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Apparent Islamic Terrorism Strikes Sydney
An anonymous reader send this link to a developing situation in Sydney, Australia, being reported on via live feed at the Guardian, and covered by various other news outlets as well. According to CNN's coverage, "CNN affiliate Seven Network said that at least 13 people are being held at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe. It published a photograph of people inside the cafe holding a black flag with Arabic writing on it. The flag reads: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God."
From The New York Times' coverage: The police have shut down parts of the city’s transport system, and closed off the mall area. They would not confirm how many people were being held hostage inside the cafe, nor whether those inside are armed.
Local media reports said that the airspace over Sydney had been closed and the famed Sydney Opera House evacuated. Television images showed heavily armed officers with their weapons trained on the cafe.
The airspace over Sydney isn't closed, nor is its airport. Flights are being diverted around the CBD (both by order from the authorities and voluntarily from the main domestic airlines agreeing to divert).
"There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God."
Well, they got the first 4 words right.
Sudden Jihad Syndrome, it could happen to anyone.
There is only a Spaghetti Monster! He is going to meat ball you!
I'm skeptical of the peaceful nature of a religion founded by a warlord; but at this stage we don't know that it's not some nut-job who is trying to capitalise on the ISIS popularity.
(I'm writing from one of the buildings currently in lock-down because of this situation)
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
To be perfectly honest, does anyone have statistics (recent) on the number of terrorist acts that are committed by Christians? I'd like to compare them with Islamic terrorist acts, because it seems to me that Islamic apologists need a wake-up call.
There are about 500,000 Muslims in Australia.
1 of them is committing this crime.
Too bad the major news networks are probably airing this from every angle, live. I bet the jihadis know how to use TVs too.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Once the western world abandons the middle east, then this shit will stop happening. Sigh, when will we ever learn.
Fundamentalists. They hate us for our chocolate.
"Lost time is not found again."
Perhaps it will stop happening here, but it will still happen in the middle east. It's not like the middle east is a peaceful place without the west butting in. The Muslims have still got plenty to do blowing each other up.
If you can get through, 2GB has excellent rolling coverage on their radio station. Ray Hadley (the presenter) has had various calls throughout the morning from one of the hostages who speaking on behalf of the terrorist wants to speak to Tony Abbott (Prime minister) live on air.
http://2gb.com/listen-live
Getting data on these issues is complicated. If one restricts to the US, then about 10% of all terrorist attacks are Islamic. See http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html. But not only is this restricted to the US, it uses a very broad notion of what counts as terrorism. If one weighs in the US by total deaths, then Islamic terrorism swamps everything else primarily due to 9/11. Worldwide, about 70% of all terrorist attacks are by Sunni Muslims but this varies from year to year. See for example the 2011 report NCTC report http://fas.org/irp/threat/nctc2011.pdf. Again, definitional issues can move this number up or down by a lot.
Some people consider it a "hate site" for some reason, but so far, nobody explained away the list.
Ezekiel 23:20
You dignify the human waste who perpetrate such idiocy by calling them "terrorists".
They are much more likely to be some loser who has no idea what else to do with
their miserable piece of shit lives, so they decide to do bad things.
Calling them an asshole is much more likely to be accurate. Calling them a terrorist
gives them more credit than all but a tiny fraction of such scum remotely deserve.
didn't expect that...
Learn? Learn? LEARN?
Crack open a book sometime. Islam has been trying to take over the rest of the world pretty much since the day it was founded. Liberal fantasies about Western colonialism are flatly contradicted by the entire rest of history. From Charlemange to Dracula the rest of the world was actively under siege.
This is just the next chapter in a very long history that's not pretty if you actually bother to pay attention to it.
Being able to ignore their oil really wouldn't change the situation all that much.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I know that sometimes on Slashdot, we get 'stuff that matters,' but can't we at least talk about the police drones involved in the situation? Or even that Uber is reportedly charging users a minimum $100 to get out of Sydney CBD. At least attempt to make it seem relevant please?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Uber is reportedly charging its users in downtown Sydney a minimum $100, a result of surge pricing introduced in the midst of an armed hostage crisis, Mashable has learned.
http://mashable.com/2014/12/14...
Islam is a peaceful religion, that's why followers just went out of their way to do this. And in Canada we had two terrorist attacks(one in Quebec), and another on Parliament Hill in two days.
My interpretation is that Islam is just like any other religion. A bunch of people who think their religion wants them to be perfectly nice and peaceful, and a bunch of others who think it demands they cleanse the Earth of non-believers.
If you followed the attacks in Canada you noticed that the attackers were recent converts to Islam. Their attacks weren't motivated by Islam, they were motivated by ISIL's culture of terrorism and enabled by whatever personal demons caused them to jump headlong into a new religion. Islam is just the language that ISIL uses to communicate that culture.
