If 300000000 were dedicated to the destruction of western civilization, it would be destroyed today.

Her contention that the peaceful majority is irrelevant means we must be in fear of and at war with every group we could name, because they all have radicals. That's simply asinine.

She is really angry about this question.
There are MANY Islamic peace movements, contrary to their implications that this single woman is it. Just a few below.

Islamic Peace Movement UK, more widely known as Islamic Movement UK or IMUK, is the largest Islamic organisation in the UK.[1] It was formed in 1989 in Leeds by Mohammed Kilyam

Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad (Mir-za Mas-roor Ah-mad) is the fifth Khalifa (Caliph) of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Spearhead by the Muslim Peace Coalition, 100 New York Imams in the spring of 2011 stood together to issue an historic statement that established the link between wars at home and wars abroad.

@transmorpher
so when i point out the historical implications,i am somehow automatically disregarding the inherent problems within islam itself?

and your counter is to not only NOT counter,but refuse to acknowledge the historical ramifications,because that is some political,agenda driven-drivel.

that the ONLY acceptable argument is to focus on the religion itself,and ignore all other considerations,because,again..just tools to be used and abused by the left to fuel the far right.

am i getting this right so far?

that to include history is actually the path that stops that path to move forward?

and here i was still hanging on to that tired old adage "those who refuse to recognize history,are doomed to repeat it".

i am glad that you found those authors so respectful and admired their analysis and dedication to research,but you didn't even bother to use one of THEIR arguments.you simply made claims and then told us you read some books.

dude..now i am just kinda...sad for you.

i am sorry that you are oblivious to your own myopia,and that you are coming across as condescending.yet really haven't posted anything of value that you have to contribute.

you are just pointing the finger and accusing people of their arguments being dishonest,when it appears to me that everyone here has taken the time to try to talk to you,and your replies have been fairly static.

hitchens tried to make the case,and failed in my opinion(i am not the only one),but a case i suspect you are referencing.that even if we took the history of neoliberalism,colonialism and empire building OFF the table.islam would STILL be a gaggle of extremist radicals seeking a one world caliphate.

which is why i referenced dearborn michigan.
it is why i mentioned kabul afghanistan.

we are talking about the radicalization of muslims.
why are they growing?
where do they come from?
why do they seem to be getting more and more extreme?

which many here have attempted to answer,including myself.

but YOU are addressing and entirely different question:
'what is wrong with islam as a religion"

well,a LOT in fact and i already mentioned islams dire need for a reformation,but it goes further than that.you see the epistemology of both judiaism and christianity have been thoroughly argued over and over....and over..that what you find today is a pretty succinct refinement of their respective theologies.

agree/disagree..maybe you are atheist or agnostic,that is not the point.the point is that the so-called "finished' product has pretty clear philosophies,that adherents can easily follow.

for judaism this is in large part to the talmud,which is a living document,where even to this day rabbis debate and argue the finer details.not to be confused with holy scripture the torah.

christianity was forced to acknowledge its failings and flaws,because the theology was weak,and was becoming more and more an amalgamation of other religious beliefs,but most of all,and i think most importantly,the in-fighting with the vatican and the church of england had exposed this weakness,and christianity was on the brink of collapse due to its own hubris and arrogance.

they had no central authority.no leadership that the people could come to in order to clarify scripture.

so thanks to the bravery of martin luther,who risked being labeled a heretic,challenged the political power,which in those days was religious,and so began the process of reformation.

and also ended the dark ages,and western civilization stepped into the "age of enlightenment".

islam has had no such reformation,though is in desperate need of one.they had no council of nicea to decide what was holy canon and what was not,which is why you have more gospels of jesus in the quran than you do in the actual bible.

the king james bible has over 38,000 mis-translations in the old testament alone,whereas the quran has....well...we don't know,because nobody challenges the veracity of the quran.

am i winning you over to my side yet?
still think i am leftist "stooge' and "useful idiot"?

