Radical Islamic Terrorists

See @Barack Obama , that wasn't so hard to say. Why couldn't you say that for eight years?

He did say it. Nice try with the right publican alternative facts. Are you sure you are a libertarian because you seem to be very deplorable.

Yeah, I've never criticized Trump, not ever.
http://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/saudi-arabia-egypt-and-lebanon.112268/

He did say it now and again. But it's not a good term, because it means naming the enemy according to their beliefs rather than your own. It would be like the Allies calling the Third Reich the Millennial Empire, or referring to Hitler's Germany as Aryan Masters.

Specifically, it suggests that joining AQ or Daesh is the most radically religious thing a Muslim can do, as if terrorism is at the heart of that faith. That's what al-Baghdadi wants people to believe, but we and all of our Muslim allies don't. What we want them to see is that terrorism is an aberration, and that they are bad rather than good Muslims if they support it.

Or the Master Race. But that would sound like you're playing their game, which is part of the whole problem with Terrorism and allowing (or encouraging) yourself to be Terrorized by it.

Myself I never saw what the problem was with Islamofascists. It's a nod to their own view of themselves (as is Third Reich) and describes their own violent, unscrupulous nature.

The problem with the term terrorism (or "terrism" as Dubbya pronounced it) is it has become so cheapened by the fact that One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

So.... did all the terrorists surrender because Trump used the special phrase?


No?


Then who fucking cares?

=

Kiddo, you need to go to your reading comprehension class more often. Of course you criticise trump for not being fascist enough. That s because you are a libertarian and the modern ones only want rights for themselves.

Libertarians support fascism, okay. This how I know not to engage with you, you're nuttier than @garamet You sure are going to great lengths to try and paint me as a Trumps supporter.

Thank god. Finally the war on terror is over. I will sleep peacefully tonight.

You have it all wrong, libertarians are essentially anarchists. That's diametrically opposed to fascism.

All anarchists are libertarian, not all libertarians are anarchists. You both got it wrong.

Anarchism is the ultimate expression of the Randian philosophy of selfishness.

Libertarians are just people that don't quite understand how appalled and horrified they'd be by an actual Libertarian society.

Actually, @Federal Farmer has been quite reliably pro-freedom in his criticism of Trump. Credit where due.

Problems with calling them Islamofascists:

1. It still sounds as if they adhere to Islam, which they don't.
2. They're not fascists, because they don't mix corporate and capitalist interests with their governments.
3. They're also not fascists because they don't believe in a strong nor a totalitarian state.

Selfishness is not necessarily a bad thing and it doesn't make all libertarians anarchists.

I'm not making any normative statements regarding selfishness, libertarianism, or anarchism.

I'm merely pointing out the overlap. Selfishness and anarchism have the biggest overlap, and selfishness is a fundamental Randian philosophy. Granted, not all libertarians follow a Randian philosophy, but a significant number do.

I think that's an open question. They think they do, just as all them gun-totin', hate-mongering Baptists think they're Christians.

Both operate on the basis of sacred scriptures just crawling with contradictory pronouncements. And there's no lack of clergy on both sides willing to quote, out-of-context-why-not, the bits that serve their purpose.

So I don't think it's possible to say that they don't adhere to Islam.

Regardless of what they "believe", we can only go by the examples we have: ISIS, Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, the Hezbollah state within a state, and so on.
All these constitute, in fact, strong totalitarian states.

This is one criterion for fascism. There are many many definitions of fascism, not -- by any means -- all loyal to the pure Mussolini Model.

Myself, I'd agree with the guy in this brief clip (yes, I know it's about the 17th time I've posted it ...). That's a good enough definition of fascism for me. I agree with O'Riordain that one can't just throw the word around any old way. Nor, however, do I think that it should be confined to something exactly like 1924-43 Italy.

Yeah, but they are going to force you to be anarchists. That is because libertarians are the mental rejects from the trump campaign

Precisely, and the struggle for the definition of Islam is one decisive front here. I say we don't yield.

Hundreds of millions of Muslims disagree with you and with them, and frankly, that this puts you and Daesh on one side of an issue opposed by the rest of peaceful Muslims should already suggest you might be taking the wrong side, especially if you believe it's a choice and not an issue of accurately applying established definitions.

No, they don't. The only totalitarian state in that list is Iran, and that at the same time might be the one least likely to be described as 'Islamofascist' in that same list.

So you have a word made up out of 'Islam' and 'fascism', and the argument for its use is that both of its parts could mean lots of different things, and so might not be quite strictly provably inaccurate in this use. At the very best, that makes it an incredibly bad descriptor.

Sorry, you lost me. Yield to what? To the Salafists' claim that they represent the true Islam? To the Shiite's claim that they represent the true Islam? To the Sufi's claim that they represent the true Islam? To the (place name of sectarian group X here)'s claim that they represent the true Islam?

Since every branch of Islam can find, from among the many-many pronouncements in the Koran, myriad quotations that will back up their special interpretation, it doesn't matter whether we "yield" or not. The latest wave of religious fervour (which seems to have replaced Arab Nationalism in a disappointed backlash) will go on whether we "yield" or don't yield.

