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Whether you like China or not, Islamic fundamentalism is a huge problem to global peace today. Not just in the Middle East, Europe, but also parts of Southeast

• duxup 8y ago
  "But we at least must do something about it" Like oppress an entire region of people who aren't committing violence to get to the handful who are?
  • oblong 8y ago
    Gaza shows that handful can easily become most of the population if you let it get out of control. The left's deep love and devotion to a religion that oppresses their other favoured groups - gays and women - astonishes me.
    • ironjunkie 8y ago
      Gaza is not a religion problem, it is a human right problem. Israel is scandalously denying human people living in Gaza any dignity in their living, after stealing their land and oppressing them for years. I'm sick to see how much America is getting complicit with this. and happy to see that most of Europe realizes what is really going on there.
      • ShabbosGoy 8y ago
        The problem is you are considered Anti-Semitic if you criticize the government of Israel. So you cannot even talk about it in public, or it will ruin your reputation and career. Edit: The karma of my comment proves my point.
        • eanzenberg 8y ago
          In tech and in other liberal fields as academia it is the reverse: critique of islam, muslims, their treatment of women and education, is mostly forbidden unless you’re ok with being ostracized.
          • ShabbosGoy 8y ago
            I also work in tech, I just don’t discuss anything remotely controversial IRL because it will end up offending someone. Recently, I made the mistake to actually speak what was really on my mind (when I was drunk) and I ended up getting physically assaulted which led to a concussion. Suffice it to say I will never talk about politics publicly ever again.
        • mythrwy 8y ago
          To be fair your username might be part of the issue. It makes it a bit hard to take claims of innocent-peace-and justice-no-anti-semetic-intent-intended and somewhat implies time spent watching "Evil Joos controlz the banking system and the Facebook!" videos. Charitably, myself, I assume this isn't actually the case, but it could create that impression. FWIW.
          • ShabbosGoy 8y ago
            I came up with this name when I was bored and surfing random articles on Wikipedia.
      • yoavm 8y ago
        Do you know many people in Gaza? Because I do and they complain much more about Hamas than they do about Israel. I'm far from agreeing with Israel's policies regarding Gaza, but the truth is it's far from being Gaza's biggest problem. Not to mention the often forgetten fact that Gaza has another border, with Egypt, which is closed, and Israel has nothing to do with it. A Gazan friend told me this very week actually that they wish Israel would re-enter the Gaza strip and remove Hamas from power. Israel of course is not interested. Reality is often much more complicated.
        • IkmoIkmo 8y ago
          > Not to mention the often forgetten fact that Gaza has another border, with Egypt, which is closed, and Israel has nothing to do with it. Suppose a universe in which Israel didn't exist. Would Egypt have closed off its border with Gaza? Not a chance. That means it has everything to do with Israel. If you think Israel and its allies wouldn't respond with pressure on Egypt the moment it'd open up a border with Gaza, precisely because of Israel, you're fooling yourself. As for your anecdotal stories about a friend in Gaza, they're as meaningless as if I said I had a Gazan friend who said the opposite. The notion you've got Gazans risking their lives protesting against Israel (with over ten thousand injuries and 100 dead in the past months, 100% Palestinian) but not Hamas apparently isn't telling to you. And if you think Palestinian lack of satisfaction with its leaders at any point in its history (e.g. Hamas now) has nothing to do with Israeli oppression (including the closed borders and the destruction of Palestinian economy every time there's an lopsided violent clash) with the backing of the world's superpower, you're also fooling yourself.
          • yoavm 8y ago
            * The Egyptian border is closed since the Egyptian army took control of the country. They hate Hamas more than anything. They have no love for Israel. Israel never asked them to close the border. What is your "not a chance" based on? Egypt blamed Hamas for terror attacks inside Egypt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_positions_on_the_nature_of_Hamas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_positions_on_the...) * My stories are anecdotal, but my work for the past year has almost 100% to do with Gaza and it's internals conflict. I wish I could say more but I can't, and by the way, I can't because it would put my Gazan friends in risk of being hurt by Hamas. I'm sure it doesn't represent the majority, but you have to remember what's possible to say and what's impossible to say in Gaza. It was about two years ago when thousands of youth in Gaza wanted to organize a protest against Hamas. They FB event went crazy. Hamas broadcasted a very simple slide on all TV channels saying that everyone who'll be out on the street in the time of the protest will be immediately shot. The whole thing was canceled. So yeah, the voices against Hamas are much harder to be heard, but they are there and I believe that it's not only my stories who show them, but everyone who'll you have an honest (and unfortunately, fully encrypted) conversation with will tell you the same. * I never said Gazans like Israel. They hate it. They also hate America, the Palestinian Authorities, etc'. So what? My note was only that the Human Rights issues in Gaza have only so much to do with Israel. * I agree that Israel helped bringing Hamas into power. That doesn't change the fact that Hamas are no less of oppressors towards their own people. They abuse them, they care nothing for their lives, they're a bunch of gangsters willing the destroy all of Gaza just so they'll stay in power. Yes, Israel has to do with it, and not a little. But Hamas was chosen democratically. Again, I've led so many campaigns and protests against Israel's governments and policies over the past years. I'm so far from agreeing with them on anything. But I care for Gazans a lot, and since I started hearing them, I learned that their day-to-day problems are at 90% of the cases things like corruption, women rights, inability to gather, abuse, and internal Stasi-like issues.
