Islamic State seeks to justify enslaving Yazidi women and girls in Iraq
Source: Reuters
ARBIL Iraq (Reuters) - The Islamic State group said it enslaved families from the minority Yazidi sect after overrunning their villages in northwestern Iraq, in what it praised as the revival of an ancient custom of using women and children as spoils of war.
In an article in its English-language online magazine Dabiq, the group provides what it says is religious justification for the enslavement of defeated "idolators".
The ancient custom of enslavement had fallen out of use because of deviation from true Islam, but was revived when fighters overran Yazidi villages in Iraq's Sinjar region.
"After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State's authority to be divided as khums," it said. Khums is a traditional tax on the spoils of war.
*
The Dabiq article said fighters were reviving a practice of the companions of the Prophet Mohammad by enslaving enemies. Enslaving women and forcing them to become wives reduces sin by protecting men from being tempted into adultery, it said.
"One should remember that enslaving the families of the (non-believers) and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the Shariah, that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet," the article said.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-state-seeks-justify-enslaving-yazidi-women-girls-150713031.html
FYI. Not an endorsement of US airstrikes.
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TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)are human, and if they did what is claimed need educating, not killing.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)If I round up a group of people, call them "subhuman" are you willing to "exterminate" them yourself?
Interesting choice of words.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)given a fair hearing. Maybe we can teach them to respect women, and not sell them as sex slaves and baby incubators. 
7962
(11,841 posts)Think they'd keep their heads?
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)is the poster SERIOUSLY advocating "extermination" as a solution?
DetlefK
(16,670 posts)What are the odds that somebody who kills and enslaves and justifies killing and enslaving with a religious belief, even though the vast majority that holds that belief claims that he's a heretic, would be willing to stop killing and enslaving?
What are the odds that the ISIS-fighters will stop killing and enslaving anybody they don't like?
If a person is dangerous, and if there is no chance that that person will decide on his own to stop harming people, then what's the point of NOT executing him?
What's the point of a limited punishment when that limited punishment won't have an effect?
There are situations where killing somebody is morally justified.
7962
(11,841 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Based on what criteria? What evidence? Do our bombs only kill people with ISIS tattoos, or do they kill and maim the guilty and the innocent indiscriminately? Does it matter to you if I save you from a beheading, but kill your spouse and children in the process? How many lives and how much money is spent to avenge deaths that would not have occurred if we had not illegally invaded the country in the first place?
I am not arguing that there are situations where killing is not morally justified (direct self-defense comes to mind). But the original poster is advocating "extermination" of all "subhumans" and that is genocide and genocide is NEVER morally justifiable. And we went back and fourth on the question of the academic and legal definition of the word genocide and the poster's advocacy meet those definitions, so "genocide" is what is being proposed.
DetlefK
(16,670 posts)1. Those in power make the decisions.
2. Who "is in need of extermiantion" should by decided on an individual basis by a legal court, depending on whether that person is really irredeemable.
3. No system is perfect, there are always false positives. It's just, in war being a false positive means dying as a collateral.
4. Griping about the past is useless. Regard the past as a part of present circumstances and work from that present towards the future.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)the situation we are setting up (air war) doesn't allow for any real due process, so military men, bureaucrats, politicians, spies, and financially/ideologically motivated informers will be the people deciding who is "subhuman" and deserves to be "exterminated".
(BTW, in view of the ambiguity of written discussion, please do not take my tone as hostile, but conversational)
Can we really trust "those in power", people who have been categorically wrong about this region for the last three decades, to be allowed to make those decisions?
A "false positive" means much more than "dying as collateral" it means the survivors become recruits for the terrorists and the problem they seek to solve grows worse.
As for the past, we have to learn from it guard against making the very same mistakes again and again.
The response to some human beings doing horrible and inhumane things cannot be a "neater" form of horror and inhumanity with a flip of the coin precision as to whether innocent people are also caught up in that "civilized" form of vengeance.
get the red out
(14,031 posts)Their culture must be respected, who are we to say that sex slavery is wrong? 
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)is "extermination"?
Are we liberals or Daleks?
samsingh
(18,426 posts)Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)now that you have weighed in, are YOU advocating with the original poster for the "extermination" of "subhumans".
7962
(11,841 posts)The goal is always to exterminate the enemy until they cease to be a threat. We have forgotten that as well.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention on Genocide.
Also, you are talking about wars between nation states, not nation states and political/religious sub-groups within a another nation state.
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)Is that clear enough?
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)And are you willing to waste another decade and another trillion dollars, not to mention thousands of American soldiers maimed and killed in pursuit of this.
What specific criteria do you set down to decide who is "subhuman" and deserving "extermination"?
7962
(11,841 posts)They CHOOSE to do what they're doing. They can choose to stop. They can choose to be civilized.
Destroying an enemy is not against the Geneva Convention.
I would say, mass murder, rape of women and children & slavery are a good standard to judge by.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)advocating "exterminating" these people who he called "subhuman". I then quoted both the definition of genocide from the Merriam-Webster and Oxford dictionaries, along with the legal definition from the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. You can find this discussion up thread.
So again, please answer my questions:
1) Are you willing to waste another decade and another trillion dollars, not to mention thousands of American soldiers maimed and killed in pursuit of this?
2) What specific criteria do you set down to decide who is "subhuman" and deserving "extermination"?
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)Killing your enemy is not genocide, if you did not know that I suggest looking up the definition of genocide. No, take the gloves off and take the politics out of war and it could be done much quicker with less American lives lost. That is just a fact.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)I am basing the view from the words used by the poster I originally responded to:
These subhumans need killing.
No, they need to be exterminated. And they're subhuman.
I the provided the legal and academic definitions of "genocide" and the criteria is met by this posters words.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=917382
No, take the gloves off and take the politics out of war and it could be done much quicker with less American lives lost.
And again I ask, how is this going to be accomplished? Who will die? What is the criteria?
There are a thousand people in this village. Some are believed to be ISIS. When you take your gloves off, how do make the explody things only kill "terrorists" and "subhumans"?
NickB79
(20,357 posts)Waging war with a piece of shit terrorist group like ISIS is in no way similar to a genocide, and you know (or should know) it.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)The poster I was responding to to advocated that "subhumans" should be "exterminated". When asked to reflect on his words stood by them. The context of the use met the academic and legal definition of "genocide". You don't defeat "monsters" by becoming "monsters". I don't understand why that is so hard to understand.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)and if we don't fight back many innocent people will die and the problem will keep getting worse.
review history - isis like hordes were only stopped when someone fought them - otherwise they continued to kill and massacre their way into asia and europe.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)My family on my mother's side are Irish Catholics, some who lived in Northern Ireland. I have heard the same rhetoric about the need to "exterminate" the people on both sides of the conflict from both sides of the conflict. Peace came to Ireland once both sides realized that they had to sit down with the terrorists (the IRA and the UDL) and talk to them rather than kill them.
Innocent people die every day and I certainly want that addressed, but how does a call to "exterminate subhumans" do this? If the plan is carried out who decides who is a deserving "subhuman" who should die rather than an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)by isis members. i understand that.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)which is why I took pains to get him to reflect upon what he was saying, instead he doubled-down on his view.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)the real problem are the people who are doing the killings, and whatever we agree on here is not going to have any impact on that.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)to find "liberals" advocating that anyone be "exterminated".
get the red out
(14,031 posts)I am sure my scarcaustic post said nothing of the sort. Nor did the post I was responding to. Everyone expressing something you don't like isn't guilty of wanting to kill people.
Response to Kelvin Mace (Reply #50)
get the red out This message was self-deleted by its author.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)your solution is "extermination". Are you willing to do the killing personally, or simply advocate that it should be done by someone else on your behalf?
"Extermination" of "subhumans" has certainly been advocated in the past, are you comfortable with the storied company you would keep by joining that advocacy?
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)organization.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)as long as your are comfortable advocating genocide.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)They're a self-selected group of sadists and psychopaths. Atrocities are pretty much all they do--that, and organized crime. They need to be wiped out.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Seems like a certain apologist caucus on DU doesn't like your posts.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Words mean things. ISIS and its ilk meet the criteria as a "political, national or cultural" group under the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions of "genocide". They meet the legal definition as a "religious" group under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, of which the U.S. is a signatory.
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group.
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/genocide
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html
Your solution to monsters is for us to become monsters.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)participate in murder, rape and torture. Your defense of them is mind-boggling.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)I am simply saying that you don't respond to terrorism with genocide. Show me in the UN convention where it makes exceptions for terrorism (I notice, by the way, you are no longer quibbling about my use of the word "genocide"
.
You have advocated the "extermination" of people you have deemed "subhuman". I have advocated against committing genocide, regardless of the pretext. I find the "extermination" of a group of people unacceptable regardless of circumstances. You advocate "extermination" (premeditated murder) as perfectly fine, as long as it is against the "right" kind of people. Who is being morally inconsistent?
And I would also point out that ISIS is OUR legacy, OUR creation. We invaded the country, we destroyed the government (which we helped install back in the 60s) and we created the anarchy which led to the rise of these people. Saddam Hussein was OUR monster (just as bin Laden was our creation from our military support of the anti-Soviet insurgency in the 80s). Now you want us to create new monsters which will need to be "exterminated" at some future date?
Exactly HOW do we go in and "exterminate" these people? Upon what criteria? Based on accusations of their enemies? Based on intelligence reports from an agency that has been dead WRONG so many times about so many things I wouldn't trust them to tell me the time of day without check six local clocks? You have a gun to the head of another human being, upon whose proof do you pull the trigger?
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)If you go by their stated goals and current behavior, they're not going to turn into better people. They don't have an understandable cause, they're not oppressed and crying for freedom and rights, or better economic conditions. They're going to go after western targets, infidels, after they finish building their caliphate "utopia" of medieval horrors. They're the Taliban, but more ambitious, nastier and far more capable. They've already killed Americans--Americans who weren't fighting them, but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are incompatible with peace and modern civilized life. They have to be eliminated, exterminated, crushed, destroyed, whatever you prefer. It's not genocide, because their group is formed on the basis of a behavioral code that comes down to "convert or die" and almost pornographic brutality. But they do COMMIT genocide, as we've seen.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)hundreds of thousands of them, many who were not fighting us, but "were in the wrong place at the wrong time".
Again, how will you carry out your "extermination". Based on what evidence do you decide someone needs to be "exterminated".
"They are incompatible with peace and modern civilized life. They have to be eliminated, exterminated, crushed, destroyed, whatever you prefer."
You know your point of view is one I hear every day from Fox News and people like Dick Cheney, Sean Hannity, Laura Inghram, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, et al.
Comfortable with the company you are keeping?
I would also point out that a compelling argument can be made that the United States is "incompatible with peace and modern civilized life". Every war we have fought from Vietnam on has been a war of choice, with the American people lied to in order to justify the slaughter that followed.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)you wish. But I feel very certain that the best way to deal with groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda is to drop bombs on them and shoot them, until they quit their behavior or are all dead.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Can you point to a terrorist group that ever worked against?
