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Of course it's not "all Muslisms". But those who claim "it's only the terrorists" or "it's all politics" do not grasp the scope of the problem, ie that globally

by cygx 11y ago

Of course it's not "all Muslisms". But those who claim "it's only the terrorists" or "it's all politics" do not grasp the scope of the problem, ie that globally speaking, a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam. To me, that's a scary number.

jacquesm 11y ago
> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends. And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.
- crusso 11y ago
  Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    That's an open door, I don't need to kick it in. It simply revolves around how you define terrorist and that horse has been beaten to death by now, I really don't see any reason to revive it just to beat it to death again.
    - tome 11y ago
      Wow, that's a complete cop out. Can you come up with any definition of "terrorist" where significant numbers of the one billion Chinese are commiting terrorist atrocities abroad, for example?
      - jon-wood 11y ago
        Can you come up with one where significant numbers of the billions of Muslims in the world are committing terrorist atrocities abroad? The vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace, just like everybody else. To your question though, the French resistance during the second world war could easily have been called terrorists, as could the American revolutionary army.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        - Algeria - Vietnam - Cambodia - Ghana - Iraq - Afghanistan The list is endless, you can keep that going for a long long time before you run out of names.
        tome 11y ago
        If you want to consider the list (that's as long as my arm) of Islamic terror attacks in the 21st century "insignificant", then that's on you, I guess. It's absolutely not inconsistent to hold the view that Islamically-inspired terror is a big problem for the world, whilst simultaneously holding the view that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. I don't know why anyone would think otherwise.
        jon-wood 11y ago
        Its entirely consistent to hold the view that Islamic terrorists are a problem for the world without also believing that the majority of Muslims are terrorists. This seems similar to saying that I can't consider people being hit by cars a problem without also saying that the vast majority of car journeys result in someone being hit. A vocal and deplorable minority of Muslims are actively attempted to split the world into Us and Them, I don't see that playing into their hand and deciding that I'm going to declare all Muslims want me dead is really going to help matters.
  - steveklabnik 11y ago
    Not Jacques, but from a few months back: "White Supremacists More Dangerous To America Than Foreign Terrorists, Study Says" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-terrorism-charleston_n_7654720.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-terrorism-... > At least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing > extremists in the 14 years since since the September 11 > attacks -- almost twice as many as were killed by > self-identified jihadists in that time. As Jacques says, "terrorist" attacks are only committed by a Muslim majority because we re-define any attack committed by a non-Muslim as "not terrorism."
    - crusso 11y ago
      Are you actually going to put some lone nut jobs here and there on the same level as organized and determined jihadists? If so, you need to include the tens of thousands of murdered people that ISIS has been responsible for. You'll need to include the Russian jet that was blown up, the attack in Paris, and all those killed by al-qaeda on 9/11, etc. You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the government has a similar concern for white supremacists. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists
      - steveklabnik 11y ago
        The FBI is concerned about white supremacists: http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enforcement/ http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enf... (this particular domain isn't the best, but it's a story that was repeated all over the place) And stuff like https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/extremism_052212/extremism_052212 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/extremism_052212/e... , etc. And they were in fact doing more, but a lot of it (along with funding) has gone by the wayside since 9/11.
        theorique 11y ago
        This is at least in part due to their bad habit of depending on the partisan SPLC for "hate group" data. SPLC is in the business of making so-called "hate groups" into terrible bogeymen, because SPLC reaps significant financial rewards through scare-tactics fundraising the depends on the threat of such groups.
  - lars 11y ago
    > the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers I wonder if this is really true though. Some statistics: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05#terror_05sum https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20... While Anders Breivik was shooting kids on the island in Norway, the Norwegian media were speculating that it was most likely perpetrated by muslim extremists. Even though we've historically had way more examples of terrorism perpetrated against immigration related targets by right-wing Norwegians (which was the case with Breivik as well). The average Norwegian won't remember any of the mosques, immigrant reception centers and immigrant stores that were bombed in Norway in the past. I guess terrorism is quickly forgotten when it isn't your own group that is targeted.
    - rmc 11y ago
      Breivik wrote a manifesto claiming he was doing it to support Christianity. And yet people don't call him a Christian terrorist.
      - tim333 11y ago
        Breivik was a bit of a one off. Sadly Islamic terrorism seems more frequent.
        conceit 11y ago
        not at all a one off
      - noobermin 11y ago
        To be fair, Breivik was an individual, while ISIS is a movement.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        Let's rejoice about that (About Breivik being only an individual, actually he's not quite just an individual, there are more idiots like that but so far they haven't been able to do a whole lot of damage in Western Europe, let's hope it stays that way).
  - DanBC 11y ago
    US citizens are at greater risk of harm from police officers (who kill about 1,000 people per year) than from Islamist terrorists. US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists - see the numbers of people injured and killed by various mass shooters or clinic bombings.
    - crusso 11y ago
      US citizens are at greater risk of harm from police officers How is that a fair or even interesting comparison, though? Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. Islamist terrorists aren't otherwise expected to be agents of the government charged with using physical force to protect the laws. Islamist terrorists target innocents in a deliberate effort to maximize damage and loss of life. Body counts tell almost nothing of the story in an honest comparison of the threat from police officers vs Islamic terrorists. US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists This is a slightly more interesting comparison, but even then you have to look at who the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are watching to understand that Christian extremists are individual actors who target specifics like abortion providers. They're not looking to take down all of Western society. They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer. So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) - but that doesn't mean that they're the same level of threat in a strategic geopolitical sense.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        > Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. True disturbingly often for police officers. About half the people shot and killed by police in the US (about 500 people per year) have mental illness. Compare that rate with the rest of the western world (less than 100 people since 2000) where people with mental illness tend not to be murdered by police. Even if we remove all the mentally ill people with guns from those numbers (to make the weapon use comparable across countries) we see very many more people killed in the US than any other western nation. And if you want numbers for innocent people shot by officers with poor aim, well, they don't keep numbers so you can't get accurate stats. Here are a few: https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-you-why-do-you-make-us-angry-like-that/ https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-yo... > So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) I'm not excluding 9/11. Christian and right wing extremists have killed more than 3,000 people in the US in the 19th and 20th century. At least 3,500 black people were lynched, for example. We've seen in this thread people claiming that Islam has centuries of violence, so let's go back 200 years and see who's being killed and who's doing the killing. Black folks are being killed, and Good White Christians were doing the killing. > They're not looking to take down all of Western society. Sure they are. "NEW WORLD ORDER" and "THE JEWS DID IT" and "FREEMEN ON THE LAND" are all about how corrupt the current system is. Read the Unabomber manifesto. That's all about overthrowing the system. > They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer. There's no point having this discussion if you're just going to shift the goal posts to keep redefining what terrorism is or what extremism is or what atrocities do or don't count.
