Numbers
Bookworm on May 20 2008 at 4:50 pm | Filed under: Islam, Jihad, Muslim violence
At this particular moment — 4:47 p.m., PST — the counter in my sidebar from The Religion of Peace records that terrorists acting in Islam’s name have committed precisely 11111 acts of terror since 9/11. That’s quite a number, both in terms of that string of ones, and in terms of what all those ones stand for.
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Bookworm, the death rate from islamic terrorism is running at 4.5 per day, according to the website you cite, whereas the murder rate in the US is running at 45 per day. There are about 1B Muslims in the world but only 300M Americans, so it would seem that Americans are more dangerous than Muslims since less than one-third the people are committing ten times the killing. Now, I know my last assertion is incorrect because the 4.5 per day stat excludes a lot of other homicides perpetrated by Muslims, but if you look at comparative homicide rates across countries, you will find that Muslims do appear more peaceful(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate); from this data you will see that only one Islamic country, Pakistan, has a higher murder rate than the US and many are much lower. That you single this form of killing out suggests that you believe murder carried out for religious reasons is worse than murder carried out for other reasons. Why is this the case? BTW, I trust that it’s not anti-Muslim sentiments that cause you to focus more on this Islamic terrorist statistic than on other homicides…just wondering what the reason is.
Bookworm, the death rate from islamic terrorism is running at 4.5 per day, according to the website you cite, whereas the murder rate in the US is running at 45 per day.
It’s a great job covering up the deaths by honor killing and stoning in Iran, EC, don’t you think?
Muslims, but if you look at comparative homicide rates across countries, you will find that Muslims do appear more peaceful
That’s cause Muslims don’t report killings as murderers and don’t report honor killings at all. Obviously in a more just and fair country like the United States, you will always have better record keeping. Just as in a just and fair country like the US, you will actually find people that care about murder statistics.
Why is this the case?
Something to do with the fact that assassinations of politicians and lynchings of freed slaves, although a minority statistically, is so impactful.
The Muslim component does matter, Eccechone. The thing about Muslim violence is that it’s a common denominator around the world, with the Muslims struggling to take control of whichever society they call home. This is different from garden variety murder or crimes of passion. This is war, fought on a local scale, in countries around the world, with a variety of nations on one side and, consistently, Muslims on the other side: in Russia, in Bali, in Indonesia, in Holland, in France, in England, in Iraq, in Israel, in America, etc. So yes, the Muslim numbers matter.
Also, I think Y has good points about who is doing the counting. Repressive societies often do have lower crime rates, because it’s the government that commits the murderously violent acts, not the people. I’m willing to bet that, if you don’t count government sanctioned murders and concentration camps, and if you’re not worried about perpetual famine and the risk of being arrested at any moment for thought crimes, North Korea is one of the world’s safest places.
Bookworm, sorry but I’m not buying that argument at all. You must believe by that definition that the killing of a Christian Druse politician in Lebanon by a Muslim is a more heinous crime than the execution of an innocent person in Darfur. And your rationale is a little strange. You say that Islamic killings happen all over the world, but what is the significance of that? Murder occurs in every country anyway. You say that Muslims are trying to take over every country they live in, but most Muslims are actually peaceful citizens of the countries in which they live. You reject my stats without any proof of your own (still waiting on many stats to support unproven positions on this site, which is disappointing), which maybe only highlights a prejudice and predisposition that even numbers cannot dispel. You say that Y gives a good reason–dictatorships suppress stats–but the authoritarian regimes in Latin America have higher murder rates and you provide no evidence that they have less incentive to understate homicide stats. You say our fight against Islam is a war, but this is just semantics; and, anyway, you do not have a counter tracking the number of deaths in Darfur (also a war, where the killing rate at times has exceeded that of the Holocaust) nor one for the hundreds of thousands killed just last year from famine in North Korea, another member of the axis of evil. I am not defending Islamic extremism, but you offer no compelling reason to worry more about this than other types of murder. Practically speaking, I for one am concerned about terrorism but believe that my child is more likely to be shot by a gangbanger in LA than blown up by a terrorist bomb. And as for a moral stance, I find it hard to say that I should mourn the death of that Druse politician more than an innocent civilian in Darfur. Just one man’s opinion…but a man without an axe to grind vis-a-vis adherents to the Islamic faith.
Y, if America is such a just and fair country, then why do police departments throughout the land regularly dispose of DNA evidence that could be used to exonerate innocent people wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murder? Not very just or fair… I do think that the US has a better legal system than any other country in the world, but let’s not get carried away here and only view this country with rose-colored lenses.
echeccone -
Bookworm is saying nothing of the sort. Murder is still murder.
Random murder and murder based on crimes of passion can and do happen anywhere, unless, of course, you are in countries like Syria, NK, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other similar countries that have draconian punishment for even minor crimes (thus curbing the likelihood of someone committing murder) and regimes that do not hesitate to dispose of thousands and even millions of their own citizens. You know that these sorts of governments aren’t worried about keeping their statistics accurate so your demand for Bookworm to produce numbers on these is ludicrous. And please - the regimes you refer to in Latin America are not authoritarian compared to these other countries. And, when there were authoritarian regimes in Latin America, they functioned like all other good authoritarian regimes - they dispensed with keeping accurate statistics, hence the significant discrepancies you see in the number of people who are thought to have been murdered during Argentina’s Dirty War.
It is very much a concern when a certain group of people consistently is being killed and/or a certain group of people consistently is doing the killing. More heinous? I don’t know. Certainly the loved ones left behind of any murder are traumatized regardless. But it behooves the rest of us to pay particular attention to this second type of murder, particularly when those doing the murder take every opportunity to announce their intentions of killing any infidel anywhere at any time even if it kills them simply because we don’t believe in their god. It’s like an early warning signal - they are telling us that they are going to do it again. That isn’t something you regularly see out of people who conduct random or crime of passion murders. And because we have been warned of their intentions, than it is incumbent upon those of us left behind to sit up, take notice, and then take action to prevent them from carrying out their plans. If you do not take action, you are actively involved in allowing more innocents to die.