      • throwaway-hn123 8y ago
        Stop virtue signalling.
    • duxup 8y ago
      Gaza is a good example of how constant control and oppression makes people desperate and you get large scale issues. If you haven't noticed, that problem has not been solved.... that should tell you something. I don't know what you'r trying say with that second line. Your perspective is very strange, it seems like madlibs for identity politics.
    • jrs95 8y ago
      It really shouldn't be astonishing (although I disagree with your assessment of the situation in Gaza in particular -- Israel has been doing some seriously fucked up shit in the region for a long time). The most obvious long term response to Nixon's Southern Strategy is to do the opposite and wait for the GOP's embrace of being the conservative white party to screw them over. They've succeeded at that. Every demographic other than straight married white women and straight white men prefer the Democratic Party. Rhetoric painting that demographic as the enemy (often exaggerated IMO but based on at least partial truths most of the time) helps unify those groups despite their differences. Of course that's a big part of the polarization in our politics, but we're approaching a tipping point where the GOP's current position will become untenable and that might result in the polarization being dialed down as the GOP attempts to rebrand itself and expand it's constituency again.
    • partycoder 8y ago
      I wonder how "out of control" you would be if you fell victim to settler colonialism. We can objectively say it's colonialism rather than occupation since it's permanent. What would you do if an IDF Caterpillar D9 armored bulldozer shows up in your neighborhood accompanied by the military and starts demolishing houses to make room for settlers, leaving a bunch of people homeless in the process? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDF_Caterpillar_D9 That's why people are a little bit upset over there. Among other things.
    • dang 8y ago
      Please don't use HN for ideological battle or religious flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • raverbashing 8y ago
    As opposed to the western approach which lets religious fundamentalists profess their anti-semitism, anti-atheism and misoginy freely and violently? Example: http://www.france24.com/en/20180511-saudi-financed-belgian-mosques-teach-hatred-jews-gays-report?ref=tw http://www.france24.com/en/20180511-saudi-financed-belgian-m... And while freedom of expression is important, it is limited (especially in Germany). Racists expressions are a no-no pretty much everywhere. Now Jews feel increasingly unsafe in the streets of Europe.
    • duxup 8y ago
      Are you concerned those people might oppress others if they came to power...like say the article above?
    • beebmam 8y ago
      Freely, yes. People in the United States have the right to express publicly whatever their beliefs are. And we also have the right to judge people based on their beliefs. I'm not sure about the rest of the "western" world. But I this the way it is in the United States.
    • wafflebear 8y ago
      Hitchens called himself an "antitheist" and certainly expressed that sentiment freely, I don't see why someone shouldn't express anti-atheism freely. Violence is obviously already illegal, as is anti-semitism in many western countries.
  • jrs95 8y ago
    The presence of the "nonviolent" but complacent and complicit minority in these countries is what enables things to be the way they are. Maybe not everyone participates, but if you poll them on whether or not they support honor killings, oppression of women, etc. a large number will agree. This is not some fringe set of beliefs. Now personally I don't think we need to "do something about it", but the U.S. has actually gone out of it's way to create chaos in the Middle East and empower fundamentalism. We treat Saudi Arabia as an ally while they export poisonous propaganda, we help remove mostly secular dictators from power (who are generally opposed to Islamism and who keep the peace between ethnic groups), and chaos, terrorism, and explicitly Islamist governments with far more extreme policies is the result. Basically, if we really wanted to "do something about it" we'd just stop doing what we've been doing for decades. And yes, that includes not overthrowing Assad. The same people claiming he gassed his people are the same ones that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I don't buy it.
    • duxup 8y ago
      You support mass oppression and claim to be concerned about opression of women? I doubt your sincerity about that and the rest of your arguments.