look man,
words are inert.
they are simply symbols.
they are meaningless until we lay eyes on them and GIVE them meaning.

so if you are a violent,war-loving person-------your religion will be violent,and warmongering.

if you are a peaceful and loving person----then your religion will be peaceful and loving.

the problem is NOT religion itself,and i know my atheists really don't want to hear that,but it's true.religion is going nowhere.

the problem is fundamentalist thinking.
the problem is viewing holy scripture as the unerring word of god.
which is why you see creationists attempt,in vain,to convince the rest of us that the earth is only 6,000 yrs old,and their only proof or evidence is a book.

so we all point and laugh.....how silly..6,000yrs old.crazy talk.

but WHY is the creationist so adamant in his attempts to defend his holy text?
because to accept the reality that the earth is not 6,000 yrs old but 14 billion yrs old,is to go against the word of god,and god is unerring,and if the bible is the word of god....and god is unerring.........

now lets go back to dearborn michigan.
if hitchens and harris are RIGHT,then that relatively stable community of muslims are really just extremists waiting for the angels to blow their horn and announce the time for JIHAD!!!

and,to be fair,that is a possibility,but a small one.

why?
because of something the majority of christians experience here in the states,canada,europe,australia...they experience pushback.

does this mean that america does not have radical christians in our midst?

oh lawdy do we ever.

ok ok..i am doing it again.
me and my pedantic self.

suffice to say:
islam IS a problem,even taken as a singular dynamic,that religion has serious issues.
but they are not the ONLY problem,which is what many of here have been trying to talk about.

ALL religions have a problem,and that problem is fundamentalism.which for christianity is a fairly new phenom (less than 100 yrs old) whereas islam has suffered from this mental malady pretty much since its inception.

ok..thats it..im done.pooped,whipped and in need of sleep.

hope i clarified some things with ya mate,but i swear to god if you respond with a reiteration of all your comments.i am going to hunt you down,and BEAT you with a bible,and not that wimpy king james either!
the hefty scofield study bible!

Absolutely. We've had our share of - primarily Austrian and French - mercenaries as part of our internal wars. These were groups who enlisted for one of the fighting parties.

In Syria, however, you've had thousands of mercenaries who were not fighting for the government or the "rebels", but for their own. And we're not just talking about ISIS carving out pieces of Syria for their own caliphate, but also other jihadists who merely want to turn Syria into another failed state, like Libya.

To describe this as a civil war distorts the nature of this conflict, it makes it sound as if it were a struggle for control between two groups of Syrians. It may have been at some point years ago, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Mali is looking awfully similar by now, too. Lots of foreign fighters in nation states that were only ever stable on paper anyway -- a recipe for disaster.

Historically Islam didn't really engage in forced conversions, partly because under both the Caliphate and the Ottoman empire the tax break given to Muslims would've been problematic if given to the entire population (this tax break is the flip side of the "extort money" that you refer to).

Also speaking historically, Jews were much safer in Muslim lands than Christian since Christians tended to massacre them on a fairly regular basis until 1945 and despite what you've heard most Muslims are fairly tolerant. The same applies to minority Christian sects, the Nestorians for instance had to flee to Persia in 489 AD, and I seem to recall another minority group who fled England to Holland and then to the Americas (perhaps you've heard of them?).

I used to think that Buddhists and Hindus were more tolerant than the Abrahamic religions, but unfortunately I've since learned that I only thought so due to ignorance.