I stole this Sig
Well, Christianity is a peaceful religion too. Perhaps that explains the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.
Crusades are easy, that would be a response to 100 years of Muslim rape, slaughter, and forced conversion in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition gets interesting, because it was a direct result of that. Surprise right? You're dealing with an entire group of extremists that responded to extremists in kind. Then again, that's not what they teach in school anymore is it. Rather many paint it as "it was all the christians fault."
Om, nomnomnom...
The Crusades were a backlash against Muslim invasion nitwit.
As a former Muslim who lives in western country:
1. Islam is not a peaceful religion, and to believe so you must either be a Muslim or a very naive person. Peaceful Muslims exist of course, but simply because they do not follow Islam strictly enough.
2. Conservative western politicians who make use of terrorism to their own political benefit are not much better than the terrorists, in that both sides have no problem using people's safety to advance their own agenda. Typically they are also the ones that support wars worldwide.
Guns aren't allowed in coffee shops in Australia. News story must be fake.
They would likely rise if the Australian government was carrying out airstrikes on the Vatican
Some people consider it a "hate site" for some reason
It contains facts that doesn't fit with their world view.
Om, nomnomnom...
Look man, even Bush said, "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.....Islam is peace." He was something of a warmonger, but even he realized that you shouldn't go to war against an entire religion. The enemies are easy to recognize, they're the ones who are trying to kill us, no matter what religion they profess.
Seriously, when you're more irrational than Bush, it's time to stop and think if you have a problem in your head.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There is nothing in attributed to the Christian god himself — nor any of his prophets — that required Crusades or the Inquisition.
On contrast, Koran — which purports to be the word of god verbatim — mandates that the faithful convert or kill the pagans and (tax the Christians and Jews). The prophet himself — whom Muslims world-wide adore — was an illiterate warlord, who used genocide centuries before it became cool.
Bible has plenty of warlords too, but none of them are His prophets. King David is described as a hero, but he killed too many people to found the Temple — the task was left to his son. Not the sort of quibbles, Muslims would consider...
The Crusades ended in the 14th century. Spanish Inquisition (a secular institution, BTW — ran by Spanish Crown) is also many centuries in the past. Since then the Western world has created the First Amendment, among other things. If you have nothing contemporary to contrast the ongoing craziness of the "religion of peace", you've lost your argument...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You can get enlightened here. I quote:
The First Crusade (1096–1099) ... ended as a military expedition by Roman Catholic Europe to regain the Holy Lands taken in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–661), ultimately resulting in the recapture of Jerusalem in 1099. It was launched on 27 November 1095 by Pope Urban II with the primary goal of responding to an appeal from Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who requested that western volunteers come to his aid and help to repel the invading Seljuq Turks from Anatolia.
And is EXACTLY the same as Christianity.
Both are religions that base their entire structure around "we are the one true correct path and all others are wrong". Both have been used to dominate other populations.
That said religion is just a tool to control the masses. It is no different to other ideologies in that case.
If you're a religious fanatic in the Middle East and want to kill Christians you become a terrorist. ...
Or, you can join ISIS (the army killing and/or enslaving/raping everyone including Christians).
So there's an equal choice to be had, yet some are choosing to capture and harm non-military forces - those people doing so have been wholly Muslim.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TL;DR no, it should not have been translated, but whomever decided to had some damned reason or another, so you'll have to ask that person to see if this was justified.
It's an interesting question, and I'm on both sides of the fence. God and Allah are both the God of Abraham, spiritual head of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
"God" in western Christianity seems to be nameless, with the generic "god" becoming a proper name. We capitalize the word because there is only one god, and that is the god to which we refer by "God". Same with the difference between "his grace" and "His grace", only "his" is not a name.
But you suggest God is a proper name. It's more of a convention than a proper proper name, but whatever.
Why is the Muslim god called Allah?
A better question is, why would a Muslim and a Jew worship differently, have different beliefs, and want to blow each other up?
It is not the same God. There is your answer.
The Muslim God spoke through Muhammad - and the followers are Muslim. The Christian God spoke through Jesus - and the followers are Christian. The Jewish God spoke through Moses, without further distillation.
The worship of Allah is not the worship of the Christian God. The worship of the Jewish Lord is not the worship of either one.
Yes, it is the same God, but not the same religion. All 3 refer to the same God of Abraham, but God is not Allah because the followers are not the same.
If you are a Copt, dominated by Arabic culture, the proper translation is probably "There is no God but God," because this is very definitely not Allah. But clearly the second half, "Mohammed is the prophet of God," tells us that this is Allah, not God.