      • jrs95 8y ago
        No, I don't think that going out of our way to "liberate" people who are just going to immediately vote for theocratic government is doing anything to reduce oppression. Democracy does not inherently reduce oppression, in this case it just enables oppression by a majority which is often even more aggressive than the system that preceded it.
      • eanzenberg 8y ago
        Are you ok with oppressing al quida, hamas, isis?
    • titanix2 8y ago
      About your first point, you are totally right. A report made in France tells that 28% of Muslim support an authoritarian position and a separatism against their host country society. While 1/3 is technically a minority, it is still a really hight proportion and a really signifiant number of people that can be counted in millions. "28 % des musulmans de France peuvent être regroupés dans ce groupe qui mélange à la fois des attitudes autoritaires et d’autres que l’on pourrait qualifier de « sécessionnistes ». L’islam est un moyen pour eux de s’affirmer en marge de la société française." [28% of muslim living in France can be grouped in this group that mix both authoritarian and « separatist » attitudes. Islam is for them a way to affirm themselves at the edge of the French society.] Un Islam de France est Possible, Institut Montaigne / Hakim El Karoui, 2016.
  • nathanyukai 8y ago
    The history of that region taught the Chinese government that if they don't do something about it, then extreme religious groups may cause serious damage.
    • seanmcdirmid 8y ago
      You mean like when the Qing used the uighurs to exterminate the dhungzar mongols in the first place?
    • sullyj3 8y ago
      It's difficult to take that seriously, given the government itself opened fire on its own population and killed 10000 people in 1989.
• scandox 8y ago
  Global peace is and always has been threatened by only one thing: inequality and greed. Religious fundamentalism may often be used as the ideological substrate for violence, but I think we've seen enough the last hundred years to know that any old ideology will do, without any spiritual element.
  • lsd5you 8y ago
    Where do you get this certainty from? What about population pressures? What about religous disagreements, what about nationalism? Old grudges? Why can't fundamental belief systems be part of the substrate of this equation that results in war. They change every other aspect of life and politics in many cases.
    • skywhopper 8y ago
      The leaders who encourage and exploit fundamentalist belief do so not out of religious fervor, but out of their own search for power. There’s always something to exploit to sow division. If you sympathize with China here because you believe they are on your side against the bad religions then you are just playing into their game. They are exploiting your own biases against fundamentalist religion in order to gain political cover for their actions. Don’t fall for it.
  • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Pakistan, Armenia, Egypt and many others are some of the most 'equal' nations in the world. I think people use income equality as a sort of euphemism for Scandinavia, and by most metrics yeah they're doing incredible there. But many of the characteristics they have, which includes relatively low income inequality when discussing matters with somebody with a left bias - and cultural/ethnic homogeneity when discussing matters with somebody with a right bias, are also shared by many other nations that are in awful shape. I will fully agree with you on greed, however. And I'd even go as far as to agree with you on religion being a tool rather than the real factor. But there's also another thing you're missing on the religious issue. The terrorists in Xinjiang killed hundreds of completely random people - and often in close contact with weapons such as knives. Well random in at least they tried to target non-Muslims. That's something I think the vast majority of people simply could not bring themselves to do. That just takes a whole lot of hate, or at best complete sociopathic disregard, for somebody you know absolutely nothing about. And religion, fundamentalistic religion in particular, is something that helps breed that hate. And it also lets people believe that after they go kill those random people, somehow they're going to end up in a magical place where until the end of time they get to go screw 72 perpetual virgins while being served by 80,000 servants. Haha. Maybe we've come full circle and the religion itself ties right back into greed!
• lsd5you 8y ago
  > which used to be just as bad as Islamic fundamentalism This is unsubstantiated even in mediaeval times. For example the crusades were minor skirmishes compared to what is the invasion of spain and the balkans - not to mention all the other places in Africa, Asia and the middle east. It is also implies that Islam can be reformed (because it's just another religion) and is just behind for developmental reasons, but there are fundamental differences. Broadly speaking, Christianity is Orthodox - it is important what you believe, Islam is Orthopraxic - it is important what you do. More importantly, Islam makes a virtue of violence and conquests and Christianity is centred on piety. Now clearly they can be binding forces for tribes and it is possible for Christians to be quarelsome and muslims to be peaceful but this is in contradiction with the teachings. (And all the refutations to this w.r.t. to the Quran either only apply to believers, or are superceded later in the Quran).
