figures or somesuch, use the term because you feel thereâs some harm thatâs being caused thatâs greater than the harm being caused to innocents by Islamaphobia? (as well as the inevitable radicalization it createsâŠgoing back to the other root causes of radicalization)
Again, I donât think itâs use is harming innocents, and donât think itâs use plays an important role in radicalisation. I donât even accept the term Islamophobia itself, which was popularised relatively recently by the Muslim Brotherhood and similar organisations as PR weapon, bigotry is a much better word (where it is actually warranted).
Not using it does cause harm though, it prevents acknowledgement of one of the key causes of the problem, it allows bigots to frame the debate, and most importantly it allows reactionary literalist Islamic thought to operate out in the open unchecked, something which is actually one of the root causes of radicalisation, it is also used as a pretext to silence dissent from within the Islamic community itself (whether weâre talking about moderate Muslims, non-devout Muslims or ex-Muslims - people who are often the minority within the minority, and in many countries subject to imprisonment, random acts of violence, and death - as well as the bigoted cries from western leftists of uncle-tomism).
So: In a nutshell. What do you want people to say. Who do you want to say it. And why is less confusing terminology not acceptable to you?
Islamic Terrorism, Islamism, Jihadism, Salafism, Literalist Islam are all relevant and accurate terms which should be used when and as they are needed. I want Muslims who donât belong to those groups to use them, I want non-bigoted politicians, journalists and other media commentators to use these terms. I donât think this will be confusing terminology once it enters into the public lexicon, and this is already starting to happen.
If you were provided with evidence of innocent Muslim people suffering unduly because immature people in this country are conflating âMuslimâ with âTerroristâ would you change your mind?
Or is it more important to you that politicians use the words that are (based on evidence) confusing people even though other terms like âRadical fundamentalistâ are 100% accurate and donât miss anybody in the Venn diagram?
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If you were provided with evidence of innocent Muslim people suffering unduly because immature people in this country are conflating âMuslimâ with âTerroristâ would you change your mind?
No, because I already accept that this is happening, I just donât think itâs happening for the reasons you think it is.
And youâre willing to take that risk with innocent strangers?
I think the failure to acknowledge the problem and apologise for extremists is a far bigger risk, and I think thereâll be less risk to those strangers if the debate is engaged honestly.
Nobodyâs apologizing for extremists, Iâm just saying that the terminology that is important to you is unnecessary in an intelligent debate and is and has been being used to rile up confused people.
I find your decision to prioritize âusing your favorite wordsâ over the risk to innocents to be reprehensible.
Good day.
Removing the agency of terrorists is apologising for their actions, saying they are only acting the way they are acting because of current and historical wrongs committed against them and people they identify with is condescending, paternalistic, and frankly racist, itâs like saying âthese people are capable of nothing other than savageryâ.
Thatâs a pretty exceptional leap. I donât see anything youâve ascribed in the comment to which you are ostensibly replying
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Iâm sure itâs not something he actually believes, I do think itâs a logical consequence of apologism in this situation though. A less dramatic way of phrasing it would be âbigotry of low expectationsâ.
I honestly donât even know what youâre talking about. low expectations of whom?
Are you saying that not trusting the general public to distinguish between islam, islamism, salafism, and safafist terrorism is being bigoted. . . against the general public? I will certainly admit, my expectations there are low, but not without reason
no, not all. sorry if Iâm not being clear, the bigotry of low expectations in this situation (apologism in general, not specifically @William_Holz) is being directed at Muslims from westerners who suffer from Chompskyitis and various related maladies (in that everything is always the westâs fault, the âvictimsâ are only acting out because weâve literally left them no choice, we have no greater expectations of them than they must kill themselves and others in suicide attacks, etc.).
You know nobody has taken the straw position the Muslims have any less agency than anyone else, right? It comes off like you wanted to confirm as much as possible what Humbabella said above
The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that youâre arguing this is a position people might confusingly adopt, unless they recognize the current violence as distinctly Islamic. So the worry other people have brought up, that the term Islamic terrorism might confuse people into associating Islam with terrorism â or rather has helped confuse them, in a case where such bigotry is hurting real people â isnât what counts.
What counts is that unless we make it clear how itâs a Muslim thing, something those people do as a consequence of their way of thinking, there is the risk we might be racist and focus instead on the contributions of the west. The horror if we worried more about how it has undermined nearly every secular democracy in the region and left Iraq a tattered mess than the precise version of terrorism that has enabled, like that villain Pnoam Chompsky! Then we mightâŠwellâŠI have a tough time understanding exactly the negative consequences, but Iâm sure itâs more important than the bigotry William is talking about.