"Allahu akbar" does, in fact, mean "God is great" to both people. That is, if I translate for you so you can understand, it means that my God, who is also your God, is great. The key is in how you use translation. Do you mean that you literally translate without regard for idiom? Because most people don't do that. If I translate as "Allah, who is the God of these people but also in many ways the god of Christians and Jews, is great" it gets wordy, leaves lots of holes for questions and disagreements, and generally is worthless.
It is much closer in meaning and sentiment to say "God is great." It is not "God who hates Jews is great" or "God who thinks America is the Great Satan is great." It means "God of our faith is great", and is more clearly translated as you said.
Now to the quote in question: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God." Should that mean Allah instead? As I read it, it does in fact exclude the Jewish God and the Christian God, specifically because it excludes other prophets. BahÃ'Ã is out because they recognize many other prophets in addition to the one claimed in the quote. Mormonism obviously as well.
So this is the God of Muhammad, which can be summed up easily by saying "Allah" instead of God. Of course, this is redundant since the quote says that directly.
Since the quote comes from CNN, which cites Seven Network, we must consider whether Seven Network was right in translating it the way it did. I'm not going to go into the complexities of deciding who your audience is and whether you want to slant the news or appear unbiased, or whether someone put this much thought into the translation. Because they probably didn't. And no one cares by this point. And unless you majored in another language in preparation to be a translator, with formal education, the subtleties would be lost.
The choice is always to color someone's perceptions or avoid coloring - there is rarely neutral ground. So finally your question: Should Allah be translated to God? The answer of course is sometimes. Not in this case.
Be sure to tell the Albigensians. I'm sure they'll be glad to know this.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Of FFS. Please stop spreading your ignorance.
You can easily obtain a firearm in Australia. In fact I own multiple. The thing is you have to be licensed and have a valid reason for owning one, and self defence is not a valid reason. You need to be a member of a club, pass a police check and have some character references. Then you need to wait a year after getting your license. It's a bit of a pain in the arse but it is far from impossible.
I own multiple semi-automatic pistols for competition shoots and a bolt action rifle for bench rest shooting.
Whether you agree with the gun laws in Australia, and as a shooter I do, to say they are near impossible to own is complete crap. What I would say is that Australia is a very safe place to live and your chances of getting shot here is almost zero. You don't ever hear about kids getting shot cause the knocked on the wrong house door during Halloween.
It's not the World Trade Center, and it's not Bali. It's a single cafe and a maximum possible body count than your typical school shooting in the US (which can hardly hold the news media's attention for more than a week any more).
This news wouldn't have made it out of Australia (if even NSW) if it weren't for the Islamic bogeyman angle.
Nobody does.
Might be referring to the numerous sting operations bordering on entrapment where the prime impetus for a group of would-be terrorists turns out to be an undercover federal agent encouraging them to cause trouble.
Clarifying question: To what degree do you fear that the Pope will declare a new Holy War and call upon Christendom to launch armies against some opponent?
Zero?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Both of the people were mentally ill. Bibeau, the homeless Ottawa killer, had a history of violence, drug addiction, and mental instability, including 12 convictions in Quebec between 2001 and 2011 for crimes including drug possession, impaired driving, weapons offences, assault causing bodily harm, theft, and possession of break-in tools, which started long before he converted to islam.
Rouleau, the Quebec killer, had been taken to a psychiatric hospital by his father, but they couldn't keep him when he said he wanted to leave. He had drug problems, had to be in a special school for kids with discipline problems when he was younger, his personal life had fallen apart, his business had failed and last year at 24 he turned to islam, looking for something to cling to where he wouldn't feel like an inadequate failure, and was attracted to the extremists on the net and in the media.
Most people are able to make the distinction between a nutbar using a religion as a smokescreen to their using violence to escape their own failures or shortcomings, and the majority who peacefully practice that same religion. This applies equally to muslims, christians, atheists, or whatever your personal preference or poison.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
IRA and Russian speaking Ukrainians are fighting for political freedom, not for a "God" (BTW, in Ukraine we are supporting the bad guys). As for "Timmy", I'm not fluent enough in English to know what you're talking about.
Islam is becoming a serious problem.
An anecdote... One of my friend is Muslim. He's really not a fundamentalist. His wife is not wearing a hijab, he shave every morning (not sure about his wife) and he drinks alcohol from time to time (although he refuse to eat pork and he celebrate Ramadan). When there was the terrorist attacks because of Muhammad drawings, he said he was against violence. But... he also said he understood why people who were angry about those drawings decided to use violence. He consider our society do not respect Islam, so violence is a normal outcome.
This point of view is shared with the vast majority of Muslims. That's the problem.
Calling them an asshole is much more likely to be accurate. Calling them a terrorist gives them more credit than all but a tiny fraction of such scum remotely deserve.
