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Dear LEGO,

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You wrote :

« Your position, is that the way to world peace is to mix up the races within the western secular democracies and eventually, some sort of fair and successful society will result. But the reality is that this model is just not working. As a resident of France, I am surprised that you do not consider the recent mass murders of French citizens by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture to clearly display the error of your muddled thinking »
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I’m afraid your imagination is playing games with you there, LEGO. I have never stated that to be my position. Nor has anybody written anything here about “the way to world peace”.

Also, “the recent mass murders of French citizens” were not carried out, as you indicate, “by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture”. They were carried out by other French citizens.

Have a nice weekend, LEGO, and, if you like, we’ll get together again sometime next week after the break.

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Hi Banjo,

You may have unintentionally missed LEGO's point: perhaps he meant that terrorist acts in France (and Belgium) (and Germany) were carried out by “by people from an imported and idiotic medieval foreign culture” AND were carried out by French citizens.

Precisely.

Joe

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Dear Loudmouth & Craig,

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It’s nice to see you both back on this thread.

Loudmouth, my gut feeling is that we should continue to provide compensation to Indigenous people until we can find a better solution to their problem … and the sooner we find a better solution the better. I see that as a moral obligation.

As for LEGO's last post, We'll see what he means after he's had a nice rest.
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Craig, thank you for those deep philosophical reflections on Malvina Reynolds’ “Little Boxes”. Very inspiring …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U

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Joe, murders are always carried out by people who are in some way deranged. They might look for justifications in all sorts of things. The fact that some might use Islam is simply irrelevant to the reality that their actions are driven by their mental illness, not by the words of the Quran.

The same can be said of those who kill in the name of the Christian or Jewish God.

I wouldn't suggest that Christianity is an inherently evil religion because Jim Jones existed, or David Koresh, or Henry VIII, or any of the paedophile priests who've caused so much destruction of people's lives. Their actions weren't driven by the Bible, they just used it as a justification for abhorrent actions. We see the same here with people like runner, who loudly trumpet the most hideously unChristian things from the haven of anonymity, while piously intoning the words of the bible.

You're normally pretty good at avoiding the simplistic, I'm not sure why you fall so easily into a simplistic response in this case.

Hi Craig,

Yes, it's possible that all murders are carried out by people who may be insane, and just as possible that, if they carry them out in the name of some ideology, say Pol Pot's communism or ISIS' Islam, those murders are carried out be people who are perfectly sane. Utter bastards, but perfectly sane.

The three hundred or so Australians killed by Islamist terrorists since 9/11, i.e. in the name of 'Allah Akbar' probably outnumber those killed by Christian fanatics, both crazy and sane - in fact, they probably outnumber all those killed by Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Scientologist and Calluthumpian fanatics put together. Don't you think ?

Islamist fascism encompasses a range of ideologies with roots in Islam, i.e. in the Koran. Not all Islamic ideologies move in that fascist direction, but some do. Adherents to those ideologies kill, and at random, under the impression that, by definition, whoever they kill deserves to be killed, as kafirs, apostates or some other heinous category.

When Amish go on a similar rampage, butchering non-Amish, raping non-Amish girls and women and burning them alive in cages, throwing gays off tall buildings, then I'll take any talk of the equivalence of various religious fascisms seriously. Until then, I'll keep a rough count of which adherents kill whom and how, at least until I lose count. That shouldn't take too long.

Joe

Joe,
Yes, some may just be "bastards", but it doesn't change my point.

How many Muslims have been killed by non-Muslim Australians since 2001 do you reckon? Of course, the vast majority of those have been killed in their own country by Australians wearing a uniform, so that makes it OK...

The boys who were arrested "on their way to behead someone" (except that the police had been watching them, which shows how few people there are like them) were explicit that their motivation was revenge for the killing of Afghanis by Australian troops. In other words, it had nothing at all to do with Islam and everything to do with the screwed up management of geopolitics that has been such a feature of the last 30 years.

I'm disappointed in you Joe, you're capable of thinking in much more nuanced terms. This is beneath you.