Finally, you say that most Muslims are actually peaceful citizens of the countries in which they live. I agree and I would bet most people on this site would agree. The problem, echeccone, is that while the overwhelming majority of them do not participate in murder, they are absolutely silent when their co-religionists do commit murder and say that they did so and will do it again because it pleases Allah. I can count on two hands the number of Muslims who have gone public (either under their own name or under a pseudonym) with their unmitigated criticisms of Muslims who commit murder in the name of Allah since September 11th. The rest either say something along the lines of “Well, it’s bad but it’s because of . . . . .” and then come up with fifteen excuses on why it isn’t the Muslims’ fault or they choose to remain silent. And I use the word “choose” deliberately – millions of Muslims have immigrated to countries that protect free speech. And yet these Muslims who live in these countries choose to remain silent.
I don’t know about you, echeccone, but whenever someone I am associated with does or says something unacceptable, I am not silent about it. I don’t find excuses for it. And that is the concern. Way too many of these peaceful Muslims in so many countries around the world will not stand up and hold their fellow Muslims accountable for their actions. Only a fool would not stop and wonder if it is because they don’t perhaps agree with the motives of the murderers.
Deana
echeccone says
“Bookworm, the death rate from islamic terrorism is running at 4.5 per day, according to the website you cite, whereas the murder rate in the US is running at 45 per day.”
This form of argument always irritates me.
I have seen comparisons between the American murder rate with the # of car accident deaths.
Clearly car accident deaths are a worse threat to us than murder, simply because the rate is higher.
Or deaths by eating hamburgers. The deaths by clogged arteries are way more of a threat than murder, simply because the rate is higher.
They do the same thing with smoking. They make the same argument about 9-11. You could do the same thing with the numbers of child molestations, or with any other number.
The argument is comparing apples and oranges.
All I can say is, if four people in your neighborhood die from clogged arteries, no one worries or walks around in fear. Show me two unsolved murders of people shot during evening walks down the street, or two women raped at night in their homes, or two children abducted and their bodies later found in ditches… and you will understand the difference, echeccone.
Some deaths are simply not to be accepted, and the reason is that they are so threatening to our way of life. Others are just an effect OF our way of life and we accept that and basically ignore it. What’s so hard to understand about that? And as our culture changes over time, we do slowly put pressure on eliminating causes of deaths that formerly we ignored (ie smoking, drunk driving, etc.) All of this is perfectly normal.
Remember what the Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, did to the Maryland/Virginia area in 2002. Only ten people died. Yet the threat was enough to plunge millions of people into chaos.
As to your specific argument: The vast majority of American murders are not an attempt to impose tyranny on the world, nor to deliberately provoke widespread fear and hysteria. The vast majority of Islamic terrorist acts ARE attempts to impose tyranny and to deliberately create fear and hysteria. That’s the difference, and it is a huge difference.
Now EC is bringing in Latin American countries when his covering up for Sharia and honor killings in Arabia didn’t work out according to spec?
How many countries and “stats” is he going to bring in in order to change the subject that EC is wrong?
Y, if America is such a just and fair country, then why do police departments throughout the land regularly dispose of DNA evidence that could be used to exonerate innocent people wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murder?
That’s like asking if war is so useful in solving human problems, why then does it often create the human problems of famine and death. In the real world, paradoxes do exist and things do not go according to your desires to treat events as mutually exclusive phenomenon. You could also waste time by mentioning how if Total War is so effective at ending wars in the shortest amount of time, why then did WWI and WWII end only after American involvement.
There are many things you can say or write that is totally irrelevant to the subject. Doesn’t mean we need to go through the list, however.
To get back to the real subjcet.
I am not defending Islamic extremism, but you offer no compelling reason to worry more about this than other types of murder. Practically speaking, I for one am concerned about terrorism but believe that my child is more likely to be shot by a gangbanger in LA than blown up by a terrorist bomb.
Slavery and liberty are opposites and both can exist at the same time. Terrorism can either decrease because slavery has increased or terrorism can decrease because liberty has increased. Thus your entire premise that you can calculate the “seriousness” of terrorism by quoting murder rates and statistics, is entirely irrelevant to the subject of how well terrorism is doing to create slavery and destroy liberty.
You must believe by that definition that the killing of a Christian Druse politician in Lebanon by a Muslim is a more heinous crime than the execution of an innocent person in Darfur.
There’s an entire nation behind the assassination of a Christian Druze politician in Lebanon. And that nation’s usually called Iran, by way of their arm, Hizbollah.
How many people support and protect the executioners in Darfur? Africans and local African Union governments and leaders, primarily indirectly. Iran however directly sponsors and protects and orders these assassinations.
So in your mind, EC, we have a nation that has the resources as well as the policy for toppling entire countries being less of a danger than random or directed killings in Darfur.
And of course, you’re not really making a rational decision about HIzbollah vis a vis Darfur, you’re just talking your local political situation because that’s where the parochialism lies.
Practically speaking, I for one am concerned about terrorism but believe that my child is more likely to be shot by a gangbanger in LA than blown up by a terrorist bomb. And as for a moral stance, I find it hard to say that I should mourn the death of that Druse politician more than an innocent civilian in Darfur. Just one man’s opinion…but a man without an axe to grind vis-a-vis adherents to the Islamic faith.
Anyone more concerned about gang bangers in LA than the Islamic war on humanity, really has an axe to grind vis-a-vis the members of LA gangs.
Using that as a justification for why you don’t accept Book’s arguments, is rather non-sensical.
The difference between organized crime and petty gang lords and their fiefs are by more than an order of magnitude. Yet you give not a care in the world for the many people HIzbollah and Iran are both capable of killing as well as already have killed, in comparison to the extremely limited ability of local warlords and tribes in Darfur to inflict damage on their own people. In your mind’s eye, EC, you will not mourn the additional deaths caused by your refusal to take serious the power of global terrorism, because you will have convinced yourself that your little local parochial situation has as many deaths as terrorism can muster.
That’s rather delusional, based upon trying to read global strategic initiatives like your daily newspaper on local crime.
Mike - Excellent post!
And Y - “Anyone more concerned about gang bangers in LA than the Islamic war on humanity, really has an axe to grind vis-a-vis the members of LA gangs.” Touche! That just made me laugh out loud!
Deana
Echeccone, your argument comes across as classic befuddled moral relativism. By your argument, we should not have responded to the bombing of Pearl Harbor - after all, more people were murdered in the United States that year than lost their lives in Pearl Harbor, right? The point is that terrorist acts are acts of war and must be stopped before they metasticize. I can assure you that the “murder rate”of New York jumped significantly on Sept. 11, 2001 - does that merit a response? Would your opinion change if a shipboard nuclear device was detonated in Long Beach harbor? Just wondering.