I've often had that same thought. Calling them "terrorists" is really glorifying them, at least in the eyes of the impressionable. They are thinking "hey - I want to be a brave terrorist just like him!" All news headlines should refer to them literally as "assholes" or "losers". Then watch how many people now are going to say "hey - I want to be an asshole and a loser just like him!".I don't think quite so many would want to emulate that behaviour.
To which I answer the same degree that I am concerned that the leader of the largest sections of Islam will do. Zero.
The degree to which I fear that splinter section of the Christian faith will take up arms against Islam is about on the same level as my concern of splinter Islamic groups taking up arms against the west. Christian extremists are the ones that will fire bomb paediatrician offices remember. I would not want to be of Islamic faith in America at the moment because I think even walking down the street could put you at risk.
What degree of risk would you associate with the KKK, a predominately Christian organisation, may start targetting muslins? I would say it is non-zero.
Might be referring to the numerous sting operations bordering on entrapment where the prime impetus for a group of would-be terrorists turns out to be an undercover federal agent encouraging them to cause trouble.
The police here were using illegal spyware to infiltrate peoples computers to capture data, instead of using the legal processes available to them, to reveal some "potential" attacks.They then whipped up a media frenzy to garner support to pass new security legislation that would legalize the use of such methods. Of the 16 "suspects" 15 were released without charge and a 16th on a minor charge.
This sort of thing is what that legislation was supposed to prevent.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And here, mass shootings tend to only take place in areas that prohibit or have severely curtailed the carrying of firearms.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And is EXACTLY the same as Christianity.
No, it really isn't.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
For you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have seen and heard.
So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
Christianity advocates persuasion and being an example. "Fundamentalist" christianity is actually very peaceful. That doesn't prevent very unpeaceful people from trying to commandeer a philosophy's good reputation and use it for to try to conquer others, but those types of people will use anything they can get their hands on.
I'm skeptical of the peaceful nature of a religion founded by a warlord
Me too! A religion founded by a warlord sounds like a terrible idea.
But are we talking about Islam(muhammad), Judaism(moses), or Christianity(constantine)?
Hey, I'm not a big fan of Judaism, but working to free your people from slavery does not make you a "warlord". Also, I don't remember anything in Exodus about Moses or his people resorting to violence; the story just has them fleeing the Egyptian army, and the Egyptians being swallowed by the Red Sea after they tried to follow the Jews through it. Of course, this story also claims the Red Sea was parted somehow so they could walk across, so it's highly questionable just how accurate this story is....
Also, I'm not sure how you give credit to Constantine for founding Christianity; I thought that honor went to Jesus, or perhaps Paul or even Peter.
If that is what you believe then you believe a lot of nonsense.
Iran considers itself at war with the US, and you may recall that it is ruled by Shia Islam clerics.
Radical Islam has been at war with the West and Israel for decades. Invidual factions have had tens of thousands of members. Something on the order of 100,000 Jihadis are believed to have gone through al Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan alone. You would think that by now if there was going to be a "Christian extremist" splinter group take up arms against Islam you would have seen that by now. Do you have any canidates?
The claim that "Christian extremists" are fire bombing paediatrician offices as a practical matter is nonsense. There are few incidents over decades, and one of the most prolific and dangerous attackers, Eric Rudolf, wasn't even a Christian, he was an atheist.
The KKK isn't a Christian organization despite its propaganda, and it is a tiny threat today that is still watched by law enforcement. I doubt it would go after Muslims since they both hate the Jews.
Your imagination is running away with you.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'm hopeful that someday we all can learn to peacefully cohabit this planet, and maybe even stand up for and protect each other.
Some people use religion as an excuse to hurt or kill, while others use it as inspiration to improve their own and others' lives. I think it has more to do with the person than the religion.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
If you don't live in the Middle East, then it's not so much of a problem for you.
In the book of Numbers, chapter 31, Moses orders the murder of every man, woman, and child in a city that was promised to his own people. When his army came back with children prisoners of war, he rebuked them, ordered them to slay the male children on the spot, and allowed them to keep the female children for themselves as spoils of war (there are plenty of other stories similar to this about the OT, and involving Moses specifically).
So, yeah, warlord.
And about Constantine founding Christianity...
When the religion was illegal by Roman law, there were many separate Christianities with very different beliefs (and they quarreled with one another, as well as with the Jews that wanted to stay Jewish). Once Constantine decided to make Christianity the official religion of Rome, he also picked the specific set of churches that he agreed with and established their representatives as the proper religious authorities. They promptly declared the other varieties of Christianity to all be heresy, had their books burned (some recently recovered in the Nag Hammadi library revealing just how different these Christianities were).