@newtboy

i do not think your solutions will have the easy results you imply.

contrary to the propaganda WE are fed,groups like ISIS are far more sophisticated and culturally savvy,as this video is evidence to and one of the reasons i posted.

it is easy to buy into the media-concocted trope that ISIS members are a bunch of un-educated,backwater,third world countrymen who are just religious zealots pining for the good old days of a world caliphate from 700 years ago.

but to believe that you would have to ignore the disturbing number of westerners who are joining ISIS.these folks benefited from western,secular education etc etc.

religion,like nationalism,has always been an extremely effective tool to manipulate,control and justify.

islam is not the cause of violence,barbarity and war.
it is the excuse used to justify that violence and barbarity.

the simple and disturbing truth is that propaganda works,nationalism works,religiousity works to get normal folk to engage in violent acts against their fellow man.

america has been perfecting their propaganda system for over a century.perfecting their art of unending war and conflict.

considering how we have injected ourselves in the middle east since the 50's.it appears our middle eastern friends have learned from us,and become quite proficient at emulating the very thing we excel at.

so you would never see this on any cable tv channel or news outlet,but i think its important to see just how well they have become at utilizing media to get across their message.

using americas great gift to the world:marketing.

Terrorist attacks are more multifaceted.

First, they are an opportunity to generate work for the defense industry.

Second, they are usually for a reason. Often some angst over our own actions in foreign countries. For example, the news says AQ is a bunch of crazies that hate freedom, however AQs demands prior to 9/11 were to get our military out of the holyland. While that's not an offense that deserves blowing up buildings, it is definitely not the same as some banal excuse like hating freedom.

Thirdly, they are often perpetrated by some persons/groups that we had a hand in creating. We install the mujahedin in Afghanistan, knowing full well what they'll do to women, and then use their treatment of women as one excuse to later invade. Saddam worked for us, was egged on to fight Iran, was egged on to suppress insurgents (the 'own people he gassed'), and we later used his actions as one excuse to invade.

At the time, the mujaheddin was useful for fighting Russia as a proxy. At the time, Saddam was useful for perpetuating a war where we sold arms to both sides. Afterwards, they were useful for scaremongering so we could perpetuate war when otherwise things got too quiet and folks would ask about why we're spending big $$$ on defense.. (In the mean time hand-waving the much more direct 9/11 Saudi connection).

... Plus if on the off chance things do 'settle down' in areas we invade, that creates new markets for US companies to peddle their wares. You can reopen the Khyber pass for western land trade with Asia, you can build an oil pipeline, and you can prevent a euro based oil exchange from opening in the middle east. All things that benefit our industry.

So in practice, as far as big industry is concerned, there's a utility in 'fighting terrorism' (and perpetuating terrorism) that just doesn't exist with internal shootings. As such, unless another 'evil empire' shows up, the terrorism cow is gonna get milked for the foreseeable future.

Sure, there's a rhetoric about preventing terrorism, but our actions do nothing to that effect. It's just a statement that's useful in manufacturing consent.

There's a particular irony, though. That is, that while such behavior is 'not very nice' (to put it mildly), it does however provide for our security by keeping our armed forces exercised, prepared, and up to date - such that if a real threat were to emerge, our military would be ready at that time. While that seems unlikely, when you look back in history at previous major conflicts, most were precipitated rather quickly, on the order of months (it takes many years to design and build equipment for a military, and the first ~half a year of any major war has been fought with what was on hand). So in a round-about, rather evolutionary way, perpetuating threats actually does make us safer as a whole.

To clarify the word 'evolutionary' : Take 10 microbes. All 10 have no militant nature. None are made for combat. It only takes 1 to mutate and become belligerent in order to erase all the others from existence. If some others also mutate to be combative, they will survive. The non combative are lost, their reproductive lines cut off. As there's always a chance to mutate to anything at any time, eventually, there is a combative mutation. So, all life on earth has a militant nature at some layer of abstraction - those that exist are those that successfully resisted some force (or parried the force to its benefit. Like plants that use a plant eater's dung to fertilize the seeds of the eaten fruit).

The relationship holds true at a biological level, interpersonal, societal, national, and international level. Societies that allow the kind of educational and military development that leads to victory, are those that have dominated the planet socially and economically. For example, Europe's centuries of infighting made it resistant to invasions from the Mongols, Caliphates, etc, and ultimately led to the age of colonialism. For the strengths built with infighting, are later leveraged for expansion. As such, the use of "terrorism" to perpetuate conflict, is ultimately an exercise in developing strength that can later be leveraged.

