"The 20th century is full of examples of civilians sacrificed on the altar of democracy."
I would have to say carpet bombing entire cities during world war 2, with incendary munitions, to destroy them outright, would support the above statement. How about dropping nuclear weapons on two largely undamaged and civillian targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Certainly there was a military presence in those cities, worth targeting, and in the result killing nearly a 100,000 civillians. Napalm in Vietnam.
"That's a strawman argument. First, it's too vague. Define "for your country"? Second, the point is, it's never acceptable to murder people for an IDEA. A BELIEF."
Murdering civillians, perhaps not the goal, but certainly the result, for an end to the war, was the reason the bombs were dropped on Japan, that and avoiding a larger loss of life estimated at being 1 million soliders/civillians with an Invasion of the homeland.
If you were an airman during World War 2, you would be murdering "for your country" would you not? I mean carrying out the mission yes, but if your mission was to drop incendary bombs on cities, and those bombs would burn entire cities, even though it were necessary to win the war would dropping those bombs not be murder?
"I don't see Islam as primarily a religion. I see it as an ideology. Be honest -- do you REALLY think that there is a single nation on this planet in which the majority or near majority of Christians or Hindu or whatever would answer that it is okay to target innocents to defend their religion?"
I don't think if you polled the people in other countries, people would defend their religion as strongly as Muslims, certainly not in favor of the violence. However, I certainly believe that if people were asked, if it were necessary to sometimes kill civilians in an effort to win a war of survival against an enemy force or foe, that you could see support for that. Probably not a majority though. Part of being Muslim is daily/hourly devotion to your religion, Islam plays a much larger portion of daily life then do the other religions for a larger percentage Islamic followers. As you have stated and I agree it is largely the accepted way of life in those countries, and what makes those percentages understandable, is that there isn't a great deal of secularism in the Islamic world, seperation of church and state isn't a common theme.
If people in our country were engaged in a war, and asked if it was sometimes rarely or never ok to attack civillians, in order to defend our way of life, that certainly would find some support, just as it has in overseas.
Again, however in these countries there is dramatically less support for AQ, and Islamic fundamentalism vs modernization. That means at least to me, that Muslims want their way of life, and want to be left alone, as well as respected for who they are not made to be westerners.
"Um, Yea, we have. There have been Muslims in the United States who have shot up schools (Jewish schools) in the name of Islam. There have been Muslims who have opened fire in airports in the name of Islam. That's just two in recent times that I can think of. While there are nuts out there who shoot up stuff anyway, these are examples of people who did it in the name of Islamic Jihad."
We do not have daily homocide bombing, or daily violence inside the United States perpertrated by Muslims, defending Islam don't even go there. There are nuts of course, but to say all Islam, all peoples of Islam are capable or want that is just flat out wrong. You can call me an apologist if you want, but I've made no apology, just offered a different way of looking at it, automatically wrong of course, and I've stated that your facts do support your conclusions. But there are more to those facts, more background issues, in the Islamic world.
Take for instance the protests against the pope in Turkey, they've been ongoing for a few weeks now. Nobody has died yet lol. When the pope gets there meets with the church in Turkey, of course there will be an increase in the intensity of protest, but there won't be outright war. That's just silly.
BTW this airport shooting you keep bringing up?
Is it this one?
archives.cnn.com/2002/US/07/04/la.airport.shooting/
"Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn added: "It appears this was an isolated incident."
A Bush administration source concurred with that statement, adding that nothing suggested it was anything other than a criminal act."
"Authorities said Patrick Gott, a Muslim man who was charged in the shooting, told them he opened fire because people had made fun of his turban at a restaurant shortly before he went to the airport."
Hardly an act of war/terrorism, being a man on the edge and upset, carrying a gun, and deciding in his mind, that because people had made fun of him that he should shoot them. Yeah that's all Islams' fault.
"NAME EXAMPLES. Name ONE example of a Christian going into an airport and gunning down people in the name of God (or something similar). Also note that Muslims make up a tiny % of our population while Christians make up around 90%.
QUIT morally equating the two unless you have FACTS to back it up. Don't waste my time with bullshit."
Ok Brad. I wish you'd stop bringing up the airport thing.
While I'm convinced it's true that there are some Muslims in the world, that would rather see our country gone, I don't believe they are a majority. I further believe that that notion is not unique to Islam either. There are lots of people who would like it if the US wasn't a part of the world. But that's not going to happen. What also isn't going to happen is us taking on Islam as a whole, in an agressive way.
According to your survey, there is support for defending Islam, one could say, at any costs, and further, there is also more support for that then Al Qaeda. There is no question that Islamic extremism is a threat, but concluding that the entire world Islamic population would be ok with suicide bombing and violence against westerners, is a bit of a stretch.
Since there is a relatively large number of of people on here, I'm curious if there are any Muslims that would like to join the discussion, at the risk of being automatically wrong,
Maybe a follower of Islam could offer shed some light on the situation.
