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Ah, yes, Indonesia. The world's largest and most populous Muslim nation, IIRC. Hmmm. And yet, the last I heard, Indonesia is not overrun with suicide bombers--even though "Islam breeds suicide bombers."
Nor, AFAIK, have there been massive protests in Indonesia over US occupation of Saudi Arabia--even though, as we've been told, that occupation is prime motivator for Muslims hating the US.
Nor are such things endemic to sub-Saharan Africa, which is also overwhelmingly Muslim.
What you do see, however--in Africa and in Indonesia--is all manner of Muslim-on-Muslim violence, motivated by politics, territory, and ethnicity. Curious, that.
And on the other side, the alleged Islamists of the al-Quaida organization have been deafeningly silent regarding oppressive government policies in Indonesia--which suggests that they don't give a shit about Indonesia. Which is odd, you know, since al-Quaida are (as we've been told) primarily motivated by the tenets of Islam... and Indonesia is, IIRC, the largest and most populous Muslim nation in the world. Doubly curious.
Cos it's all Muslims together, right? Right?
Or is this no longer true, now that Islam is a world religion? In other words, might it not be that the primary motivator for these attacks is not religion, but ethnicity--of which religion is a signifier, but not the thing itself?
quote:Originally posted by todd:
...a prime motivating factor in Osama bin Laden's fatwa against the US is the presence of US military equipment and personnel in Saudi Arabia, home and custodians of Mecca and Medina etc. The mere presence of the US profanes those holy shrines. It is like putting an abortion clinic in Vatican City.Should such a thing happen, Italian Catholics might be horrified, and American bishops would fume, but the rank and file of American Catholics would get on with their lives.
Why? Because Rome's a long way away, and we've got more immediate problems, like paying the heating bill for the parish hall.
quote:Originally posted by Fiction Suit Five:
Haven't you felt some of your liberal socioanthropological assumptions getting shaken up over the last few weeks?Nope. quote: Was it James Lovelock who said that a great mind is able to cope with having its belief systems turned on their head once in a while?Very well may have been: but the fact remains that, although many of my prior assumptions about the world have indeed been shaken over the last two weeks, my conviction that social and economic justice for all is the only way to achieve lasting peace has not been one of them. quote:Let's settle it once and for all by flying to Afghanistan and asking some Taliban face to face why they're prepared to die fighting us. 'Is it sociopolitical forces? ...Or is it because you honestly believe you will be shagging 70 virgins in heaven?' Meet you down the airport.See, right there you (and Mr. Dawkins) lost your credibility as the voice of "rationality"--when you resorted to the cheap-shot cartoon stereotyping. "Testosterone-sodden young men too unattractive to get a woman in this world might be desperate enough to go for 72 private virgins in the next..." Again, I repeat: for fuck's sake. Sure, these guys just want to get their rocks off in Paradise. Because no cause could be worth dying for, for its own sake--certainly there's no good sociopolitical reasons to be pissed off at first the Soviet puppet government and then the United States. Nope. It's all just sexual frustration.
And religion, of course, is designed primarily to appeal to that sexual frustration and the pathetic need for reassurance and comfort, I suppose--not to challenge us to be better than we can be, not to challenge us to overcome our fear of the alien and to reach out to others in a spirit of brotherhood? Is that what you believe?
Well, I've got a newsflash for you, Sunshine--in the last couple of weeks, the only place where I've been hearing a consistently reasonable message--a message of making the tough choice to accepting responsibility for our actions, a message of combating hatred and xenophobia by pursuing a policy of aid and compassion, a message of justice in the broader context--not the payment of blood debt, but a broader socioeconomic justice that makes terrorism unthinkable by making it unnecessary--has been my local church.
[ 27-09-2001: Message edited by: Jack Fear ] |
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