Christ.
You know nobody has taken the straw position the Muslims have any less agency than anyone else, right? It comes off like you wanted to confirm as much as possible what Humbabella said above:
It is a logical consequence of the apologism Iâm talking about though. Iâm not misrepresenting anyoneâs argument here, itâs an unintended consequence.
nearly every secular democracy in the region
yeah, thereâs been so many of them.
Itâs true, I should probably have said step toward secular government or democracy, because there hasnât been much accomplishment there. But you understand thatâs in no small part because of things like the US-sponsored coups by Husni al-Zaâim in Syria, or against Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, tipping the balance against them and leaving people to look for other answers, right? Or is it racist of me to think anyone other than the locals might hold some responsibility?
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No, and Iâve accepted ad-nauseum that those political factors are also very important here. The Ottoman empire of course was also an incredibly important factor, before the British and the French, or Americans, got involved at all. It only becomes apologism when you remove all (or most) responsibility. These situations are only ever resolved when all sides are able to reach compromises, and there is more than enough blame to go around on all sides. Itâs important to remember than Salafism pre-dates western colonialism.
Since my name was used in vain, Iâll quickly clarify something that was obviously misinterpreted.
I donât suffer from this strange âwhite guiltâ or âchomskyismâ phenomena that @caze caze describes and while I can speak only for myself I doubt that was the impression of others disagreeing in this thread.
Instead I believe that any actions should be performed responsibly and with as much focus on logic and reason as is possible, as they were tools created long ago to help us overcome our more stupid leanings.
As there is ample evidence that individuals who are Muslim are being targeted by individuals who can NOT distinguish them from terrorists, I find the insistence upon using terminology that is being used by individuals who enjoy riling those same people up (for votes, clicks, etc.) dangerous, reckless, and reprehensible.
For the third (and last), letâs give up on the straw men. I deliberately engaged in a focused way to verify Cazeâs position before coming to my conclusion as to his prioritization and now that I have completed that task I can treat his opinions on the subject with the lack of respect they deserve.
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I donât suffer from this strange âwhite guiltâ or âchomskyismâ phenomena that @caze caze describes and while I can speak only for myself I doubt that was the impression of others disagreeing in this thread.
You do agree there are other causal factors than western intervention then? Thatâs good to hear.
Instead I believe that any actions should be performed responsibly and with as much focus on logic and reason as is possible, as they were tools created long ago to help us overcome our more stupid leanings.
Me too.
As there is ample evidence that individuals who are Muslim are being targeted by individuals who can NOT distinguish them from terrorists, I find the insistence upon using terminology that is being used by individuals who enjoy riling those same people up (for votes, clicks, etc.) dangerous, reckless, and reprehensible.
I find it more worrying that weâre allowing such ideas to germinate in the first place. The ideas are more important than the terms, though the debate about the ideas isnât happening because of fear created around the terms, something we need to get over if we want to wrest the debate away from bigots.
For the third (and last), letâs give up on the straw men. I deliberately engaged in a focused way to verify Cazeâs position before coming to my conclusion as to his prioritization and now that I have completed that task I can treat his opinions on the subject with the lack of respect they deserve.
Iâm not straw manning you, with the possibly exception of my initial white-guilt comment (though that was more of an assumption than a straw-man - and I apologise assuming what I said at the top of this post is correct). My last few comments dealt with unintended consequences, I was not mischaracterizing anything you said, and was speaking generally not specifically about you anyway.
You did engage in a very focused way to begin with, but you seemed to stop engaging once I gave you the answers.
My prioritisation is with people not dying, and also with preventing bigotry, neither are things I consider reprehensible.
Of course I do. Did you read the sources I linked earlier? I tried to get a mix in there, but âthere are many factorsâ was pretty universal. That doesnât mean Iâm going to pretend that weâre not stuck with the burdens left by reckless asshats who were more obsessed with âseeming toughâ than actually being responsible.
Sometimes you win by not playing to the bad guysâ level (again, as evidence has indicated)
It just doesnât get as many fear-based votes or outrage-based ad revenue.
I find the risk to civilians when using the terminology of reckless individuals like Donald Trump and Bill OâReilly to be a very severe (and historically predictable) riskâŠand using the even-more-proper Radical Extremism does not feed into their hands nor does it carry the risk of causing angry idiots here to cause harm to innocents.
