Woman Beheaded at Work in Oklahoma

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<p>Even if it was, better planning for the reconstruction before going in and invading would have resulted in a shorter and more successful reconstruction.</p>

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<p>At the time, an open-ended (which would be seen as essentially permanent) American presence in Iraq was not something either the American or Iraqi people wanted (not forseeing the rise of Islamic State, which was partially as a result of poor governance by the Iraqi government), staying there was not a particularly attractive option. It is not like simply extending the American presence would automatically done anything more than delaying the reckoning of whether Iraq could produce politicians who could govern the country properly. Extending the American presence would also have meant far more American deaths than Islamic State has managed, and billions more of your tax dollars spent per year.</p>

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<p>What bigotry? Generalizations about Muslims, proclamations about whether any are “moderate”, and if so, was that because we enlightened Westerners are responsible for their enlightenment, and further proclamatiions about these socalled enlightened moderate Muslims’ responsibility to adequatly denounce to our satisfaction the actions of extremists (which are of course different from Christian extremists.) That bigotry.</p>

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There are plenty of moderate Muslims who have had little to no exposure to “Western culture.” Today and in the past 1400 years.</p>

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<p>I misread your first part…I realize now you wrote “us”, and I thought you wrote “US Muslims”…that is why I asked if their exposure (US folks) to western culture influenced their views. </p>

<p>Anyway…I’m not sure anyone of any faith was “moderate” 1400 years ago …lol </p>

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<p>However, even the Crusades are not a legitimate example of aggression for simple religious aggression sake. In fact, Christians had no such thing, as Holy Wars prior to the Crusades. And the Holy War concept, upon which the Crusades were founded, was adopted from Islam. The Crusades were essentially a reactionary war.</p>

<p>Specifically, the Crusades were a reaction to Islamic expansion into Christendom areas, and they (The Crusades) were the attempt to take back conquered lands. The Crusades were not hatched as a plan to take the lands of others that the Christians wanted or craved, but were devised to take back Christians lands, which had been conquered.</p>

<p>I will stop there, as not to derail the thread into a religious history discussion. People can research this quite easily on their own.</p>

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<p>I think some of the 7th grade history textbooks probably were full of bigotry too. It was written by Westerners. If you think of it that way. I mean who do we trust. No one but we do get to observe the actions.</p>

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<p>Sometimes what looks like bigotry is misinformation. I don’t think the discussion has degenerated into meanness, but there are misconceptions here. These can be opportunities for clarity. I am glad Muslims like Stressedoutt have come on here to educate the rest of us. </p>

<p>What ISIS is doing is horrific, and it is sending videos out for the whole world to see. Now, someone has beheaded someone in OK. People are already thinking about this. OK Muslims are scared of retaliation. Area non-Muslims are probably scared of them. It isn’t comfortable to talk about these kinds of feelings, but this needs to happen for people to understand each other. We can do this and not be mean. </p>

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<p>I think some of the figure heads like president or prime ministers are scared shirtless(for obvious reason) too. They are only president for 4-8 years but once they are out of office, they could become target. Angela Merkel is not participating in any bombing. She is too scared shirtless(for obvious reason). The guy that wrote the book Salmon Rushdie, he also was into hiding for a while.</p>

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<p>I am a Christian and I believe everyone on here is best off with Christ in his or her life, as his or her example. </p>

<p>That said, there are those crazies who claim Christianity as their religion and Jesus as their savior, and they shame us all, and Christianity, by their actions.</p>

<p>So I am willing to give Islam the same leeway: most are likely normal folks who believe what they believe but would never take it into the realm of homicide.</p>

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<p>Bigotry or brutal honesty? People have a right to be secure in their persons.</p>

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<p>No, that is not bigotry. That is trying to find a solution to what seems to be an almost intractable problem of violence, death, and a general cratering of certain civilizations. </p>

<p>Bigotry would be not accepting that non-violent Muslims existed and using the radicals aka terrorists, as the standard for all Muslims. And I do not see anyone doing that.</p>

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<p>Also some religions are morphed over time for different reasons. Like the Mormon church originally it was prophesized to have as many wives, the real reason I think is to spread the religion, nothing more. Then over time, when it’s moved to Utah, it was against the law to have multiple wives so the head church changed to make it illegal.</p>

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<p>Well if we are being brutally honest… as opposed to “PC nice” – then we ought to either spray a liquid form of Valium over the entire middle east (minus Israel), or get the good guys out of the middle east and nuke the bad guys who remain, incinerate them and turn the land to glass.</p>

<p>Since neither of those is palatable, we have to continue to take the high road.</p>

<p>I knew a Vietnam vet who told me, upon my bidding, that to “win” in Vietnam we could have just destroyed the Mekong Delta. I leave it to those older than I to comment on that, but I left with the impression that the united states has unparalleled power and that we could win every war we are in, if we wanted to.</p>

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<p>Even college professors and the media rarely ever say that it has been illegal for over 120+ years, so over 70% of people still think Mormons endorse this and practice it. (I had to add this tidbit to a couple profs statements, as they conveniently kept leaving that fact out.)</p>

<p>And this is the issue Islam is having and is the crux of its troubles. It has morphed, but the radicals want to go back to much earlier days. It is not like the radical Muslims are not following a playbook of some sort. They are trying to rebuild certain aspects from the past, for which there are well-defined and explained concepts and structures. It would be an error to say that radicals are just making stuff up; they are not. What they are doing, however, does not comport with the world of today, and that is the problem.</p>