I’ve learned form living 18 years abroad that most Americans and Europeans have a very difficult time understanding that most other people don’t think like us. “We” tend to look around at our comfortable lives and conclude that it is only rational that others want the same for themselves - not just in material terms but in value terms as well. Non-Westernn peoples, especially Muslims, have very different values and priorities. As Deana so eloquently observes, the silence of vast majority of Muslims with regard to the terrorist acts of their co-religionists has been deafening.
If you really want to know how and why Islam, thinks and acts the way it does, READ THE BLOODY KORAN (words chosen very carefully here) and have enough respect for Muslims to recognize that they take their religion very seriously and most take it very literally. Also, look at those nations and regions that border the world of Islam (West Africa, Nigeria, the Sahel, India, Eurabia, Thailand, Philippines- peaceful? Hardly. More like a gathering storm. Hint - it isn’t Buddhists and Presbyterians that stoke the fires of conflict.
“if America is such a just and fair country, then why do police departments throughout the land regularly dispose of DNA evidence that could be used to exonerate innocent people wrongly convicted and imprisoned for murder?” Such a sweeping statement! Please provide statistics. You portray this as the rule rather than the exception to be condemned. Not to mention that it is totally non sequitur to your argument.
Deana, thanks for your comments. I am still waiting for someone to show me with evidence that Latin American countries have systematically more reliable data than Muslim countries. You assume that the data is understated but offer no proof, so I cannot rely upon that argument at all. I agree that more Muslims should denounce religiously motivated killing even if it is done in the name of Allah (although more did than you give credit to), but I am no more surprised that Muslims are not doing so than I am at the surprising lack of outrage by Catholics over the child molestation issue, or the relative lack of outrage in the US (versus, say, in Europe) over Abu Graib. The point is that it is always easier to see the mote in your neighbor’s eye than the beam in your own. I am glad you are not that kind of person, but most are, in my experience.
Mike, those kinds of arguments that you describe are very irritating, I agree. And although you are likely a conservative Republican, I am sure you were equally annoyed when Rumsfeld used such a tact to talk down the civilian deaths in Iraq by comparing them to the number of people killed in traffic accidents in the US. Having said that, I am not comparing terrorist killings to heart disease. I am comparing murders to murders and trying to show the loss of life from malicious human acts that are 100% preventable. Afterall, I can stop smoking or eating hamburgers and still die of a heart attack, so the difference is one being completely preventable and the other one being more like an act of God. You raise a good point about fear and intent to create fear, which is another key difference. However, the fear caused by gang related shootings in LA is a greater concern for parents trying to raise kids and send them to schools than any Islamic terrorist activity occurring half a world away.
I tried to highlight two different dimensions through which I view the issue: one is pragmatic, the other is moral. The pragmatic one simply asks what is the greater risk, to which the answer is gang bangers shooting my kid rather than some Iranian terrorist blowing him up. I know that Y seems to think that this fear is based solely on my alleged axe to grind with gangmembers (glad to know at least one conservative here is soft on crime), but he misses the very real difference in the odds of these two things happening–a common problem amongst people that view the world through ideology rather than numbers. The proof is simple: when I moved my family closer to downtown LA, my insurance rates (life and property) went up because I am closer to gang areas; whereas, my life and property rates did not go up after 9/11 even though everyone is now more aware of terrorism. These rates are based upon fairly objective market forces and actuarial estimates rather than biased predispositions (and, yes, axes to grind) by individuals. So when I speculate that Bookworm is more concerned, on a practical level, about terrorist activity than homicide rates because of an irrational focus on Islam, this is because the statistical chance of being murdered by another American is much higher (and should instill more concern/fear) than the chance of being attacked by a terrorist. Unless there is something else going on here, which leads to the second dimension…
…and that dimension is the moral one, and here I don’t have a good answer because there are no numbers to differentiate. I personally don’t see a difference between the kid in Harlem shot in a drive-by shooting, the woman machete’d to death in Darfur, the North Korean farmer who starved to death last winter, and the Druse politician blown up because he’s a Christian. Bookworm has a different view, but should articulate it more clearly because I don’t view one set of these crimes as being “garden variety” while the case involving promotion of Islam as being particularly reprehensible. Maybe someone could enlighten me on which theory of justice or worldview holds religious killings in greater contempt than other varieties.
Danny, I am making quite the opposite of a moral relativism argument, since I am saying those murders are equivalent, while Bookworm is trying to make the relatively worse claim. Also, you raise a great point about war being a key difference here. And you should know that I subscribe to a Real Politik brand of foreign policy, so of course I’d say we should respond aggressively if those 11,111 were acts of war against the US. The problem is, that most of them are not, from I saw on the website. They were attacks on non-US citizens in other countries around the world. So I do not understand the analogy to Pearl Harbor. If the murder of every Christian or Jew by a Muslim anywhere in the world constituted an act of war, we’d be fighting in a heck of a lot of countries. The “war” on terror then starts to sound like war on drugs or war on poverty.
You brought up the Koran…the text does have some really unfortunate parts in it, but so does the Christian and Jewish bible. I remember reading a passage from the Torah during a friend’s son’s Bar Mitvah; the adjacent passage called on Jews to kill other tribes (e.g., Hittites), and then the passage had a footnote which stated that this was meant to be figurative not literal, even though the Israelites did extinguish the Hittite tribe. My point is that you can find these references in all religious books and, while we can debate the significance of frequence and the like, the reality is that most people in all three Abrahamic religions are smart enough to ignore the more unfortunate portions of the text. I don’t think the text is giving rise to the killing, since Jews have the same book but are no longer engaged in tribal warfare for a host of other reasons.
Finally, you asked about the DNA evidence. I will have to go look up those sources for you since I don’t have them, but I can say that the Innocence Project has extensively documented hundreds of innocent people sentenced to capital punishment or life in prison who were exonerated by DNA evidence; they also have documented that the majority of police departments are still destroying this evidence at the end of initial trial, despite this erroneous convictions. There was a story on NPR about this within the last month. BTW, I agree that this bit was a non-sequitur to my argument, but it was intended as a direct response to Y’s statement that the US has more accurate crime data because the US is a fair and just nation. I also believe that the US is on average a fair and just nation relative to most others, but I am also comfortable criticizing it (and not just the part of it managed by the other party).
echeccone -
I am not Catholic but the Catholics I know were simply appalled at the sexual abuse revelations. Honestly, how many Catholics do you know turned around and said, “Well, sexual abuse isn’t great but the kids deserved it because . . . .?” And maybe you aven’t talked to many Catholics or visited many Catholic blogs but it was a very big topic of conversation and the cause of much self-reflection.
