Fussgaenger

"...how do you know 40% of British Muslims want infidels heads cut off; folks burned to death in cages; girls not allowed to go to school; slavery to be put in practice; men to have up to five wives; adulterers to be stoned to death; thieves' hands cut off" - fuss - where did you get that from this article."

I don't know how many British Muslims support ALL that stuff. The poll didn't ask all that - just about Shariah. The 40% obviously support hacking off hands of thieves - that's pure Shariah, PalenQ. But the fact is that 40% support using Shariah law in Britain (and it's also a fact that ISIS supports Shariah as well.)

So... 40% of British Muslims think death is the right response for apostasy (Shariah) and for criticism of the Quran or Mohammed (Shariah,) that a woman's word in court is worth half a man's word (Shariah,) etc., etc. And Isis is showing up everywhere to offer them just that and more. They may disagree with Isis on what METHOD of death should be used on homosexuals or whether they should be lashed 100 times or stoned, I don't know. But why split hairs?

So your point is what? We should welcome Shariah-supporting Muslims in Britain and elsewhere? We should assume they'll hate ISIS like the rest of us, even though they want our current justice system turned on its head, even though they share the same desire for Shariah?

fuzzbucket

PalenQ - those tickets would be one-way.
The line forms to the left...I've got my checkbook ready.

PalenQ

But the fact is that 40% support using Shariah law in Britain (and it's also a fact that ISIS supports Shariah as well.)>

can't equate how any Muslims interpret Sharia law - like the Qu'aran and Bible lots of possible interpretations.

60% of British Muslims do not support Sharia Law - lots of good Muslims in that 60% and even in 40% whose definition of Sharia Law I think falls far short of ISIL's.

anyway I'll be ordering up several thousand plane tickets - shortly from you.

fuzzbucket

Sorry PQ - those tickets are only meant for the verbal terrorists who frequent this forum.

meuniere

I wonder what % of Jews support the Beth Din Courts in the UK
http://www.familylawweek.co.uk/site.aspx?i=ed151092

Neither the Jewish or Muslim courts impinge on my civil liberties unless I subscribe.
The Quran is not open to interpretation for it is the word of God. "The koran is the last testament in a series of divine revelations from God (Allah in Arabic). It consists of the unaltered and direct words of God, which were revealed through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammadp, the final prophet of Islam, more than 1400 years ago."

Hadiths are open to interpretation. "Hadith
haˈdiːθ/
noun
plural noun: Hadiths
a collection of traditions containing sayings of the prophet Muhammad which, with accounts of his daily practice (the Sunna), constitute the major source of guidance for Muslims apart from the Koran.
any of the sayings from the Hadith.

sandralist

Actually, New York City suffered a situation where local prosecutors -- who were elected, not appointed -- quietly looked the other way and didn't pursue some criminal cases in Orthodox neighbourhoods in favour of letting the rabbis handle it as an "internal" matter -- not unlike many child molestation cases within the Catholic church.

The relationship of ISIS to Islam reminds me of the Ku Klux Klan's relationship to Christianity. KKK burns Christian crosses as their "signature" of terror and intimidation, and has an elaborate "theology" that attempts to prove that the natural order of God's plan is white Christian supremacy. These people were as brutal as ISIS. One of the Paris attackers made a video of himself gleefully dragging around corpses tied to the back of his car. KKK did it for years, along with burning people alive, lynchings, rapes, etc. And KKK had plenty of tacit support from the local white community. Often they were, under those sheets, the bankers, judges, store owners, and their philosophy got reinforcement in local churches that preached segregation and saw "miscegenation" as abomination against God's will.

US has actually never gotten rid of the Klan and its terrorising variants -- and there have been several recent shootings (including in the South Carolina church, which was mass murder, and just yesterday in Minnesota) that were Klan-propaganda inspired. But people readily see that the majority of Christians, even white Christians, in the US, are against the KKK, even if they themselves are racists of some sort. I'm puzzled why people have such a hard time grasping that ISIS claims Islam as its "truth", but the majority of Muslims recoil from what ISIS is, even if many are angry at the amount of high-tech killing the West wreaking upon innocent Muslim people the world over (I'm angry about it too).

kerouac

Excellent analogy.

pariswat

Indeed, excellent post Sandra, will use the anaolgy, as I hadn't thought of it myself.

fuzzbucket

It's called rhetoric - anything can be (and is) manipulated with great success, especially given a charismatic figurehead preaching to a crowd who doesn't have enough money, food, job opportunities, health care, education, housing, you-name-it.

Government, religion - all are rotten with people twisting words to get what they want. There are so many disaffected people that groups grow at warp speed - but not many of these individuals can do more than just parrot slogans.

People who do have enough of whatever they need to live a good life are much less inclined to pay attention to people spouting the word of (insert your favorite spirit guide). Unless they suffer a psychotic break or something else bad happens to them. Then they go off and start their own groups, or just try blowing up everyone else.

bilboburgler

good point Sandra.

Since many of the bombers in Paris appear to have been former drug dealers and or users, poverty may not be an issue but the conditions that took them that way is.

fuzzbucket

The main reason people turn to dealing drugs is for the money.
Some dope fiends sell to support their habit, but they don't last very long, for one reason or another. It's very rare for a big-time drug dealer to abuse his product.

The reason the drug dealer's family, friends and neighbors will swear that he was always a nice, quiet, respectful human being who never gave anyone an ounce of trouble is because they are generally on the receiving end of lots of nice, shiny, expensive presents.