So, Christianity (or at least Catholicism) as we know it today was very much the work of Constantine.
Of FFS. Please stop spreading your ignorance.
You can easily obtain a firearm in Australia. In fact I own multiple. The thing is you have to be licensed and have a valid reason for owning one, and self defence is not a valid reason. You need to be a member of a club, pass a police check and have some character references. Then you need to wait a year after getting your license. It's a bit of a pain in the arse but it is far from impossible.
This,
A thousand times this.
There's so much misinformation about firearms in Australia its not funny.
It's not hard to get guns in Australia unless you've got a criminal record. I used to have guns (I moved and it was just simpler to sell them) and my character reference was the administrator at my school (she was also a JP) and that was at age 18.
Only fully automatics and semi-automatics are banned here. That is a good thing because this tool walked into a cafe with a shotgun, not an AK47. At worst it's a double barrel sawn off.
You've got a better chance of winning the lottery than being shot in Australia.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What degree of risk would you associate with the KKK, a predominately Christian organisation, may start targetting muslins? I would say it is non-zero.
Well, maybe, but as long as they stick to targeting muslin and don't attack wool or polyester, I think we'll be OK.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I'm skeptical of the peaceful nature of a religion founded by a warlord; but at this stage we don't know that it's not some nut-job who is trying to capitalise on the ISIS popularity.
I think you should get your facts right Muhammad was not a warlord in fact he was a merchant until he became a religious leader at age 26. Of course since it is very easy to interpret the Quran for personal reasons and many splinter groups of Islam have done just that so I can understand why many non-muslins would think Muhammad was a warlord.
The flag that is being shown is not associated with ISIS however it is what is called The Black Standard . The writing you can see on the flag is means "There is no god but the God, Muhammad is the messenger of the God", however this same writing does appear on many flags and some of those are associated with Muslim terrorist groups.
This incident is classified as a terrorist act however even the top Muslim Cleric in Australia has condemned this so it basically boils down to one or two extremists who have their own agenda. Basically this act will achieve nothing except to alienate Muslims from Australian society which I suppose is what the terrorists really want.
BTW. A simple search would have found the information I have given. I do live in Sydney as some of my previous posts have attested too however I am not a Muslim nor have I any intention of being one but lets get the "facts" correct.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
We should give up more of our constitutional rights NOW, before it's too late.
Its a lone gunman.
Police arent calling it a terrorism, it wasnt an IS flag being waved, airspace wasnt closed.
But hey, why not use criminal activity to drum commercial media activity.
If you want proper coverage journalism go to ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission), its govenment funded but independently operated.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
Actually, observant Jews would use a euphemism. They never use the word for G-d, but say, for example, "Hashem" (The Name), or "Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu" (The Holy One Blessed Be He).
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I'm still talking about the list of attacks. That is a summary of facts. I've randomly sampled some of the attacks some time ago and none of them was made up; all of them happened. It's not a "soundbite" or a "pre-baked conclusion" "made to look factual" that a policeman was beheaded by Muslims for religious reasons on this December's first day, BBC reports on it. And if the authors of that web site indeed only "cherry-picked" some of them, as you insinuate, I'm not sure I want to see the rest.
At this point in history, arguing that perhaps religion doesn't make people utterly stupid really sounds almost like arguing that perhaps the Earth is hollow.
Ezekiel 23:20
Sorry to hear this unfolding :(
An unarmed populous is easier to terrorize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... When being armed is illegal (or restricted to the point of being nearly that), only the bad guys will be armed in such situations. Waiting for the police to come save you is often an ineffective endeavor.
Australia's gun laws are what has prevented this person from having an assault rifle. He's armed with a small single barrelled shotgun. Having more armed people will ensure that more incidents like this will occur and a lot more often.
And I am an Australian. Our gun laws have prevented things like this as criminals cant get easy access to guns.
We are not terrorised here I can assure you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Oh, by the way, the Breivik argument is just hilarious. He's the one guy who tripled Norway's homicide statistics for one year. That alone should tell you something about Norway. And the fact that Breivik is even newsworthy after three years when something like six acts of Muslim religious violence on average end up with death daily really drives my point home. The same week that Breivik killed 77 people, Muslims around the world killed at least another 95 (just for religious reasons, mind you - that's what we're counting here). But one Breivik is newsworthy only because it's such a rare occurrence. Norway doesn't have low homicide rate because it's Christian - it really isn't, it has a low homicide rate because it's not chock-full of crazy brainwashed wackos.
Ezekiel 23:20
Australia doesn't have the 2nd Amendment.