Our national policy is largely developed in think tanks, and those organizations are planning lifetimes ahead. So these kinds of considerations are very relevant.

TL/DR : Yes, agreed, the terrorism thing is B.S. on many levels.

-scheherazade

I think we agree completely with Sam Harris in that Islam is in desperate need of a reformation. I won't bring Reza Aslan into this as I haven't read him, and it seems to be tangential at best.

But, acknowledge what you just said when you said that Islam is in need of reformation. You are saying what Sam is saying: That Islam contains some horrible ideas, and people are acting on those ideas, and we need to find a way to marginalize those ideas within the canon of Islam.

We could end the disagreement right there, except for where we stand in history at this point. If Christianity had undergone its reformation in a post nuclear arsenals world, who knows where we would be. It is because of this that it behooves everyone to encourage this reformation of Islam, and potentially to limit their access to apocalyptic weaponry until such a reformation has taken place. That's a different discussion though.

I think Sam's position is that one of the potential motivations behind suicide bombing is martyrdom and jihad. Real belief in those particular dogma alone is sufficient to justify suicide attacks. There are definitely plenty of terrorist actions that take place for completely non-religious reasons, and I bet that the bulk of them combine the two. But that doesn't refute Sam's point.

As for your last bit about literal interpretations, I don't agree there either, at least not entirely. How could you possibly explain the inquisition without resorting to what one would now consider to be fundamentalist readings of the texts? The same fundamentals you're saying weren't in vogue until 100 years ago is the very propaganda used to recruit soldiers to the caliphate's armies centuries ago. In any case it seems unrelated to the discussion when scriptural literalism came about, the fact is that it exists, making it more important that some books contain really bad ideas.

But...if you don't 'believe' in the progress of science you ARE ignorant and/or delusional. Scientific progress is not a debatable issue or something that requires 'belief', it simply is.
I'm not sure why I listened after he implied thinking that is wrong somehow.

99.9% of Muslims that don't want to impose Sharia or have an Islamic Caliphate? That certainly does not jibe with the numbers I've heard repeatedly. A recent poll in Germany I read said over 25% of Muslims there believed it was proper to impose Sharia in Germany on non Muslims. Where did he pull that 99.9% number from I wonder?

I agree that fighting in the Middle East is an apparent exercise in futility, but if we don't fight it there, it will eventually reach our shores, as it did on 9/11.

ISIS will continue to grow and create their little caliphate, control the oil, raise money, eventually build or buy a nuke, and use it on western democracies.

Fight it now, and I don't care if it is boots on the ground, or drones in the air.

I live in a suburb, but I support law enforcement efforts in the city. There is never an end to crime, there is no winning against crime, you just have to fight it because it is the right thing to do. Just because you shoot Dillinger in the head doesn't mean his son will automatically become Dillinger Jr.

ISIS is evil, and war is ugly, but to suggest that you should just wait until it reaches your shore is being blind to reality. Most of the people in the ME do not support radial Islam. They don't want that shit anymore than anyone else.

@Winstonfield_Pennypacker
well said my friend.you just succinctly put in to perspective americas older generations view on OWS and the disconnect between "the tea party" and 'OWS".
now there really is no disconnect,not really,the disconnect lies in semantics only.
the tea party viewed government as being the intruder while OWS views wall street but i submit they are one in the same.both working to keep the institutions and concentration of power and money in the same hands to the detriment of the populace and they have become so entrenched and corrupted that neither can function without the other and always,ALWAYS it is the most vulnerable who are left to drown.