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It was super long, and it certainly isnât your job. You could have posted, âWow, thatâs super long, I think Iâm not engaged enough in this conversation to really deal with that.â Instead you said that (1) you didnât read it; and (2) I was wrong. Thatâs what a lot of people would call arrogance. You even put in an attempted jab at my feelings via a jab at my lack of argumentation skill:
Saying âWow, thatâs super long, I think Iâm not engaged enough in this conversation to really deal with thatâ wouldnât have been accurate though, and I said I didnât read all of it. I made a snarky comment because I had read your previous comment as a deliberate and frankly insulting misreading of my previous comment, apologies if I misunderstood you (or myself!), but thatâs the way I took it.
[ personal insult & bb hive mind validation section ignored ]
I said that I didnât see any reason to further engage with you and that I didnât think either of us would be worse for wear if we stopped.
I donât agree actually, aside from a few snarky comments which I donât take too personally at the end of the day, Iâve found this to be a mostly well natured, if at times confusing, discussion.
But I might likewise say that your most basic point in the discussion, that people keep maliciously misinterpretting what you are saying and they are mean and dismissive might be a projection of yourself.
Or it might be true. I wasnât the only person in this thread who saw it that way.
That is the point you have made, over and over again, whether it was the point you hoped to make or not.
It was a certainly a point made in defense of my main point, and in defense of constant claims of things I never said, and also a point worth making regarding discourse in general on this topic, so nothing to do with my ego. Itâs water off a duckâs back to me though, mildly annoying intellectual dishonesty, but Iâm not a public figure and nor am I a discriminated against minority-within-a-minority, Iâll live.
ok, now to tackle the essay gulpâŠ
Iâll just quote the parts I have any comment on.
So letâs try âso it is no surpriseâ as meaning that it is likely but not inevitable.
This is the correct reading, when taken with the preceding âusuallyâ.
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.
In a scientific context you have a hypothesis, some possible assumptions (previously proven theories or mesaured values or whatnot, maybe also some unknown assumptions), some variables, and finally if all goes well, a proven theory consistent with your hypothesis. It would be more accurate to model what I said (using scientific language) as:
Usually [A] start with an hypothesis of , and then assume so it is no surprise they donât conclude anything other than .
What is important here was the preceding part of the sentence: âIt would depend on what assumptions they were making in their researchâ, given different assumptions you could still proceed with trying to arrive at a theory . The assumptions could be either implicit or explicit, in this case Iâm assuming theyâre implicit (but it doesnât really matter). Assumptions can be negative as well, things you fail to factor into your hypothesis (i.e. the purpose of controls in medical research).
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.
âŠor it could both in some cases.
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
I donât know if Iâd call it sociological, but maybe thatâs just a matter of taste.
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.
Itâs at least possible, I was being charitable about this given sub-field, the only area I have much hands-on knowledge of is a mixed bag though - behavioral genetics; thereâs a lot of failings on both sides (biological vs. sociological), but thereâs been good knowledge gained on the biological side of things in response to some sociological criticism.
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.
Not exactly, I find one framework largely invalid, others may be better if they donât make faulty assumptions - which is what I said to begin with (1), but Iâm not pre-judging them.
This was the point at which I stopped reading btw, because that seemed to be the main flaw in your reasoning that would lead you to restate what I said the way you did. Given the complexity of your post I thought it might be simpler restating it in a more clear manner, not realising youâd already addressed one of my concernsâŠ
So what did I say:
Humbabella:
This still reads to me like you are saying that if someone finds out that terrorism is caused by economic and social conditions then their research can be discounted whereas if they find it was caused by religion then theyâve got it dead on.
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.
ok, thanks.
The next few bits donât really follow given what Iâve said above.
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 didnât just assert it would any evidence, I wonât be posting an essay on the subject in here, but aside from what Iâve written above I did comment on some of the flaws (relative to naive social constructionism) of the links that were posted.
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.
I also think classical economics is basically pseudo-science! And for many of the same reasons I think much sociology is basically pseudo-science, mostly due to empirical failings and over-reliance on unproven theories of human behavior.
But other than being told Iâm delusional for thinking different than you
I donât think I called you delusional, but if I did then I apologise.
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 have to completely agree with him to broadly agree with him. Like I said to @doop earlier, Iâd be happy if everyone talked about Salafist Terrorists or Islamists instead, that would be a big improvement on our current discourse, but doesnât seem likely either.
âWhat about the articles linked by @William_Holz made you feel that they were based on flawed research?â
well, as I said in response to that list, and as William has just now said himself, there was a range of stuff in there, some of it I didnât particularly agree with, some of it seemed to be more balanced (after a pretty cursory reading). Iâve given some my reasons for the flawed ones above.