  - rmc 11y ago
    There are many many nationalist terrorist groups (e.g. IRA) or communist terrorist groups (e.g. Red Army Faction). The IRA almost killed the British Prime Minister. There actually aren't that much Muslim terrorist attacks
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      A lone gunman managed to derail dutch politics for decades.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Because these people live in societies that have been colonized, manipulated, held down and bombed for decades on end, forcing them to get radically hateful and fundamentalist as a response and pass that on to others (younger men etc). Why would a white Swedish, Canadian etc. have any reason to do the same? Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppression too? Because from the extermination of 6 million jews down to colonialism, slavery, the pogroms, nukes on civilians, gulags, the massacre in Manchuria, 2 world wars, etc, most western and asian countries don't look that good either.
    - crusso 11y ago
      What's your point? That Islamic terrorism is compatible with open society because of a bunch of things were done to them over the past thousand years? Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        I think his point is that we still have bad actors and states. We're just a lot better at PR and image management but to the dead that makes precious little difference.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        >What's your point? That Islamic terrorism is compatible with open society because of a bunch of things were done to them over the past thousand years? The question in the thread wasn't whether "islamic terrorism" was compatible with open society, but whether islam itself is. And my point it, whether it is or not, that "open society" is not as "open" as it pretends to be either. If some family had done "a bunch of things" (of enslaving, torturing and murderous nature) to your family "over the past thousand years", would you see them as friends? Especially if they continued those things in one way or another up to today, while celebrating how "open" and "tolerant" they are, (as opposed to you, who hates them).
        11y ago
  - baddox 11y ago
    That probably has something to do with the fact that there has been lots of military action, regime changes, etc. in countries with large Muslim populations over the past few decades. That's exactly the sort of thing I would expect to cause the affected people to radicalize.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  I think you are mistaking two types of open society: Open inside (market place of ideas, secularity, people generally subscribing to the live and let live) and open outside - welcoming, letting people join or willing to help people that are not from that society. Wanting liberal, secular and socially oriented Europe inside and sealing the borders and isolating oneself from the human suffering outside is definitely lacking empathy, but not incoherent position.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Sorry. My country has a pretty long history of being on the wrong side of historical arguments and was on the right side once or twice as well by 'virtue' of being invaded. We've been refugees, have taken in refugees, have been a battle field and have waged war with neighbors and overseas creating battle fields elsewhere. An isolationist strategy is given that history to me morally bankrupt and not an option, even if the position is coherent I find that for me personally that's not a road worth walking due to the inherent hypocrisy that would require.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Probably you are right, but your country is part of something bigger now. And while we are busy building an united Europe, isolationism is actually a good strategy while we sort our internal problems. Which includes integrating some troubled spots and minorities. Adding more people to the mix right now will hardly help that process. There are no good answers right now. We are very deep and there will be a lot of pain in the coming years. Everything else is wishful thinking.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        That we are fully in agreement on, unfortunately. But one thing we can do is to stop digging the hole any further (at least, on this side of the divide).
- gotchange 11y ago
  > they would like to change society to suit their ends. What would be those means employed by non-Muslim radicals to effect social change? I'm inclined to say that urban warfare and terrorizing an entire population with open aggression tactics are not among them.
  - claudius 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army All these are fairly recent examples of non-Muslim radicals attempting to effect social change by the same means Muslim radicals use to try and effect such change in Western countries. That they have not succeeded in building a near-nation state out of that terrorism is largely due to the higher stability of “Western” countries compared to the middle east, though, depending on whom you ask, they were quite successful in Ukraine.
    - ptaipale 11y ago
      You really have to go back in time to find these examples. Their dates of terror operation are 1970's, 1980, 1980's, 1995 and for one which doesn't very well compare, 2010. And then they were largely hounded down and imprisoned (or executed, for McVeigh). Islamist terrorism is a newer and also much bigger trend (even in the West, although the vast majority of people killed are in Muslim countries). I see this line of argumentation regularly, but since those movements were brought down with significant police and military operations, I don't see them as good examples for why Muslim extremism should not be brought down by police and military operations. There are other reasons, but this comparison doesn't qualify.
      - hahainternet 11y ago
        > You really have to go back in time to find these examples I remember the centre of my local town being blown to shit when I was a teenager. 1996 is not that long ago. You really shouldn't discard it as 'the past'. What's funny is, large segments in the US actively supported these terrorists. All their rhetoric and they're just as guilty.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  >And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40% That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come to Europe by the millions. It's not my opinion, but please don't compare that opinion with people who advocate that homosexuals, adulterers and apostates should be put to death. There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Your relativism goes too far. [Edit] And just to make it clear, I do not believe that it is really 40% who really hold those opinions. It's probably less. I hope.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is immaterial, the numbers are scary. http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-largest-in-the-netherlands/ http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-... That's 30% declared right there, another 10% undeclared would not surprise me at all.
    - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
      >his main motto is 'close the borders' I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria. But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        If it were up to Geert Wilders we'd be going around with a color chart in shades of brown and a burning Koran to figure out who we should kick out and who is allowed to stay.
- drumdance 11y ago
  As the OP points out, ISIS is much more horrible to their own people. ISIS and their ilk kill far more Muslims than any other group.
- baddox 11y ago
  And notice that when the commenter says "open society," that really just means the type of society that he or she desires. It's phrased in such a way that it sounds like an objective uncontroversial description of a society that all "good" people desire, but alas such an objective description does not exist.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Maybe it's easier to define an open society in terms of what it isn't: it isn't a society in which women are second rate citizens, it isn't a society where religion forms the backbone of the state, it isn't a society where free speech in a practical sense is forbidden, it isn't a society where politics are so rotten that the basics of democracy are no longer present. So North Korea probably doesn't qualify as an open society, but Sweden does. Russia probably doesn't but that's up for debate, that's just my view.
    - baddox 11y ago
      But note that some people desire attributes of society that they consider to qualify as "open society" that many other people who also claim to want an "open society" oppose. For instance, one might beliege that an open society would not have hate speech laws or copyright laws, and that anyone who supports such laws has "beliefs incompatible with an open society."
      - wfo 11y ago
        In particular on HN there are plenty of a very extreme breed of libertarians who believe 'open society' means no regulation or taxes as well. It's a generic weasel word that means "stuff I like and not stuff I don't like".
        zo1 11y ago