Terrorist networks grow, process and sell enormous amounts of drugs, most notably heroin and cocaine. Next time you're tempted to ingest something, you might think twice about whose side you're on.

Fussgaenger

"...people readily see that the majority of Christians, even white Christians, in the US, are against the KKK, even if they themselves are racists of some sort. I'm puzzled why people have such a hard time grasping that ISIS claims Islam as its "truth", but the majority of Muslims recoil from what ISIS is..."

Just a glance at the support levels for the KKK and ISIS shows your analogy is extremely flawed.

The fact that "a majority" in any society recoils from completely random mass murder is not particularly reassuring.

What minute percentage of Americans or Christians do you suppose actually approves of KKK death tactics? What would you think of Americans, Sandra, if KKK activities were openly supported by 10% of the population - or even 3%? What if 2/3 of Americans just couldn't decide whether the KKK is evil or not?

In Senegal (nearly 100% Muslim) a majority opposes ISIS. Big whoop. According to Pew, 11% of the country support the murderous group.

61% of Pakistanis are unsure whether they oppose ISIS. 9% are SURE they support them. That's 1,630,000 ISIS supporters.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...dain-for-isis/

Even fabulously wealthy Muslim countries that offer a good life support ISIS in alarming numbers. IN the UAE poverty is 0% but 3% of Emiratis still support the ISIS murderers (2014 poll.)

http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/p...is-back-two-st

It's very disturbing that anyone would attempt to make support for ISIS "understandable."

pariswat

Remind me the % of Germansxsupporting Hitler in 1933 ?

Why do we expect better from Pakistanis in 2015 ?

How many French support Le Pen ( father or daughter) ?

Etc.

Michael

<i>What minute percentage of Americans or Christians do you suppose actually approves of KKK death tactics?</i>

In its heyday, the KKK had a large support of the population if the photos and postcards of public lynchings are any indication. I think that we can legitimately compare then and now even when we recognize that the KKK is no longer what it is and that Germany is not what it was under Hitler.

fuzzbucket

Many people are simply terrified to do anything that might be misconstrued as opposing the groups or regimes that have been mentioned - and with good reason.

sandralist

It is absolutely true that in its heyday the KKK had considerable tacit and open support in the US, and not just in the south. In fact, one of the longest lasting strongholds of the KKK was Indiana. In 1925, the governor of Indiana was a Klansman, and a good chunk of the state legislature was as well. Politicians running for office usually needed the endorsement of the Klan, not dissimilar from needing NRA endorsements today in many states. The power of the Klan in Indiana was broken when its chief "dragon" was arrested for raping and murdering a schoolteacher (she was white).

Indiana was hardly an outlier, and although the Klan slipped into the shadows in much of America following the anti-lynching laws of the 1920s, and anti-Nazi attitudes in WW2 further discredited the Klan, they were the underpinning into the White Citizens Council and other racist segregationist movements in the 50s and 60s -- and once again, it was not only wide segments of the white population that "appreciated" their vicious assaults on blacks and frequently Jews (like the murders of civil rights activists), the perpetrators were frequently people of high position within local communities -- judges, governors, mayors, preachers, newspaper owners, police.

sandralist

(Also to add that it is significant that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. largely beat the Klan and its cohorts by appealing to the white majority in America in language that was plainly and recognisably "truly Christian" and moral to the ears of most Americans, even though his tactics where Ghandian, and this was reinforced by coalitions of Christian clerics who vocally condemned racism and white supremacy as immoral. KKK and the cross-burning intimidations were seen as 'fringe' and a perversion of anything Christian (or American).

sandralist

>>>What if 2/3 of Americans just couldn't decide whether the KKK is evil or not? <<<

What if 2/3 of Israelis just couldn't decide if the present Israeli government is evil or not?

Must be a wider context and history at work, and a lot of policy gone wrong along the way.

sandralist

And while I am at it, I would like to point out the Americans and most Europeans seldom see pictures of the beheaded and dismembered children and wedding party attendees that are the result of Israeli gunships, American drone strikes, and other atrocities committed by US allies like Saudi Arabia, who behead and flog to death "infidels". Nor do they read page after page of newspaper stories about the innocents murdered in the Middle East, what their names were, who they were, the grief of their families. Nothing like we see following the Paris attacks. No candles and teddy bears and Facebook flags-for-a-day for them.

But people in the affected countries as neighbourhoods have seen these things and suffered these traumas, griefs and losses profoundly, and relentlessly, at the hands of the same "democracies", who residents seem not to notice anything amiss until their favourite vacation spot turns into a bloodbath, the kind of bloodbath American tax dollars has been underwriting for years, with no end in sight.

So when somebody comes along an carves out a caliphate and declares they are entitled to act to defend it with all the brutality that a Jewish state defends itself, isn't surprising that people who know an entire wedding party that was wiped out in the "war against terror" might think it's not a simple matter of choosing up sides as to who is more evil.

Fussgaenger

White Christian churches all over the country shouted and marched and distanced themselves, bringing the power of the majority to bear on the KKK thugs hiding behind the cross. Now they're nothing.

But it's 2015 now and we have random, wanton bloodshed around the planet thanks to Muslim terrorists. Wish there were a silent majority of good Muslims interested in taking down their evilest element... but alas, America's lesson on handling robed thugs with holy books is lost on Muslims. The Muslim majority is only marginally less extreme than ISIS - they are nearly all behind Shariah and thus share too much hatred for the West and too many values with ISIS.