Again, what is your criteria for who drop a bomb on or shoot? Specifics please.
Again, are you comfortable being in complete agreement on this matter with Dick Cheney?
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)quite a bit. I fully support killing such people. So, yes, I am in agreement with Dick Cheney and whoever else thinks that ISIS and AQ need a-killin'. That group includes Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Jimmy Carter, by the way. Not one of them has called for an end to our efforts in Iraq/Syria right now, that I know of.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Carter, Sanders or Warren advocated genocide?
That group includes Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Jimmy Carter, by the way. Not one of them has called for an end to our efforts in Iraq/Syria right now, that I know of.
Maybe not, though they certainly expressed serious reservations about getting into the war in the first place and are critical of tactics that caused our current situation, tactics you and Dick Cheney are in agreement on.
Here is what Carter actually said:
“First of all, we waited too long. We let the Islamic state build up its money, capability and strength and weapons while it was still in Syria,” Carter said in an October 7 interview with the Fort-Worth Star Telegram, “Then when [ISIS] moved into Iraq, the Sunni Muslims didn’t object to their being there and about a third of the territory in Iraq was abandoned.”
Carter said ground troops could enable the mission to succeed, but that troops would only help Iraq, not Syria, where ISIS originated.
Carter also criticized the president’s counter-terrorism drone policy. In 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress informing them that four Americans had been killed in drone strikes targeting terrorists in the Middle East. Carter told the Star-Telegram that the deaths of these Americans "violate our Constitution and human rights."
“I really object to the killing of people, particularly Americans overseas who haven’t been brought to justice and put on trial,” he explained.
Hmmm, sounds like Carter was criticizing Obama for letting the problem get out of control not for failing to "exterminate subhumans".
What did Bernie Sanders say?
It’s a problem for the international community, and you asked me a moment ago why aren’t other countries more deeply involved? I will tell you why. Because they believe that the American taxpayers are going to do it, and American soldiers are ultimately going to do it. And as long as that signal is out there, that’s what’s going to happen. I want the Saudi Arabian government to be actively involved. I want their troops to be on the ground. I don’t want them to believe that we’re going to do it for them. So yes, I think we have to play a very strong and supportive role with the UK, with France, with Canada, with other countries. It can not and should not be the United States alone.
It is very easy to criticize the president, but this is an enormously complicated issue. We are here today because of the disastrous blunder of the Bush/Cheney era that got us into the war in Iraq in the first place. Which then developed the can of worms that we are trying to deal with right now.
Also:
Here's the danger, Candy. If the Middle East people perceive this is the United States versus ISIS, the West versus East, Christianity versus Islam, we're going to lose that war.
Imagine how the people in the Middle East will perceive the U.S. once we go in and start "exterminating" people.
But wait, here is a headline from Elizabeth Warren from Townhall.com come which agrees with you:
Elizabeth Warren: It's Time to Destroy ISIS
Except this is Townhall.com, a rightwing site and that is not QUITE what Warren said.
"ISIS is growing in strength. It has money, it has organization, it has the capacity to inflict real damage. So when we think about a response we have to think about how to destroy that," Warren told Yahoo's Katie Couric.
Not destroy "them", destroy "that", with "that" being "the capacity to inflict real damage".
But later she does say
"We need to be working now, full-speed ahead, with other countries, to destroy ISIS.
Again, no mention of genocide or subhumans. "Destroy" ISIS? Yes, but only in conjunction with a legal international effort, which I would imagine would be in conjunction with international law.
But while Warren may support destroying ISIS and its "capacity to inflict real damage", http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2014/09/us_sens_elizabeth_warren_edwar.html]she is skeptical of the tactics that have failed in the past and voted AGAINST providing weapons to Syrian rebels.
"I remain concerned that our weapons, our funding, and our support may end up in the hands of people who threaten the United States," Warren said in a statement. "I do not want America to be dragged into another ground war in the Middle East."
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)Okay, instead of "subhumans", I'll call them "animals" or "barbarians", and instead of "exterminate", I'll say "eliminate", or "destroy", or just plain "kill". I think we should kill these animals. I think we should destroy these barbarians. Of course, though, I stand by my original statement.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Last edited Wed Oct 15, 2014, 09:45 AM - Edit history (2)
1) Who decides who gets the label and how is it decided?
2) Who exterminates them?
3) How is this plan carried out.
I gave you ample chances to reflect on your words and you stood by them.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)they kill, execute, behead, rape, enslave, torture, amputate, and bury alive the rest of us "infidels"--that is their mission, they state it quite openly. We, and/ or whoever else deems them a threat, exterminate them.
It's carried out with bombs, missiles and bullets. See? Very easy. I support it.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)do let me know when those declarations are made by the "rest of the civilized, peaceful world".
And you still have not answered the questions:
1) What is the criteria?
2) What is the evidence, the standard of proof?
3) How will pursuing the same strategy that has failed over and over again, suddenly work this time?
And here's another one you can answer:
4) How many innocent people are you willing to see die to insure the "extermination" of "subhumans"
Round numbers please.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)what's going on in Iraq and Syria with ISIS...besides you, that is. Check the UN, though. They usually know what's happening in the world. Civilian deaths should be prevented as much as possible, of course--that said, plenty of civilians have already been killed and displaced by ISIS. And in terms of our military intervention, I don't know how else to kill these guys other than what we're doing.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)The UN tells you that in a village of a 1,000 people, there are 50 ISIS "subhumans".
The tools at your disposal are:
1) Drones with Hellfire missiles
2) B-52 bombers
3) F117 Fighter/Bombers
4) Apache Attack Helicopters
5) Tomahawk Cruise Missiles
Please explain how you will choose which 50 people to "exterminate" and how you will effect the "extermination".
Also, please, please, PLEASE show me where I have disputed what is going on in Iraq and Syria? The only thing I have "disputed" is your proposed "solution" for what is going on in Iraq and Syria.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)This is where progressives got a bad name as "knee jerk liberals" because they'd fight for the survival of vile and asinine groups just for ideology and utopia.
There ARE people in this world that deserve to be eliminated. That is a fact. When you get pneumonia, you have to take antibiotics and kill billions of bacteria because it is you or them. The same applies to ISIS.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)They SHOULD be punished, but not "exterminated".
I am not the one defending genocide.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Really, it would be genocide to kill them? Then wasn't it genocide to kill the Germans? Geez, they are the bad guys here. Sometimes there are bad guys who are way worse than the US.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)these people as "subhumans" which needed to be "exterminated". These are words I have heard before applied to native Americans, blacks, Jews, "Gypsies", gays, Communists, etc.
I gave the poster ample time to reflect on his choice of words and he embraced them and even accepted that he agreed with Dick Cheney and Fox News in his views. He did belatedly address his word choice, but still made clear his intent had not changed.
Then wasn't it genocide to kill the Germans?
No, since the German army was the military arm of the German nation state involved in an open and declared war with other nation states. Everybody wore uniforms, which made it a lot easier to figure out who to shoot. However, the German government made a specific decision to "exterminate" people they deemed to be "subhuman", using EXACTLY the same language as the poster. And before you tell me that ISIS did horrible things to people, you need to read your history and see what various Partisan groups did to German soldiers and collaborators.
Sometimes there are bad guys who are way worse than the US.
If someone "accidentally" kills your spouse/child/parent/sibling while "exterminating subhumans" that is a distinction without a difference. Dead is dead. I expect mindless screams for bloody vengeance from Neanderthal conservatives, I expected better from members of the "reality-based community".
(This is not a dig at you, but a depressing observation of this thread).
treestar
(82,383 posts)They are not akin to the Jews, gypsys and gays, they are not the victims. They are the victimizers.
Sometimes people do need to be opposed, and they don't allow it to be in civilized talks. They have made it clear they don't want to abide by the standards regarding war that the world in general has agreed to - they want to go back to 15th century (for the rest of the world) standards.
I don't see anyone calling for bloody vengeance. But even the most liberal person has to cringe at what these people are doing. There is no argument for them that they are freedom fighters or such, or that it's their society and they should have it as they see fit. I guess there is a line even liberals should have when it comes to barbaric behavior, and behavior even the oh so bad USA can judge negatively.
Dead is dead, but at least there's an attempt here - should there be more dead with carpet bombings because drones are not perfect? We can't have peace on earth as long as someone is willing to disrupt it, but at least we can try not to hurt civilians. We are to be condemned anyway, it seems. At least we are trying, but what is ISIS doing? And what would they do long term? Are they to be honored for not killing these women and children. It is better to be a slave and at least be alive? Thus ISIS is more honorable than a US drone strike that unintentionally kills other than the targets?
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.
the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group.
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/genocide
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genocide
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html
They are not akin to the Jews, gypsys and gays, they are not the victims. They are the victimizers.
The same arguments were made about the above groups, as well as Blacks, Native Americans, Armenians, Catholics/Protestants in Northern Ireland (this I know as personal fact as my family is from Ireland) and dozens more. Now, you will argue (correctly) that ISIS is different, they actually beheaded people. Well, they have done precisely that to a handful of people. How does this justify a unilateral U.S. response costing billions of dollars a month and applying the same failed tactics that never work? How are these atrocities any different than similar atrocities committed by drug gangs in Mexico? Why is there no talk of an air war on Mexico?
You may argue (correctly) that they are an insurgent element raping and murdering their way across Iraq. Again true, but how is that any different than what happened in Rwanda where we did not propose an air war? This kind of tactic is being used in a dozen or so conflicts across the globe, but we only want to get involved in Iraq where the oil is and where we have already waged a failed and ILLEGAL military campaign that has cost a trillion dollars and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.
I agree with you that these terrible people do what they do by dehumanizing their victims. You know, declaring them "subhuman" and in need of "extermination". So why would we adopt a similar tactic?
I guess there is a line even liberals should have when it comes to barbaric behavior, and behavior even the oh so bad USA can judge negatively.
I completely agree that their behaviour is barbaric, but you don't fight barbarians by being barbaric, not if you wish to be seen as the "good guy". Also, if we are going to play at being the world's policeman then you need to OBEY the law, even when it is inconvenient to do so. If we don't then we are no better than the Ferguson PD.
Dead is dead, but at least there's an attempt here - should there be more dead with carpet bombings because drones are not perfect?
When your house is in flames and your children are dead, does it actually matter to you that the U.S. government really, really TRIED to use the least force possible?
We can't have peace on earth as long as someone is willing to disrupt it, but at least we can try not to hurt civilians.
Who deliberated manufactured a provocation for war with Vietnam?
Who helped overthrow the legally elected government of Guatemala?
Who helped overthrow the legally elected government of Chile?
Who helped Sadaam Hussein launch a nerve gas attack against Iran?