        If you mean it as a sort of "derogatory" description of what non-libertarians think of actual Libertarian beliefs, then that makes sense. However, in actuality, libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is very clear about what its core foundations are. And you'll only find the left-libertarians that are very wishy-washy about their beliefs such that each one has their own definition of "stuff I like, and not stuff I don't like".
vog 11y ago
> 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam. How do these numbers compare to other religions? For example, there is an unconfortable number of Christians who do have a fundamentalist mindset, too (although I didn't find any exact numbers). Probably similar issue for other religions and possibly also among non-religious people.
- jjoe 11y ago
  What would be fair comparison is a country or region with a large Christian population that's at war or serious unrest. One country that comes to mind is Rwanda in 1994.
  - crusso 11y ago
    You're assuming that the religious/ideological choices of a society aren't contributing factors to their state of war or unrest. It's like saying, "You'd need to find a Jainist[1] population that's at war or serious unrest." Their ideology tends to self-select states that aren't at war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    Poor example. Christianity had nothing to do with that civil war. For reasons incomprehensible to most (as is also currently the case with Shiite vs Sunni), the Hutus and Tutsis had a deep cultural mutual hatred, and eventually acted on it to the slaughter of one side. There was nothing about the motivations related to a [mis-]representation of Christianity. Near as most can tell, Islam _is_ a central factor in recent events. A lot of people are looking for a reason to conclude it isn't; if you can explain (either way) please do.
    - jjoe 11y ago
      Although Rwanda is among the most Christian countries in Africa, in the 1994 genocide, church buildings became the primary killing grounds. To explain why so many Christians participated in the violence, this book looks at the history of Christian engagement in Rwanda and then turns to a rich body of original national and local-level research to argue that Rwanda’s churches have consistently allied themselves with the state and played ethnic politics. Comparing two local Presbyterian parishes in Kibuye prior to the genocide demonstrates that progressive forces were seeking to democratize the churches. Just as Hutu politicians used the genocide of Tutsi to assert political power and crush democratic reform, church leaders supported the genocide to secure their own power. The fact that Christianity inspired some Rwandans to oppose the genocide demonstrates that opposition by the churches was possible and might have hindered the violence. Source: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/african-history/christianity-and-genocide-rwanda http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/africa... The Rwandan genocide, just like the Paris attacks, must've been carried out by a bunch of nutsos. They both used religion and its tools to promote and support their wicked agenda forward.
DanBC 11y ago
A bunch of Americans think US free speech doesn't apply to hate speech. (Although I accept that they don't want to kill you for it). A bunch of Americans think you should be killed for being black; or gay; or trans. A bunch of Americans don't think rape is actually rape - "s/he didn't fight back!", "s/he had a beer!" Lots of people have wrong ideas.
- cygx 11y ago
  Exactly. And you tell them in no unertain terms that they are wrong, instead of making excuses because "it's their culture" or because of freedom of religion. Harmful ideologies do not get a free pass in my book just because they claim divine backing.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Agreed but it works both ways - non-religious harmful ideologies can be almost as bad. What proportion of people - even of western college-educated liberals - genuinely, in their heart of hearts, supports free speech even when it's speech they disagree with, freedom of religion even when it's a religion they disagree with, and all the other enlightenment values? I fear it's pretty low.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      I support freedom of speech - absolute and unrestricted. I don't support freedom of religion, but support freedom from religion - no other human should be able to force religion on other. The religion should be private matter to the individual and individual alone.
      - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
        Freedom of Religion means I can practice whatever religion I want without the Government telling me I can't. It does not, in any way, force religion upon anyone.
        11y ago
iamthepieman 11y ago
Yes it is scary. I believe that love conquers all fears. I do not make any pretense that some people in this world are truly my enemies. They want to destroy me and all I hold dear. These enemies do not love me, do not want to love me, do not want to understand me or know me or anything I stand for. Yet I must love them. Not just because I am commanded to. I do it because it is who I am. My very identity is tied up in my love for my fellow human being. I do not always or even often know how to love and I do not always want to love and when I do love, I do so imperfectly. It is this very struggle that is me. The fact that I struggle against hate - not the hate of others - the hate within myself, gives me something to push off of. A boundary to say this is me and this, this disregard, this alienation, this contempt, this selfishness is not.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Self-defense is not hate. Consenting to slaughter is not love.
Angostura 11y ago
I really hate that Pew Survey. It polls people from some of the most culturally conservative countries and then uses that to make assertions about Islam. I wish Pew had interviewed Christians in the same countries at the same time and asked them what they thought should be done to homosexuals. It would be interesting to see what we could glean about Christianity.
- cygx 11y ago
  Make no mistake, I'm not a fan of 'conservative' Christianity. As I mentioned elsewhere, the problems are ideologies, in particular those that promote totalitarianism and unreason - whether or not they are religious in nature is incidental to me. However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years.
  - the_af 11y ago
    > However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years. True, but I think it's more complex than that. First, I do not think the Vatican automatically represents the most conservative brand of Christianity; not at all times, anyway. Not now, for example. Second, beheadings seem rightfully barbaric and horrendous to us, but as terrible as they are, I think their impact is superficial in a way (though obviously not to their victims, and please make no mistake: I do not wish to live in a country that beheads people!). ISIS beheadings are a matter of form, a propaganda tool; a way to shock the West into action, and the local population into compliance. But as for actual damage, compare their beheadings with the damage caused by some Christian leaders of First World countries who have been bombing cities in the Middle East and causing a lot of deaths. These conservative Christians sometimes describe themselves as "born again", surround themselves with religious phraseology, describe their wars as Crusades and name them with Biblical sounding names (Righteous Fury, Infinite Justice, etc, etc), feel their countries have a God-given right to shape the world as they see fit. Wouldn't people living in a city bombed by a Western country consider themselves the victims of Western religious zealots? And if, say, we know Obama and Bush are NOT the same, are we not making the mistake of thinking every bellicose Muslim is exactly the same terrorist fundamentalist that cannot be reasoned with and must be exterminated? Maybe there are shades of gray with them, just like it happens in the West?
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>globally speaking, a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. You could say the same about the followers of other religions. And of certain popular political persuasions. And of many economic belief systems. Just because adherents don't usually make the news by indiscriminately shooting members of the public doesn't mean they don't do incredible damage in other ways. A public massacre is a horror, for obvious reasons. But it's not truly more horrible than many other everyday outrages, some of which take place on much bigger and longer timescales.
megalodon 11y ago
World's largest arms exporter: US ($10,194,000,000 in 2014) World's largest arms importer: Saudi Arabia ($4,243,000,000 in 2014) To me, these are scary numbers. > When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious. – Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...
- DamnYuppie 11y ago
  It appears, from what I could find, that Saudia Arabia's yearly spending on education is $57.9B, they spend $42.7B on health, with a total spending of $229.3. So they spend 25% of their budget on education and less then 2% on arms importation. Yes they could spend that money on something else, but please don't make it seem like they are neglecting healthcare or educational spending for arms. http://www.us-sabc.org/custom/news/details.cfm?id=1645 http://www.us-sabc.org/custom/news/details.cfm?id=1645
  - deleted 11y ago
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  - yetanotheracc 11y ago