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<p>Radical Muslims aren’t making things up, but they lack vital information. While there were wars that happened when Islam was first introduced, the history is very different from what they make it out to be. For moderate Muslims (excluding the nonreligious ones), Islam doesn’t morph and Islam shouldn’t morph. We believe that we should adapt while staying true to Islam and that Islam allows such adaptability. </p>

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<p>And this why they should be taken seriously. Radicals are not crazy, as people say; they do have a foundation, but that foundation is flawed, as you state, because of missing vital information. Unfortunately, even a flawed foundation can be extremely strong and very difficult to adjust and make right, as the world is painfully learning.</p>

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<p>Vets like to say stuff like that, because they were on the losing side in Vietnam. But war is about more than guns - if your point of view is so unpersuasive that you have to destroy the Mekong Delta (whatever exactly that consists of doing) to prevail, then you havn’t won. The objective is to convert the other side to your point of view, aided by force, not to exterminate them.</p>

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<p>The principals of a religion don’t have to morph- - how to treat others, rules about stealing, murder, charity- but ancient texts need to be considered in context of history. People mentioned the Crusades- however, the Crusades occurred when religion was in the hands of conquering leaders, applied in a time where warring civilizations were conquering other ones. We are not in the same situation today, especially in a country like the US that does not have an official government religion and isn’t out trying to conquer other civilizations. </p>

<p>To me, an aspect of religious fanaticism is when someone pulls a part of their religious text out of context and uses it as some kind of absolute proof. People have pointed to parts of the Old Testament as proof that religion is archaic without considering that years of rabbinical commentary have been written since, discussing the essence of the message in modern context. It’s a challenge to look at ancient texts as timeless in an evolving world. Inevitably, someone with a twisted mind will be attracted to parts of the texts that resonate with that twist. This is why many religions also have established governing organizations, standardized education for clergy, leaders like the Pope, and other ways to ensure some consistency of their teachings. The ideals of many religions are timeless. It’s people that often don’t live up to them. </p>

<p>I’m not very familiar with Islam, but to me it seems as if ISIS is practicing a chapter of 9th century Islam where conquering lands and establishing a Caliphate in a tribal and nomadic civilization was in process. It’s a paradox that they are using modern technology to spread their 9th century message. </p>

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<p>I think that people in general want to have a sense of power and purpose (both economic and social) in their lives. When people feel like they have very little of either they are more attracted to radical religions and other groups . . . everything to gain and nothing to lose. Both at home an abroad large groups of young men who don’t see a viable future can be a dangerous thing. Radical Islam seems to be the latest thing to give these young men (mostly) that feeling of agency, belonging an larger purpose. I don’t say this an an excuse at all. However, in the longer view RE both foreign and domestic policy it could be important to keep in mind. Not long ago it seemed that the “loser” prison population turned to either street gangs or Aryan Nations. Here in the Pacific Northwest where AN seems to be the tweeker group of choice, we have had a few horrific crimes committed by random hangers on. ISIS seems to have enough appeal to a similar already twisted and criminal population that it doesn’t seem far fetched that some would act out personally based on the MO that they see on the news because it makes their actions seem larger and more important. I worry less about these home grown cases than I do the large swaths of Africa, The Middle East and Central Asia that are under economic pressure and political destabilization. That’s what makes a war on ideas so hard to win. How can you possibly kill all the people who might join up? I don’t have an answer but I feel like, to borrow from Stargate SG-1 for a moment, it’s like battling the replicators. </p>

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<p>It’s a dilemma for modern societies to defend themselves from the attacks of barbarian fanatics. As much as we hope for reasonable discussion and negotiation, and other non-violent means, when dealing with a culture that upholds violence and uses it ruthlessly, civility doesn’t work. </p>

<p>There is no question that a reasonable country would prefer diplomatic negotiations, but when those don’t work, resorting to violence back can at least stop the attacks periodically. This is the dilemma that the US faces now. ISIS has murdered Americans and is taunting the world with war mongering videos. How do you respond to this and at least keep your sensibilities. Maybe you can’t. </p>

<p>I don’t want to debate the middle east situation- it would get this discussion shut down in an instance- but want to make the point that the same dilemma for the US is that which Israel faces- and harder since these types live next door to them. When Israel uses its power, the world becomes critical of the violence, and while we wish no country ever had to resort to it, there doesn’t seem to be a good solution to keeping one’s country free and the other side wants the whole world. Now, we too, the US, are left with airstrikes to at least halt ISIS for a while, but we can’t wipe that type of thing out. We will face both criticism and support for this from the rest of the world. </p>

<p>Until 9-11, and the recent OK incident, we could watch this battle unfold from the safety of our living rooms, and be as critical or supportive as we want. Our own wars over ideals were interpersonal verbal battles on social media. However, none of us know what we’d resort to if ( Heaven forbid), ISIS lived next door to us. If we wanted to keep our own houses, we might have tall fences and armed guards, and resort to firing back sometimes too, even if these were things we never hoped to have to do. Innocent Muslims might have tall fences and armed guards to protect themselves from being mistaken as ISIS by us- and they’d have to protect themselves from ISIS too. </p>

<p>ISIS is in our faces now, and we can’t do nothing, but we have to keep our senses too. If we want to keep safe, and protect a free world, we need to condemn and even harm ISIS, without causing too much harm to others. We can hate them, but if we hate all Muslims we become as bad as they are. How do we fight with barbarians without acting like barbarians too? How do we contend with the kind of anger, horror, and rage that ISIS incites in us without loosing our heads in all of this ( double entendre intended). These are challenges. I don’t have the answer. </p>

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<p>“Virtually every violent conflict in the world right now has Muslims on one side or both.”</p>

<p>Bullcrap… Is Putin a Muslim? </p>