Who helped the Shah come to power?
Who backed Ferdinand Marcos?
Who backed the Duvaliers in Haiti?
Who backed Noriega in Panama?
Who supported (illegally and with money from drug trafficking) the Contras?
Who deliberately lied about Iraq ties to 9/11?
Who deliberately lied about NBC weapons in Iraq?
Yes, this is why we can't have nice things in the world, the U.S. keeps running around making excuses to break things and/or helping other people break things our behalf. If we really care about not hurting "civilians", we have a funny way of showing it.
We are to be condemned anyway, it seems.
Well, as we have never been prosecuted, as we certainly would be if we were not the biggest bully on the planet, "condemnation" is all some of us can manage. Personally I have a long list of people from Henry Kissinger to Dick Cheney I would like to see in chains before an international tribunal. But, I'll take condemnation since it is all that is available. The good news, I guess, is that it really pisses some people off.
At least we are trying, but what is ISIS doing?
ISIS is behaving with an inhumanity that is the end result of decades of U.S. intervention in other people's business for imperialism and profit. If you beat a dog bloody and it starts attacking children is it fair to blame ONLY the dog? ISIS is doing what we did to Native Americans, what we did to slaves, what we did to Japanese civilians, what we did to women, and what MANY people in power in states like Texas would do today to gay people if Christian Dominionists were in power, or the central government had disintegrated to the level it has in Iraq and Syria.
Again, ISIS is, without question, responsible for its crimes. But if we intend to stop this from happening then we have to face our own sins which created this mess. I do not excuse ISIS, nor condone their actions. But I also think pouring gasoline on a fire is a bad idea.
Are they to be honored for not killing these women and children. It is better to be a slave and at least be alive? Thus ISIS is more honorable than a US drone strike that unintentionally kills other than the targets?
Honor stopped being applicable to this situation when we illegally invaded Iraq on fabricated evidence to satisfy George Bush "Daddy issues", Dick Cheney's sick imperialist fantasies and defense contractors' avarice. Native and African Americans may move that date back a bit further.
Response to TwilightGardener (Reply #79)
Kelvin Mace This message was self-deleted by its author.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)members - i should have said tens of thousands
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)invading Iraq, overthrowing the government and allowing the rise of these groups?
Now we are to go in and do it all over again? Are you prepared to spend another trillion dollars to kill another few hundred thousand Iraqis and create another five or six groups just like ISIS? Because that is inevitable outcome of us going back in. Those of us who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq predicted this outcome and we were brandedalarmists at best, and traitors at worst. The war would be over in six months and would "pay for itself".
Thousands of men and women have been killed and raped in the last decade under U.S. occupation, so why the major concern now after we left?
150,000+ people have died since 2006 in the Mexican drug war, with lots of rapes and grisly murders. Why aren't we invading Mexico?
The Somali civil war has killed over a half million people since 1991. We did get involved in that, but a warlord shot down one of our helicopters so we decided to walk away.
Why couldn't we be bothered to look in on Rwanda when people were being beheaded and hacked to death with machetes?
There are hot wars and insurgencies with daily rape and murders going on in Darfur, Nigeria, Columbia, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Kashmir, and about a dozen other places, yet we are not launching air wars against any of them. Atrocities like beheadings, rapes, torture, etc, are going on EVERY day in great numbers, all over the world. But we only want to stop it here, and we want to stop it, according to the poster I was responding to, by "exterminating subhumans".
How is becoming just as monstrous as the monsters we are fighting make us virtuous?
samsingh
(18,426 posts)invading iraq under the bush regime was illegal and monsterous. saddam was created by us and the removal has resulted in the events of today. we are responsible for the deaths happening there.
i don't know how ignoring massacres makes us virtuous, and saying that it's too complicated makes us complicent.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Last edited Wed Oct 15, 2014, 10:13 AM - Edit history (1)
I have simply said that such massacres do NOT justify genocide. I am all for taking measured steps, within international law, to stop what is going on. I do, however, draw the line at "exterminating" ANY group of people, even if they are demonstrably "subhuman". I oppose the death penalty, but I support due process, jury trials, the rights of appeal and locking up the guilty. No matter how heinous their crime, I support a just and humane judicial and penal process.
A case can be made, within international law, for military intervention, and such intervention will result in deaths. But it is NOT the same thing as "exterminating subhumans". I cannot find ANY legal support for such a thing without going back to the Nuremberg trials.
Also, I would point out that IF we are going to play the world's policeman, then we had better follow the law and apply it the same way in EVERY situation, otherwise we have ZERO moral authority and can do less harm by staying OUT of other country's business.
At the moment we are at war with another country's people without a formal declaration of war and without ANY debate about whether we even have a legal right under international (or even U.S. law) to be there.
This discussion is, in part, about words and their actual meaning. I have been VERY careful in how I use mine. I took the original poster to be expressing understandable frustration at horrific events, but when I gave him a chance to reflect on his words, he doubled, then tripled-downed on his intent and meaning. The other part of the argument is about legal and moral issues and the ramifications of what is being advocated in current horrific situation of OUR making.
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)By the way they treat other people.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Cambodia, Vietnam, Guatemala, Chile, etc. Do American people deserve to die because our government lied us into wars, committed war crimes, and tortured prisoners. I don't see Henry Kissinger in chains.
But setting that all aside, please explain the criteria for the "extermination" of "subhumans".
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)Those sat those prisons attacked the USA first. I will not apologize for the US like others.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)Last edited Wed Oct 15, 2014, 10:15 AM - Edit history (2)
in Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib guilty? What trial? And if they are guilty why has even the U.S. government admitted that a lot of people in both prisons are NOT guilty or that their is insufficient evidence to charge them.
The Iraqis had NOTHING to do with the 9/11 attacks, even George W. Bush admitted that.
And even if they were guilty, since when is the torture/murder of prisoners legal?
noiretextatique
(27,275 posts)who the fuck is apologizing for the us? certainly NOT the people who should be apologizing for the rest of their miserable lives, i.e, bush, cheney, rice, et al.
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)Speak differently.
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)Because they have shown the ability to be taught and the desire to as well.
CanonRay
(16,171 posts)We're the infidels and non believers. I don't think education is the ticket in this case.
840high
(17,196 posts)them. They will never be educated.
treestar
(82,383 posts)About history. Traditions from the past. They are using their education to justify their barbaric acts. They want to go backward as far as the progress the world has made.
The world has evolved to exclude those acts as legitimate spoils of war. It's a war crime, for real. People who specifically refuse to obey the laws of war are declaring themselves to be outside the bounds of human decency.
Drones are an attempt to at least kill the bad people and not indiscriminate like bombing. The world has not stated that is out of bounds for war. In fact, bombing indiscriminately is likely allowed and not considered a war crime. It's part of war. We may not like war, but where it is happening, there are certain rules that define war crimes. (though there are those on DU who apply that term to all acts of war, it's not true - the world does allow war to happen still. There are certain acts that are considered too much, but war itself is still accepted).
So the US isn't guilty of war crimes, and if you insist drones are, then the US is no better for not intentionally enslaving woman and children as spoils of war? Sometimes USDS exists and attempting to paint the US as no better than ISIS shows that.
Subhuman may be a bad word to use. But people who have declared they will not respect the laws of war and justify using terms of war from centuries ago are not people we have to consider, in the war situation, as people who get a chance to be reasoned with.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)as refers to American action is legal opinion, not legal adjudication. Attempts to charge the U.S. with war crimes for Abu Ghraib, the use of chemical weapons and drones has been blocked by political stonewalling. John Yoo wrote legal opinions that torture was legal, you just needed to call it "enhanced interrogation". Since no one has ever been charged for torturing people at Guantanamo (or in at CIA "black sites" that legal fiction has never had to stand judicial review.
Article 2(3-4) of the UN Charter, which the U.S. is bound by says:
All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
The U.S. and the U.K. invaded Iraq on the basis of "provocations" which were not only false, but deliberate fabrications of the U.S. and U.K. governments. Thus, the invasion of Iraq was a war crime, and the charge was made by numerous countries. The UN was petitioned under Article 39 to rule on the legality of the Iraq War, something it is specifically empowered to do. However, since the U.S. and the U.K. sit on the Security Council, the request for a ruling was vetoed each time.
So, the very people to be charged with war crimes were the very people that prevented the charges from being adjudicated. To claim the U.S. has not committed a war crime is the same as pointing out that Charles Mason never killed anyone. But while Manson is in jail, the Bush administration walks free. Apparently they had better lawyers than Manson.
One more time I will make my point:
I do NOT defend nor justify the actions of extremists of ANY stripe. Once you move from verbal objections and civil disobedience to violence, you lose my support. My expressing concern over U.S. hypocrisy about when the law does, and does not apply, does not mean I condone what ISIS, abortion clinic bombers, the IRA, Basque Separatists, White Supremicists, Christian Dominionists, etc, do. My refusal to embrace "kill them all" strategies does NOT mean I condone what these people have done. I am simply pointing out that declaring an enemy "subhuman" and deserving "extermination" has never worked in the past and turns us into the very same monsters were purport to be be fighting.
If the U.S. wishes to engage in a lawful, international effort to root out ISIS, that is one thing. To simply bomb people on the basis of a legally suspect law (AUMF) to apply the same failed counter-insurgency policy that created the current situation in the first place, then no, not buying it.
The original poster I responded to, TwilightGardener, specifically said:
"These subhumans need killing."
"No, they need to be exterminated. And they're subhuman."
So, yes, I am in agreement with Dick Cheney and whoever else thinks that ISIS and AQ need a-killin'.
I took exception to his words which are words that have been used to humanity's detriment by other people with a simple "solution" to people they came into conflict with. I then asked him and everyone else who defended him and his words to please give me specific details on how they were going to carry out this "extermination" and how they would determine who was "subhuman". Some folks have made such an attempt and I have rebutted their arguments, others have simply danced around the issue, mischaracterized my argument, or played word games.
In its simplest terms I have pointed out that to defeat an enemy, you must understand them. Simply declaring them "subhuman" and in need of being "exterminated" is NOT understanding the enemy, it is adoption of the enemy's same nihilistic mindset.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)go over and offer classes on humanity and experience sharia first hand.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)should be willing to go over and do it themselves.
Two wrongs always make a right. Sore, I though I was on a "progressive" political board. Apparently I was mistaken.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
However, I think the solution here is sunlight. It's still not clear exactly who or what is supporting this group and to what end.
Let's pull the curtain aside and see who's pulling the strings. I don't believe the story that they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Even Joe Biden put paid to that idea.
Kelvin Mace
(17,469 posts)This is a complex situation that came about because politicians had simplistic views and solutions to complex problems. Now that those solutions have not only failed, they have made the problems FAR worse, I have folks here advocating the very same Bush/Cheney solutions, even to the point of genocide.
