possibly Hindus... we aren't sure.
cali (97,318 posts) http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026080413
Yes, religion is part of the reason for the Charlie Hebdo attacks
It just strikes me as absurd to claim that religion has nothing to do with it. Emperor's new clothes kind of denial. And I get that people of good will rightly don't want to see Muslims demonized. I know that the vast majority of Muslims repudiate this kind of violence and are just people trying to live their lives. From my perspective, hey [they?] don't have any obligation to police radicals within their religion. But the Charlie Hebdo attacks were about religion as well as other issues. The perpetrators made that quite clear. Religion isn't the sole reason, but it's surely in the mix.
If muslims don't have any obligation to police crazies to do shit in the name of their religion then I guess no one else does either.
el_bryanto (9,175 posts)
1. It is in the mix
But that does raise some follow up questions. Was religion a necessary motivator for the attacks (i.e. if there were no religion they wouldn't have happened)? Or was religion just part of a larger mix?
I don't hold with the theory that the attacks had nothing to do with religion (i think that people who argue that are in denial), but I also don't hold with the theory that the attacks are another indication that we need to abandon religion. And that later point is why some people on this board don't want to admit that religion played the role in these attacks that it clearly did (well that and also the concerns about Muslims as a minority here in the United States that often gets attacked in these situations.
Bryant
randys1 (5,052 posts)
29. Dont all religions insist their version of the god is the true one? There could be one that doesnt but the big ones do, therein lies the problem. Tribalism plus religion, very bad
Big Gay Randy isn't sure which god is better so he doesn't believe in any of them.
el_bryanto (9,175 posts)
43. I didn't dispute that religion played a roll in this tragedy. You seem to have an animus against Islam.
Bryant
this is an answer to a post that was hidden by a jury. We can guess it went along the lines that if muslims quit killing innocent people in the name of their religion people might stop calling them violent extremists... or Buddahists... or something...
Prophet 451 (9,708 posts)
81. Disagree, the link was a hate site
Oooooooooooooooooooooo....
m-lekktor (703 posts)
14. so you think these extremists don't really believe they are "avenging the prophet" when they shoot up a place? they are just a bunch of secular people using that as a pretext to randomly murder? why else would they choose those particular people, the cartoonists, if not for religious reasons? what would the point of all of that have been for murdering political cartoonists at a satire magazine?
hmm...
jeff47 (14,358 posts)
17. Minions vs bosses. To the minions, it's religion. Because they've been manipulated by their bosses via religion. To the bosses, it's power. In this particular case religion was the most convenient tool to use to gain power. But there's plenty of other tools.
Could be shape shifting magical jews.
jeff47 (14,358 posts)
62. You can fix it by not letting the strategy work.
No backlash, and the strategy doesn't work.
and it has zippo to do with the invasions. That's a remarkably awkward comparison.
9/11 happened because terrorists wanted more terrorists. They anticipated a very large backlash that they could exploit to create more terrorists.
And they got it. And there's a lot more terrorists than there used to be. We even eliminated a competitor and installed allies for them. It worked stunningly well.
Sure, Cheney and company were doing their own manipulating, but they're utterly incompetent. That's why we ended up with a world more like bin Laden wanted than what Cheney wants.
Uh.... they attacked us so we would atack them so they could get more people to attack us?
Pooka Fey (2,480 posts)
21. Muslim Extremism-Islamic Terrorism creates too much cognitive dissonence for liberals
A classic example is the Ben Affleck vs Sam Harris debate on Bill Maher last October. Everything I've seen on DU this weekend can be summed up in that debate.
Here is a snippet from Sam Harris's essay about that episode (emphasis mine)
After the show, a few things became clear about Affleck’s and Kristof’s views. Rather than trust poll results and the testimony of jihadists and Islamists, they trust the feeling that they get from the dozens of Muslims they have known personally. As a method of gauging Muslim opinion worldwide, this preference is obviously crazy. It is nevertheless understandable. On the basis of their life experiences, they believe that the success of a group like ISIS, despite its ability to recruit people by the thousands from free societies, says nothing about the role that Islamic doctrines play in inspiring global jihad. Rather, they imagine that ISIS is functioning like a bug light for psychopaths—attracting “disaffected young men†who would do terrible things to someone, somewhere, in any case. For some strange reason these disturbed individuals can’t resist an invitation to travel to a foreign desert for the privilege of decapitating journalists and aid workers. I await an entry in the DSM-VI that describes this troubling condition.
Contrary to what many liberals believe, those bad boys who are getting off the bus in Syria at this moment to join ISIS are not all psychopaths, nor are they simply depressed people who have gone to the desert to die. Most of them are profoundly motivated by their beliefs. Many surely feel like spiritual James Bonds, fighting a cosmic war against evil. After all, they are spreading the one true faith to the ends of the earth—or they will die trying, and be martyred, and then spend eternity in Paradise. Secular liberals seem unable to grasp how psychologically rewarding this worldview must be.