And to compare murder with a solider putting women’s panties on a prisoner’s head or making prisoner’s form naked pyramids is . . . well, words fail me. When Abu Ghraib came out, I was so furious with those soldiers. They knew better. I never bought the argument that because they were military police, they hadn’t had proper training. My personal belief was that those soldiers didn’t get nearly long enough sentences for the behavior and for the damage they did to their fellow soldiers and the U.S. Many people I know were extremely uncomfortable with what they saw coming out of Abu Ghraib and wanted to see the soldiers punished - but these people were equally troubled at the claim that what happened at Abu Ghraib was somehow equivalent to Nazi-run concentration camps and so on. They are not equivalent and to claim that, or to suggest that Abu Ghraib deserved further “outrage” is to deny the truly awful experiences of those who died in the Holocaust or other simliar concentration camps in other countries around the world.
echeccone - Who are all of these Muslims who have publicly (on TV, Internet, or print) denounced their fellow Muslims for murdering people who do not believe in their God without reservation, excuses, or efforts to explain their behavior?
Deana
Deana, I wasn’t saying murder is the equivalent of child rape or sexual humiliation. Just that people tend to see faults in others more readily than in themselves. I’m glad that you were outraged by Abu Graib and the Catholic Church’s failings, because over on Fox News I heard both O’Reilly and Hannity defending the military and the Church. Hannity–and other conservatives like him–argued that we weren’t doing anything as bad as Saddam had done in those same prisons, therefore deflecting the moral reprehenisibility of the actions. O’Reilly similarly argued that the Church had done so many great things for the world that it wasn’t right to attack it as those who were outraged had done. As a Catholic, I quit giving money as a result, but O’Reilly said that he wouldn’t. What incentive was there to force a change in behavior if members didn’t withold funds? I know that Fox News doesn’t reflect the views of all conservatives, but they do mirror many of them. I would have had much more faith in the integrity of these two pundits had they actually shown some outrage at the time. I’m glad to hear that you did, which gives me faith that conservatives are not completely blinded by a flag or cross.
You asked for Muslim denunciations of religious based terror, so I leave you with the first couple of pages of listing I found in a simple Google search. I’m sure that there are many more to be found.
http://www.freemuslims.org/
http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/terror.htm
http://www.islamfortoday.com/terrorism.htm
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/muslim_voices_against_extremism_and_terrorism_2/
http://www.m-a-t.org/
http://www.islam-democracy.org/terrorism_statement.asp
http://www.petitiononline.com/No2Jihad/petition.html
http://www.reformislam.org/polls/
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/03/massive-muslim-protest-in-bahrain.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=N3FIT27sjWAC&dq=muslims+against+islamic+terrorism&pg=PP1&ots=SPCly0Cwqz&source=citation&sig=q3KOZU8rD2I6-JcXc1BN0RQG0i8&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fq%3Dmuslims%2Bagainst%2Bislamic%2Bterrorism%26hl%3Den&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1&cad=bottom-3results
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/Muslims.html
http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/040430/muslim.shtml
http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.com/mat1.htm
http://www.twocircles.net/2008apr12/indian_muslims_against_terrorism.html
http://www.rayhawk.com/classics/matusa/islam.html
http://www.muhajabah.com/otherscondemn.php
http://www.islamfortoday.com/fundamnetalism.htm
http://www.answeringprophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Terrorism_Not_Islam.php
I _am_ a Catholic, and yes, we - my family and I - have been appalled at the sexual abuse situation and how it has been handled. Two follow-ups though - first, the sexual abuse has been described as “pedophilia”, when in reality more than 80% of the cases were actually homosexual encounters with pubescent young men. Secondly, the LA school district has had some 80 cases of sexual abuse of minors by teachers in the last few years - the silence from the press concerning the matter, considering the blast of the Catholic abuse cases from 20+ years ago has been deafening. Neither of these excuses wrongful acts, but the attitude toward improprieties by homosexuals and a secular organization is instructive. I suppose one could consider it a compliment that the Catholic Church is held to a higher standard…maybe.
Deana, no one is equating those other crimes to murder or genocide. I’m merely saying that it’s easy to see other’s faults rather than one’s own.
And I’m glad that you were outraged about Abu Graib and the pedophilia in the Catholic Church, because I saw many conservatives, including two famous conservative pundits on Fox News (Hannity and O’Reilly), defend the military and the Church and deflect the criticism. I believe the deflection on Abu Graib was that Saddam had done far worse, which is not exactly the standard we should hold ourselves to. And on the Church, there was more criticism on Fox over Bill Maher’s observation (that if it was Disney and its CEO rather than the Church and the Pope that the CEO would have been fired or jailed for criminal negligence and the company would have faced product boycotts) than over the actual Church misdeeds. Seriously, they spent at least a week on it after the comment. Hannity and O’Reilly would have retained more than an ounce of credibility had they reacted as you had.
By the way, I am a Catholic and was horrified at how muted the response to the outrage was. Donations to the Church were down less than 20%–not nearly as much as it should have been. And what demonstrations or marches occurred to protest the event? If you had to go to a blog to find the protest, then it ranked about as high as complaints against cable television customer service. And let’s be honest. If the (secular humanist) public schools had been caught doing this, I don’t think that Hannity and O’Reilly could have found enough airtime to condemn it.
On your question regarding the peaceful Muslims (where is this endangered species of Islam??), I tried to post a long (two dozen) list of websites to visit with Muslim groups unequivocally denouncing terrorism, articles on groups doing so, etc. For some reason, it did not attach the post and didn’t save it either. If you google muslims against islamic terrorism, you will find scores of different websites with the examples you are looking for. It took me all of 30 seconds to find it, so you should have no problems finding ample examples.