Ash_F
(5,861 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)I don't know who's writing this stuff or if they really believe it...but it's going to backfire on them eventually.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)Last edited Mon Oct 13, 2014, 04:11 PM - Edit history (1)
I think they might use "Sharia" as a cover, but I also think that this attracts low-life losers from the west with promises of women as slaves and such.
I could be wrong, though.
Edit: Changed "too" to "to"
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)A bunch of gullible adolescents who want to live out "Conan the Barbarian" and "Game of Thrones".
PatSeg
(53,214 posts)This is more about power, sex, and violence than religion. Many fighters had to be instructed in the Muslim faith when they joined. They can justify uncivilized behavior with a religion and for many, any religion probably would do.
Fantastic Anarchist
(7,309 posts)PatSeg
(53,214 posts)samsingh
(18,426 posts)PatSeg
(53,214 posts)But in the not so distant past Christianity and Mormonism justified some pretty violent and oppressive behavior in "the name of god". I think some people go out and find the religion that gives them permission to be sexist or racist or violent or hateful.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)for recruitment, weapons and training.
And don't forget, as I mentioned before...what was the biggest threat in the 20th century?
That's right communism.
And what did we come up with to fight the commies in Afghanistan?
That's right, the Mujahideen.
And what do we continue to support to topple secular regimes.
That's right, religious fundies.
Maybe if we cut the funding for these groups they wouldn't be so powerful.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)the airstrikes are trying to stop that chain
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Last edited Tue Oct 14, 2014, 04:10 PM - Edit history (1)
Have you heard of the massacre of Protestants by Henry IV of France? St. Bartholomew Day's Massacre
The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de' Medici, the mother of King Charles IX, the massacre took place five days after the wedding of the king's sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV of France). This marriage was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris.
The massacre began in the night of 23-24 August 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks, the massacre expanded outward to other urban centres and the countryside. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.
The massacre also marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, as well as many re-conversions by the rank and file, and those who remained were increasingly radicalized. Though by no means unique, it "was the worst of the century's religious massacres."[2] Throughout Europe, it "printed on Protestant minds the indelible conviction that Catholicism was a bloody and treacherous religion".[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew%27s_Day_massacre
204 years less about 6-7 weeks later, the Declaration of Independence was sign declaring all men equal. Religious freedom and tolerance are basic to the unity of our nation. Religious wars are to be discouraged with all our effort. They are terrible, terrible wars -- and they serve no purpose. They destroy the spiritual and material lives of all who are in any way touched by them. ISIS is a very destructive organization.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)
blackspade
(10,056 posts)To find Christianity used as a tool for the extermination, rape, science experiments, and slavery.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)You take an uneducated barely employed young man who has no prospects of attracting a bride's family and by joining ISIS, you become a respected family man. As hard as it may be to believe, this is an acceptable and honorable way to secure a family.
The young men are not looking for women to rape. They are looking for women to make them respectable, honorable family men. It's just a side effect that they get to rape them when they want to.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)that the religion has carried out for centuries.
The only thing that stopped them before was bullets and the only thing that will stop it now is bullets and daisy cutters.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)I'm just explaining that there is sense to what they are doing.
People who just think they are evil or crazy don't get their culture.
They don't seek craziness or hell. They seek respectability, and murdering a man and marrying his widow is a respectable way to become a family man in their culture.
Rhinodawg
(2,219 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)is the classic definition of an apologist.
One can explain suicide bombings in pizza parlors in Jerusalem or hotel massacres in India or 9/11 or even pedophiles that way.
One should show courage to condemn such behaviors and punish such behaviors severely so others would think twice.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)is fine with me.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)But on the other hand, how do you protect the people they are hurting now.
And what do you do to prevent future groups like ISIS?
I do not envy the Obama administration that has to deal with all the many aspects of this problem.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)JI7
(93,617 posts)who have gone there. and many of them come from families who are pretty well off and parents who are moderate and gave them freedom.
and the fact that they tend to be the most brutal according to hostages and others who have been there.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)the most fanatical and raged of all. It is all very base instinct, reptilian reaction.
Bragi
(7,650 posts)The audience for their English language propaganda is young Muslim men (mostly) living in the west whom ISIS is encouraging to move to the ME to help build the new Muslim "Caliphate" declared by ISIS.
The Dabiq publication is intended to be an attractive mixture of inspiring theology, history and news reports about the military successes of ISIS.
When you think about it, if you were a young Muslim man in the west with a hate on for dominant Infidels, and looking for meaning, the notion of a glorious and pious military career which includes slave women as rewards may well seem like an attractive proposition.
The thing we have to understand is that non-Muslims in the west are not the target audience of this publication.
Read more on Dabiq here:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/dabiq-strategic-messaging-islamic-state
- B
Yupster
(14,308 posts)It attracts young uneducated men who have no prospects of a decent job and therefore no prospects of attracting a wife.
All of the sudden, the young man goes from the fringe of society with no prospects to a respected warrior, religious family man.
It may not make sense to you, but it makes lots of sense to thousands of young men all around the world.
The women are an important part of the equation. The captured women changes the life of the man tremendously for the better. It's considered honorable. Of course the men must be killed to get them out of the way.
Jack Rabbit
(45,984 posts). . . starting with slavery and imperialism and continuing to racism, misogyny and sectarian bigotry.
Secularism? Do you call me a secularist? My, you say that like it is a dirty word. My word for the Caliph is tyrant. My brothers and sisters in the Middlde East, do with the tyrant al-Baghdadi what you will.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)our most conservative christian types?
Psephos
(8,032 posts)...because you are overdosing on LSD?
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)No, I think it is the hypocrisy, the closed minded, irrational approach based on some fairy tale characters who they base their entire existence upon, strengthened by the fear that their beliefs might be all wet and we may take notice of that fact.
Anyone who prays for certain events to occur, then claim it was god's will when it never happens, is by definition irrational. In that respect, there is no difference between our christians and ISIS.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)Conflating holy rollers and evangelicals with head choppers and child slavery practitioners is itself an irrational and destructive act. You sound xenophobic.
I have no truck with fundies. But in the name of tolerance, I'm content to let them believe what they want, while I do the same.
Call me when the baptists start capturing women as spoils of war, and burying their enemies alive.
ChairmanAgnostic
(28,017 posts)The brain-washing of kids by religious parents causes permanent harm. It instill fear unnecessarily, it causes stress and strife when they try to learn scientific concepts.
In their own way, christian conservatives pose a danger to civilized society.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)Bottom line for me is, I don't allow others to impose their beliefs on me. I don't try to impose my beliefs on others.
We stand on slippery grass when we say that people who have different religious beliefs from our own are a "danger to civilized society." That's been used throughout history to justify any injustice those in power feel like committing, and most of them have even had the audacity to say it was a moral thing to do.
Exactly what good is tolerance if we can't or won't tolerate people we disagree with?
Anyway, although we differ, I do appreciate your earnest and civil discourse. 
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)On edit there were some baptists that supported slavery.
Psephos
(8,032 posts)
This discussion is about what's happening in 2014.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)In case you haven't heard, there are lots of Christian nut-cases that would like to make the US a theocracy.
What's stopping them is the secular government.
And they're trying to get a foothold there so they can undermine it.
Six centuries ago, there was no government stopping them and they showed their true colors.
I would not like to see a repeat.
Throd
(7,208 posts)Psephos
(8,032 posts)So by your ancient historical-precedent logic, I should be on red alert for slavery to be part of the Democratic Party platform in 2016.
Let's deal with the real problems caused by real people in the present day.
Fundy Christians are nutty by my standards but the tolerant thing to do is, umm, tolerate them. Until they start chopping off heads and capturing atheist women to serve as indentured concubines, of course.
agentS
(1,325 posts)epublican Nevada state assemblyman said that he would vote for legislation in favor of slavery if his constituents wanted him to. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Jim Wheeler of Gardnerville, NV was speaking to the Storey County Republican Party when he made the remarks last August, although they are only now coming to light.
“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” he said. “That’s what a republic is about.”
Now, Wheeler said to the Sun, “liberal operatives” are spreading the video in an effort to smear him.
The assemblyman was referring to a blog post by a conservative commentator named Chuck Muth, who asked during Wheeler’s candidacy, “(W)hat if those citizens decided they want to, say, bring back slavery? Hey, if that’s what the citizens want, right Jim?”
Wheeler told the audience of Republicans, “yeah I would.”
The remarks have kicked off a firestorm with Republicans and Democrats alike rushing to denounce Wheeler, who rode the 2010 wave of tea party fervor into his spot on the state assembly.
snooper2
(30,151 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The present grows out of the past. That is why the past is always a relevant starting point for understanding the present and working to improve it. If we can see past mistakes, we may be able to find a way to avoid them. The religious wars or jihads or whatever you want to call them of the past did not resolve anything. People still argue about religion. In this life, on this earth, we will never know for sure who is right and who is wrong about religion. That is why only the stupid and foolish fight wars or invade countries or kill based on their religion.
Religious wars have never decided anything that had to do with God. They only decide who gets to "own" what land, which women, etc. War has nothing to do with the spiritual experience of the sense of the power of God or of the universe. Religion is merely an excuse for war.
And so it is with ISIS.
treestar
(82,383 posts)Find one time they advocated enslaving women and children. For real, not some symbolism based on their positions on abortion.
Turbineguy
(40,077 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)
TomCADem
(17,837 posts)...ISIS is hardly alone in male dominated groups adhering to an ideology that justifies the subjugation of women. Of course, in the U.S., you have Republican candidates blaming a wide variety of societal on single women, single moms and working women, so we are not exactly beyond reproach.
denem
(11,045 posts)an al-Qaeda off shoot group fighting to establish an islamic state. Boko Haram claims the right to sell the girls. Open slavery is affront to the world, and rightly so. If the civil war meant anything, this is an issue that transcends patriarchy.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)being condemned and convicted rapists are put in prison or given the death penalty.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It's just about owning material things, and the women are viewed as material possessions.
Powerless men who cannot persuade a decent woman to marry them. That is the problem.
TomCADem
(17,837 posts)...in the name of god or not. Also, as the attached article shows, sexual harassment and violence is part of life for many women in India has been an ongoing issue with India even distributing a PSA to inform men that it is intimidating and harassing to openly stare at women. In other words, I would not simply point the finger at Islam as the reason why women are being raped. Even on U.S. college campuses, there has been an epidemic of rape with men who join a fraternity being three times more likely to rape than other men. Again, the rape is not being done in the name of religion, but I think that this is of small comfort to the victims.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/13/india-gang-rape-attitudes-women-changing
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29433262
samsingh
(18,426 posts)
pampango
(24,692 posts)such belief might lead to US actions that I don't support? Or do I try to determine 'reality' (facts) first then worry about what policy is appropriate? Isn't it easier to believe in a policy first then accept/reject 'facts' based on whether they are consistent with the policy I believe in? 
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)who trained them, funded them, armed them and what their agenda is.
