Professional Soldiers ® - View Single Post

Ismail K. · 06-28-2010, 15:08

...there is so much here that I would love to respond to but push ups beckon. Besides, I should probably play my opinions fairly close to the chest, there is interesting and engaging debate, and there is getting on a soapbox and shooting your mouth off and tainting people's impression of you before you even get to basic. The later is a bad idea I feel.

So I would just like to highlight some assumptions which have frequently gone unreferenced and occasionally unchallenged:

1) Islam intrinsically promotes a polarized ideology of us vs them, dividing the world between the unconquered non-Muslim peoples (dar al harb, the house of war) and the Muslims (dar al islam, the house of submission/peace)

2) Attacks against civilians are generally condoned among the populace of the middle east and/or larger Islamic world.

3) Muslims as a whole have a noticeably higher contribution toward violence as a whole.

4) Jews, Christians and others are capable of reforming their religion and moving away for some the archaic and primitive practices, where as Muslims are not.

5) The groups that we are at war with in Iraq and Afghanistan are global organizations, with global, ideological concerns prioritized over local, political ones.

6) Muslims in the US have been slow to condemn terrorism, and Muslims abroad have not made any significant effort to fight it.

7) Islam's role in history has been solely to limit individual freedom, retard scientific advancement, degrade women, and heap violence and persecution on religious minorities.

This is an issue that is near and dear to me, and so I have done some independent research, and I have no good empirical reason to think that any of these are true, and several reasons to think that a few of them are not. This is coupled with some fairly sloppy thinking, and occasional blatant dishonesty from some people on both sides of the debate, and so I have discovered that I have to really dig deep and verify everything independently. And on top of that, there are a lot of very nebulous terms that are thrown around recklessly ("western civilization" comes immediately to mind). All in all it is a great exercise in skepticism and critical thinking!

I'm gonna shut my yap now.

06-28-2010, 15:08	#1135
Ismail K. SF Candidate Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Portland, OR Posts: 5	So here is the problem with a first post on a 76 page thread... ...there is so much here that I would love to respond to but push ups beckon. Besides, I should probably play my opinions fairly close to the chest, there is interesting and engaging debate, and there is getting on a soapbox and shooting your mouth off and tainting people's impression of you before you even get to basic. The later is a bad idea I feel. So I would just like to highlight some assumptions which have frequently gone unreferenced and occasionally unchallenged: 1) Islam intrinsically promotes a polarized ideology of us vs them, dividing the world between the unconquered non-Muslim peoples (dar al harb, the house of war) and the Muslims (dar al islam, the house of submission/peace) 2) Attacks against civilians are generally condoned among the populace of the middle east and/or larger Islamic world. 3) Muslims as a whole have a noticeably higher contribution toward violence as a whole. 4) Jews, Christians and others are capable of reforming their religion and moving away for some the archaic and primitive practices, where as Muslims are not. 5) The groups that we are at war with in Iraq and Afghanistan are global organizations, with global, ideological concerns prioritized over local, political ones. 6) Muslims in the US have been slow to condemn terrorism, and Muslims abroad have not made any significant effort to fight it. 7) Islam's role in history has been solely to limit individual freedom, retard scientific advancement, degrade women, and heap violence and persecution on religious minorities. This is an issue that is near and dear to me, and so I have done some independent research, and I have no good empirical reason to think that any of these are true, and several reasons to think that a few of them are not. This is coupled with some fairly sloppy thinking, and occasional blatant dishonesty from some people on both sides of the debate, and so I have discovered that I have to really dig deep and verify everything independently. And on top of that, there are a lot of very nebulous terms that are thrown around recklessly ("western civilization" comes immediately to mind). All in all it is a great exercise in skepticism and critical thinking! I'm gonna shut my yap now.
Ismail K. is offline