Nono: So I don't think it's possible to say that they don't adhere to Islam.

K.: Hundreds of millions of Muslims disagree with you.

Well, there are apparently 1.6 billion (16 hundred million) Muslims. So if 200 million disagree with me, that's one eighth.

Wikipedia describes the Pew Research Center as "a nonpartisan American 'fact tank' ". So at least it's not wholly owned by Breitbart or anything. It "does not take explicit policy positions, and is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts".

Last year Pew found that eye-popping numbers of Muslims worldwide favour Sharia law (72% in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country). [Chart below.]

Yes, a majority take a very dim view of groups like ISIS, but in Pakistan, 62% refused to answer the question. Meanwhile, look at the results from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Palestinian territories, where around a third feel that suicide bombings are "at least sometimes" justified.

Lots of sobering reading here. In Pakistan (170 million Muslims), for example, 40% think that "honour killing" of women is "often/sometimes" justified.

I have no fear of my opinion putting me, in your eyes, "on the same side as Daesh". I'm interested in the truth, not what I wish the truth were.

Naturally most Muslims are like most Christians ---- just trying to live their lives as peacefully as possible.

And yet these statistics are unsettling. I think the Sunni/Shia split is analogous to the Catholic/Protestant split. Yet Sunnis don't even consider Shiites Muslims period (do they?). You have to go to places like Northern Ireland to find that sort of shit in the Christian world.

Sorry, I disagree. But then you and I would probably have different definitions of the word to "totalitarian" too. If you can't see that ISIS is totalitarian (public lashing for opening your stall on a Friday or whatever ---- a lot of very ugly stories coming out), then I don't know what "totalitarian" could possibly mean to you.

OK, what do you suggest??
To me, "Islamofascist" is a fascist application of Islam, just as Torquemada practised a fascist application of Christianity.

Most of that simply doesn't apply to the question. For instance, sharia law isn't identical to Daesh or Al Quaeda, and if you'll ask most self-professed Christians in the US whether they think the Bible's laws are sound, they'll say yes, and yet they'll still be opposed to stoning their grandma for her approaching temple despite having bad eyesight. In fact, they might even be surprised.

To me, this boils down to two things:

There is only a true answer to what Islam is if Allah actually insists, Mohammed was actually His prophet, and the Koran is indeed His word. I believe none of that, so the operative definition of Islam is up for grabs, along with all of the remainder of human morality that we constantly negotiate. A vast majority of Muslims agree with us in rejecting AQ and Daesh. When we refer to the latter as a radical form of Islam, we're abandoning the former and doing the latters' propaganda for them. I refuse to do that.

It means a postulate of total power. It's also always ugly, but many things are ugly without being fascist or totalitarian.

I suggest calling terrorists terrorists, murderers murderers, and reminding Muslims that their faith forbids both of those things.

Terrorism is at the heart of their faith. That's what the left doesn't want to acknowledge.

@garamet can at least be funny sometimes.

Hmm... There's probably a lot of truth to that.
And yet, and yet ... the Afghans --- who very recently indeed had a lengthy, industrial-strength dose of Sharia --- are 99% in favour. And nobody can claim that they aren't intimately familiar with the sordid details.

It looks like neither the Saudis nor the Iranians let Pew work in their countries. From conversations I've had, I would be surprised if a large majority in both countries weren't in favour, though this would be considerably lowered by the significant urban youth culture in Iran.

Agreed. No Muslim would challenge those tenets. But a lot of blood is being spilled at this very moment between people who disagree about the details. Very strongly disagree.

Reject their style and extreme views, yes. But how many Sunnis would say that the members of those groups are not Muslims?? Not a whole lot is my guess. This is very important.

Saying that "when we refer to (AQ and Daesh) as a radical form of Islam, we're abandoning the (majority of Muslims) and doing (AQ's and Daesh's) propaganda for them" sounds just like me saying exactly the same thing about calling Stalin and Mao "communists".

And here we come back to the very handy term "fascism". All these groups --- extreme Islamists (or "Islamists"), revolutionary communists (or "communists"), witch-buring Christians (or "Christians"), brown-shirted fascists (or "fascists") --- share features of violently millenarian, fanatical tribal/sectarianism that are basically identical.

Well and good. And while we're at it, we can refuse to use the term "Christian" (in the case of the Southern Baptists, say), "Labour" with Blair, "Social Democrat" with Schröder, Steinmeier & Co, etc.

But dressing up our language never changes reality.

I never said that all ugly things need be described as fascist or totalitarian (though a good number of them are just that, in my understanding of the terms). Perhaps "violently tribal" would be more all-encompassing.

1) One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

2) You'd better be able to out-quote them in terms of the Koran. Because that's the only way you'll change the minds, for instance, of those 70 million Pakistanis who believe that the "honour" killing of women is perfectly in tune with the Koran.

My second cousin Bernard is a holy-rolling Protestant preacher. I take profound exception to many of his pronouncements, but I would never dream of "reminding" him of anything. He would Blind me with Science and quote the Bible till I screamed for mercy.