    And what an education it is! https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabias-curriculum-intolerance https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabia...
  - ashaiber 11y ago
    Perhaps considering the total military expenditure will provide a better perspective - $80B for Saudi Arabia in 2014; 3rd highest in the world in $ terms, and highest in the world in terms of percent of GDP (10.7%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
Vivtek 11y ago
You obviously have a blind spot towards American-brand Christianity. Speaking of scary numbers and scary access to nuclear weapons perfectly capable of killing you, me, and the other seven billion of us.
- cygx 11y ago
  You seem to think I'm giving Christianity a pass. I'm not.
mozumder 11y ago
Lots of countries have sedition acts, including the US, which would punish you for speaking out against them. Many countries also have hate-speech laws, including France, which would punish you for speaking out against protected groups. Being vengeful against those that are disloyal to you is a common human ethos.
gonzo 11y ago
> > a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. A significant number of adherents of Christianity also hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  We could just say most people "hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society". Look at all the "enlightened free thinkers" in this thread who want it to be illegal to state something they adamantly disbelieve ("hate speech"). They are apparently not aware that the same laws could be brutally used against them, should they ever find themselves disagreeing with the predominant belief system (and newsflash, enlightened free thinkers: a lot of your beliefs already do). The problem is that the term "open society" has no objective meaning, so you can use it to exclude any set of beliefs that you don't like, up to and including anarchists.
Arnt 11y ago
Yeah, well. I think the key word is naïve. There's a mosque around the corner from where I live, and a lot of people called Mohamed and Hilay and so on live in the area. Few of them visit that mosque, so if your extrapolation were right, there should be a considerable number of murdered apostates. Which there isn't.
- cygx 11y ago
  You do know how the process of computing an average works? Im guessing you're not living in, say, Egypt or Pakistan, are you?
  - Arnt 11y ago
    No. I live in a city with a considerable number of muslims and a considerable number of apostates. Isn't that the kind of place where you'd expect apostates to be killed, if anywhere?
    - cygx 11y ago
      Isn't that the kind of place where you'd expect apostates to be killed, if anywhere? Not necessarily, no. Support for murdering apostates can be low in countries with a majority Muslim population (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are all in the low single-digit percentage range, it's at 8% in Turkey), and the figures for minority Muslim communities in western countries might be comparably low. Also note that supporting an action does not automatically translate to enacting such an action, but such a mindset is still problematic. And as the cases of Bangladeshi atheists that have been hacked to death show, such things do happen. Generally, apostates probably know to keep their head down in places where it is an issue. The fact that you say you live in a place with a considerable number of apostates shows that it's likely not one where you are.
      - Arnt 11y ago
        You're down from "40%" to single examples. Time to stop worrying ;)
JeremyNT 11y ago
I suspect that it's (relatively) easy to take an adherent of any religion and radicalize them with a slight permutation of said religion, versus trying to radicalize somebody without that shared kernel of faith. I therefore assume that "regular" Islam is an "in" for extremists; they can build upon existing indoctrination and subvert it for their own purposes. I don't think there's anything particular to the Islamic faith that lends itself to this pattern, though. Charlatans and tyrants have effectively used religious beliefs for their own goals since the very beginnings of human civilization. I believe Islam faces a "perfect storm" now; it is immensely popular across the world, but a large number of its adherents are stuck in a region that has been dramatically destabilized by foreign influences. The Muslims there are able to use the shared elements of their religion as a way to reach out to Muslims outside of the region and incite them to revolution. To paraphrase Dan Carlin of Hardcore History: it's not religion that's the problem, it's the tyrants that are the problem. Of course, even if you (and I) are right in assuming that a (relatively) large percentage of Muslims are currently radicalized in comparison to other religions, this doesn't actually mean that there's any practical way to respond to that. The lazy answer is "stabilize the middle east at all costs" but that never seems to actually align with Western political and economic realities, so here we are...
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  All you need is an imagined enemy or threat (human or not) and a goal to impose on them. That's what happened with Hitler, Stalin and many more. Religion is just one of the many available excuses, and a popular one because there's already many religious people. Building on what people already believe is always the easiest way to get them to join.
SolaceQuantum 11y ago
Globally speaking, the term open society and compatibility with it shifts wildly.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
Some would argue that a significant number of Christians also hold views that are incompatible with an open society.
steveklabnik 11y ago
> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that > are incompatible with an open society. Yet, a significant number of them also do. You can't generalize over a billion people like this. For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. Sounds pretty progressive when you put it that way...
- cygx 11y ago
  You can't generalize over a billion people like this. Of course you can. The issue is not that such generalizations are invalid, but what conclusions to draw from them and what actions to take in response. Also note that I have a black friend^W^W Muslim roommate (in fact a Hafiz) I get along well with. That does not mean I don't consider Islam as it presents itself today on a global scale a dangerous ideology. For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. And how many out gay politicians are there in such countries? And anecdotally speaking, remember what happened to Benazir Bhutto.
forty 11y ago
I wonder what you call "adherents of Islam" and "Muslim population". As far as I know they are many groups that claim they are Muslims and they sometimes don't recognize other groups as Muslims (I have many friends that are Muslim and I am pretty sure they would tell you that the 40% your are mentioning are not Muslims) so I think it would be a bit weird to consider all of them as being "Muslim population" as if they were a single group while there are clearly just separate and unrelated groups that happen to claim the same name.
phkn1 11y ago
> If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam. And, if you actually read the study, you find this number is 28%, not 40%. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-and-society/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-mu...
- cygx 11y ago
  Global median (by region or country?) vs global mean by total population, computed from the raw data in the annex combined with some population figures from wikipedia. I know how to do maths, thank you very much.
baddox 11y ago
What do you suggest the rest of society should do about people who hold views which are (supposedly) incompatible with a free society?
lectrick 11y ago
Here's a timely book by Sam Harris where he (successfully!) debates with a formerly fairly-extreme Muslim: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_awd_aXNswbXAY282T&sa-no-redirect=1 http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_a...
deleted 11y ago
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ender7 11y ago
If you naively extrapolate, ... Yes, this is definitely an appropriate time to make sweeping generalizations based solely on naive extrapolations. https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/
finance-geek 11y ago
> "a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society." Not sure where you got that statistic, but the much better documented statistic are those of...say...US Republicans. An actual significant population (backed by polls) support outright genocide. Here is a Christian Pastor calling for genocide. Its not some conspiracy-esque statistic like yours, he does it out on the puplit. http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-muslims/ http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-...
jcranmer 11y ago
To many patriots in the United States during the American Revolution, Catholicism was an evil religion whose precepts were fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Yet I don't think very many Americans would concur today. Religious dogma is as much shaped by the current cultural norms as it shapes them, something that many religious leaders are loathe to admit. Your statement reminds me scarily of something I read relatively recently in a book by a conservative Christian author. The sentence, to paraphrase, was along the lines of "I'm not saying all Muslims are extremists, but the threat of Islamic terrorism is so high we should kick them all out to be safe."

