"Violent Extremism"

[fedoralover]

I've noticed in some news articles that the phrase "global war against terrorism" is now "sometimes" going to be replaced with "global struggle against violent extremism". Just curious how others feel about this, do you think it has any significance? It does for me, because it just seems to be a narrower term against the real source of the problem, that being, extreme religious idealology. I've made no secret about my disgust with religions that have promoted war and bloodshed in the name of God.

regards fedoralover

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

I believe this is more an issue of public relations than of any practical significance. Even the original phrase "war against terrorism" is devoid of any objective meaning. I am not quite sure what political goal the new terminology of "violent extremism" serves at the moment though.

The Bush administration (and the Republicans in general) have been very, very good at public relations/spin control/terminology in recent years. Witness the change in public perception due to labeling the estate tax the "death tax." I have a feeling that this new semantic shift has a similar cause.

 

[feltfan]

Administration speak

I've noticed in some news articles that the phrase "global war against terrorism" is now "sometimes" going to be replaced with "global struggle against violent extremism". Just curious how others feel about this, do you think it has any significance?

That change of phrase was a Bush Administration decision. Really.
Sad the way journalists change their vocabulary like trained monkeys
when told to do so, rather than attribute it to its source.
As Harry Shearer put it in his Le Show broadcast on Sunday,
the fact that the administration no longer refers to the war against
terrorism must mean we've won the war on terrorism. Check it out:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/politics/26strategy.html

It does for me, because it just seems to be a narrower term against the real source of the problem, that being, extreme religious idealology. I've made no secret about my disgust with religions that have promoted war and bloodshed in the name of God.

regards fedoralover

That's almost all of them with enough of a following to do so, right?
I can't think of a religion that hasn't. Even Buddhism. As a Universal
Life Church minister, I can say that my own church is neither extremist
nor has it promoted war and bloodshed.

I just hope Bush and cronies will remember that this sort of terminology
can be applied to the excesses of capitalism and American militarism, too.

Back to hats... I thought I had sworn off non-hat threads here.

 

[rebelgtp]

The thing is most people turn a blind eye to the evils that have been done in the name of God and religion. I went to a catholic school growing up and I studied this topic alot. There are very few religions that have not had these sorts of "blemishes" in their past, and as we are all aware there are some that currently are on this path. Part of the problem that I have always found is there are others of the same religions that turn genuinly good and true people but many of them refuse to beleive what is being done in the name of their religion. Now some people that read this may say I'm refering to one specific religion, I'm not. I'm talking about about most religions in the past or current. If you want to find out some horrific stuff, do some real research on the crusades. All religions have a dark side. Have you ever heard the saying "Pray in my tent or I'll kill you"? That is how alot of the religious extremists think. If you are not in their "tent" then you are not in the right and many then beleive that you are evil or whatever. It really is a scary thing.

 

[Vladimir Berkov]

It is sort of a problem inherent in the concept of religion. When you hold something above and beyond human life as your ultimate value, human life can then logically be sacraficed or taken in the name of the religion. Some religions are probably more inherently violant than others but the real root of the problem isn't the implimentation of the religion but the idea of religion itself.

 

[ClintonHammond]

"disgust with religions that have promoted war and bloodshed in the name of God"

Last time I looked that was all of them....

 

[Matt Deckard]

It is sort of a problem inherent in the concept of religion. When you hold something above and beyond human life as your ultimate value, human life can then logically be sacraficed or taken in the name of the religion. Some religions are probably more inherently violant than others but the real root of the problem isn't the implimentation of the religion but the idea of religion itself.

He's a Warlock!

 

[Thomas Walden]

I'll get the stake if you grab the lighter fluid...

 

[Leporello]

Any terminology adopted by the George Bush glee club is an improvement on "Crusade."

 

[Biltmore Bob]

Maybe the Immans should preach "Love thy neighbor", instead of "Kill the infidel".

 

[MK]

.

Well said.