Not true. The second amendment to the Australian Constitution in 1910 amended Section 105 so that it read
The Parliament may take over from the States their public debts, or a proportion thereof according to the respective numbers of their people as shown by the latest statistics of the Commonwealth, and may convert, renew, or consolidate such debts, or any part thereof; and the States shall indemnify the Commonwealth in respect of the debts taken over, and thereafter the interest payable in respect of the debts shall be deducted and retained from the portions of the surplus revenue of the Commonwealth payable to the several States, or if such surplus is insufficient, or if there is no surplus, then the deficiency or the whole amount shall be paid by the several States.
Where previously it had read
The Parliament may take over from the States their public debts as existing at the establishment of the Commonwealth , or a proportion thereof according to the respective numbers of their people as shown by the latest statistics of the Commonwealth, and may convert, renew, or consolidate such debts, or any part thereof; and the States shall indemnify the Commonwealth in respect of the debts taken over, and thereafter the interest payable in respect of the debts shall be deducted and retained from the portions of the surplus revenue of the Commonwealth payable to the several States, or if such surplus is insufficient, or if there is no surplus, then the deficiency or the whole amount shall be paid by the several States.
In retrospect, I should not have posted the "brick testament" link. It was needlessly snarky.
Here are a few passages about Moses' military exploits, without the snarky lego commentary.
The slaughter of women and children at Midean: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=28...
The slaughter of women and children at Bashan: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=28...
The slaughter of women and children at Heshbon: http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=28...
But that isn't your argument.
Your argument is that Islam is inherently violent (which is what the site you linked to is trying to say). Dont try to change the argument to all religions because you've been proven wrong (you want a list of attacks, the IRA did over 10,000 bombings on its own).
Extremism is bad and causes people to do irrational things. Your brand of extremism is as bad as any other.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Only fully automatics and semi-automatics are banned here. That is a good thing because this tool walked into a cafe with a shotgun, not an AK47. At worst it's a double barrel sawn off
Just to clarify this as it is a little more fine grained that an outright ban. To own a semi-automatic rifle you need to be in a career which requires it. So culling from a helicopter is one of the few occupations which allows you to own a semi-auto rifle. Semi-auto pistols though are a standard item in IPSC and ISSF competitions so you are able to own them without a problem but the size of the magazine is restricted to 10 shots. There is however no restriction on the number of mags you carry (odd I know).
Pistol ownership also requires you to actually use the weapons rather than just say that you do. So if you own just 1 pistol you must do a minimum of 6 competitive shoots with that weapon each year. If you own 2 or more you must do a minimum of 4 with each. I own a .22 semi an air and a .32 semi so I need to do a minimum of 12 competition shoots per year.
Fully automatic rifles or pistols are outright banned. As are self-loading and pump action shotguns.
Moving the goal posts means you've lost the argument.
You said it yourself, this guy trippled Norways yearly homicide rate in 3 days. How many of the Muslim incidents you allude to occur in war zones or countries that have an open revolution? Most of them. It's like saying all Christian nations are unsafe by Colombia as an example. The difference between us is that I can recognise BS and you cant.
Norway is an extremely safe country and a rational one. The way Norway picked up and carried on After Breivik is a shining example to us all. No fear mongering or revenge wars.
But where are the extremist Islamic attacks in Norway... at least one per week please.
And this makes you a xenophobe.
Which was the point of my argument, you aren't interested in the truth, you're interested in things that agree with you.
Now here's the kicker, I'm an Australian, I live in Australia and I know a hell of a lot more about this than you do considering how biased and inaccurate your sources are.
This guy is simply not right in the head. It's not that he's a Muslim that caused this, its the fact he's mentally ill. He's already lost 5 of his hostages (they escaped out the back door) he's that incompetent. This is more an indication of Australia's failing mental health care than the rise of Islamic extremism.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
So it is no different to Islam then.
The core Islamic faith does not promote violence. It is co-opted to do so. There are a load of sections of the bible which when taken out of context sound like they promote violence. The Koran is the same.
“When you approach a city to fight against it, you shall offer it terms of peace. If it agrees to make peace with you and opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall become your forced labor and shall serve you. However, if it does not make peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it. When the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall strike all the men in it with the edge of the sword. Only the women and the children and the animals and all that is in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as booty for yourself; and you shall use the spoil of your enemies which the LORD your God has given you. Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” (Deuteronomy 20:10-17)
Taken out of context I could easily use this to show that the Christian god has told me to invade other cities and only leave them alive if they become my slaves. The biggest difference is that currently Christian dominated countries tend to make up the wealthier and more educated parts of the world (and this has nothing to do with Christianity it was just a fluke of history). People who are educated, comfortable and happy are less likely to want to kill other people. Simple proof is that no nation states that have a McDonalds have yet been to war with each other (and by that I mean a true war not supporting insurgents aka Ukraine).