Suek, I have never heard anyone show that the incidence of sexual abuse in the LA Unified School district or public schools in general is worse than that of the Catholic Church. If you have evidence to support, please share. I would love to see it. Also, if you are suggesting that 80% of the cases involved consent, that would be news; otherwise, it makes little difference to me whether my son is molested at age 8 or age 15…
Echeccone - you’ve posted so much that it really isn’t possible to reply but to a few of your points:
Regarding Abu Ghraib you say, “Hannity–and other conservatives like him–argued that we weren’t doing anything as bad as Saddam had done in those same prisons, therefore deflecting the moral reprehenisibility of the actions.” First of all, Abu Ghraib was an abuse by soldiers that was under investigation by the Army when the Army’s legal report was leaked to the media - the U.S. ARMY was already solving the problem before it became a press issue.. Secondly, how can you possibly compare what happened in Abu Ghraib, in which Baathist thugs were humiliated (true), to what Saddam did, including feeding prisoners through wood chippers feet first, loosing dogs on young children to eat them alive in front of their imprisoned parents, gassing whole villages. This is the moral confusion which I referenced in an earlier post.
Re. the Koran: Much of the old Testament is violent as it refers to a much more violent age. People and societies have evolved considerably since then and Judaic interpretations of those violent clauses (”an eye for an eye,” for e.g.) take care to put them into a historical context. However, I challenge you to find ANY part of the Christian Bible (i.e., New Testament) that advocates violence against others. That being said, the issue of the Koran is that it is not interpretative - it is (to Muslims) the literal, written word of God and therefore not open to interpretation. Those aren’t “unfortunate” passages in the Koran to which you refer, they are inviolable written clauses in a religious AND political constitution for Muslims. So, in that sense, the Koran represents a value-system that is a step back of more-than 2,000 years of human and societal evolution. Don’t get me wrong - I am NOT suggesting that all Muslims buy into this.
I’ve checked some of your links to the Islamic sites, by the way. What nonsense - you have to be careful in how you interpret what they say and not take it at face value…especially when dealing with CAIR. I especially liked the Islamic Supreme Council site referring to Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols (the Oklahama bombers) as fundamentalist “Christian terrorists”. No they weren’t - not only were they were non-religious, as far as we know, but they were in fact very sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism (Terry Nichols was married to a Muslim Philippina). When Muslims talk about wanting peace, you need to ask what they mean by “peace” (in Koranic terms, ‘peace” is defined when the whole world submits to Islam). Understand that in Islam, “taqiyeh” (the practice of overtly lying to infidels), is condoned if it furthers the cause. So, you need to dig deeper than public statements. Fortunately, there is evidence that the tide of Muslim opinion is turning against Islamic fundamentalism, but you can credit U.S. policies with regard to Afghanistan, Iraq and the global war against Islamic fundamentalism with a good part of that changing opinion.
echeccone -
I did take a look at some of your links. Several of the links have one or two sentence quotes from Muslims claim (among other things) that:
- jihad does not mean war;
- Muslims who committed terrorist acts in the name of Islam weren’t really Muslims (and I have to say, that claim is always my favorite!)
- “Muslims throughout their history never allowed the killing of civilians, even in the midst of wars such as the Crusades. There is no respected Islamic scholar here in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else in the Muslim world who would support such a fatwa.” (http://www.awesomelibrary.org/Muslims.html).
Really echeccone? Have you ever listened to some of the sermons coming out of the mosques over there? They are available at MEMRI (http://www.memri.org/) if you are ever curious as to what these Islamic scholars are preaching.
echeccone - On several of these sites (see your own links - http://www.awesomelibrary.org/Muslims-Rage.html, http://www.islamfortoday.com/muslimstoday.htm, and http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/response.htm),
there are, again, one and two sentence critiques of terrorism followed by statements such as:
“Although terrorism cannot be justified, many Fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East are angry with the United States. Even though extremely few Fundamentalist Muslims engage in terrorism, the anger of many Muslims needs to be understood by Americans to avoid other types of conflicts in the future.”
Then there are many articles – some teach Muslims how to respond to racial bias in the media. Others are geared toward the Western audience to teach us about the prevalence of “misconceptions” Americans have of Muslims, the undervaluing of Muslim scholars, the hate crimes that have been committed against Muslims since 9/11, why the West is “so afraid” of the cultural richness of Islam, and (I hope you are all sitting down) how Islam is a model for the treatment of minorities.
In short, your “list” is not sufficient. They are mostly full of cherry-picked statements by Muslims who claim to be against terrorism. But these claims are surrounded by the usual excuses that because the U.S. and the West did (fill-in-the-blank), Muslims feel rage, which can only lead to more terrorism. So again, we are to blame.
echeccone, when I asked for a list of Muslims who are against terrorism, I was thinking along the lines of Dr. Wafa-al-Sultan, Ayaan Hirsa Ali, Ibn Warraq, Amil Imani, Dr. Fouad Ajami, and so forth. With these people, it does not require combing through years and years of their statements to find a sentence or two that appears to make them be against terrorism because they so forcefully renounce terrorism with every fiber of their being. In practically every single piece they write or appearance they make on TV, they address this issue. More importantly, they don’t attempt to blame America and the West for the failings that are abundantly apparent in the Muslim world and are due to the repressive governments and religious beliefs.
Look - In my heart, I really want to believe that the vast majority of Muslims are against Muslim terrorism with no excuses. When I asked you for a list earlier today, I recalled reading an article approximately a year ago about a middle-aged Muslim man who lived in Nebraska (I think). The man had written an opinion piece that was published in his local paper in which he professed his love for his religion and his fellow Muslims but that their continued support of radicalism and their refusal to acknowledge the serious problems caused by Muslims concerned him greatly. And guess what happened to him? His own mosque refused to let him attend services and he was receiving serious threats by other Muslims, simply because he chose to speak about this issue. This was in America.
Few Muslims are standing up and unequivocally condemning the killing that is done under the name of Islam. This can only be for two reasons: they are either deathly afraid of their fellow Muslims (which, given the experience of the man I described above, is understandable) or they more or less support (or at least excuse) the murder of people who do not believe in their God.
Deana
P.S. I apologize for the length of this post but this is just unbelievable. In another one of echeccone’s links that is supposed to prove that there are just gobs of Muslims out there who consistently speak out against Muslim terrorism without excuses, I found this little gem:
“The extremism in very small pockets of Muslim community is caused by:
The oppression of Muslims and their counties by the Western world in 1700, 1800 and early 1900 in the name of imperialism, colonialism and communism.
The continuation of this oppression by the West in the name of secularism and capitalism . . .”