If we are told incorrect information or relevant information is withheld then we may support the wrong decisions again and get ourselves into an even bigger mess (as happened after 9/11).
pampango
(24,692 posts)on that. If we base action on incorrect information or an overall policy that we have adopted which does not require 'correct information' we will indeed get ourselves into bigger and bigger messes.
iandhr
(6,852 posts)cosmicone
(11,014 posts)This is what Muslim invaders like Babur, Humayoon, Malik Kafoor, Ahmadshah Abdali, Nadir Shah, Mahmood Gaznavi, Mohammad Ghauri and others did in India in the 11th through 16th centuries. If one were to research the above names one would find ISIS like slaughters, ethnic cleansing, rapes, slavery and forced marriages practiced back then. According to KS Lal, (from his book), between 1000 ACE and 1525 ACE, 80-100 million Hindus were killed or forcibly converted.
More recently (in 1970s), when Bangladesh was seeking independence from Pakistan, Pakistani military did the same thing against Bangladeshis. Some 400,000 rapes were reported but actual number may be higher.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_Bangladesh_Liberation_War
http://www.forbes.com/sites/worldviews/2012/05/21/1971-rapes-bangladesh-cannot-hide-history/
Iraq's Yazidis are actually lost Hindus from that era. They have a snake symbol in the entrance to their temple, a sun symbol on their doors and a peacock, vestiges of the worship of Kartikeya (Murugan.)
It is vile and their justification for being according to Shariah is not erroneous.
I wonder, if ISIS is so un-Islamic and maligning the name of Islam, how come there is no fatwa against ISIS and no one has proclaimed jihad against ISIS?
Dems to Win
(2,161 posts)Those who say ISIS is not Islamic have to ignore great swaths of the Qu'ran to come to their position.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)big_dog
(4,144 posts)they have nothing to do with true religion whatsoever, just using it as an excuse for mayhem
7962
(11,841 posts)Yet we still have some here who will equate ISIS with Pat Robertson and say they're equally as bad.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)blackspade
(10,056 posts)candelista
(1,986 posts)The most effective guerrilla warfare organization I have seen since the Viet Cong. But yes, crazy.
Bragi
(7,650 posts)The link below goes to is an interesting and detailed report on the first issue of the ISIS publication "Dabiq" issued last summer, and the ideology it reveals:
Dabiq: The Strategic Messaging of the Islamic State
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/dabiq-strategic-messaging-islamic-state
I don't know who exactly is backing the "Institute for the Study of War" that published the report, but I find their reports to be invaluable in trying to understand what's going on right now with ISIS in Syria and Iraq.
riversedge
(80,814 posts)The Keane name sounded familiar but I could not place him so I looked him up:
Keane name was on the Who We Are website: (of ISW)
https://www.understandingwar.org/who-we-are
Who’s Paying the Pro-War Pundits?
Talking heads like former General Jack Keane are all over the news media fanning fears of IS. Shouldn’t the public know about their links to Pentagon contractors?
Lee Fang
September 16, 2014 | This article appeared in the October 6, 2014 edition of The Nation.
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Retired General Anthony Zinni, retired General Jack Keane and former Bush administration official Fran Townsend
If you read enough news and watch enough cable television about the threat of the Islamic State, the radical Sunni Muslim militia group better known simply as IS, you will inevitably encounter a parade of retired generals demanding an increased US military presence in the region. They will say that our government should deploy, as retired General Anthony Zinni demanded, up to 10,000 American boots on the ground to battle IS. Or as in retired General Jack Keane’s case, they will make more vague demands, such as for “offensive” air strikes and the deployment of more military advisers to the region.
But what you won’t learn from media coverage of IS is that many of these former Pentagon officials have skin in the game as paid directors and advisers to some of the largest military contractors in the world. Ramping up America’s military presence in Iraq and directly entering the war in Syria, along with greater military spending more broadly, is a debatable solution to a complex political and sectarian conflict. But those goals do unquestionably benefit one player in this saga: America’s defense industry.
Keane is a great example of this phenomenon. His think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which he oversees along with neoconservative partisans Liz Cheney and William Kristol, has provided the data on IS used for multiple stories by The New York Times, the BBC and other leading outlets.
Jack Keane (Screenshot: Fox News)
Keane has appeared on Fox News at least nine times over the last two months to promote the idea that the best way to stop IS is through military action—in particular, through air strikes deep into IS-held territory. In one of the only congressional hearings about IS over the summer, Keane was there to testify and call for more American military engagement. On Wednesday evening, Keane declared President Obama’s speech on defeating IS insufficient, arguing that a bolder strategy is necessary. “I truly believe we need to put special operation forces in there,” he told host Megyn Kelly.
Left unsaid during his media appearances (and left unmentioned on his congressional witness disclosure form) are Keane’s other gigs: as special adviser to Academi, the contractor formerly known as Blackwater; as a board member to tank and aircraft manufacturer General Dynamics; a “venture partner” to SCP Partners, an investment firm that partners with defense contractors, including XVionics, an “operations management decision support system” company used in Air Force drone training; and as president of his own consulting firm, GSI LLC....................
Bragi
(7,650 posts)I will bear it in mind when I read their stuff. I won't stop reading their stuff, however, since they do produce articles (like the analysis article I cited, and their daily military updates) that I don't find elsewhere.
For me, I'm trying to understand a bit more deeply what's happening, so I'm not wanting to exclude what seem to be useful and unique sources at this point.
riversedge
(80,814 posts)a fan of always.... killing the messenger either. In solidarity
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Bragi
(7,650 posts)That's why I prefer multiple sources.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)We have a forum for posting stories from the international press. I haven't been very active on DU recently because I am doing a lot of babysitting, but check it out. It would be great if you read foreign press and could post there. You can also post the same articles on GD I think. But I would like to have a place for alternative sources of news. Thanks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1268
Not much going on there recently but I hope to increase the activity in spite of my being away from the computer a lot now.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)American ground force in Iraq and Syria. Every bit of analysis they churn out is devoted to that goal. They will constantly proclaim that whatever Obama's doing in Iraq and Syria are failures that can only be remedied by AMERICAN ground troops.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)According to Dabiq, Zarqawi’s plan includes five steps: hijrah (emigration), jama’ah (congregation), destabilize taghut (idolatry), tamkin (consolidation), and khalifah (caliphate).
The article explains that ISIS’s original incarnation, al-qaeda in Iraq (AqI), completed the first three steps as it became the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). This past progression both sets conditions and serves as a model for the current establishment of the Caliphate.
The group appears to be proceeding on schedule. I'll look up more on that website to see what it's about, what their interest in this is, their motives. I'm just going through the thread right now.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)experience. Mohammed fought wars and conquered and abused people in order to convert them to his religion. That is historical fact.
Muhammad spent his last ten years, from 622 to 632, as the leader of Medina in a state of war with pagan Mecca. Muhammad and his Companions had earlier migrated from Mecca to Medina in what is known as the Hijra following years of persecution by the Meccans. Through raids, sieges, and diplomacy, Muhammad and his followers allied with or subdued some of the tribes and cities of the Arabian peninsula in their struggle to overcome the powerful Banu Quraish of Mecca.
They also sent out raiding parties against Arabic-speaking communities ruled under the Roman Empire. Muhammad was believed by the Muslims to be divinely chosen to spread Islam in world, and Muhammad ultimately permitted warfare as one aspect of this struggle.[1] After initially refusing to accede to requests by his followers to fight the Meccans for continued persecution and provocation, he eventually proclaimed the revelations of the Quran:
"Permission to fight is given to those who are fought against because they have been wronged -truly Allah has the power to come to their support- those who were expelled from their homes without any right, merely for saying, 'Our Lord is Allah'..." (Quran, 22:39-40)"
After the first battle of Badr against the Quraysh, he is reported as having said "We have returned from the lesser Jihad to the greater Jihad (i.e. the struggle against the evil of one's soul)."[2] John Esposito writes that Muhammad's use of warfare in general was alien neither to Arab custom nor to that of the Hebrew prophets, as both believed that God had sanctioned battle with the enemies of the Lord.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad
The Muslims conquered much of North Africa, entered Spain and lived there in harmony with the people of Spain and invaders from the North. At one point, the Muslim warriors entered Italy and even reached the doors of the Vatican. As some may recall, Muslim Turks invaded Southern Europe, took over Constantinople, the center of the Roman Christian Empire.
I don't know much about this website, and it seems to be sponsored by a religious organization, but it tells the story of the invasion of Constantinople in simple terms:
http://www.reformation.org/fall-of-constantinople.html
I think it is a Protestant website.
Eventually, in 1683, they even reached the walls of Vienna to be routed by a Polish general and his army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna
We hear a lot of condemnation of the Crusades and that is fine, but we don't hear much about the invasions by Muslim "hordes" (the term I have read for them) of that same area. The Muslims took North Africa by force. I do not deny that there were probably lots of voluntary conversions, but let's don't be dishonest about the essence of the Muslim teaching.
Christians became warriors with Constantine after Constantine dreamed that he could win at war under the sign of the cross Prior to that time, Christians were martyrs to the Romans. Christians tended to come from subservient and oppressed groups in the Roman Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great.
But originally, Christianity was not a religion associated with a lot of violence and war. They simply were not powerful enough in the military sense until Constantine. I am not claiming there was no interpersonal violence among early Christians or on a small scale possibly with non-Christians, but that there were no Christian armies or military prior to Constantine.
The Muslims were violent and formed a military sort of organization even in the time of Mohammed. They began that way.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Hindu temples were desecrated, idols broken (even today, it is hard to find an ancient temple in North India where the idols have not been shattered), women raped, men enslaved and wealth looted.
This history is downplayed in Indian textbooks so that feelings are not hurt in secular India.
However, in his book, "The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India", Sita Ram Goel (an historian and formerly an anchor at Voice of India.) Chapters 6 and 7 are particularly cogent about atrocities committed by muslims in India and make a great read.
http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/siii/ch6.htm
http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/siii/ch7.htm
The whole book can be read here: http://www.voiceofdharma.org/books/siii/
Using warfare, brutality and enslavement to spread religion is unique to Islam and it must be owned by people who defend it.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Today is Columbus Day. Ignoring the military and violent roots of the Muslim religion would be like ignoring the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the horrible suffering that followed.
The past is what it is. We can learn now not to be overly certain that we must kill or fight to defend what we think is right. This is the error of ISIS. We need to make sure we do not make that same error.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)We know you hate Islam, but that is some silly shit.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Like JD Priestley said, one has to accept history rather than denying it.
However, which other religion uses warfare and brutality to spread the religion? The last I checked, mormons and Jehovah's witnesses only annoy you by showing up unannounced. The catholics and protestants send docile missionaries who try to convert with kindness. Hindus and Buddhists don't use violence and threats.
Please read the citations I posted up this thread.
