Ending the Jihad

Posted by Wanderer 7 years, 9 months ago to Philosophy
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Ending the Jihad
We’re not stopping Islam with guns so, let’s try laughs.
Another day, another Muslim killing a bunch of non-Muslims and, you’re failing to see the humor in mass shootings, frenzied stabbings, homicide vests, beheadings, crucifixions and immolations and of course, you’re right.
Each of those gruesome public spectacles with which Islam has gifted us is a tragedy for the victims and victims’ families and communities. Not only do they die, often painfully but, they’re deprived of the chance to tell their loved ones goodbye, or die with dignity or courage. Either they die instantly or, they’re drugged and made to appear passive, helpless, hapless in the hands of their heroic, swashbuckling executioners. That’s the intent.
So, why laugh at them? Because, the alternative is killing them. Do you really want to try to kill one-billion-four-hundred-million people?
The videos are meant to flood the arena of social media with the impression that Islam isn’t just competing, it’s winning, it’s crushing and humiliating its enemies, who are so weak they deserve humiliation, so pathetic they’re not worthy of empathy, so pitiful they’re not even worth pity.
They allowed themselves to be killed so, they deserved to be killed.
We don’t all see it that way but, many do. How many? Hundreds of millions. We know that because this is what Islam is all about and, there are around a billion-four-hundred-million Muslims in the world, all of whom, by virtue of their daily pledge to Allah and Muhammad, accept the righteousness of Jihad and the necessity of killing non-Muslims.
Tens of thousands have already paid their way to the Middle East to get in on the free and unfettered killing of non-Muslims and, of the remaining number an untold percent plan to and will embark on their personal Jihads in their own time and at wherever in the world they happen to be.
Television is full of inexpert experts wishfully calling them lone wolves, or domestic terrorists, or radical Islamists, agendaists striving to connect them to ISIL or avoid connecting them to ISIL depending on whether there’s a record of direct contact between them but, these experts and agendaists are either willfully ignorant or missing the point. It doesn’t matter if two Muslims have never met or talked to each other or shared an SMS, they know what to do, they have their orders, they have the same play book.
It’s called the Holy Quran and, it gives them their instructions. They must act but, each Muslim has the leeway to choose his or her individual assignment and time frame and, he or she has the freedom to light his or her own fuse.
Omar Mateen’s fuse just burned down, whether because his career was going nowhere or, he thought the FBI was closing in, or his family was about to discover he was gay, or his wife was unhappy, or he’d just been jilted by a lover — his personal fuse burned down and, his personally chosen assignment was to kill as many gay infidels as he could.
He didn’t do it because Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told him to, he did it because the Quran told him to. He did it because he was gay, a mortal Islamic sin and, his only route to paradise was to martyr himself while killing unbelievers. That the forty-nine unbelievers he killed were likely gay might have been a bonus in his and Islam’s eyes but, it wasn’t necessary, nor was it the goal. The goal was to kill infidels. Those were his orders, straight from the Quran. How, when and where he did it was up to him.
This is the lurking threat posed by apparently peaceful Muslims; their holy book orders them to kill infidels and offers them rewards for doing so. Even if they’re not dedicated Jihadis, when something in their lives goes wrong or, someone in their lives pushes them, martyrdom, being killed while killing infidels is the honorable, admirable way out. Omar Mateen went from gay Islamic sinner, doomed to everlasting hell, to celebrated Jihadi warrior in one night, by killing infidels and gay infidels at that.
The most fitting term for peaceful Muslims is Sleeper Jihadis who, when an especially attractive target presents itself or when life becomes disappointing or when Jihadi peer pressure tips their hands, will light their own fuses and drive down the street, shooting at random pedestrians or, shooting up an unprotected military recruiting office or, taking their banned weapons to the base gymnasium and killing their fellow soldiers or, taking their illegal weapons to the office Christmas party and killing the coworkers who have just thrown them a baby shower or —
— going to the neighborhood gay club and one by one, shooting unarmed people with whom they had previously socialized, until the ammo runs out because there were so many to kill and it took the police so long to arrive.
Mateen couldn’t kill himself, another mortal sin. He had to wait for the police to martyr him so he could get his free pass to paradise. How many victims bled to death while the SWAT team waited, negotiating with him, apparently not comprehending, he wasn’t holding hostages, he was just waiting for them to come in and shoot him so, he could die a martyr.
Allah-u-akbar!
And before the blood dries, millions of young people all around the world will have read their posts and downloaded their pre-massacre selfies and watched their anti-western civilization rants and messaged each other about how cool the cute Muslims were who killed all the boring, ordinary non-Muslims.
And I’m not talking about Muslim kids, I’m talking about good ol’ corn fed American kids.
We appear to have entered a post-moral age. One in which those young enough to have had their sensibilities completely dulled by the games they play and what they see every day on the web, instead of judging the perps for taking innocent lives, judge the security and execution videos for their cool factors and production values, as though they’re watching video games.
“Did you see him cut that guy’s head off? Did you see the blood? Cool!”
Although Islam embraces post-morality, we can’t blame this on Islam. Most of us aren’t Muslim and post-morality has been with us for awhile. Maybe we’re desensitized to suffering because virtual reality is becoming so real and, reality is becoming so virtual. Everything’s on the web. Maybe we’re seeing even the moral obscenity of the execution videos as a slightly less cool but, more real version of a video game.
When nineteen year old Robert Hawkins shot up a shopping mall in Omaha, wounding four and killing eight, before police arrived and, he ended his teenage tantrum in the now all-too-familiar way, by shooting himself in the head, he left a suicide note, saying he wanted out of his meaningless life and “just want to take a few pieces of shit with me.”
You might think he was getting even with people who’d wronged him but, not so. He knew none of the twelve pieces of shit he shot, nor did they know him.
“Just think tho, I’m going to be fucking famous!” They lost their dreams, their loves, their families and their lives so an unhappy teenager could have his fifteen minutes of fame.
That was nine years ago and, had I not named him, none of you would know who he was. Eight people died so he could be completely forgotten.
Tragic, right? Not nearly as tragic as his teenage friends’ reactions. They defended him. One explained to reporters it was all good because “He wanted to go out like a star.” Another of his friends threatened to kill a girl who, post-massacre,
SOURCE URL: https://medium.com/@Penseur/ending-the-jihad-a9f1fdbe8bb#.bhxnm4g0m