The gist of the article is that Muslims are unfairly painted by the Western media so they have organized themselves to achieve the following objectives (among others):
- To create awareness about the teachings of Qur’an and the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) regarding the roles and responsibilities of an individual, a government and a group of Muslims in Muslim and non-Muslim countries.
- To use the justice system against those media channels (radio, TV and newspapers etc..) which propagate false information against Islam and Muslims
- To use justice system against those media channels (radio, TV and newspapers etc.) which identify a terrorist based upon his / her religion. http://www.islamicsupremecouncil.com/mat1.htm
Whew!! Such breathless, unmitigated condemnation of terrorism and fundamentalism is almost too much to take in one sitting!!
echeccone - I have attempted to post a response but for some reason, it refuses to appear above. The system seems to think I’m attempting to duplicate my comment. With all of my technological bad luck, I’ve probably managed to break the blog!
I’ll try and repost my comment tomorrow.
Deana
I don’t think it’s too hard to understand why there is more reason to be concerned about murder carried out for religious reasons than there is for murder carried out for other reasons.
Why do we treat crimes of passion differently than cold-blooded murder? Why are we more aggressive about halting organized crime than we are isolated crimes?
One basic reason is the difference in consequences. One is a greater threat to the liberty (life) of members of society than the other. A man who murders his wife in a fit of rage is less of a threat to the rest of society than a man who makes his living out of murder..in each case the victim is dead - but which person is more of a threat to the rest of us?
A murdering convience store robber has a goal, and that goal is to gain the product of some other persons’ labor without a witness, depriving a person of his life.
Islamic terrorism has a goal, too, and that goal involves depriving millions of people of their liberty.
To treat each death by terrorism as an isolated murder case is blindly suicidal. I find it hard to believe that a thinking person can’t predict the potential differences in the outcome for all of us.
Akismet will spam your comment if it has more than one link and especially if the second link is a blogspot address.
That means you won’t even see the “Awaiting Moderation” message on your comment, it will just disappear. If you try to repost it again, wordpress will refuse it because every word will match with another comment in the spam queue.
Either Book will get it out of spam because she has been notified by wordpress, or you need to add another symbol to your comment, if you really want to try reposting it.
An extra x or . at the end should work.
Re: the LA public school district sexual abuse
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/dave-pierre/2008/05/19/not-catholic-church-national-media-mum-huge-l-school-sex-abuse-scandal
Re: >>Also, if you are suggesting that 80% of the cases involved consent, that would be news; otherwise, it makes little difference to me whether my son is molested at age 8 or age 15…>>
I don’t know if consent was a factor. Legally, it wouldn’t be relevant. Below 18, there is no ability to give legal consent. However, there _is_ a difference between pubescent and pre-pubescent sexual molestation, I think. When you say that I’m suggesting that consent was involved, you’re being offensive. If a man rapes a woman, _he_ is obviously consenting, she is not. If there are young men who were molested, there is a presumption that they were not consenting. Whether they were or not is not the issue. I _am_ suggesting, however, that there is a definite possibility that homosexuality is involved.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26940
Don’t even bother with the “homophobe” nonsense. I’ll just assume the usual spiel. Next thing you’ll be telling us that pedophiles are born that way too, and have a right to their pleasure just like anybody else. I’m definitely a NAMBLA phobe.
Deana, thanks for the great response. You are correct that many Muslims rightly or wrongly blame the west in general and the US in particular for their problems. But they are not terrorists nor are they justifying terrorist action. I thought that was the issue in question here. If anyone thinks that anything but a tiny fraction of the one billion adherents to Islam advocate terrorism, then I remain in strong disagreement obviously.
The idea that you would judge 1 billion Muslims on the basis of the few crazy fundamentalist mullahs is harsh, in my view. I mean, McCain just dropped Rev. Hagee’s endorsement because this crazy religious leader said that God willed the Holocaust so that the Jews could form Israel. And he is still allowed to preach in public and draws massive crowds. Shouldn’t Israeli’s judge Americans as all anti-semitic for not denouncing him in masses? Haven’t you posted a blog yet condemning this? Have you “stood up and unequivocally condemned” Hagee for his insane view of the Holocaust? C’mon. How many sentences or blogs on a list will be “sufficient” to you?
Also, I thought it strange that you disliked the idea that Muslims might be taught to respond to racial bias, especially after 9/11. You mentioned the story about the Muslim in Nebraska that you read about, so let me tell you about my colleague at work in LA. He is a Muslim Indian who is educated at the top business school in the US and now making 7 figures in an investment firm. He took a flight to Seattle for a meeting with Microsoft’s top executives and hired a taxi from the airport to MSFT’s headquarters. After the meeting, he came out of the building to find three police cars and a fire truck outside. The policeman, visibly shaking with anger and with a gun drawn, told him to drop his briefcase and walk slowly toward the squad car. Evidently, the taxi driver had claimed that my colleague had left strange white powder in the back of the taxi and clearly was planning to bomb the software giant’s headquarters. It took two hours to calm down law enforcement and resolve the situation. My colleague has five Wall Street analysts and a dozen buy-side investors as witnesses to this story. Meanwhile, my colleagues wife stopped wearing a birkha in public for two years after 9/11 to avoid being viciously, verbally abused by ignorant Americans in one of its most liberal cities. If Muslims sought to counter a perception of fear and ignorance that could threaten their ethnic group, based upon my limited knowledge of just a few Muslims in my community, I would not fault them for it, as you seem to have done. If my colleague were angry at Americans over this, I would not fault him and hope you wouldn’t either. I hate it when people attack someone for “blaming America” because some behavior occuring in America truly are blameworthy. Not all or even most of them, but some of them. We’re secure enough in our country to be able to admit that without a grudge.
Finally, while we’re talking about denouncing terrorism, should we ask the Israelis how they could elect a leader who made the comment? “…Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and responsible for the deaths of Count Folke Bernadotte, UN mediator and British official Lord Moyne. Shamir,would later would become prime minister of Israel, declared that ‘neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.’” I do not judge the millions of Israeli’s on the basis of their respected former prime minister’s comments, so I will not judge the hundreds of millions of Muslims by similar comments.