by cygx 11y ago

jacquesm 11y ago

> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too. All these people have at least one thing in common: they would like to change society to suit their ends. And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40%. Which in my opinion makes them just about as bad.

crusso 11y ago
Significant numbers of non-Islam subscribers hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society too If that's your contention then you'd need to account for the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  That's an open door, I don't need to kick it in. It simply revolves around how you define terrorist and that horse has been beaten to death by now, I really don't see any reason to revive it just to beat it to death again.
  - tome 11y ago
    Wow, that's a complete cop out. Can you come up with any definition of "terrorist" where significant numbers of the one billion Chinese are commiting terrorist atrocities abroad, for example?
    - jon-wood 11y ago
      Can you come up with one where significant numbers of the billions of Muslims in the world are committing terrorist atrocities abroad? The vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace, just like everybody else. To your question though, the French resistance during the second world war could easily have been called terrorists, as could the American revolutionary army.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        - Algeria - Vietnam - Cambodia - Ghana - Iraq - Afghanistan The list is endless, you can keep that going for a long long time before you run out of names.
      - tome 11y ago
        If you want to consider the list (that's as long as my arm) of Islamic terror attacks in the 21st century "insignificant", then that's on you, I guess. It's absolutely not inconsistent to hold the view that Islamically-inspired terror is a big problem for the world, whilst simultaneously holding the view that the vast majority of muslims are peaceful. I don't know why anyone would think otherwise.
        jon-wood 11y ago
        Its entirely consistent to hold the view that Islamic terrorists are a problem for the world without also believing that the majority of Muslims are terrorists. This seems similar to saying that I can't consider people being hit by cars a problem without also saying that the vast majority of car journeys result in someone being hit. A vocal and deplorable minority of Muslims are actively attempted to split the world into Us and Them, I don't see that playing into their hand and deciding that I'm going to declare all Muslims want me dead is really going to help matters.
- steveklabnik 11y ago
  Not Jacques, but from a few months back: "White Supremacists More Dangerous To America Than Foreign Terrorists, Study Says" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-terrorism-charleston_n_7654720.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/24/domestic-terrorism-... > At least 48 people have been killed stateside by right-wing > extremists in the 14 years since since the September 11 > attacks -- almost twice as many as were killed by > self-identified jihadists in that time. As Jacques says, "terrorist" attacks are only committed by a Muslim majority because we re-define any attack committed by a non-Muslim as "not terrorism."
  - crusso 11y ago
    Are you actually going to put some lone nut jobs here and there on the same level as organized and determined jihadists? If so, you need to include the tens of thousands of murdered people that ISIS has been responsible for. You'll need to include the Russian jet that was blown up, the attack in Paris, and all those killed by al-qaeda on 9/11, etc. You'll also need to explain why the FBI terrorist list doesn't show that the government has a similar concern for white supremacists. https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists
    - steveklabnik 11y ago
      The FBI is concerned about white supremacists: http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enforcement/ http://thegrio.com/2015/05/12/fbi-white-supremacists-law-enf... (this particular domain isn't the best, but it's a story that was repeated all over the place) And stuff like https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/extremism_052212/extremism_052212 https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/may/extremism_052212/e... , etc. And they were in fact doing more, but a lot of it (along with funding) has gone by the wayside since 9/11.
      - theorique 11y ago
        This is at least in part due to their bad habit of depending on the partisan SPLC for "hate group" data. SPLC is in the business of making so-called "hate groups" into terrible bogeymen, because SPLC reaps significant financial rewards through scare-tactics fundraising the depends on the threat of such groups.
- lars 11y ago
  > the high terrorist attack output of Islamists vs other non-Islam subscribers I wonder if this is really true though. Some statistics: https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005/terror02_05#terror_05sum https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-20... While Anders Breivik was shooting kids on the island in Norway, the Norwegian media were speculating that it was most likely perpetrated by muslim extremists. Even though we've historically had way more examples of terrorism perpetrated against immigration related targets by right-wing Norwegians (which was the case with Breivik as well). The average Norwegian won't remember any of the mosques, immigrant reception centers and immigrant stores that were bombed in Norway in the past. I guess terrorism is quickly forgotten when it isn't your own group that is targeted.
  - rmc 11y ago
    Breivik wrote a manifesto claiming he was doing it to support Christianity. And yet people don't call him a Christian terrorist.
    - tim333 11y ago
      Breivik was a bit of a one off. Sadly Islamic terrorism seems more frequent.
      - conceit 11y ago
        not at all a one off
    - noobermin 11y ago
      To be fair, Breivik was an individual, while ISIS is a movement.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Let's rejoice about that (About Breivik being only an individual, actually he's not quite just an individual, there are more idiots like that but so far they haven't been able to do a whole lot of damage in Western Europe, let's hope it stays that way).
- DanBC 11y ago
  US citizens are at greater risk of harm from police officers (who kill about 1,000 people per year) than from Islamist terrorists. US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists - see the numbers of people injured and killed by various mass shooters or clinic bombings.
  - crusso 11y ago
    US citizens are at greater risk of harm from police officers How is that a fair or even interesting comparison, though? Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. Islamist terrorists aren't otherwise expected to be agents of the government charged with using physical force to protect the laws. Islamist terrorists target innocents in a deliberate effort to maximize damage and loss of life. Body counts tell almost nothing of the story in an honest comparison of the threat from police officers vs Islamic terrorists. US citizens are at greater risk of far right or Christian extremists than they are of Islamist extremists This is a slightly more interesting comparison, but even then you have to look at who the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are watching to understand that Christian extremists are individual actors who target specifics like abortion providers. They're not looking to take down all of Western society. They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer. So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) - but that doesn't mean that they're the same level of threat in a strategic geopolitical sense.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      > Islamist terrorists aren't killing people ostensibly engaged in criminal acts. True disturbingly often for police officers. About half the people shot and killed by police in the US (about 500 people per year) have mental illness. Compare that rate with the rest of the western world (less than 100 people since 2000) where people with mental illness tend not to be murdered by police. Even if we remove all the mentally ill people with guns from those numbers (to make the weapon use comparable across countries) we see very many more people killed in the US than any other western nation. And if you want numbers for innocent people shot by officers with poor aim, well, they don't keep numbers so you can't get accurate stats. Here are a few: https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-you-why-do-you-make-us-angry-like-that/ https://popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love-yo... > So sure, Christian terrorists' kill numbers might be comparable or even greater than Islamic terrorists domestically (if you unfairly exclude 9/11) I'm not excluding 9/11. Christian and right wing extremists have killed more than 3,000 people in the US in the 19th and 20th century. At least 3,500 black people were lynched, for example. We've seen in this thread people claiming that Islam has centuries of violence, so let's go back 200 years and see who's being killed and who's doing the killing. Black folks are being killed, and Good White Christians were doing the killing. > They're not looking to take down all of Western society. Sure they are. "NEW WORLD ORDER" and "THE JEWS DID IT" and "FREEMEN ON THE LAND" are all about how corrupt the current system is. Read the Unabomber manifesto. That's all about overthrowing the system. > They aren't amassing armies in other countries to assert 6th century law on all the territories that they conquer. There's no point having this discussion if you're just going to shift the goal posts to keep redefining what terrorism is or what extremism is or what atrocities do or don't count.
- rmc 11y ago
  There are many many nationalist terrorist groups (e.g. IRA) or communist terrorist groups (e.g. Red Army Faction). The IRA almost killed the British Prime Minister. There actually aren't that much Muslim terrorist attacks