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  • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 9 months ago
    I like this but calling Christianity 'one of the most passive religions on earth' is strange.

    I'd like to see a version with cross-referencing to the Koran verses or other sources.
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    • Posted by 7 years, 9 months ago
      How so? Read the New Testament? It commands Christians to not judge others and turn the other cheek. When Christians have done violence in the name of Christianity, they have violated their religion. The Crusades were military responses to Muslim invasions and plundering of Christian countries and widespread mass murder of Christian populations. Jerusalem was Jewish thousands of years before Muhammad was born and Christian 680 years before Muhammad was born. It only became Muslim when Muhammad and his armies invaded it and massacred its Jewish and Christian occupants. The Crusades attempted to undo the invasions and rescue the remaining Christian populations in the Holy Lands and southern and eastern Europe.

      The Quran, on the other hand, demands, in so many words its adherents engage in violent Jihad.

      The Quran is very hard to read because the verses come in no discernable order. They're not chronological or by topic. It's as though after his death, Muhammad's transcriptionists threw the pages up in the air and ordered them by how quickly they hit the ground. My hard copy is traditional but, I have a digital copy that's 80%-90% chronological.

      The early history of Muhammad and Islam is fairly well known, although Islam has tried to cover up the worst parts. Living in Mecca, home to many religions, Muhammad tried to promote his own but, didn't get any attention until he declared all the other religions were worshipping false gods. That got him thrown out of Mecca. He did journey to Medina, where the Jews agreed to take him in and, a few years later he did pay them back by beheading most of them.