Link to Sam Harris complete essay: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself
Maedhros (4,609 posts)
79. Surely you and Behind the Aegis cannot be unaware of the kneejerk bigotry against Muslims than occurred in America after the 9/11 attacks? Muslims were cast as "the Other" by the propaganda machine and Americans were manipulated into fearing and hating Islam. Do you remember the idiot that went out and shot a Sikh convenience store clerk because he wore a turban, and was therefore a Muslim in the eyes of the drooling redneck who murdered him? Or the countless Republican nutjobs touting Islam as the "religion of hate", in an effort to get us to support endless war?
The reason Liberals are quick to point out the history of Christian and Israeli violence is to draw attention to the rank hypocrisy of right wing bigots who parrot ignorant talking points about Islam yet ignore transgressions by Christians and the Israeli state. For example, nobody in the traditional media or Congress calls Christianity a "religion of hate" because of what Timothy McVey, Eric Rudolph or Scott Roeder have done.
The issue isn't religious violence, per se - every major religion on Earth has a shameful past with regard to violence and suffering. Liberals object to the demonization of Muslims as a group in service of pro-war propaganda, and would prefer that all religiously-motivated violence be treated with the same seriousness. Perhaps the Government and media really don't care about innocents being killed unless it serves the greater geopolitical purpose?
Yeah... other than those two examples I really don't remember a huge anti-muslim backlash... ever... despite repeated attackes on the country in the country...
uhnope (2,128 posts)
23. So you agree with the terrorists? You still don't get it. it's about people who pick up guns and shoot people for any excuse. Not about cartoons, as some of the (empty-headed factions of the) progressive left think, or about religion, as some RWs want to make it.
To say it's about religion is to take the terrorists' excuses seriously. That's absurd.
uh... ok... that lost me completely.
uhnope (2,128 posts)
44. ok. well let me see if I can rephrase,
Last edited Tue Jan 13, 2015, 04:43 PM - Edit history (1)
so you can at least get my point, which goes to the heart of the matter.
Some say it's about the cartoons. That this shooting happened because Charlie Hebdon was overly provocative, bordering at times on racist, etc.
Point one: that kind of thinking is whacked. To even bring up the cartoons in this way in the aftermath of the shooting is grossly blind to the concept of freedom of expression.
Next: some say it's about religion. That this shooting happened because of (a) religion.
Point two, about the same as point one: that kind of thinking is whacked. To say this happened because of a religion is to accept the shooter's own justification. To even bring up the faults of a giant, multifaceted religion (the overwhelming majority of followers of which do not use it to justify terrorism) in the context of this shooting and in its aftermath, is grossly blind to the concept of freedom of religion.
WTF?
By saying these guys were muslim and carried out the attack because they were muslim and believed that their religion ordered them to carry out these attacks is wrong because... what again?
uhnope (2,128 posts)
54. so how far do you go in agreeing with the terrorists?
that the cartoons were worthy of mass murder?
that killing in the name of religion is justified?
Sorry, no--we don't accept these justifications. We reject them.
What?
So, by saying that he killers believed they were doing what their religion requires them to do we support the killers? somehow? WHAT!?
uhnope (2,128 posts)
58. wait--what? I'm starting to think you're arguing for argument's sake. As we see from post #52, you DO reject them, also.
I am just trying to figure out WTF you are talking about!
uhnope (2,128 posts)
33. see post #31
I hope you can get it
it's about any people at all who pick up guns and shoot people, no matter what the excuse is.
Desert805 (175 posts)
30. What "Christian Holy Wars" have been waged in the last century? The amount of MUSLIMS killed by violence inspired by Islam in the past century is STAGGERING.
Oh, no....
redgreenandblue (1,291 posts)
37. Iraq. From a certain perspective the entire cold war, including Vietnam. World War 2 was a "holy war" from the German perspective. Christianity arguably also had an influence on the military ethos during WW1
Oh, for ****'s face...
Pooka Fey (2,480 posts)
49. WWII was not a "holy war" from the German perspective - what a whopper Nazism was a POLITICAL ideology, not religious. Their belief that there was such a thing as an "Aryan" race destined to rule the world was ideological, not religious. There is zero theology in Nazism, yes we all know there was a heavy reliance on occult symbols to propagate the message. Symbols do not equal theology. Your remark about WWI is so far out in left field that I don't even know where to begin. Why don't flesh that out, if you can?
redgreenandblue (1,291 posts)
63. Re: WW1. I wrote "arguable had an influence". As cali pointed out above, there is a relationship between power and religion, and the churches most certainly were powerful in the early 1900s. As for WW2: The nazis recruited mainly from a catholic base, and that Hitler claimed to have been inspired by Christian mythology is well known. I forgot one: The war against Native Americans. "Manifest destiny" and all that.
That's right. The NAZIs were catholic.
Prophet 451 (9,708 posts)
80. If it wasn't religion, it would be something else The mindset of extremists is such that, absent the cartoon, they would have found something or someone else to attack. These types are so bubbling over with rage (at their lack of status, at society, at modernity) that they're just looking for something to take their anger out on
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