Where are the Muslims fighting ISIS? You need to see this!

originally posted by: victor7
a reply to: enlightenedservant

Instead, you placed an impossibly higher standard on all people who claim to be Muslims; a standard which no other demographic in the world is held to or can satisfy.

Facts on the ground are one thing and replying in deception and avoidance is another.

Your long winded answer did this thread no good. You avoided the question all together.

I am not interested in carrying out this discussion either.

Btw, want to stop the world hunger then do one thing...........stop killing animals and consuming the flesh. 60%+ of world food is spent on the animals grown for consumption. When this animal breeding stops there will be lots of food left for humans to consume. Also, thanks for the modern scientific research like GMO crops, the yields from agriculture are rising and that will help alot in various pursuits of solving world hunger.

I think the reason he was able to "avoid the question" was because it was a question that missed the point.

I've spent the past week watching white people, average white Americans in my own hometown and across America and Europe radicalize themselves on a White Nationalist forum, which I won't name here, and that I'm not a part of because I'm a "mongrel" they'd murder if they get half a chance.

I've watched and tried in vain to talk fellow American Christians I've known for years out of radicalizing themselves into rabid Islamophobes who would look at bedraggled refugees as subhuman debris over propaganda from Fox News and crap spewed off of ultra conservative sites on the web.

I've watched and talked in vain to ultra liberal friends I've known for years into stop dismissing legitimate concerns over terrorist infiltration as "Islamophobia" and to stop brushing off people trying to have a dialogue about it as haters.

There can be no solutions made if people don't even attempt to leave their entrenched points of view and try to come to a meeting of the minds. Instead they stand in their corners and point fingers and dehumanize one another over rhetoric.

What I've noticed in all of this is that anyone can be radicalized. The triggers are words that embody ideas and ideals held special to each group.

So the question in this case then should be "What is there in Islam that can be exploited to cause the radicalization that manipulates some Muslims into carrying out the atrocities we currently see, on the scale that we currently see?

At the urging of a fellow ATS member, who expressed the wish that non-Muslims make a study of the Quran for themselves rather than rely on memes and reports from biased news sources, I decided to do just that.

First off, there are many translations of the Quran into English to take into account. Secondly the Muslim sources I sought out urged people not to study alone. So I studied a version that came with several annoted commentaries from a site offering itself as a resource to Muslims and converts not able to read the Quran in its original form.

Finally, I didn't even get past the first Surah without one commentator mentioning how important Jihad is to the kind of immersion in Islam that is required to become a "true Muslim". As far as I know I'm on a moderate resource and the commentator wasn't making a call to arms against my government per se. But it's stressed as very fundamental part of the religion along with other activities like prayer. So it's the concept of Jihad, which from what I can see in its pure form is a sort of sacramental practice to defend Islam from conflicts within oneself and threats from outside, that can be twisted to radicalize a Muslim into doing the things we consider acts of terrorism.

I'm not far enough into my study of the Quran to say for certain, but the words lying there on the page are innocuous enough. It's what various "guides" make of them that can be problematic. But hey, I've read the Bible and excerpts from a version of the Talmud as well...you can take any words and concepts from any religion or any philosophy and radicalize people over them. It's a sad fact people want to be led. And it's all too easy to exploit hate and fear to activate the fight or flight response we all have and that makes us easy to manipulate because in fight or flight, we shut down higher critical thinking.

But consider this, many of the prominent terrorists we hear of in the news today are reported to not have been religious at all. The female Parisian suicide bomber who blew her head off in the raid last week was a wild child according to most accounts, not a demure and proper Muslim damsel in a hijab. The kids who run away from good European middle class homes by and large are not seen in hijabs or other Muslim garb in photos prior to their defection. In fact I read one news source say that most of the radicalization takes place not in mosques but among friends and family.

They're being exploited over the usual teen themes of alienation from adult authority and teen angst. Youthful desire to identify with a cause bigger than the individual is being exploited by ruthless people well versed in human psychology and spread from friend to friend and family member to family member like some pyramid scheme. If this didn't start as a psy-op somewhere in some group having nothing to do with any religion at all, I'd be mighty surprised.

We are all pawns in a very big game. I don't know if it's a carefully orchestrated game or just purposely introduced chaos that various powers will then try to take advantage of. Yes, I believe there is always a Dick Cheney somewhere waiting to make the most of the opportunities that chaos and tragedy bring. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's called looking back on history and seeing what has already taken place and extrapolating to the present and future.