      My overall point is, the web and cell phones have given young people the world over access to information they haven't had in the past. They all, everywhere I've been, are very "cool" conscious. Currently Islam and Islamic leaders teach young Muslims it's cool to engage in Jihad. If we can paint a true picture of Islam's ridiculous beginnings, maybe we can take away the cool factor.

      It's worked on Christianity and Judaism; the leftists have made them uncool and few young people now claim either religion. If we could do the same to Islam, over time we might rid the world of Jihad without having to engage in World War 3.

      Thanks for reading and, thanks for your comments.
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      • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 9 months ago
        Passive. Is a group to be characterized by its actions or by what is in its core texts and teachings? In the case of Islam, there is scarce difference.
        The history of the Crusades is an example of the contradictions in Christianity. Ref. the Fourth Crusade-
        http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/history/2...
        There are other instances.
        This could be an explanation-
        'If you believe in absurdities, you will commit atrocities', Satre.

        Constantinople again- the above ref is perhaps the most thoughtful. The last para is worth reading-
        " If we can hold a 795-year-old grudge, why not go further back? .. Let's begrudge Italy because the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD. .. The Serbians remember their battle of 1389 like yesterday, we are told, so why not 1204, too? (But) Look at our friendly attitude towards the Germans and Japanese, for example - a mere 50 years after they were both our mortal enemies in the greatest war of world history."
        That is, most groups have their ups and downs, but one group has both bad precept and bad behavior over centuries.

        The conventional order of verses in the Koran is approximately longest to shortest.
        Ref-
        https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Chronologi...

        For Muslims, the prioritizing of contradictory instructions is given by the word 'abrogation' as you state in your other thread. This is not sufficiently well understood by the chattering classes, it is as if the verse ordering were done to conceal the real intent.
        Something else very important-
        'the teachings are the seal of the prophet' meaning they can not be changed.
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        • Posted by 7 years, 9 months ago
          Lucky;

          The Crusades were military responses to Muslim invasions. The Holy Lands and much of southern and eastern Europe were forcibly taken by Muslims. The Crusaders attempted to take them back. True, the Crusaders killed many Jews too but, Jews weren't their target, Muslims were their target.

          I realize Islam teaches that the order of the verses in the Quran was given by Muhammad but, they very conveniently cover up the many contradictions in the book and make it much harder for people to understand how Muhammad's religious teachings changed, based on his military success. He went from tolerant to totally intolerant as his military power grew.

          I have several sources for the chronological Quran but, none claim to be perfect. The real chronological order may not now be known to anyone.

          If one understands this, Islam seems less a religion and more the ravings of a seventh century homicidal maniac.
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          • Posted by Lucky 7 years, 9 months ago
            Thanks for the comment.
            One of my earlier points refers to Constantinople. In 1204 during the fourth crusade, western Christians (Catholics), inflicted mass murder on eastern Christians (Orthodox). The crusade ended with that event.
            The official aim may have been to push back Muslim advance, the effective target was loot, the method was slaughter.
            The implications were far reaching, under the new rulers the Byzantine state decayed and was not able to resist the Ottoman expansion.

            The other point I tried to make is that cultures change, Religious adherents have become less extreme and violent over the past few centuries, the exception is Islam.
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            • Posted by 7 years, 9 months ago
              When we speak of the Christian religion should we differentiate between what the New Testament teaches and what the organized church did? Clearly, as you point out, individuals who claimed to act in Christ's name broke his moral rules but, they may not have been breaking organized church rules. Do we end up having to specify always Teachings of Christ, Organized Church, Individuals Acting For Christ, and Individuals Acting for the Organized Church?

              I have never claimed Christians are perfect just, that Christianity teaches tolerance and nonviolence while, Islam teaches intolerance and violent Jihad. Yet, many people seem unwilling to address the question in those terms or unable to separate the acts of individuals and organizations from the teachings of Christianity.

              In the case you mention above, Christ would never have condoned the Roman Catholic Church attacking the Orthodox Church. Can we say Rome condoned the attacks or, are we only able to say individuals acting in the name of Rome attacked individuals of the Orthodox Church?
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