Danny, I’m glad that we can credit our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Muslims increasingly rejecting Islamic fundamentalism, rather than their own thoughtfulness on the issue. I don’t know what evidence you point to in support of your argument, but if you’d like to draw that conclusion, then have at it. I have no statistics on the number of Islamic fundamentalists before and after those wars were started to even be able to judge the trends that you describe. Would love to see the data if you have it.
suek, thanks for the article link. It definitely is scary the number of cases in LAUSD. Whether its more than the Church is unclear from your article. If you have data to show it, I’d be on your side. The other comments about consent and the significance of pre- or post-puberty I don’t really understand. I was not trying to offend, however. Just to understand.
Tap, thanks for the insights. I think you raise a great point about needing to understand the intent, which is why we treat acts of war differently than acts of crime. I am trying to be a “thinking person” but differ from you not in my inability to think but in my differing opinion on whether terrorism is really about “them hating us because we’re free” and whether a terrorist poses a greater threat to my personal well-being or my family’s than a homicidal criminal living nearby. If you can show me logically that Islamic terrorists really pose a greater threat to me than a local criminal, then I’m open to change my thinking mind…
Also, there is perhaps an irony in your argument about consequences. If the goal of terrorism is depriving people of liberty by fear, then by assigning greater meaning and tragedy to the terror motivated deaths, then aren’t you doing what the terrorists want? Aren’t I frustrating them more by keeping the threat in perspective, which allowed me to board one of the first airplanes flying to NYC after 9/11? Just a thought.
echeccone -
I don’t have time to respond at length as I am neck deep with school and work. But briefly:
I think Hagee is certifiably bonkers and I find it baffling that people listen to him. I am confident I am far from being alone in this. But here is the difference: it would not be difficult at all to find millions upon millions of Americans who would not hesitate to say the same the exact same thing I did about Hagee if asked - they would be willing to say it in public or put it in writing and not think twice about it. Muslims rarely do that. You rarely ever see Muslims in America or Europe get on television and proudly state that they think a particular imam or mullah or what have you is nuts. There is just silence. Resounding silence.
Another big difference? Hagee is not advocating killing. He has some wacky ideas but no one’s life is at stake. Not so with the fundamentalist Muslims. Do you honestly believe that if Hagee (who I had never heard of before a couple of weeks ago) or some major Christian pastor started advocating the murder of Jews that Americans would be silent?
Also, echeccone, you are smart enought to know that my point about Muslims being taught to respond to racial bias after 9/11 was not that I think it is wrong for people to be aware of racial bias. On the contrary. But anyone reading my post would understand that my point was that your links showed example after example of single, stand alone statements that appear to make oodles of Muslims be adamantly against Muslim terrorism when, in fact, those statements on your links are drowning in claims that it is the Muslims who are really the victims, that it is the Americans and the West who don’t understand them, that it is the Americans and the West that are to blame, and so on.
I have been clear in what I was requesting from you - I wanted to know how many Muslims you could think of who had condemned Muslim terrorism without reserve. It’s hard to come up with examples, isn’t it?
Finally, with regard to your comment on Israel - if the only problem we had with Muslims was that 65 years ago, one leader from one of their countries made a statement in support of terrorism, I think we would all be able to agree that our problem with the Muslims really isn’t much of a problem, no?
Deana
Thanks for the response, Echeccone.
To respond to your point, I certainly can’t show you that Islamic terrorists pose a greater Immediate personal threat to you than a local criminal, particularly if your live and work in an area with high crime rates. Maybe that is why you have chosen to juxtapose terrorism with criminal activity. Or maybe it is just that for you, local crime is of more interest than international interests like Islamic terrorism - I don’t know.
Perhaps you would be more interested in a crime-blog? I’m certainly not suggesting that you shouldn’t be here commenting on this blog. I find your perspective quite interesting. I’m just wondering why you suggest that the focus on this blog should change from being primarily about politics to crime. I believe someone pointed out earlier in this thread something to the effect that you could just as easily argue that Bookworm should focus on traffic fatalities or heart disease. Would that not be as valid an argument as the one you are making?
I, for one, am glad those things are not the focus of this blog. I doubt I would bother reading it very often if it were. It’s just as interesting for me. *shrug*
My point is this: Long term, Islamic terrorism poses a greater threat to our society than local criminals. This is supposing that those of us who would prefer tough sanctions on criminals continue to have some influence in the way criminals are handled in this country. I don’t think to many of the people you are debating this issue with on this website are bleeding heart types.
In response to your suggestion that I think Islamic terrorism is about “them hating us because we are free”, I don’t think you’ll find that I said that if you check my post.
Finally you finished with this paragraph:
“Also, there is perhaps an irony in your argument about consequences. If the goal of terrorism is depriving people of liberty by fear, then by assigning greater meaning and tragedy to the terror motivated deaths, then aren’t you doing what the terrorists want? Aren’t I frustrating them more by keeping the threat in perspective, which allowed me to board one of the first airplanes flying to NYC after 9/11? Just a thought.”
First, fear is one way they hope to deprive people of freedom, but hardly the only way. Violent subjugation goes a long way as well. But you greatly misunderstand me if you think I live my life deathly afraid I might die in a terrorist attack at any moment and therefore deprive myself of the freedom to actively enjoy my life. I am fairly certain you are more than bright enough to acknowledge that there is a difference between handing terrorist the power to cause you to live your life cowering in fear and proactively opposing their efforts.
Are you frustrating them by keeping the threat in perspective? Only if your perspective is correct.
>>It definitely is scary the number of cases in LAUSD. Whether its more than the Church is unclear from your article.>>
You completely miss the point. The question is not whether it’s “more” or “less” than the incidents within the Church. The point is that the media pursued the abuse of priests with blaring headlines, even when the cases were 40 years old, but scarcely cover the same sort of cases in the public school system when it’s only within the last few years. Church affiliation is voluntary, public school attendance is mandatory.
You don’t see the difference?
I don’t think to many of the people you are debating this issue with on this website are bleeding heart types.
If we are, however, we are mostly the ones that cause other people’s hearts to bleed out.
I’m certainly not suggesting that you shouldn’t be here commenting on this blog.
Good job heading off what would be EC’s normal argument for his logic once you actually follow that logic to its ultimate conclusion.
Who is that EC moron who thinks that common criminals are the same as terrorists? I agree with Ymarsakar that we should give them both bloody hearts, but especially those Islamic terrorists. Nothing is a bigger threat to us than those Muslims.
>>Who is that EC moron>>
What an opening!
Options abound!