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    A lone gunman managed to derail dutch politics for decades.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Because these people live in societies that have been colonized, manipulated, held down and bombed for decades on end, forcing them to get radically hateful and fundamentalist as a response and pass that on to others (younger men etc). Why would a white Swedish, Canadian etc. have any reason to do the same? Besides, is it just terrorism that's incompatible with an "open society", or other acts of murder and oppression too? Because from the extermination of 6 million jews down to colonialism, slavery, the pogroms, nukes on civilians, gulags, the massacre in Manchuria, 2 world wars, etc, most western and asian countries don't look that good either.
  - crusso 11y ago
    What's your point? That Islamic terrorism is compatible with open society because of a bunch of things were done to them over the past thousand years? Or is it that because Western society has had some bad actors/states, that we can never thereafter point to bad behaviors or systems of thought?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      I think his point is that we still have bad actors and states. We're just a lot better at PR and image management but to the dead that makes precious little difference.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      >What's your point? That Islamic terrorism is compatible with open society because of a bunch of things were done to them over the past thousand years? The question in the thread wasn't whether "islamic terrorism" was compatible with open society, but whether islam itself is. And my point it, whether it is or not, that "open society" is not as "open" as it pretends to be either. If some family had done "a bunch of things" (of enslaving, torturing and murderous nature) to your family "over the past thousand years", would you see them as friends? Especially if they continued those things in one way or another up to today, while celebrating how "open" and "tolerant" they are, (as opposed to you, who hates them).
      - 11y ago
- baddox 11y ago
  That probably has something to do with the fact that there has been lots of military action, regime changes, etc. in countries with large Muslim populations over the past few decades. That's exactly the sort of thing I would expect to cause the affected people to radicalize.
venomsnake 11y ago
I think you are mistaking two types of open society: Open inside (market place of ideas, secularity, people generally subscribing to the live and let live) and open outside - welcoming, letting people join or willing to help people that are not from that society. Wanting liberal, secular and socially oriented Europe inside and sealing the borders and isolating oneself from the human suffering outside is definitely lacking empathy, but not incoherent position.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Sorry. My country has a pretty long history of being on the wrong side of historical arguments and was on the right side once or twice as well by 'virtue' of being invaded. We've been refugees, have taken in refugees, have been a battle field and have waged war with neighbors and overseas creating battle fields elsewhere. An isolationist strategy is given that history to me morally bankrupt and not an option, even if the position is coherent I find that for me personally that's not a road worth walking due to the inherent hypocrisy that would require.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Probably you are right, but your country is part of something bigger now. And while we are busy building an united Europe, isolationism is actually a good strategy while we sort our internal problems. Which includes integrating some troubled spots and minorities. Adding more people to the mix right now will hardly help that process. There are no good answers right now. We are very deep and there will be a lot of pain in the coming years. Everything else is wishful thinking.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      That we are fully in agreement on, unfortunately. But one thing we can do is to stop digging the hole any further (at least, on this side of the divide).
gotchange 11y ago
> they would like to change society to suit their ends. What would be those means employed by non-Muslim radicals to effect social change? I'm inclined to say that urban warfare and terrorizing an entire population with open aggression tactics are not among them.
- claudius 11y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army All these are fairly recent examples of non-Muslim radicals attempting to effect social change by the same means Muslim radicals use to try and effect such change in Western countries. That they have not succeeded in building a near-nation state out of that terrorism is largely due to the higher stability of “Western” countries compared to the middle east, though, depending on whom you ask, they were quite successful in Ukraine.
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    You really have to go back in time to find these examples. Their dates of terror operation are 1970's, 1980, 1980's, 1995 and for one which doesn't very well compare, 2010. And then they were largely hounded down and imprisoned (or executed, for McVeigh). Islamist terrorism is a newer and also much bigger trend (even in the West, although the vast majority of people killed are in Muslim countries). I see this line of argumentation regularly, but since those movements were brought down with significant police and military operations, I don't see them as good examples for why Muslim extremism should not be brought down by police and military operations. There are other reasons, but this comparison doesn't qualify.
    - hahainternet 11y ago
      > You really have to go back in time to find these examples I remember the centre of my local town being blown to shit when I was a teenager. 1996 is not that long ago. You really shouldn't discard it as 'the past'. What's funny is, large segments in the US actively supported these terrorists. All their rhetoric and they're just as guilty.
fauigerzigerk 11y ago
>And a very large number of people in my country would happily throw back those fleeing the carnage to become victims of that 40% That statement really doesn't make much sense at all. People are fleeing a war, among them people from the 40% and the 60% group alike. And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Many want the refugees stay somewhere in the region instead of letting them come to Europe by the millions. It's not my opinion, but please don't compare that opinion with people who advocate that homosexuals, adulterers and apostates should be put to death. There is no 40% group of the population in Europe that holds views that are anywhere near as disgusting as that. Your relativism goes too far. [Edit] And just to make it clear, I do not believe that it is really 40% who really hold those opinions. It's probably less. I hope.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > And no one in Europe is advocating throwing anyone back into a war zone. Ah, you must be a bit out of touch with recent developments in NL. We're soon to have elections and it looks like we'll have Geert Wilders for prime minister, his main motto is 'close the borders', the secondary one is 'the problem is the foreigners' and the third is 'let's throw all those refugees out'. And whether it is exactly 40% or not is immaterial, the numbers are scary. http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-largest-in-the-netherlands/ http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/09/geert-wilders-party-is-the-... That's 30% declared right there, another 10% undeclared would not surprise me at all.
  - fauigerzigerk 11y ago
    >his main motto is 'close the borders' I'm not out of touch enough to have missed this opinion. But that is not the same as saying that people should be sent back to war zones. We don't have borders with Syria. But you are right that I don't know specifically what that Dutch politician actually demands other than closing the borders.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      If it were up to Geert Wilders we'd be going around with a color chart in shades of brown and a burning Koran to figure out who we should kick out and who is allowed to stay.
drumdance 11y ago
As the OP points out, ISIS is much more horrible to their own people. ISIS and their ilk kill far more Muslims than any other group.
baddox 11y ago
And notice that when the commenter says "open society," that really just means the type of society that he or she desires. It's phrased in such a way that it sounds like an objective uncontroversial description of a society that all "good" people desire, but alas such an objective description does not exist.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Maybe it's easier to define an open society in terms of what it isn't: it isn't a society in which women are second rate citizens, it isn't a society where religion forms the backbone of the state, it isn't a society where free speech in a practical sense is forbidden, it isn't a society where politics are so rotten that the basics of democracy are no longer present. So North Korea probably doesn't qualify as an open society, but Sweden does. Russia probably doesn't but that's up for debate, that's just my view.
  - baddox 11y ago
    But note that some people desire attributes of society that they consider to qualify as "open society" that many other people who also claim to want an "open society" oppose. For instance, one might beliege that an open society would not have hate speech laws or copyright laws, and that anyone who supports such laws has "beliefs incompatible with an open society."
    - wfo 11y ago
      In particular on HN there are plenty of a very extreme breed of libertarians who believe 'open society' means no regulation or taxes as well. It's a generic weasel word that means "stuff I like and not stuff I don't like".
      - zo1 11y ago
        If you mean it as a sort of "derogatory" description of what non-libertarians think of actual Libertarian beliefs, then that makes sense. However, in actuality, libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism is very clear about what its core foundations are. And you'll only find the left-libertarians that are very wishy-washy about their beliefs such that each one has their own definition of "stuff I like, and not stuff I don't like".

