I suspect that even Hamas did not expect that their terrorist will do a massacre and killings and rape. At least from some interviews it felt that way.
Hamas provides the masses on the Arab street with the two things it needs. Joy (at dead Israelis) and rage (at dead Palestinians) so their cause remainst in the news for another decade.
Nah. If Israel destroys Hamas, they will disappear from history once and for all. Nobody talks about Al Qaeda or ISIS now that much. Nobody likes talking about losers from the past.
The UN is like the points in Who's Line is it Anyway.
What kind of country proudly commits mass rape, beheading and burning civilians alive while simultaneously refusing to protect its own citizens?
No, they refused that option like 6 times in the past 75 years, willing to condemn the 5000 rocket attacks Hamas has made in the past 15 years?
or puts people to death for selling land, or burns down (literally) multimillion-dollar industries because they were given it by Jews, I guess, or launch attacks weekly and have the group they're attack not retaliate because they protect themselves,
This modern secular religion needs to be treated like any other religion, which means that it isn't taught in schools. The entire idea of not teaching religion in schools comes down to it being reprehensible to teach children that the deeply held moral values and personal beliefs of their parents are wrong, and that's exactly what's happening in schools today.
When Israel wins (and they will), this should be grounds to call for resignation top-down of every head of these news agencies in the West. They're not just going to get away with an about-face and 'yay, Israel' when this is finished. We all know they've supported (some were part of) the terrorists who started this. Positive reports and terminations following televised apologies.
Irishtan. Nice ring to it.
They don't want to teach, they want to influence. You can't take something like this from an arbitrary point of time because it needs the entire history being understood.
Their actual problem is that the historical facts are pro-Israel. It does include the Palestinian "struggle" for freedom and liberation, that struggle was violent and was met with loss after loss of territory and chances for peace.
They should all be fired, or as they like to say, educate themselves.
Do not these people normally say “it is not cancelling, it is consequences baby”?
No, but they do like to say what they like by hiding by behind their rights of 'religious freedom of expression' so...
This is, of course, not something confined to Islam.
As much as I hate to disagree with someone who mostly agrees with me, the word secular just means not related to religion or faith. When I say "secular religion" I'm mainly referring to secular moral values that are viewed as gospel and treated as such. If secularism refers to what you mentioned above, I'm not talking about that.
Islam in general lacks self reflection and is very dogmatic, because it did not go through Reformation like Christiniaty. One of the observation people have is that a lot of muslims are quite devout, without being an extremists. In Christianity you are usually either devout (a-la "bible belts") or secular. You kinda don't have that "between".
The way I understand the post, you can substitute "secular religion" with "dogma" or "dogmatic thinking", which I think we all agree can exist independently from religion, and should be discouraged.
Those are some scary thoughts. Unfortunately I don't disagree with you. It is a plausible scenario unless society undergoes a shift in values. Islamism is compatible with globalization and with other socio-moral movements such as environmentalism and anti-capitalism in general. The problem is that while many of the criticisms they have for today's consumerism and hypocritical application of Christianity are legitimate, they don't actually offer an alternative that guarantees a more free and enlightened society. On the contrary, wherever Islamism has been tried over the past few centuries, it has resulted in despotism, poverty and ignorance. In a sense, it's kind of similar to the situation with socialism/communism: attractive on paper, but in practice destructive and backwards, unless heavily balanced by other values.
100%. It is basically Christianity of the Roman Empire, basically even in the same borders.
I've been reading Bernard Lewis lately to gain a wider perspective on Islam, and a chapter I read last night contains a rather profound observation with regard to the state of Israel: Jews in Israel basically comprise of two groups: those that over the course of millennia have been heavily influenced by Christian thinking and values, and those that over the same period were heavily influenced by Muslim thinking and values.
Ummm... Since Judaism came before these two. I'd say we influenced them rather than they influenced us. I'm not sure the influence from them in millennia was religious as much as it was cultural.
It's difficult to boil down Lewis to a few sentences. Essentially he makes the claim that Judaism exists as a religion with a system of morality and certain cultural elements that are common to Jews, but it doesn't really have its own political and economic world view. And this makes sense because unlike Christianity and Islam, we (Jews) haven't run a country for any extended period of time, let alone a network of countries. So the politics and economics of Israel are so far an amalgamation of those we adopted in our respective countries of exile. I find that rather accurate and profound.
Strange, David was our first king and many came after him. So not sure about the not having politics and economic know-how.
The kingdom was shortlived and hasn't existed for millennia. It's not like those skills were recorded or remembered, let alone practiced today. Both Christianity and Islam have been much more influential when it comes to matters of policy in modern times.
No, that's why I think it's more cultural influence. Which I guess includes economics and political.
I suppose you could make the claim that there is recorded knowledge from the various dynasties of Israel and Judea that can still be looked up and referenced when it comes to decisions of policy. Perhaps I am showing my ignorance here, but as far as I'm aware no serious political leader in Israel does this, relying more on western practices when it comes to economics, or attempting to engage with the politics of Arab countries when it comes to matters of military.
I think there is a valid point to be made regarding certain weaknesses that exist in western secular society today, which, as you correctly point out, are being exploited by ultra religious countries for their own purposes. For example, I recall a study done in the west about the influence of the internet on the rise of fascist thinking in developed countries. Or, as in your example, the fact that western capitalism has created a situation where sometimes all money is seen as equivalent, even when there are ideological strings attached, meaning it clearly isn't equivalent. But this may be getting too tangential to the topic of this thread.
The main weakness of the west is the constant doubt of everything. If it is coming from the western area - you should doubt it. That's the main issue.