He could be one of the internet jihadis just playing “uproar”..
or
He could be a young liberal who is precocious..
or
He could be an anarchist trying to sow confusion and doubt…
There must be other options, but that’s all I can think of at the moment…
The weekend is nigh!
Wow. DG seems to imply that all Muslims are Islamic terrorists and all suek can do is count the ways that I am a moron.
Nothing is a bigger threat to us than those Muslims.
Except the fact that people can actually become as brain dead and brainwashed as you, dg.
It’s not just an acquired trait from birth, you know.
Wow. DG seems to imply that all Muslims are Islamic terrorists and all suek can do is count the ways that I am a moron.
That depends upon whether my gamble pays out.
Good one, Y.
Which of my options indicates _anything_ about level of intelligence?
If you want to impute “moron” to yourself, be my guest. I did not do so.
My options indicate that you’re not an intellectually honest person seeking to discuss issues of the day, you’re a troublemaker who seeks to disrupt - for whatever reason. Your motives are your own, whatever they are.
How does it feel to be a man of mystery, echeccone?
Hee-hee-hee!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Deana
By the way, ec…what percentage of Germans do you think were Nazis who felt that killing Jews was a good thing?
Historical hierarchies via aristocracy have shown that as little as 10% of a population can control the rest pretty easily.
The Germans would have made the best ally for America in the 20th and 21st century, had not the Kaiser Wilhelm, an aristocrat, fauked up his country by entering a war with England, who were our enemies, and France, who was England’s historical enemy.
WWI decided the future military alliances for the rest of the century. America got France and our enemies got Germany. That is totally not in our favor.
suek, please name my intellectual dishonesty and I’ll leave this site immediately. I don’t seek to disrupt people but only their fallacious ideas, both those in others’ heads and those in my own. Your identification of rampant abuse in public schools, if on the same or comparable level of frequency as the Catholic Church, would be an example of the latter. Please share the data, so you can set me straight.
>>I don’t seek to disrupt people but only their fallacious ideas,…Your identification of rampant abuse in public schools, if on the same or comparable level of frequency as the Catholic Church, would be an example of the latter.>>
Ok..right there.
<>
You may have misunderstood the first time, but I think not the second.
I said: “The point is that the media pursued the abuse of priests with blaring headlines, even when the cases were 40 years old, but scarcely cover the same sort of cases in the public school system when it’s only within the last few years.”
The point - once again - is not whether the public schools have an equal or higher incidence of sexual abuse. The point is that the media coverage is persecutorial towards the Catholic Church, and lassez faire towards the same abuse in the public schools. Your efforts to drill towards “prove that there is the same or more” instead of recognizing that _media coverage_ is the issue being discussed indicates to me that you might have the same mindset as the media has.
You are intellectually dishonest. You come here with an unalterable mindset and would wish to enlighten us poor ignorant conservatives. Your own mind is closed to any ideas other than those already set in place. Now, to a certain extent, that’s a normal, natural and expected thing. We adhere to ideas because we think they’re correct. If they’re correct, though, they can stand a bit of debate. You do not debate. You do not discuss. You expound. You lecture. You gift us with the benefit of your extensive knowledge. Your mind is unready, unwilling, perhaps unable to accept any challenges to the basic tenets which you have decided are to your benefit.
It’s all about _you_.
In other words, you are an ass.
Thanks for that. Actually, I think you would agree that if the incidence of child abuse is 100x higher in the Catholic Church than in public schools, then it would be ok for the level of coverage to be at least 100x higher, correct? Then when I say that I’d like to see data showing that public school abuse (per teacher) is roughly comparable to Catholic Church abuse (per clergy), it is to show that the greater coverage of the Church abuse (and I think Michelle Malking cited Google hits showing 20 or 30 percent more stories on Church vs. school abuse, but you’ll have to look that up) is not in proportion to the greater incidence. This is not a dishonest argument, but a totally rational one. Tell me where I am wrong.
As I have said, if you show the data, I will concede the point. I promise. I am totally open to the possibility that the media has an anti-Catholic Church bias. But I need to see data before I change my mind. You say that you adhere to ideas that you think are correct, but you need to prove that they are correct. Asserting an opinion as fact does not make it so. But marshalling logic and evidence increases the probability that it is. So, please, drop the name-calling and actually show me the data. I actually think that you may be right about this, but am waiting for you to demonstrate it.
An interesting side note. A group of graduate students showed that all of the presidential candidates in the primary received equal air time and equally positive and negative coverage from left and right-leaning outlets, using statistical analysis, except for one: Ron Paul, who was systematically under covered. There were many theories–that could not be proven–as to why it occurred but it could not be denied that there wasn’t a media bias. You could probably find a similar study conducted on the Church vs. school abuse data. I hope that helps.
As I have said, if you show the data, I will concede the point.
As I mentioned before, people with different philosophies will see the same exact data yet conclude mutually exclusive conclusions.
>>show me the data.>>
Have you seen the sexual abuse by priest cases covered by the media? I think the answer is “yes”, and would be “yes” by anyone not living in a cave for the last 10 years or so.
Have you seen the sexual abuse by employees in the LA School districe covered by the media in the last 5 years? You’ve already said you haven’t. I think most people would agree with you. Even most people within the LA school district - wouldn’t you think that _every_ parent in the LA school district should be aware of this?
If they are not, why not?
My guess would be that if an actual coverup has not occurred within the district, at the very least, silence has been the policy, and the press has not pursued it with the same vigor as they used in chasing the Priest abuse cases.
Your guess would be…??
Your guess would be…??
His guess would be that your deductive logic can’t be used by him.
Y…
No doubt you’re correct. He said that “…if you show the data, I will concede the point”. He said ” name my intellectual dishonesty and I’ll leave this site immediately”.
Obviously, it’s contrary to his interest - which I’m assuming, is to enlighten us neanderthals - to either concede a point, or leave the site immediately, so he’ll yield to neither.
So far, I gather that he is:
Anti-Iraq war, though he has not said why.
Anti concern about islamic intentions
Anti anything less than acceptance of homosexality as a fully normal and socially acceptable lifestyle.
What have I missed?
suek, a person who tries to lay the blame of using ad hominem arguments on another, after they had just finished using an actual one against Book, can always distort logic to their benefit if it so requires.
Heh. That sounds like the old “when you point your finger at someone else, there are 4 pointing back at you!”…!