vog 11y ago

> 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam. How do these numbers compare to other religions? For example, there is an unconfortable number of Christians who do have a fundamentalist mindset, too (although I didn't find any exact numbers). Probably similar issue for other religions and possibly also among non-religious people.

jjoe 11y ago
What would be fair comparison is a country or region with a large Christian population that's at war or serious unrest. One country that comes to mind is Rwanda in 1994.
- crusso 11y ago
  You're assuming that the religious/ideological choices of a society aren't contributing factors to their state of war or unrest. It's like saying, "You'd need to find a Jainist[1] population that's at war or serious unrest." Their ideology tends to self-select states that aren't at war. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Poor example. Christianity had nothing to do with that civil war. For reasons incomprehensible to most (as is also currently the case with Shiite vs Sunni), the Hutus and Tutsis had a deep cultural mutual hatred, and eventually acted on it to the slaughter of one side. There was nothing about the motivations related to a [mis-]representation of Christianity. Near as most can tell, Islam _is_ a central factor in recent events. A lot of people are looking for a reason to conclude it isn't; if you can explain (either way) please do.
  - jjoe 11y ago
    Although Rwanda is among the most Christian countries in Africa, in the 1994 genocide, church buildings became the primary killing grounds. To explain why so many Christians participated in the violence, this book looks at the history of Christian engagement in Rwanda and then turns to a rich body of original national and local-level research to argue that Rwanda’s churches have consistently allied themselves with the state and played ethnic politics. Comparing two local Presbyterian parishes in Kibuye prior to the genocide demonstrates that progressive forces were seeking to democratize the churches. Just as Hutu politicians used the genocide of Tutsi to assert political power and crush democratic reform, church leaders supported the genocide to secure their own power. The fact that Christianity inspired some Rwandans to oppose the genocide demonstrates that opposition by the churches was possible and might have hindered the violence. Source: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/african-history/christianity-and-genocide-rwanda http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/africa... The Rwandan genocide, just like the Paris attacks, must've been carried out by a bunch of nutsos. They both used religion and its tools to promote and support their wicked agenda forward.

DanBC 11y ago

A bunch of Americans think US free speech doesn't apply to hate speech. (Although I accept that they don't want to kill you for it). A bunch of Americans think you should be killed for being black; or gay; or trans. A bunch of Americans don't think rape is actually rape - "s/he didn't fight back!", "s/he had a beer!" Lots of people have wrong ideas.

cygx 11y ago
Exactly. And you tell them in no unertain terms that they are wrong, instead of making excuses because "it's their culture" or because of freedom of religion. Harmful ideologies do not get a free pass in my book just because they claim divine backing.
- lmm 11y ago
  Agreed but it works both ways - non-religious harmful ideologies can be almost as bad. What proportion of people - even of western college-educated liberals - genuinely, in their heart of hearts, supports free speech even when it's speech they disagree with, freedom of religion even when it's a religion they disagree with, and all the other enlightenment values? I fear it's pretty low.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    I support freedom of speech - absolute and unrestricted. I don't support freedom of religion, but support freedom from religion - no other human should be able to force religion on other. The religion should be private matter to the individual and individual alone.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      Freedom of Religion means I can practice whatever religion I want without the Government telling me I can't. It does not, in any way, force religion upon anyone.
      - 11y ago

iamthepieman 11y ago

Yes it is scary. I believe that love conquers all fears. I do not make any pretense that some people in this world are truly my enemies. They want to destroy me and all I hold dear. These enemies do not love me, do not want to love me, do not want to understand me or know me or anything I stand for. Yet I must love them. Not just because I am commanded to. I do it because it is who I am. My very identity is tied up in my love for my fellow human being. I do not always or even often know how to love and I do not always want to love and when I do love, I do so imperfectly. It is this very struggle that is me. The fact that I struggle against hate - not the hate of others - the hate within myself, gives me something to push off of. A boundary to say this is me and this, this disregard, this alienation, this contempt, this selfishness is not.

ctdonath 11y ago
Self-defense is not hate. Consenting to slaughter is not love.

Angostura 11y ago

I really hate that Pew Survey. It polls people from some of the most culturally conservative countries and then uses that to make assertions about Islam. I wish Pew had interviewed Christians in the same countries at the same time and asked them what they thought should be done to homosexuals. It would be interesting to see what we could glean about Christianity.

cygx 11y ago
Make no mistake, I'm not a fan of 'conservative' Christianity. As I mentioned elsewhere, the problems are ideologies, in particular those that promote totalitarianism and unreason - whether or not they are religious in nature is incidental to me. However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years.
- the_af 11y ago
  > However, note that no beheadings have been staged in Vatican City in recent years. True, but I think it's more complex than that. First, I do not think the Vatican automatically represents the most conservative brand of Christianity; not at all times, anyway. Not now, for example. Second, beheadings seem rightfully barbaric and horrendous to us, but as terrible as they are, I think their impact is superficial in a way (though obviously not to their victims, and please make no mistake: I do not wish to live in a country that beheads people!). ISIS beheadings are a matter of form, a propaganda tool; a way to shock the West into action, and the local population into compliance. But as for actual damage, compare their beheadings with the damage caused by some Christian leaders of First World countries who have been bombing cities in the Middle East and causing a lot of deaths. These conservative Christians sometimes describe themselves as "born again", surround themselves with religious phraseology, describe their wars as Crusades and name them with Biblical sounding names (Righteous Fury, Infinite Justice, etc, etc), feel their countries have a God-given right to shape the world as they see fit. Wouldn't people living in a city bombed by a Western country consider themselves the victims of Western religious zealots? And if, say, we know Obama and Bush are NOT the same, are we not making the mistake of thinking every bellicose Muslim is exactly the same terrorist fundamentalist that cannot be reasoned with and must be exterminated? Maybe there are shades of gray with them, just like it happens in the West?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

>globally speaking, a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. You could say the same about the followers of other religions. And of certain popular political persuasions. And of many economic belief systems. Just because adherents don't usually make the news by indiscriminately shooting members of the public doesn't mean they don't do incredible damage in other ways. A public massacre is a horror, for obvious reasons. But it's not truly more horrible than many other everyday outrages, some of which take place on much bigger and longer timescales.

megalodon 11y ago

World's largest arms exporter: US ($10,194,000,000 in 2014) World's largest arms importer: Saudi Arabia ($4,243,000,000 in 2014) To me, these are scary numbers. > When a country decides to invest in arms, rather than in education, housing, the environment, and health services for its people, it is depriving a whole generation of its right to prosperity and happiness. We have produced one firearm for every ten inhabitants of this planet, and yet we have not bothered to end hunger when such a feat is well within our reach. Our international regulations allow almost three-quarters of all global arms sales to pour into the developing world with no binding international guidelines whatsoever. Our regulations do not hold countries accountable for what is done with the weapons they sell, even when the probable use of such weapons is obvious. – Oscar Arias Sanchez, 1987 Nobel Peace Prize winner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_largest_arms_exporters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World.27s_larges...