If the people recruited into these organisations were happy, well fed, safe and educated we wouldn't be seeing this problem. But their infrastructure is destroyed, their life expectancy is low, their education is non-existent but they have access to arms and a finger pointed at the west that it is the wests fault that they are poor and miserable. Unfortunately in a lot of cases they have a good argument for that.
Constantine did not found the RCC. He just changed Roman law so that it would be legal. The RCC predates Constantine, and was solidly entrenched in Roman society by the time Constantine made it a legal religion. Constantine's change in Roman law wasn't proactive; it was reactive.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Might be referring to the numerous sting operations bordering on entrapment where the prime impetus for a group of would-be terrorists turns out to be an undercover federal agent encouraging them to cause trouble.
How much "encouragement" would it take to convince you to:
- Walk into a building with a suicide bomb vest and attempt to detonate it
- Park a van full of explosives at a public event and push the detonator in the middle of the ceremony
The stings offered them the opportunity to engage in terrorism, nothing more. They had the intent.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I'd like to know where you got your information that the US had killed more than a million people in Iraq. Of all the surveys done for casualties in Iraq (including internal Iraq surveys) have placed the number closer to 120,000 for the entire war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
If you're getting your 1M+ number from the widely discredited Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll then you're just trying to sensationalize the numbers for some reason.
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It all depends on your definition of terrorist attack. You know the saying, war is the terror of the rich, terror the war of the poor. So, is it a terrorist attack when a smart bomb "accidentally" levels a civilian building and kills a few hundred because someone had a hunch that there might have been someone he wanted dead?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As far as I can tell, by definition, when supporting ANY side in the Ukrainian conflict, you're supporting the bad guys...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can I just think that taking orders from your invisible imaginary friend is a case for a shrink, no matter what you call him?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You think someone wanting to fight and die because his imaginary friend told him it's a good idea is NOT mentally deranged?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A book which is filled with innuendos, deceits and lies, no matter how you look at it, should never be considered as " holy " !!
I agree, so I really have to wonder why you quote from it.
Snide comments aside, you do know that what you consider your "holy bible" today is nothing but a selection of scriptures that someone who happened to have been in power when they were selected wanted to be "holy" while considering what didn't further his agenda was tossed aside as "apokryphic", i.e. "not holy", yes? That the oh so holy bible is nothing but a collection of those stories that fit into someone's power plan.
Not to mention that you're quoting the translation (and let's be blunt here, a rather bad one), don't make me start on that one.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why on earth would you say that? That's not a logical argument. If someone tells you some facts, and they happen to have already made up their mind on what those facts imply, that's still a perfectly valid source of knowledge to use.
You're not obliged to accept their conclusion, unless it logically follows from the facts. And if you don't accept their conclusion even when it follows logically from the facts, then you're a fool. So either way, whether someone else already followed the facts to some logical conclusion before you is irrelevant. You should accept the conclusion if and only if it follows from the facts.
Aside from the fact that Christians did exactly the same when they reconquered the Iberian peninsula, and aside from the fact that in that time Muslim societies were far more liberal than any Christian society (Jews usually fled to Muslim countries from Christian countries), would you mind explaining why no bloody crusade ever went west to Spain, but all East to Jerusalem?
The crusades were the product of a fanatical Christian society, with the motivation of paradise for the soldiers and spoils of war for the commanders. They sacked, plundered, raped anything between Europe and Jerusalem, and that includes Costantinople that at the time was Christian. Which was expected of any serious army at that time. The pretext for war was the "liberation" of Jerusalem, and the real drive was a combination of poverty, ignorance, greed and religion. So the crusades were pretty much the ISIS of the second millenium.
Do read up some history lest you spout more of such nonsense.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
This is what you get when you're short-sighted with your immigration policy
When they have the numbers, they will be up to their mischief
Look around the world, you'll see that this is not a new phenomenon -
They will first DOMINATE - becoming a very vocal minority
Then they will INTIMIDATE - and call anyone who disagree with them "racist" or "hater" and everything their opponents do as "hate speech", "hateful acts"
... and ultimately...
They will SUBJUGATE - the Middle East, Pakistan, Iran, North Africa, and so on, used to be places where the number of non-Muslims were larger than Muslims
Now?
In Pakistan they burned two Christians alive in a kiln
In Iraq / Syria they cut off the heads of Christians
In Northern Nigeria they kidnapped over 200 young girls and forced them to converted into Islam and then married them to much older Muslims
... and so on, and so forth
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Calling them an asshole is much more likely to be accurate. Calling them a terrorist gives them more credit than all but a tiny fraction of such scum remotely deserve.