Peace.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)then you don't know much about those societies.
But let's go back and look at the rise of islamic extremism.
In the 20th century communism was the biggest threat, so much so that we fought wars all over the place to keep it in check.
Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski were so concerned about the godless commies that they supported a bunch of religious fundies to fight against the commies in Afghanistan, starting in 1979.
Reagan-Bush continued the policy throughout the 80s.
The same religious extremist Frankenstein monster was encouraged to grow in Pakistan.
As a result of those policies Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were created.
Now those same religious fundies are the biggest threat we face.
A threat that we and our allies helped to create.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)I am not talking about ordinary violence but violence specifically for propagation of a religion.
Last I read, hindus and buddhists have not used violence to CONVERT someone to their faith.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)and an army and she'd probably start doing that.
Every religion has the seeds of violence in it. It flares up in different ways and at different times.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Islamic violence has had a deep impact on people lasting centuries. Even powerful and rabidly religious Christian kings did not send armies to convert people to Christianity.
In India there was a practice of Sati -- where a Hindu widow would be burned on the funeral pyre of her husband. According to many historians, this practice started because muslim invaders would round up all widows and take them as slaves. The Hindu women preferred being burned alive to being taken as a sex-slave.
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Mr_eYjoVjz8C&pg=PT449&lpg=PT449&dq=Sati+and+Islamic+rule&source=bl&ots=75fxsBS4wV&sig=qrzmi-2iH0wn0DWO2OmiIV1rXco&hl=en&sa=X&ei=G1g8VKmEPMbs8AW38YLQCg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw
(Excerpt from a book written by M.A. Khan, a Muslim historian)
According to the above book, Muslim rule exacerbated and accelerated the practice of child marriage in India as well. Preadolescent children were married to each other so that the girls would wear black beads signifying they were married and thus protect them from the Muslims.
Older and unattractive widows would shave their heads instead so as to become unattractive to muslim invaders, It is no surprise that these practices were common in India wherever muslim rule was present. These practices were caused by fear so powerful that they continued long after (almost 140 years after) first the Marathas and then the British had almost obliterated Islam in India.
My muslim friends argue that Islam spread because all pagans loved its teachings and embraced it. Thus a predominantly Zoroastrian and Buddhist Iran became Islamic in about a decade. A predominantly pagan Egypt became muslim in a decade. How was it possible without force in an era when printing was primitive and communication was non-existent? If Islamic teachings are so wonderful, in an era of facebook/twitter/email/mobile phones, everyone in Europe should have been converted in 5-10 years!
The fact is, the brutality was only stopped by the invention of gun powder and modern weapons. That history is about to repeat itself.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)just in different ways. I look for the bits I agree with. I think the old Cherokee saying about the two wolves representing Love and Hate sums it up. The wolf that grows stronger is the wolf you feed. That applies to all religions. You can feed the negative side or the positive side.
Furthermore, I believe the Bush administration was a religious extremist outfit that caused a lot of the problems we're seeing today.
What's worse is that they (the neocons) thrive on causing these problems and making them worse.
They are playing a double game of spreading christian fundamentalism and islamic fundamentalism and then trying to pit the two groups of gullible idiots against each other for fun and profit.
They never intended to spread "liberal democracy" because they don't believe in separation of church and state or inalienable rights.
I want a return to traditional secular values where religion is a private matter.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Islam has a terrible history. The sooner we own up to it, the sooner the healing and understanding can begin.
It is like the Armenian genocide carried out by Turks. All Armenians want is acceptance that it took place. They don't want the land and they don't want to punish anyone. However, denying historical evidence just to sound progressive is not very liberal.
History has nothing to do with neocons. I have had very few Muslim friends state that their religion was pretty brutal in the past. That admission made me respect them more.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)if you study their docterine, you will find many many differences.
Rhinodawg
(2,219 posts)of course "no one here supports ISIS" BUT they cant see or say anything connects isis to islam.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The New Testament does not contain seeds of violence in spite of the violence perpetrated against Jesus. Of course, one can question how historically accurate or complete the New Testament is with regard to the depiction of Jesus as a man. But the New Testament, what we have of the story, what was handed to us by the early Christians, is non-violent, quite essentially non-violent. Turn the other cheek. Help the Samaritan (a person of another religious and ethnic group.)
Early Christianity, pre-Constantine was a non-violent religion that was spread through means other than violence. I recall one story from the Acts of the Apostles in which a couple who did not share all their worldly goods with other Christians in the community were punished. That's the only incident of violence that I recall. And it was not violence to convert. It was violence to punish someone who claimed to be a member.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)
kwassa
(23,340 posts)During the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, forcibly Roman Catholicized the Saxons from their native Germanic paganism by way of warfare and law upon conquest. Examples include the Massacre of Verden in 782, during which Charlemagne reportedly had 4,500 captive Saxons massacred upon rebelling against conversion, and the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, a law imposed on conquered Saxons in 785 which prescribes death to those that refuse to convert to Christianity.[4][5]
Pope Innocent III pronounced in 1201 that even if torture and intimidation had been employed in receiving the sacrament, one nevertheless:
...does receive the impress of Christianity and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling. ... [For] the grace of Baptism had been received, and they had been anointed with the sacred oil, and had participated in the body of the Lord, they might properly be forced to hold to the faith which they had accepted perforce, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed, and lest they hold in contempt and consider vile the faith they had joined.[6]
Spanish Inquisition
After the end of the Islamic control of Spain, Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.[7] After the Reconquista, so called "New Christians" were those inhabitants (Sephardic Jews or Mudéjar Muslims) during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era who were baptized under coercion and in the face of murder, becoming forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and secret Moors) and forced converts from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos). Then the Spanish Inquisition targeted primarily forced converts from Judaism who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it. Jewish conversos still resided in Spain and often hiddenly (cryptically) practiced Judaism and were suspected by the "Old Christians" of being Crypto-Jews. The Spanish Inquisition generated much wealth and income for the church and individual inquisitors by confiscating the property of the persecutees or selling them into slavery. The end of the Al-Andalus and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula went hand in hand with the increase of Spanish-Portugal influence in the world, as exemplified in the Christian conquest of the Americas and their aboriginal Indian population. The Ottoman empire, the Netherlands, and the New World absorbed much of the Jewish refugees.[8]
Goa inquisition
Religious persecution took place by the Portuguese in Goa, India from 16th to the 17th century. The natives of Goa, most of them Hindus were subjected to severe torture and oppression by the zealous Portuguese rulers and missionaries and forcibly converted to Christianity.[9][10][11][12][13][14]
In 1567, the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished. In 1583, Hindu temples at Assolna and Cuncolim were destroyed through army action. "The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers." wrote Filippo Sassetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588. An order was issued in June 1684 for suppressing the Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak the Portuguese language. The law provided for dealing toughly with anyone using the local language. Following that law all the non-Christian cultural symbols and the books written in local languages were sought to be destroyed.[15] Methods such as repressive laws, demolition of temples and mosques, destruction of holy books, fines and the forcible conversion of orphans were used.[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_conversion#Christianity
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)Okay, Islam is not the only religion to use forced conversion - I concede.
However, hundreds of Muslim rulers have used it as their only method of conversion all over middle east, North Africa and Southern and Southeast Asia.
The fact that ISIS is using it today without significant opposition from Muslims suggests it has broad spectrum acceptance.
If a Christian king -- like that of Belgium -- tried this, he will be put in a psychiatric hospital. On the other hand, conservative mullahs around the world are recruiting and sending manpower to ISIS with pride -- in the 21st century.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)The fact that ISIS is using it today without significant opposition from Muslims suggests it has broad spectrum acceptance.
No.
I really don't think you read anything on this subject. There was a very public letter recently signed by 120 prominent Muslim scholars denouncing ISIS as un-Islamic, with many specific references to passages in the Koran. It was written about here on DU.
Every other Muslim nation in the Middle East is trying to help stop ISIS. That is called news, and current events. I guess you haven't read about this, either. Saudi planes have attacked ISIS, for example.
On top of this, you don't know the history of Belgium. If you want to meet one of the most brutal murderers in the history, look no further than King Leopold of Belgium, who created his own personally owned colony in central Africa, which is now known as the Congo. Joseph Conrad wrote about it in "Heart of Darkness" . I really recommend "King Leopold's Ghost."
Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forcing the population to collect sap from rubber plants. Villages were required to meet quotas on rubber collections, and individuals' hands were cut off if they did not meet the requirements. His regime was responsible for the death of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese. This became one of the most infamous international scandals of the early 20th century, and Leopold was ultimately forced to relinquish control of it to the Belgian government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Prior to that time, Christianity was not violent. The New Testament, the Gospels are not violent.
The Koran is violent.
Yes. Christianity was used as an excuse for violence. But the violence is a serious deviation from the original teachings of Jesus assuming that what we read in the New Testament reflects what Jesus said.
blackspade
(10,056 posts)Has no basis in reality as it applies to either Jewish or Christian history.
Both are rife with exceptional amounts of brutality in the name of propagating their religions.
Islam is no different but is not exceptional by any means.
Rhinodawg
(2,219 posts)forget it, dude. hopeless.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)and fought wars in the name of the cross of Christianity. Christians have been doing it ever since.
But Christianity, the religion of the Gospels is non-violent. I must say it is not the only religion to be non-violent. Buddhism is non-violent, perhaps more so than the religion that Jesus taught (if the Gospels reflect what he taught).
Sorry if I exaggerated with the word unique. Buddhism is also non-violent as far as I know.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Christian Holy War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_violence#Holy_war
In 1095, at the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II declared that some wars could be deemed as not only a bellum iustum ("just war"
In the 12th century, Bernard of Clairvaux wrote: "'The knight of Christ may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently; for he serves Christ when he strikes, and saves himself when he falls.... When he inflicts death, it is to Christ's profit, and when he suffers death, it is his own gain."[29]
In Ulrich Luz's formulation; "After Constantine, the Christians too had a responsibility for war and peace. Already Celsus asked bitterly whether Christians, by aloofness from society, wanted to increase the political power of wild and lawless barbarians. His question constituted a new actuality; from now on, Christians and churches had to choose between the testimony of the gospel, which included renunciation of violence, and responsible participation in political power, which was understood as an act of love toward the world." Augustine's Epistle to Marcellinus (Ep 138) is the most influential example of the "new type of interpretation."[30]"
as to the Crusades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
The crusaders often pillaged the countries through which they travelled in the typical medieval manner of supplying an army on the move. Nobles often retained much of the territory gained rather than returning it to the Byzantines as they had sworn to do.[8][9] The Peoples' Crusade prompted Rhineland massacres and the murder of thousands of Jews. In the late 19th century this episode was used by Jewish historians to support Zionism.[10] The Fourth Crusade resulted in the sack of Constantinople by the Roman Catholics, effectively ending the chance of reuniting the Christian church by reconciling the East–West Schism and leading to the weakening and eventual fall of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)to find violence and atrocities by non-muslims simply to take over territory and loot it.