DamnYuppie 11y ago
It appears, from what I could find, that Saudia Arabia's yearly spending on education is $57.9B, they spend $42.7B on health, with a total spending of $229.3. So they spend 25% of their budget on education and less then 2% on arms importation. Yes they could spend that money on something else, but please don't make it seem like they are neglecting healthcare or educational spending for arms. http://www.us-sabc.org/custom/news/details.cfm?id=1645 http://www.us-sabc.org/custom/news/details.cfm?id=1645
- deleted 11y ago
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- yetanotheracc 11y ago
  And what an education it is! https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabias-curriculum-intolerance https://freedomhouse.org/report/special-reports/saudi-arabia...
- ashaiber 11y ago
  Perhaps considering the total military expenditure will provide a better perspective - $80B for Saudi Arabia in 2014; 3rd highest in the world in $ terms, and highest in the world in terms of percent of GDP (10.7%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Vivtek 11y ago

You obviously have a blind spot towards American-brand Christianity. Speaking of scary numbers and scary access to nuclear weapons perfectly capable of killing you, me, and the other seven billion of us.

cygx 11y ago
You seem to think I'm giving Christianity a pass. I'm not.

mozumder 11y ago

Lots of countries have sedition acts, including the US, which would punish you for speaking out against them. Many countries also have hate-speech laws, including France, which would punish you for speaking out against protected groups. Being vengeful against those that are disloyal to you is a common human ethos.

gonzo 11y ago

> > a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society. A significant number of adherents of Christianity also hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society.

cookiecaper 11y ago
We could just say most people "hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society". Look at all the "enlightened free thinkers" in this thread who want it to be illegal to state something they adamantly disbelieve ("hate speech"). They are apparently not aware that the same laws could be brutally used against them, should they ever find themselves disagreeing with the predominant belief system (and newsflash, enlightened free thinkers: a lot of your beliefs already do). The problem is that the term "open society" has no objective meaning, so you can use it to exclude any set of beliefs that you don't like, up to and including anarchists.

Arnt 11y ago

Yeah, well. I think the key word is naïve. There's a mosque around the corner from where I live, and a lot of people called Mohamed and Hilay and so on live in the area. Few of them visit that mosque, so if your extrapolation were right, there should be a considerable number of murdered apostates. Which there isn't.

cygx 11y ago
You do know how the process of computing an average works? Im guessing you're not living in, say, Egypt or Pakistan, are you?
- Arnt 11y ago
  No. I live in a city with a considerable number of muslims and a considerable number of apostates. Isn't that the kind of place where you'd expect apostates to be killed, if anywhere?
  - cygx 11y ago
    Isn't that the kind of place where you'd expect apostates to be killed, if anywhere? Not necessarily, no. Support for murdering apostates can be low in countries with a majority Muslim population (Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are all in the low single-digit percentage range, it's at 8% in Turkey), and the figures for minority Muslim communities in western countries might be comparably low. Also note that supporting an action does not automatically translate to enacting such an action, but such a mindset is still problematic. And as the cases of Bangladeshi atheists that have been hacked to death show, such things do happen. Generally, apostates probably know to keep their head down in places where it is an issue. The fact that you say you live in a place with a considerable number of apostates shows that it's likely not one where you are.
    - Arnt 11y ago
      You're down from "40%" to single examples. Time to stop worrying ;)

JeremyNT 11y ago

I suspect that it's (relatively) easy to take an adherent of any religion and radicalize them with a slight permutation of said religion, versus trying to radicalize somebody without that shared kernel of faith. I therefore assume that "regular" Islam is an "in" for extremists; they can build upon existing indoctrination and subvert it for their own purposes. I don't think there's anything particular to the Islamic faith that lends itself to this pattern, though. Charlatans and tyrants have effectively used religious beliefs for their own goals since the very beginnings of human civilization. I believe Islam faces a "perfect storm" now; it is immensely popular across the world, but a large number of its adherents are stuck in a region that has been dramatically destabilized by foreign influences. The Muslims there are able to use the shared elements of their religion as a way to reach out to Muslims outside of the region and incite them to revolution. To paraphrase Dan Carlin of Hardcore History: it's not religion that's the problem, it's the tyrants that are the problem. Of course, even if you (and I) are right in assuming that a (relatively) large percentage of Muslims are currently radicalized in comparison to other religions, this doesn't actually mean that there's any practical way to respond to that. The lazy answer is "stabilize the middle east at all costs" but that never seems to actually align with Western political and economic realities, so here we are...

Natanael_L 11y ago
All you need is an imagined enemy or threat (human or not) and a goal to impose on them. That's what happened with Hitler, Stalin and many more. Religion is just one of the many available excuses, and a popular one because there's already many religious people. Building on what people already believe is always the easiest way to get them to join.

SolaceQuantum 11y ago

Globally speaking, the term open society and compatibility with it shifts wildly.

JupiterMoon 11y ago

Some would argue that a significant number of Christians also hold views that are incompatible with an open society.

steveklabnik 11y ago

> a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that > are incompatible with an open society. Yet, a significant number of them also do. You can't generalize over a billion people like this. For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. Sounds pretty progressive when you put it that way...

cygx 11y ago
You can't generalize over a billion people like this. Of course you can. The issue is not that such generalizations are invalid, but what conclusions to draw from them and what actions to take in response. Also note that I have a black friend^W^W Muslim roommate (in fact a Hafiz) I get along well with. That does not mean I don't consider Islam as it presents itself today on a global scale a dangerous ideology. For example, there are many Muslim-majority states that have had multiple women as heads of state. And how many out gay politicians are there in such countries? And anecdotally speaking, remember what happened to Benazir Bhutto.

forty 11y ago

I wonder what you call "adherents of Islam" and "Muslim population". As far as I know they are many groups that claim they are Muslims and they sometimes don't recognize other groups as Muslims (I have many friends that are Muslim and I am pretty sure they would tell you that the 40% your are mentioning are not Muslims) so I think it would be a bit weird to consider all of them as being "Muslim population" as if they were a single group while there are clearly just separate and unrelated groups that happen to claim the same name.

phkn1 11y ago

> If you naively extrapolate from the 2013 Pew Poll The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society (which in principle represents nations with a total Muslim population of about 1 billion), 40% of these think you should be killed for leaving Islam. And, if you actually read the study, you find this number is 28%, not 40%. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-and-society/ http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/infographic-the-worlds-mu...

cygx 11y ago
Global median (by region or country?) vs global mean by total population, computed from the raw data in the annex combined with some population figures from wikipedia. I know how to do maths, thank you very much.

baddox 11y ago

What do you suggest the rest of society should do about people who hold views which are (supposedly) incompatible with a free society?

lectrick 11y ago

Here's a timely book by Sam Harris where he (successfully!) debates with a formerly fairly-extreme Muslim: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_awd_aXNswbXAY282T&sa-no-redirect=1 http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0674088700?ref_=cm_sw_r_a...

deleted 11y ago

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ender7 11y ago

If you naively extrapolate, ... Yes, this is definitely an appropriate time to make sweeping generalizations based solely on naive extrapolations. https://xkcd.com/605/ https://xkcd.com/605/

finance-geek 11y ago

> "a significant number of adherents of Islam hold ideas that are incompatible with an open society." Not sure where you got that statistic, but the much better documented statistic are those of...say...US Republicans. An actual significant population (backed by polls) support outright genocide. Here is a Christian Pastor calling for genocide. Its not some conspiracy-esque statistic like yours, he does it out on the puplit. http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-muslims/ http://aattp.org/christian-pastor-calls-for-genocide-of-all-...

jcranmer 11y ago

To many patriots in the United States during the American Revolution, Catholicism was an evil religion whose precepts were fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Yet I don't think very many Americans would concur today. Religious dogma is as much shaped by the current cultural norms as it shapes them, something that many religious leaders are loathe to admit. Your statement reminds me scarily of something I read relatively recently in a book by a conservative Christian author. The sentence, to paraphrase, was along the lines of "I'm not saying all Muslims are extremists, but the threat of Islamic terrorism is so high we should kick them all out to be safe."