I've often had that same thought. Calling them "terrorists" is really glorifying them, at least in the eyes of the impressionable. They are thinking "hey - I want to be a brave terrorist just like him!" All news headlines should refer to them literally as "assholes" or "losers". Then watch how many people now are going to say "hey - I want to be an asshole and a loser just like him!".I don't think quite so many would want to emulate that behaviour.
Well, the problem with that is that the people involved don't call themselves "terrorists" in the first place, and they certainly don't care how the Western Media label them.
In their eyes, they are freedom fighters, holy warriors, God's Special Forces, or whatever.
A bit of name-calling really isn't going to stop them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You got the founder of Islam right, but Judaism is considered as founded by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...">Abraham who precedes Moses by multiple centuries. And Christianity was founded by this guy named Jesus, called "the Christ". He predated Constantine by about 300 years or so... Abraham and Jesus were most assuredly NOT warlords.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
A bunch of people who think their religion wants them to be perfectly nice and peaceful
People who haven't read the Koran. We'll call them Diet Islamic, or Islamic Zero.
and a bunch of others who think it demands they cleanse the Earth of non-believers.
People who have read the Koran.
What people do in the name of their God, and what their God commands them to do are two fundamentally different things. Most religions do horrendous things in the name of their God, most of which goes against the word of that God as written. Quite the opposite for Islam.
And what happens when, not if, actually crime happens because of law enforcement involvement or because the sting contributed in some significant way to the crime? We already have an example of the latter with the "Fast and Furious" operation by the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) contributing just over a couple thousand firearms (they assisted in getting those firearms smuggled over the US border to Mexico untraced and with who knows what else included in the package) to the Cartel wars in Mexico. Those firearms then showed up in numerous murder scenes (over 200 deaths by 2011, as I recall), including the death of a US border agent. The end result was that after two years, some minor characters in the smuggling operation were arrested, but not any important figures in a cartel.
The main problem here is that without the agency of the uncover agent, the crime might not have happened in the first place. But even when we know crime happens, the sting can actually make it worse in various ways (such as creating an easy, predictable route by which to commit additional crimes or enabling criminals to do worse than they could before).
No, a "False Flag" does not mean completely fabricated (made up). False Flags relate to the Hegalian Dialectic, problem reaction solution. The problem does not have to be fabricated, and in fact these events work better when they are not. Stand down police to allow something to occur, then capitalize on the aftermath. In nearly all of the high profile FBI busts in the US in the last decade, the FBI acted as facilitators to recruit "terrorists", provided plans and direction for bombings, and even the fake bombs. They did not do the dirty work themselves, it would be too easy to trace. The term "patsy" should suffice for the normal.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Extremism is bad and causes people to do irrational things. Your brand of extremism is as bad as any other.
Like it or not, there are different types of extremism.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6ccC...
That's half a joke, and half true. In some circles, you are considered an extremist if you are rude to others while addressing whatever the issue is. In other circles, you're not an extremist if you kill people over the issue, only if, say, they were children.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
You have to go back to WWII to even make, much less prove, a point about 'Christians' (even though Hitler did nothing in the name of Catholicism) whereas the GP was making his point using current events - events since 2000!!! Can we stick to this millenium? If you want to go back before that, how about we start in 1AD?
How about only condemning the offending group in this case - Muslims? Since we don't currently have Christian or Taoist terrorists on the loose, without going back to the Crusades.
Really? Since the crusades, we haven't had Christians killing abortion doctors or bombing abortion clinics. Waco never happened? Every Sunday some pulpit somewhere preaching about how wrong it is to be LGBT, and that the Bible teaches that these people deserve to die, but that's not preaching hate?
People who want to limit the subject to just Muslim extremists don't want the inconvenient truth - that their belief system is equally flawed, and continues to produce extremists. The KKK is a good case in point - they use the Bible to justify their hate.
A list of just some of the contemporary incidents of non-muslim violence in the USA from 1984 to 2012, mostly committed by christians and/or white supremists:
Frank Silva Roque. Four days after 9/11, murdered Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who owned a gas station in Mesa, Arizona. Roque, a racist, mistook him for a Muslim.
On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented (do you consider white supremists who kill as "non-terrorists")
On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder , was a victim of Christian Right terrorism.
On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays.
July 29, 1994. The murder of Dr. John Britton. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.
Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. His bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998 caused the death of Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard) and caused nurse Emily Lyons to lose an eye, and bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997 and an abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb in 1997.
Oct. 23, 1998 Charles Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later.
1994, John C. Salvi attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others.
Feb. 18, 2010,Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), killing IRS employee Vernon Hunter.
June 18, 1984, Alan Berg killed with an automatic, Berg, a liberal Denver-based talk show host, was a critic of white supremacists. Members The Order (a white supremist group) members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.
April 19, 1995. Timothy McVeigh an
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.