That does NOT justify what ISIS is doing, the various ISIS apologists notwithstanding.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I can find much more recent Christian violence, by the way.
There is no justification for violence by either group.
The problem with ISIS is more about fanaticism than religion. Fanatics, regardless of the source of their cause, behave remarkably alike.
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)Crack a book sometime.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)religion several centuries before the Crusades.
The very early Christians were victims, martyrs, not warriors. After Constantine, the Christians also became violent.
There is no agreement on an explanation of how Christianity managed to spread so successfully prior to the Edict of Milan. For some Christians, the success was simply the natural consequence of the truth of the religion and the direct intervention of God. However, similar explanations are claimed for the spread of, for instance, Islam and Buddhism. In The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark argues that Christianity triumphed over paganism chiefly because it improved the lives of its adherents in various ways.[63] Another factor, more recently pointed out, was the way in which Christianity combined its promise of a general resurrection of the dead with the traditional Greek belief that true immortality depended on the survival of the body, with Christianity adding practical explanations of how this was going to actually happen at the end of the world.[64] For Mosheim the rapid progression of Christianity was explained by two factors: translations of the New Testament and the Apologies composed in defence of Christianity.[65] Edward Gibbon, in his classic The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, discusses the topic in considerable detail in his famous Chapter Fifteen, summarizing the historical causes of the early success of Christianity as follows: "
1) The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses. (2) The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth. (3) The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. (4) The pure and austere morals of the Christians. (5) The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire."[66]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity
In contrast, Mohammed spread his religion with the sword and conquest. It continued to spread in great part through conquest.
Phase I: Early Caliphs and Umayyads (610–750 CE)
See also: Muslim conquests, Rashidun Caliphate and Umayyad Caliphate
This was the time of the life of Islamic Prophet Muhammad and his early successors, the four Rashidun Caliphs.
Within the first century of the establishment of Islam upon the Arabian peninsula and the subsequent rapid expansion of the Arab Empire during the Muslim conquests, resulted in the formation of one of the most significant empires in world history.[7] For the subjects of this new empire, formerly subjects of the greatly reduced Byzantine, and obliterated Sassanid Empires, not much changed in practice. The objective of the conquests was more than anything of a practical nature, as fertile land and water were scarce in the Arabian peninsula. A real Islamization therefore only came about in the subsequent centuries.[8]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam
The Pope's approval of war was centuries after Mohammed's conquests and the conquests of early Muslims.
In the late 11th century catastrophe struck with the unexpected and calamitous defeat of the imperial armies at the Battle of Manzikert in Armenia in 1071. The Emperor Romanus Diogenes was captured. The peace terms demanded by Alp Arslan, sultan of the Seljuk Turks, were not excessive, and Romanus accepted them. On his release, however, Romanus found that enemies had placed their own candidate on the throne in his absence; he surrendered to them and suffered death by torture, and the new ruler, Michael VII Ducas, refused to honour the treaty. In response, the Turks began to move into Anatolia in 1073. The collapse of the old defensive system meant that they met no opposition, and the empire's resources were distracted and squandered in a series of civil wars. Thousands of Turkoman tribesmen crossed the unguarded frontier and moved into Anatolia. By 1080, a huge area had been lost to the Empire, and the Turks were within striking distance of Constantinople.
. . . .
Under the Comnenian dynasty (1081–1185), Byzantium staged a remarkable recovery. In 1090–91, the nomadic Pechenegs reached the walls of Constantinople, where Emperor Alexius I with the aid of the Kipchaks annihilated their army.[36] In response to a call for aid from Alexius, the First Crusade assembled at Constantinople in 1096, but declining to put itself under Byzantine command set out for Jerusalem on its own account.[37] John II built the monastery of the Pantocrator (Almighty) with a hospital for the poor of 50 beds.[38]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantinople
kwassa
(23,340 posts)I'm not sure why you are making so much of this. Why does it matter if religions were violent sooner or later?
And while Mohammed certainly commanded armies that were violent, this is not proof that he was personally violent, which is how you are describing him.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)This is important because the thread is about ISIS claiming that selling women who do not agree with ISIS's religious beliefs into slavery was OK by Mohammed. That is the relevance.
ISIS is conducting a religious war. We have the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion because at the time we were founded, religious wars, brutal religious wars in Europe were only maybe a century or two a way. Our Founding Fathers did not want to see our country engulfed by religious wars.
Years ago for a very brief time, I dated a Muslim. We were students. He gave me a copy of the Koran. I was raised a Methodist. My father, a minister, was a pacifist. The Gospel practically demands that Christians be pacifists. To be otherwise is to act in opposition to the Christian religion.
When I read the Koran, I was horrified at the militancy and war-mongering. It was so offensive that I could not read far beyond the first pages.
I belong to an organization that was begun by a Muslim. I am not opposed to Muslims or most aspects of the Muslim religion. I believe strongly in religious tolerance and separation of church and state.
My posts are directed at educating people about where ISIS is coming from. Constantine's war and his motto referring to the cross -- In this sign, I conquer -- are a deviation from the teachings of Jesus. They have caused enormous suffering in this world. But ISIS is not necessarily a deviation from the teachings of Mohammed.
If I am wrong about this, I would appreciate being shown historical facts that contradict my understanding of what Mohammed did and taught. Thanks.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)major Islamic scholars, in the previous article to which I already referred. What made the article interesting to me is that their accusations parallel the arguments made against fundamentalist interpretations of the Christian Bible; what is happening is a careful selection of passages out of context to support an extreme version of the religion.The ISIS version of Islam is not a mainstream version of Islam, even remotely correct, according to these scholars.
The Bible is quite violent, particularly the old Testament, but selective quotes about Jesus, such as his chasing the moneychangers out of the Temple sound like a violent reaction to what he saw as injustice.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Fundamentalist Christians, like ISIS cherry-pick. On those facts we agree (among others).
But Jesus chased the money-lenders from the temple. He did not kill them. At least we are not told that he killed anyone. The story of Jesus was handed down as oral history for the most part in the very early years, so we cannot know for sure whether the version or versions we have of it are entirely true. But we have no historical record that Jesus conquered anyone. We do have historical records as well as Mohammed's own writings of his military campaign against Mecca. That militant, violent history is a fundamental fact about the Muslim religion. In contrast, Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek.
Jesus was Jewish and the Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible. But Jesus, according to Christianity, came to refocus the religious beliefs of people away from the violence and hatred and narrow ethnicity of the Judaism of the time and to be inclusive of all people and to promote peace. That was not the message of Mohammed. That was the message or at least what survived of it of Jesus.
I am a Unitarian. I believe in religious tolerance. But let's be honest about the history of the religions.
Christianity became a violent religion when the Roman Empire, especially under Constantine, officially adopted it. They melded their militancy, their violence into it. The result was the Catholic Church of that time. The Catholic Church of our time is not that of Constantine.
You are right about the Old Testament. But the New Testament is the essential text of Christianity. There is no report of Jesus leading and army, no report of his conquering anyone, no report of his killing anyone. The story of the disciple Peter at Gethsemane trying to thwart the Romans' arrest of Jesus is illustrative of Jesus' teaching of pacifism.
There is no such story of a pacifist response by Mohammed. Sorry. But that is so.
Luke 22 tells the story of the arrest of Jesus. Apparently, the disciples had swords but Jesus did not have them use them. And interestingly, it is quite possible that Jesus was a Zealot, a rebel against the Romans. We do not know that for sure. But the teaching that survived his death is pacifist. Even at Gethsemane, the story does not recount violence on the part of Jesus and his disciples. Jesus did not go out to conquer with a sword. Mohammed did. That is a major difference.
Of course, generations of Christians were quite violent in conquering the world.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)They read from it in church services.
This part:
Jesus was Jewish and the Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible. But Jesus, according to Christianity, came to refocus the religious beliefs of people away from the violence and hatred and narrow ethnicity of the Judaism of the time and to be inclusive of all people and to promote peace. That was not the message of Mohammed. That was the message or at least what survived of it of Jesus.
I would say that this is your interpretation of Jesus, and his importance in the Bible. Many Christians include the Old Testament beliefs and attitudes in their beliefs along with the teachings of Jesus, and filter their attitude towards Jesus through some of the Old Testament teachings. Hence the judgementalism and prejudices against those that are not Christian.
I would say that there must be something important in Islam if 1.6 billion people choose to believe in it.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That does not change the fact that Mohammed led an army, and the Muslim religion relied on forced conversion from the very beginning while the early Christians, pre-Constantine, regardless of the accurate history of Jesus, the historical Jesus, rejected much that was in the Old Testament and were close to pacifists. That is the history.
Islam was a great improvement over the religions that were most common in the Midle East and much of the world prior to that time.
The story of Abraham is an important link between the three religions of the book: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And that story tells us that the people of those religions rejected the practice of the sacrifice of the human body to God as a form of worship. Unfortunately, as I see, the religions that follow that teaching of Abraham violate it when they wage war. This goes for ISIS as well as for the nations that call themselves Christian or Jewish. War is in my view a form of human sacrifice. This is especially true of wars claimed to be fought to further a religious viewpoint. Killing another person in order to accomplish conversion is to me the same as sacrificing that person's life for the purpose of proving to God something, I'm not sure what.
The history is not to be argued with unless you adopt the view that much is omitted or unknown about the story of Jesus. That is possible since his history and teachings were put into writing until after the Roman destruction of the temple, meaning the Romans' dealing with the Jewish insurrection. Note that the Acts of the Apostles and Letters in the New Testament were, I believe at least most of them written before the Gospels. Those Acts and Letters tell how the early Christians lived. They were persecuted. They were not fighting wars.
Mohammed fought with an army during his lifetime, and his followers continued to use violence to convert people. The Crusades did not occur until Islam had already spread partly through violence.
Here. You don't have to take my word for it.
Relationship with followers of Abrahamic religions
. . . . (Be sure to read this.)
The Jewish clans however kept aloof from Islam though in the course of time there were a few converts from them.[7] After his migration to Medina, Muhammad's attitude towards Christians and Jews changed. Norman Stillman states:[8]
, , , ,
During this fateful time, fraught with tension after the Hijra [migration to Medina], when Muhammad encountered contradiction, ridicule and rejection from the Jewish scholars in Medina, he came to adopt a radically more negative view of the people of the Book who had received earlier scriptures. This attitude was already evolving in the third Meccan period as the Prophet became more aware of the antipathy between Jews and Christians and the disagreements and strife amongst members of the same religion. The Qur'an at this time states that it will "relate [correctly] to the Children of Israel most of that about which they differ" (XXVII, 76).
