England

No, the "religion" DOES profess that ideology, it's simply that the majority thankfully choose to ignore it.


Oh well, that's OK then except that there are 1.8 billion followers of Islam which leaves 18 million not living peacefully with their neighbours. You're also misinterpreting what I said - I said Islam itself seeks to subjugate - I made no reference to Muslims, individually or collectively, acting upon its edicts.

I think trying to have a meaningful discussion about Islam here is going to prove futile and as I said in my response to the original post, failure to recognise the problem will mean that it's bound to continue. I shall withdraw from the discussion at this point but I'll leave a couple of quotes from people much better informed and well known than myself:

Mosab Hassan Yousef: Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of war, and most Muslims don't understand the true nature of Islam.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islam is not a religion of peace, it's a political theory of conquest that seeks domination by any means that it can.

Uhm, I seem to be a minority here, but I still can't see Islam as the main root to the problem, even though I strongly dislike all religions. I believe that different times have different idiots. In the seventies we were plagued by left wing terrorism in Europe with the goal of overtopping democracy and creating the 'perfect' communist world. We had the German RAF, ETA, Anni di Piombo, the Red Brigades and the Irish breakaway Real IRA. This is the same, it's just called a religious world today. The lunatics of today just get caught on Islam as an excuse to kill. Twenty years from now it'll be called something else. But people will still kill for it. Terrorists just get more attention these days. During 1970 - 1980 the average yearly total of terrorist attacks in Europe was four times higher than today. 1980 and 1988 sticks out in particular with more than 500 dead per year in terrorist attacks. Considering that the population is much larger now, the problem, number of attacks and number of dead were incredibly much higher back then than what it is now, it just get so much more attention today. We are actually living in a pretty calm period right now, even if it doesn't look like that when you read the papers. Peace and prosperity doesn't sell.

But... if the CIA hadn't overtopped the democratic Iranian government in 1953 for oil, if England and France hadn't colonized the Middle East in the early 20th century and made up idiotic borders and as thanks for fighting the Germans having given the desert to the extremist Saud tribe, if the USA hadn't invaded Iraq because Saudi terrorist operating from Afghanistan had attacked (sponsored by Bin Laden who was trained and equipped by the USA to fight the Russians in the 80s) and if Europe hadn't thought that creating Israel in the middle of the Arab world was a great way to get rid of the few surviving Jews after the war, I think we'd have more or less zero problem with Islam extremism. But we'd still have terrorism, it would just be something else, in the name of the holy sandal or whatever. There will always be terrorists and if there are no external ones, we have the neo Nazi Brevik who murdered 77 young persons in cold blood and the Una bomber, or for example the Militia attack by McVeigh in Oklahoma killing 168 just because he hated the US government. The right wing extremists have always been a greater threat and killed more innocents than the religious lunatics and the lefties.

But Februs, that's the same as the bible. If Christians followed it, we'd go around killing to the left and the right and massing for Jerusalem. So, if now everybody around the globe could just ignore religion and I think it would be so much better a world. I don't mean to defend Islam here in any way, it is just that I think that it is just as bad as all other religions.

The problem is anger: it fuels the extremism which seeks to control through fear, which in turn makes us all angrier!

These terrorists (in Europe in recent times almost all 2nd or 3rd generation, home-grown petty criminals seduced and given a twisted Big Idea by ISIS websites) are angry and want to incite us to lash out like they do, to prove them right in their angry hatred of us. But 'an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind' (I won't go into teeth at this point if you don't mind - a sore subject). However angry we feel in response to these attacks, if we let our anger guide our actions then we're doing exactly what they want us to do - turn on our fellow citizens of whatever hue or culture, blame them all in an angry sweep, and join in adding to the sum of human suffering.

Our response has to hold firm to our values of tolerance and compassion - one race, the human race - and be intelligent and targeted, which, in general, I think it has been, because (thank God, or Whoever) we have laws which protect the rights of individuals, wherever they might have come from out of our colonial past. Just as the americans can't (or choose not to) legislate for the crazies who open fire in primary schools, we can't lock up or kick out every muslim because of the actions of a few (and I do believe they are few - it's not even one thousandth of one percent who do this shit).

I think the kind of 'Je suis Charlie' response we've seen in Manchester and London - don't let the buggers grind us down - is the right one, not because it denies how fearful we might justifiably feel, but because it doesn't let them see our fear. The way the Norwegians refused to lash out after the Britvic (?) shootings was, I believe, exactly right.

They're not winning! They're not even a flea on a pregnant elephant. Millions of us, every day, enjoy freedom of speech, of sexuality, of political and religious belief, the fruits of centuries of gradually accumulated wisdom and understanding of how to live in peace with each other. So long as we hold true to our humanity, we win and always will.

This is not the place for it, but we won't win if we don't recognise the nature of the enemy and surrender the ideological war to him, with talk about Islamophobia, religion of peace, extreme or aberrant Muslims etc.
We do not have freedom of speech, outside the USA. Try giving a correct analysis of Islam in the UK, Australia, Canada or the EU - you'd be in court charged with a hate crime. That concept in itself is part of the surrender.
Yes, there are hideous things in the OT Bible, but nobody, no church, no ministers, no body of followers preaches that these things should be done in our communities. They are treated as anachronistic nonsense. There are whole countries, and millions of believers in Islam who do preach, support and cheer for the implementation of the terrible passages in the Koran. It cannot, ever, be amended, as the book is perfect and the direct word of God.
Sorry, but the problem is Islam: The Koran, Mohammed, and 1400 years of belief and practise. To say otherwise is to insult the growing pile of corpses in Western cities.

Wow ...religion ... time for opinionated persons like myself to shut up and go away...far away.

CS

Yes, I think the chances of agreeing are slightly limited in this matter. Maybe we should all just agree to disagree. But I don't think that we're so far apart. Some dislike some religions more than other, I dislike all religions, some think that the religion isn't the main source of the problem, but still is a mean to get easily misled people to do evil. Religion, when it's twisted, seems to be a problem in most people's eyes.

Anyway, I think it's good to have a general discussion like this and that we all get to ventilate our points of view and emotions. It helps us to understand each other better and bring new ideas to each other.

Someone (can't remember who) once said: There have always been good people, and there have always been bad people. But there's nothing like religion for getting good people to do bad things.

For me, that pretty well sums it up....

I agree with you in that, at least somewhat. I think kind of like alcohol, religion doesn't get people to do things that are totally against their nature, it just softens them up to do things they actually do want to do, but might be "socialized" enough to not do while sober, or not "under the influence" of religion.

I also think it doesn't help the conversation to blame a single religion here. It tars too many good people with one brush, and causes a lot of backlash violence against innocent adherents to the religion, that does nothing toward solving the problem.

It seems to me that well meaning but excessive governmental reactions toward terrorist attacks, that have changed the lives of all Americans in negative ways, is a greater threat than the terrorism which has triggered such reactions. I use to love flying. Now I don't. And it is not a matter of my getting older. Here, in the U.S., privacy has become a casualty. Governments have to protect their citizens from terrorism and lots of evils, but they need to act a lot wiser than they have. Now, citizens need to think about how we, as a society, can protect ourselves and our fellow Americans, from our government's well meaning but excessive reaction toward terrorist attacks. This problem goes a lot deeper than political affiliation. Both major political parties have much to answer for.