 

[jake431]

I've noticed in some news articles that the phrase "global war against terrorism" is now "sometimes" going to be replaced with "global struggle against violent extremism". Just curious how others feel about this, do you think it has any significance? It does for me, because it just seems to be a narrower term against the real source of the problem, that being, extreme religious idealology. I've made no secret about my disgust with religions that have promoted war and bloodshed in the name of God.

regards fedoralover

I just think it is a tool to change the public perception on our military actions. a global war on Terrorism is limiting, you have to show that we are fighting terrorist groups currently and actively engaged in terrorist activity in US territory to justify a military action. Violent extremism is a much more open-ended phrase, allowing us a justification to mess with any nation we deem to exist in a violently extreme state - the mere potential to do harm in the future should be enough to encourage military involvement. Most likely, it signals that the current adminsitration will enlarge number of arenas we are at war in.

It seems a fairly clever way to re-introduce a cold-war mentality. Before it was "if we let one country fall to Communism, soon every country will be Communist. If we don't stamp out all evidence of Communism at home and abroad, how can our nation shine as a beacon of freedom to others?" With this simple turn of phrase, it can be, "If we let one country engage in violent, extreme behavior, soon every country will be tolerating such behavior. And how long before these countries turn to terrorist activity against our fair and free nation?"

-Jake

 

[LaMedicine]

Maybe the Immans should preach "Love thy neighbor", instead of "Kill the infidel".

The fact is, Jesus is considered one of their prophets along with Abraham, Noah, and Moses by the Muslims. The Koran (or Quaran) actually does not condemn other religions, but rather considers that any religious insights gained by prophets and thus preached are all true teachings, and Islamic tradition says that there have been 124,000 prophets, a number that is actually symbolic of infinitude, in the past. Islam in its original form is an all-inclusive religion, rather than the all-exclusive form that the present day world perceives. Consider the fact that though the Ottoman Turk Empire was an Islamic empire, it accepted people from all walks of the world, regardless of their religious beliefs, and even had Christians in important positions in their empire.
The tragedy of many religions is that contrary to the hopes and intentions of the people who originally preached, their teachings were warped and shaped to fit the purpose of those with particular motives in particular times to gain momentum for their own agenda. No religion has been able to escape this, but fortunately, all present day great religions have done much more good than bad, including Islam, but as is always the case, the minority evil stands out glaringly, while the majority good is ignored.

What is ironic is the fact that with Saudi Arabia, which today the US considers a staunch US ally in the Middle East, the royal household, and so the state, are Wahabists, an Islamic sect that is considered one of the most fundementalistic, and so an extremist form of Islam.

(BTW, I'm a Roman Catholic, and there's a lot the late Pope John Paul II apologised for to other religions during his reign. It's easy to condemn others, difficult to own up to our own shortcomings.)

 

[Biltmore Bob]

I generally know what the Koran teaches. I'm not a Koran scholar however, but I was refering to violent Islamic extremism, which does not include the average Muslim. You have to admit that the terrorists are recruited and indoctrinated by the Imaans, the leaders of their own religion. I don't see mainstream Protestant and Catholic Churches condoning the killing of non believers. If they did that they would have a very small congregation and the FBI would be really interested intheir activities.

The thing about me is that I believe Jesus is God and the only way to heaven, so I really don't care what the Koran says.

 

[Joseph Casazza]

Ah, but we need to care what the Koran says, because that is the justification for all the "extremists" do. The Koran is clear, as any good Moslem will tell you, and what it is clear about is that there are only three acceptable states for human beings: be Moslem, be subject to Moslems, be slaughtered by Moslems. Indeed, if there are any moderate Moslems, it is only because they are too scared to be good Moslems and plot to kill or subjugate the rest of us, and then carry out their attacks.

And let us not be misled about Mohammed or the nature of Islam. Mohammed was no latter day Jesus, preaching love and compassion. That stuff is OK toward other Moslems (though, in fact, the first thing they did on the prophet's death was to start slaughtering one another - it took the Christians 300 years or so before they figured out how to deal with their own heretics in the same way) but there are no rules essentially, except for brief truces or contracts advantageous to Moslems, when dealing with infidels, i.e everyone else. For Islam, the natural state of man in relation to god is slavery. I don't think that will ever be compatible with the Judeo-Christian tradition, nor with most other religious traditions with which I am familiar.