In March 624, Muhammad led some three hundred warriors in a raid on a Meccan merchant caravan. The Muslims set an ambush for the Meccans at Badr.[15] Aware of the plan, the Meccan caravan eluded the Muslims. Meanwhile a force from Mecca was sent to protect the caravan. The force did not return home upon hearing that the caravan was safe. The battle of Badr began in March 624.[16] Though outnumbered more than three to one, the Muslims won the battle, killing at least forty-five Meccans and taking seventy prisoners for ransom; only fourteen Muslims died. They had also succeeded in killing many of the Meccan leaders, including Abu Jahl.[17] Muhammad himself did not fight, directing the battle from a nearby hut alongside Abu Bakr.[18] In the weeks following the battle, Meccans visited Medina in order to ransom captives from Badr. Many of these had belonged to wealthy families, and were likely ransomed for a considerable sum. Those captives who were not sufficiently influential or wealthy were usually freed without ransom. Muhammad's decision was that those prisoners who refused to end their persecution of Muslims and were wealthy but did not ransom themselves should be killed.[19][20] Muhammad ordered the immediate execution of two Quraysh men without entertaining offers for their release.[20] Both men, which included Uqba ibn Abu Mu'ayt, had personally attempted to kill Muhammad in Mecca.[19] The raiders had won much booty, and the battle helped to stabilize the Medinan community.[21] Muhammad and his followers saw in the victory a confirmation of their faith and a prime importance in the affairs of Medina. Those remaining pagans in Medina were very bitter about the advance of Islam. In particular Asma bint Marwan and Abu 'Afak had composed verses insulting some of the Muslims and thereby violated the Constitution of Medina to which they belonged. These two were assassinated and Muhammad did not disapprove of it. No one dared to take vengeance on them, and some of the members of the clan of Asma bint Marwan who had previously converted to Islam in secret, now professed openly. This marked an end to the overt opposition to Muhammad among the pagans in Medina.[22]
Muhammad expelled from Medina the Banu Qaynuqa, one of the three main Jewish tribes.[3] Jewish opposition "may well have been for political as well as religious reasons".[23] On religious grounds, the Jews were skeptical of the possibility of a non-Jewish prophet,[24] and also had concerns about possible incompatibilities between the Qur'an and their own scriptures.[24][25] The Qur'an's response regarding the possibility of a non-Jew being a prophet was that Abraham was not a Jew. The Qur'an also stated that it was "restoring the pure monotheism of Abraham which had been corrupted in various, clearly specified, ways by Jews and Christians".[24] According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Jews also began secretly to connive with Muhammad's enemies in Mecca to overthrow him."[26]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_in_Medina
Early Christians suffered sporadic persecution as the result of local pagan populations putting pressure on the imperial authorities to take action against the Christians in their midst, who were thought to bring misfortune by their refusal to honour the gods.[7][8] Persecution was on the rise in Asia Minor towards the end of the 1st century,[9] and in 111 AD the emperor Trajan issued regulations about the conduct of trials of Christians under the Roman governor of the area.[10] The first action taken against Christians by the order of an emperor occurred half a century earlier under Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD.[8]
During the Ante-Nicene period following the Apostolic Age, a great diversity of views emerged simultaneously with strong unifying characteristics lacking in the apostolic period. Part of the unifying trend was an increasingly harsh rejection of Judaism and Jewish practices. Early Christianity gradually grew apart from Judaism during the first two centuries and established itself as a predominantly gentile religion in the Roman Empire.
According to Will Durant, the Christian Church prevailed over paganism because it offered a much more attractive doctrine and because the church leaders addressed human needs better than their rivals.[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Christianity
If you can find a history that shows that Christians had a military organization prior to Constantine, please let me know. I have never heard or read of it. There is even some question as to when the use of the cross tp represent Jesus' martyrdom and death became popular among Christians.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)I hope that you understand that my posts are strictly about the history. I am not making a judgment of any kind about people who are Muslim today. Personally, I believe that if a person believes there is only one God, then that person must show respect for all religions because they all worship God. Most of the rest of it, the parts that cause disagreement and violence, is a question of semantics, culture and history which should not motivate any of us today to harm each other or to be intolerant of each other or even to distrust each other. When we are so intent upon proving that we are right in our manner of worship or our beliefs about details about God, then we are not worshiping God but are worshiping being right or being smarter than others, and that is in the Christian religion considered to be the sin of pride -- and therefore not very Christian.
tabasco
(22,974 posts)Hellooo!!!!
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Please elucidate.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Then demand your Jewish friends acknowledge, explain, and apologize for the obscene, hateful, genocidal shit found within.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)There is a bit, but Jesus did not command his disciples to go kill people in his name or in the name of God. And there is a lot of question as to what in the world Revelations has to do with Jesus' teachings and story. It is kind of an odd book that is tenuously related to the rest of the Bible. Fundamentalists love it, but . . .
I was not comparing the Old Testament to the Muslim religion.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Then God commits all the violence by sending unbelievers to burn in lakes of fire forever in hell.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)That would be a great improvement over what is happening in the Middle East today.
Let's leave revenge to God.
I'm all for that.
I wish the Bush administration had taken a page from the book that says you should forgive your enemies and that revenge is to be left up to God. And what book would that be?
The New Testament. That's what book.
I'm not particularly favoring Christianity as it exists today. But it has a lot of good ideas.
I am not opposed to Muslims. There are so many, many, many wonderful Muslims. The vast majority of Muslims are not violent. They are far from it.
But it is important to understand the religious foundation for ISIS's use of such terrible violence.
get the red out
(14,031 posts)WE aren't supposed to post history like that. Only against Christian groups.
denem
(11,045 posts)The word isn't combine, it is slave. Sex slavery.
Rhinodawg
(2,219 posts)Look what your dealing with.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)They've declared these women will birth new fighters for their world caliphate. This is how it's being done, as has been done in the past. Controlling the means of reproduction is now, and has always been, used in the past through the mass subjugation of women for the creation of empire:
After witnessing the impact of President Bush's reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule, Michelle Goldberg, journalist, author, and long-time critic of the Bush Administration's policies on sexual and reproductive health, decided that a book about the global battle for reproductive justice was long overdue. So she wrote The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World. [17]
The cover art depicting a woman holding the Earth on her shoulders is more than appropriate for this deeply-researched, historically-informed examination: fifty years worth of research about four continents has convinced Goldberg that women's oppression is at the crux of many of the world's most intractable challenges. She illustrates how US policies act as a catalyst for or an impediment to women's rights worldwide, and puts forth a convincing argument that women's liberation worldwide is key to solving some of our most daunting problems.
"Underlying diverse conflicts - demography, natural resources, human rights, and religious mores - is the question of who controls the means of reproduction," she writes. "Women's intimate lives have become inextricably tied to global forces."
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/03/23/controlling-means-reproduction-an-interview-with-michelle-goldberg/
That's from my thread:
The First Feminist President, Barack Obama
by Mandy Van Deven
March 23, 2009
On January 20th the first self-identified feminist was named President of the United States of America. Just two days after taking office, Barack Obama performed his first presidential act of solidarity with women around the world by repealing the Global Gag Rule. Established in 1984 by President Reagan, the Global Gag Rule denies aid to international groups "which perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning."
The Global Gag Rule has come to be seen as a litmus test of the current US President's stance on women's rights, though it is just one aspect of the complicated story of the impact of American reproductive rights policy in countries around the globe. [17]
Yes, we can expect nothing less from a group that's openly declared its intention to set up a caliphate or empire, based on what they demand. Many of these women and girls are already pregnant and have no place to go. Some have committed suicide to escape this life, but others have not since other members of their families are also captives who they want to protect, despite the end result.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)You can't defend the indefensible.
Love,
Brigid
Skittles
(171,717 posts)Funny, I have yet to hear this kind of idiocy in any church I have ever set foot in.
Skittles
(171,717 posts)being against birth control, pimping for republicans, homophobia, etc
Brigid
(17,621 posts)I know it's high fashion to bash any religion, no matter what it actually believes, on DU; but if that's what you want, just go to the Religion forum and have at it. But not here.
Skittles
(171,717 posts)sure
Brigid
(17,621 posts)This is exactly why I stay out of the Religion forum. Welcome to my ignore list.
GOOD!!!
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)not all religions are equally derp-worthy. Thnere is a huge difference between the misogynist evangelical church a few blocks from my house, and the Methodists downtown who just built an orphanage and school in rural Jamaica (which this atheist contributed to... yes, they will evangelize.... but they will also save lives and educate children.)
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)I don't know if it possible to retrain their minds so they could coexist with other people or animals.
rollin74
(2,301 posts)individuals or groups who believe child slavery is OK and are willing to fight to defend it
mwrguy
(3,245 posts)despite the name.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)samsingh
(18,426 posts)CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)That's the beauty of religion, everyone can have their own interpretation.
Your interpretation will be different from my interpretation.
That's why religion should be a private matter and not a basis for policy.
cosmicone
(11,014 posts)They are following it to the letter - just as those who follow the speed limit.
samsingh
(18,426 posts)there is no interpretation required when specific words are used to stone women to death.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)"Sharia law" is redundant. It's saying "law law" like a moron. There is no codified "sharia," no singular list of rules and regulations. Any law that draws some inspiration, even very loosely, from the Koran, is generally regarded as "sharia." And like any holy book, the Koran can be used to take any fucking approach to anything. Legalizing murder? Sure it's got that. Making murder in all forms utterly criminal? Yup it's got that too. Treat women with dignity, honor, and respect? it's in there. abuse women, instead? It's got that too. Live at peace with your neighbors? It's there. Chop them into little bits? It's there too.
Just like every other holy book you can care to think of.
And frankly, secular law tends to have the same sort of schizophrenia; just ask a black kid in Florida about whether murder is okay; it is if he's the victim, but it's not if he's the perpetrator.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)
samsingh
(18,426 posts)you have no regard then for the legalized murder then
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)candelista
(1,986 posts)Mainstream Muslims defend this passage by saying you gotta look at the context. Muhammad didn't mean ALL idolators. He just meant the ones who broke a treaty with him. And besides, if they repented of their idolatry, they would be forgiven! So what are you complaining about?
https://www.alislam.org/egazette/updates/why-does-the-quran-say-that-infidels-should-be-killed/
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)The Muslims i know have nothing to do with that thinking.
candelista
(1,986 posts)The Koran is kind of like the Old Testament when it comes to pure bloodlust.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)are calm, peaceful, and productive members of my community.
Remember that these Holy Books reflect the values of the peoples of that era. As a people our values evolve and improve.
candelista
(1,986 posts)Obviously modern Jews do not support the barbaric rules and practices of Leviticus.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)They have ZERO future.
Putting out stuff like this is actually helpful because we can go to the local governments and ask, "Are you REALLY okay with this? Seriously?"
sakabatou
(46,151 posts)Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)This thread is heaving, sweating proof of that.
Response to candelista (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Throd
(7,208 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)Wow. Some on DU are plumbing depths ever lower. Disgusted. 