I_Framed_OJ t1_jajka68 wrote
Reply to comment by serpentechnoir in Dozens of schoolgirls in Iran taken to hospital after poisoning by hoseiin
I gave a list of things that do not happen in Indonesia, that are perhaps specific to certain cultures in the Middle East and South Asia. However, radicalization and violence are not exclusive to those regions. There have been a series of terrorist attacks in Indonesia targeting westerners, and militant Muslim groups in the Philippines have kidnapped and actually beheaded western hostages. They do all of this in the name of Islam, and it’s not because America bombs their countries. They may have genuine grievances against the West, who have supported anti-Communist dictatorships in the past, but you cannot draw a straight line from the West’s influence to these barbaric acts of violence, as if the militant terrorist groupe have no choice but to kill people and cut their heads off.
The Christian world has indeed committed barbarities (don’t mention the Crusades - the Muslim world started that shit - look it up), but we in the West have moved past that ever since the Protestant Reformation (again, look it up) and the de-legitimization of clerical authority along with the emphasis on the New Testament, in particular the Sermon on the Mount. There has been no Reformation in Islam. They still hold to the exact word of the Quran, written over 14 centuries ago and held to be the inerrant and final revelation of God, and the Hadith, which comprise the opinions of the Prophet and therefore subject to his whims and desires, which instruct them to slay unbelievers wherever they are found, take the women of the enemy as sex slaves if they happen to be virgins, treat the testimony and rights of inheritance of women as subordinate to those of men, and prescribe vicious punishments up to and including death for apostasy (a victimless crime if ever there was one, and a thought crime for that matter!). Saudi Arabia did not allow women to drive until incredibly recently, and they behead people for witchcraft, which is a completely imaginary crime since witches, you know, don’t exist. These are not the policies of radicals. These are the proclamations of the Saudi government, that is, the Royal Family, who incidentally consider themselves the guardians of Islam and allies of the West. Polls taken across the Muslim world, encompassing a wide cross-section of those societies, including Muslims living in the West, demonstrate that the vast, vast majority of Muslims condemn homosexuality and consider death the appropriate punishment for renouncing Islam. If an entire society is “radicalized” then the word has no meaning. If individual Muslims reject the majority opinions of their co-religionists, then it is just as probably due to the influence of Western, humanist values.
I will say it again: the West is no longer to blame for the barbarities, iniquities, and outrages against basic human rights within the Muslim world. It is a civil war within Islam, which occasionally spills over into our sphere. The world is a much more complex place than you seem to realise. It is not a simple matter of blaming the West for the inability (or unwillingness) of Middle Eastern and African societies to clean up their own messes. We can help, but they have to take the lead.
Killing young women for not keeping their hair covered? That is 100% on them, not us.
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