(i say lets take private monies out of public elections.that would be a great start)

you state the "average american" has a 401k,property etc etc.
this is true if you are retired or near retirement but this is no longer the case and has not been for many years.hence the disconnect between the older and younger generations,yet both generations are angry and upset and are starting to make some noise.i find this to be a very good thing (the noise,not the disconnect).

but i do disagree with you on "finding a specific message".the tea party started out organically and as people related to the shared feeling of frustration and outrage.they found a message, they began to come together and then what happened?
they became corporately sponsored ie:koch brothers.
and their message became a weird amalgam of frustration and palinisms and what was once a movement that was beginning to be heard became co-opted in to a politicians wet-dream of free publicity.

so i say keep the non-distinct yet palpable rage and keep the message broad and inclusive because as history teaches us:if the powerful cant beat ya.
they will co-opt ya.
(before they kill ya).

i hope those who rallied with the tea party will join hands with those in wall street (and italy,greece and ireland) and make such a ruckus that they make politicians pee themselves in fear.
because the only thing a government,crown,caliphate or grand poo-ba is afraid of are people coming to their door-step enmasse.see:end of vietnam war.

@kronosposeidon Glenn Beck's waaaaaay ahead of you. Haven't you heard? Progressives are in an alliance with radical Muslims to bring about a Caliphate that's gonna take over the entire middle east, parts of Europe, and randomly New Zealand.

I can't wait, I'll be able to visit the Shire and eat organic halal falafels at the same time.

The enemy of which he speaks is not your average Muslim, trying to grasp our American Dream. He speaks of die-hard Quranic literalists who pervert the scriptures in order to replace our modern society with the bigotry and chauvinism of a denominationally-driven caliphate. Fundamentalist devotees of any belief will continue to abate true liberty until humanity wipes itself or them from the earth, and with all his historical insight, Lt. Colonel West should understand this more than anyone. His focus is misguided and will only serve to inflame all Muslims.

I never though there WAS a question. I mean, the name itself, "WORLD TRADE Center". It's all about anti-globalization. They mind the fact that we remove crude oil from their homelands (which, given their delusions about an Eternal Caliphate, is a big swath of land), and give monstrously corrupt regimes all the cash and military might they want, as long as they keep the situation contained. The region was never stable to begin with, but with the way it was set up, it'll never get better. In their eyes, the WTC was where all those petrodollars were laundered and used to put a respectable business face on the dark deeds of the past. It's why Ward Churchill got into so much trouble by referring to those who worked in the WTC as 'little Eichmanns'-- hey, man, they were only following orders, pushing papers around an office. He wasn't calling them Nazis. Rather, Eichmann was found guilty not of killing anyone, but rather perfecting a system, the consequences of which was the slaughter of millions. This does not justify in any way the actions taken by the hijackers and their masters. The religion they so fervently follow forbids 'collateral damage'. They are hypocrites, and they are delusional. All this came out before, and I can imagine the MSM not really giving a damn about trucking out that bag of loons one more time.

As for 'It's Israel, stupid!" I'm not a fan of atrocities against unarmed civilians. I have no idea what it would take to make that part of the world get along. I do know that, were we to follow the whims of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the entire country AND race would be driven into the sea and drowned. There is no pretense to compromise. Israel is a convenient head to hang their hate. Simple as that. Could Israel chill the crap out a little more? Probably. 34 Americans died on the USS Liberty because Israel got sloppy.

The Palestinians need to realize what the people in Kansas seem incapable of understanding--there are people out there who will deceive you. They will make you believe that they are on your side, and protecting your interests. In truth, they only want to stir up the muck within yourselves, and will often make you act outside of your own self-interest. If we can't solve it among people at relative peace, how do we solve it when both sides have been going at it for decades?

It takes more than holding elections to have a democracy. The elections have to be fair and free on intimidation. The elected officials cannot be over-ruled by unelected monarchs, dictators, religious authorities, etc... This is not a reasonable response, it's the same crap Iran has been feeding the West for years. Iranians know nothing about democracy, they themselves do not have a democracy (despite having elections in which the candidates must first be approved by the caliphate), nor do many others in the region, despite saying they do. I can't believe you people actually buy this...I'm not advocating war against Iran, but Jesus Christ, use your noggins people.

I knew it! The Islamosifters want to take over everything, and establish Farhad as Caliph. I've been trying to warn you about the clash of Siftilizations, but you wouldn't listen!