Over half a century of sceptical observation has taught me a few things which I suspect will always prove true, though as a confirmed sceptic, I am, of course, willing to see it another way should the evidence warrant:

Human beings will believe anything.
Human beings will worship anything.
All religion is, at its root, evil, because it makes some human beings feel superior to other human beings because of what they believe or worship, to the point that they are willing to kill other human beings over the differences in what they believe or worship.

 

[Biltmore Bob]

Joe...

You had me until the last paragraph, my friend.

Most humans don't believe in anything, or if they do, it's the wrong thing. Therein lies the problem.

I don't feel superior to anybody because of my salvation. On the contrary, I realize from whence I came. I am a poor sinner saved by the grace of a loving and longsuffering God.

It's not about religion, it's about relationship. It's not what you know,but rather Who you know.

 

[android]

God bless you if you don't feel superior.

The fact is the religious right in America has decided to be "of" the world and not "in" the world as Jesus taught.

They are trying to create Heaven on earth through political action.

I cannot imagine any pursuit more worldly and corrupt than politics and American Christians have dived into the middle of the quagmire in the name of God and of course, the children.

 

[Joseph Casazza]

Yes, lest you get the impression that I am merely an anti-Moslem racist or imperialist, or whatever other kind of -ist will allow you to dismiss my opinion by catagorizing it, I am well aware that we have our own right here in the US willing to kill their fellow citizens for the sake of their brand of Christianity. What makes Christianity slightly less evil than Islam at the moment is that Christianity has within it the justifications for branding such "extremism" as evil, just as Christianity had within it the justification for branding slavery as evil in the 19th century. Islam, I think a review of the Koran will show, has no such basis in its defining text for labelling slavery or "extremism" as evil, and that is why slavery is as alive as ever in the Islamic world, as well as murder for religion's sake, while both are aberrations (though not entiely absent) in the US.

As for superiority - the believers are saved and I am not. One may leave it to a god at the last judgement to do the dirty work for one, but there is no escaping that the believers' victory and my defeat, their eternal bliss and my eternal damnation, are the whole point. Fortunately, I see no such inequality. Our fates are the same. We were equally powerless at birth, we shall be equally powerless at death, and, for those of us living in the liberal Western political tradition of the Enlightenment, we are supposed to be politically and legally equal in between. As long as we come somewhere close to that, I am content.

 

[farnham54]

As far as I'm concerned, it's a damn big world out there guys. There's plenty of room for Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddists, Scientologists, Gary Coleman-ists, and watever other faith is out there. 95 percent of the world is fully capable of getting along just fine; that five percent is the root of the problem. Unfortunatley, sometimes that 5 percent leads another HUGE portion of people against others. But I can not accept that some people just believe the "wrong" thing.

To me, there is Right and there is Wrong. What is right and wrong is fundamental. Don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, etc. The basics of common sense; these basics are things that are NOT good for society. But believing something (or nothing) can't really be considered "wrong"--it's free will, no? And without that, well, we'd be in one hell of a pickle.

Not trying to get your goat, Bob--I think you were saying that you believe christianity is "better" then islam (for lack of a better word), ergo the Islam ethos is wrong and because in Christianity your not supposed to worship other gods Islam is wrong. But the free will that allows people to CHOOSE what to worship cannot be taken away nor can it be deemed wrong. It's the greatest gift that Man has.

Cheers
Craig

 

[Feraud]

This topic raises too many connected subjects to go into.

Let me just add that Religions are not a bad thing. People manipulate words and people to use for their own means.

Peoples weakness to greed and power sometimes take a strong hold and they do things in the names of religions or countries.

If we make individuals responsible for their actions, and not let them hide behind "following orders" or "God told me to" there would be a lot less abuse within government, business, religion and families.

Religion serve an important part to many people.
Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater.