Paris under attack
- Thread starter Beantown
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Deleted member 848
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It isn't reckless and irreesponsible. People are using this strategy to heighten Islamophobia, which robs North-American citizens of their rights, of their dignity, and serves to actually make ISIS recruiting pitches stronger. This is the big problem with the responses to these atrocities. The French government wants to close down mosques that are alleged to be promoting "hate speech". Unfortunately, America played a massive role in the creation of ISIS, and now many Western nations are paying for it. I fear for my life as well-- especially seeing as the militants are much more lethal against Muslim populations than non-Muslims.
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Deleted member 848
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I'm definitely no expert, but here's at least my best attempt at solving such a massive crisis.
Let's ask ourselves a couple questions first-- 1.5 billion Muslims all read the same book. Okay. Why are some of them responding to this religious text with a desire to kill civilians in the west-- including those who live in the west?
The answer is tied to the decades of foreign intervention from the west in the Middle East, which has been essentially the biggest foreign policy blunder at least since Vietnam, maybe the worst ever. There is simply no way to spin the Iraq war as successful in any aspect. The region is thoroughly worse off since Americsn intervention.
Okay, okay. So they hate Americans. Well, so do people all over the world really. What is the source of ISIS's ideology? What is their financial source? Where the **** are they getting all of these weapons and explosives? What on earth?
Well unfortunately, these weapons are coming from Arabic nations who continue to receive weapons and tanks from Western nations (Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia), including from America. I specifically have a lot of disgust with how in-cahoots the US is with Saudi Arabia. It makes no ****ing sense. Not only are they responsible for originating this extremist, Wahhabist Islam that ISIS have taken and run with, it's quite clear that a massive proportion of funding and weapons is coming from this Sunni-state. They have "enacted" laws trying to stop this ease of funding (at behest of the US) but they do not police it with any legitimacy.
So here we have a couple nations, including Saudi, who are very obviously the lifeblood of this militant organization. Why does the US not chastise them? Why does the US attempt to sanction Iran, and reportedly denigrates the country even though it is 100% less reprehensible as a nation than Saudi? Sure, Iran wants to "wipe Israel off the map" while Saudi doesn't-- but it's obvious that Saudi only says that because of their allied relationship with the US. They are the bitch of the US, but unfortunately it's a bit of s 2-way street. The US is highly dependent on preserving relations with Saudi due to their huge stocks of natural resources, thanks to the world's oil economy. The global demand for oil persistently floods Saudi with wealth, and that's what enables them to find organizations like ISIS.
One more question: why are citizens in European countries committing violence against their fellow citizens, despite sometimes being born and raised in Europe?
As a Muslim who lived in Europe for a year in the 4th grade (Germany), I can tell you why. Racism is 100% still prevalent there. Way, way more than Canada. You simply cannot shake off the feeling of just feeling like you are a second class citizen there. This is ESPECIALLY true in a nation like France, which has such high Islamophobia (and even pockets of anti-Semitism). It's a system failure of nations across the European continent that build these Muslim minorities to fail in their countries, which builds their animosity, and enters them into a mindset where they no longer care about the lives of their fellow citizens.
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So, what would I do?
- move towards an oil-free energy economy (through nuclear, wind, etc.) to reduce our dependence on the Middle East.
- coerce Saudi to change their policies towards terrorism on every front. Coerce them to change their policy on refugee accommodation. We now have the upper hand on them, due to our lack of oil dependence.
- assert to the Middle East that it is their responsibility to mobilize and fight against ISIS. Coerce other nations we are allied with into launching an organized offensive against this insurgency.
- kickstart government campaigns across Europe to keep inviting refugees and eliminating the continent of Islamophobia, as well as providing socioeconomic stimulus in the neighbourhoods in which these minority populations reside, in order to help incoming Muslims feeling less disenfranchised from the nations in which they live.
These are a couple, but there's a ton more along the same realm. We need to let the Middle East deal with it, we need to stop ISIS from making us Islamophobic, and we have to do more to accommodate refugees because it is Muslim allies that will end up being our most potent weapon against Islamic extremism. Isis is PRAYING that the world responds to their stacks with Islamophobia-- it is these reactions that perpetuate their existence
This isn't a silver-bullet solution, and it'll take a while before it works. Unfortunately, it's the only one that will work. US Bombing of ISIS territories with boots on the ground will maybe eliminate ISIS (doubtful) but this sets the stage for another militant organization to take control. You have to approach things from the ground up. What factors are leading to this? Let's treat those factors. We don't treat headaches with decapitation.
i say it is irresponsible because no one that is of any political consequence is blaming Muslims as a whole. It defeats a possible unity between faiths and people in general when such broad swaths are taken. Muslims are equally to blame as the rednecks that call all Muslims bad people.
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Deleted member 848
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GOPers who say "this is a radical Islam problem" show a characteristic naivety to this entire sociopolitical conflict, using religion as the source of their violence. It's a lazy assertion that looks like it makes sense on the surface, but can quickly be deconstructed.
Do we say "we have a white race extremist problem" after every mass murder on US soil?
No we don't. We also don't have ANYONE of political consequence saying all muslims are bad. Muslims need to stop playing the victim card and ignore any hack that says all muslims are bad. Like I said, it's counter-productive.
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Deleted member 848
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You don't because it's stupid, and it would alienate white people. Thats why we don't do it. It should be the same for Muslims.
You're missing the point. The lives of Muslims across the continent are worse because of these uprisings, despite their lack of involvement. You say that no one thinks that all Muslims are bad-- yet using words like radical Islam implies the Islamic faith as one that has unique propensity to becoming violent (which is simply categorically incorrect).
Consequently, think of how much harder it has become for any person in America to secure a job if his name is Hussein Mohammed-- as opposed to John Smith. This isn't the victim card-- this is the fact of my day to day life. It becomes increasingly difficult to tell people my faith, due to fear of judgement. Is this fair? This is my reality. No one in Japan knows my religion due to the deep-seated Islamophobia here. I tell people I don't drink because I had an alcoholic uncle.
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Deleted member 848
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Untangling the Overlapping
Conflicts in the Syrian War
By SERGIO PEÇANHA, SARAH ALMUKHTAR and K.K. REBECCA LAI OCT. 18, 2015
What started as a popular uprising against
the Syrian government four years ago has become
a proto-world war with nearly a dozen countries
embroiled in two overlapping conflicts:
the two conflicts have cast the United States and Russia as enemies in one war and nominal allies in the other.
Civil War
Rebel groups supported by the United States are focused on toppling the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, not rooting out the Islamic State.
The United States is focused on defeating the Islamic State. While it has attacked 2,600 Islamic State targets, it has not directly attacked the Syrian government and it is backing rebel groups only with money, arms and some training.
Russia, Iran and the Lebanese group Hezbollah want to keep Mr. Assad in power, for now. Russia, in coordination with Syrian ground forces, has aimed the vast majority of its airstrikes at rebel positions.
The Islamic State, meanwhile, wants to both unseat Mr. Assad and create a caliphate stretching beyond Syria’s borders into Iraq and other countries.
Syria’s territory has been fragmented after four years of war.
The government now controls only a fraction of the country.
The United States has been joined by Turkey and several Arab nations in its fight against the Islamic State. They all believe ISIS poses a threat to them in their own countries.
“Most people are realizing now that the best way of dealing with the Islamic State is to contain them,” said Columb Strack, an analyst at IHS Janes, a defense research firm. “If you contain them and start hitting their economic sources, the idea is that in a few years they will collapse from within. That seems what the Americans are going for.”
But because the war against the Islamic State is just one among many, cutting off the group’s resources has been difficult. Porous Turkish borders and private Arab dollars have helped the Islamic State’s rise.
For Syria’s allies, especially Russia, the Islamic State is just one of many insurgent groups that they have called terrorists. While some Russian airstrikes have hit areas controlled by the Islamic State, most have targeted rebels groups.
Kurdish ground forces have been America’s mainpartner in the war against ISIS in Syria. But the partnership poses delicate problems for the United States.
Nearly 30 million Kurds live in territories divided across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, and they want more autonomy in those countries, or even a state of their own. The conflict in Syria has given them an opening toward achieving those goals.
American airstrikes against the Islamic State, coordinated with Kurdish fighters, have helped the Kurds seize a broad stretch of territory along the Turkish border. Those gains have increased tensions with Turkey, a major American ally, which has been fighting a bitter war with Kurdish separatists for decades.
Kobani has been the focal point of the U.S.-Kurdish
battle with ISIS. American airstrikes have hit more than
1,000 targets there, almost half of all their strikes in
Syria, helping the Kurds push back ISIS in the north.
In Overlapping Wars, the Danger of a Collision
As their offensives cross paths, all of these run the risk of their battles colliding. Experts say a misguided attack or an errant airstrike could escalate Syria’s two wars and lead to an even wider international conflict.
Russian airstrikes have hit rebel groups supported by the United States and its allies. Russian cruise missiles have crossed areas where American jets have been flying.
Turkey has attempted to hinder Kurdish advances in Syria and is bombing Kurdish rebels in its own territory, despite saying that Turkey shares the American and Kurdish goal of defeating ISIS.
Iran and Hezbollah, Shiite allies of the Syrian government, are fighting rebel groups supported by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab nations.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...t-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=2
realized the text from the figures isn't showing up. A shame. It's a brilliant compilation of whats going on done by the Times.
It's very difficult to not connect radical islam to the terrorist attacks when the attackers, themselves, are stating they're doing these acts in the name of Allah. I believe the super-majority of muslims are are peaceful good people. But that fact doesn't change the fact that there is undeniably a tie-in. That's why the radicals are killing the peaceful Muslims... because they're not practicing the correct faith (in the minds of the radicals).
I'm VERY, very sorry that Muslims have gotten a bad rap for the radicals, but all of my posts have been to plead that Muslims should stand WITH humanity against the killers rather than take the airtime to complain they're wrongly blamed rather than joining the rest of the world in trying to solve the slayings. Frankly, it's repulsive, to me, that most every Muslim is too busy being defensive rather than locking arms with everyone else against the ****heads.
fail
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Deleted member 848
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then you simply aren't reading. Literally every prominent muslim group across the Western world has harshly condemned these attacks. I was broken for the entire day when I heard of these attacks. They are deplorable, and it really just hurt me down to my core.
With this said, the backlash has been unacceptable, and will lead to easier ISIS recruiting. That's the problem. That's why I have the comments that I do-- saying that it's just opportunistic victim-carding minimizes Muslim problems, and (again) helps groups like ISIS pander to Muslims who feel like the West doesn't care about them.