  • nkoren 8y ago
    Bullshit. You want proof that doesn't appeal to the Quran? Fine. In long-Islamic countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, there are a large number of pre-existing minority religions: Yazidis, Mandeans, Samaritans, and a number of others -- as well as long-established Jewish and Christian communities. Those communities have been surrounded by Islam for more than a thousand years, and while they've undoubtedly got some legitimate complaints about Islam, the fact is that they're still there. Compare and contrast to Christianity. Before Christianity took over, Europe, like the Middle East was a rich tapestry of pre-existing religions. None of them survived: they were universally exterminated with extreme prejudice. This was not a gentle process: Norway, for example, was Christianised by as man whose favoured way of dealing with stubborn pagans was to force iron rods down their throats and force poisonous snakes into them. So no, Christianity wasn't a more tolerant religion. The absence of any survivors -- in contrast to Islam -- is a testament to this.
    • titanix2 8y ago
      It is funny you take the example of Christians community in the Middle East, because right now they are precisely the target of Sunnis terrorists and in great danger. A few month ago, a Libanese bishop was saying in a newspaper that "Christians will inevitably disappear from the Middle-East, even from Lebanon". He predicted that to happen in the timeframe of a decade. [1] https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1110721/-a-quoi-servent-les-eglises-si-elles-sont-vides-et-fermees-.html https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1110721/-a-quoi-serven...
• temp_accounter 8y ago
  It would require a serious commitment to the absurd to suggest that Beijing's quasi-genocidal policies in Xinjiang are just part of an unusually blunt women's-rights campaign. China's "hard handed approach" is about ethnically cleansing conquered territories, crushing whatever indigenous subject populations they can't outright displace, and destroying any institutions or social organizations that exist independently of the CCP.
• bobthepanda 8y ago
  Usually oppressing a major marginalized group with blunt, heavy-handed approaches only serves to intensify local support. Particularly if two reasons for marginalization coincide greatly (say, ethnicity and religion) See: Catalans, Scotland, Kashmir, Palestine, Tuaregs in Mali, etc.
  • adventured 8y ago
    China of course knows that. It's why they have the knives chained to the walls. Their intention is to entirely prevent the Uighur people from being able to defend themselves or fight back. I keep wondering what China is going to do when these efforts fail (genocide being the primary worry). Xi's dictatorship will only grow more powerful and oppressive in the next five or ten years, as is nearly universal with the history of dictatorships. I don't believe China will be able to strip away the religious beliefs & culture easily, nor near-term. The only way they can do it, is over a very long time frame, and by trying to forcibly prevent the next generations from becoming Muslims. As news of what's going on there spreads globally, to the Middle East and other bordering Islamic regions, China may have to build considerable border fortifications to keep terrorists out (people seeking revenge, or just an excuse to wage jihad, and attempting to flow weapons in). China of course borders Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan - all Muslim majority nations.
  • jfaucett 8y ago
    > Usually oppressing a major marginalized group with blunt, heavy-handed approaches only serves to intensify local support. I think that is at best fragile as a general statement. I would argue that increases in local support are dependent on other factors besides heavy-handedness or harshness, and that these vary on a case by case basis. For a plethora of counter-examples see: The history of the Jewish people, Native Americans during colonialism, the anabaptists or the calvinists in European history, the Muslim populations after the conquest of Granada.
• nafizh 8y ago
  >The problem is people clinging to old time religious beliefs that women are inferior and must be veiled and that infidels are not worthy Wow, such an uninformed generalized comment. Not something you would expect to see at hacker news. Anyway, just because the West had problems with Christianity does not mean the East have the same problems with Islam. That is one of the reasons why Islam has more practicing followers than any other religion on earth.
  • curyous 8y ago
    Can you shed some light?
    • nafizh 8y ago
      This is a good resource to learn about some of the more ‘controversial’ topics in Islam like apostasy or the position of women. https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/research/ https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/research/
  • Franciscouzo 8y ago
    What's so uninformed about it [0], are you implying those beliefs should still be held? The main reason there are so many islam followers is that they have more kids on average. [0] http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#penalty-for-converting-to-another-faith http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
    • nafizh 8y ago
      Just like any other legal system, Islamic Legal system is also incredibly complex and nuanced. I suggest reading this article on the issue of apostasy in Islam [0]. In a legal matter, what general Muslims think about it (like a pew poll) does not matter because most of them, just like any other population are not experts in judiciary. Regarding your points about Muslims having more kids, there is nothing preventing these kids from turning away from the religion, just like the kids of old devout Christians today no longer identify as at least practicing Christians. 0. https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/jonathan-brown/the-issue-of-apostasy-in-islam/ https://yaqeeninstitute.org/en/jonathan-brown/the-issue-of-a...
• all2well 8y ago
  >Not sure if China's hard handed approach may work I think the lesson of the 20th century is that denying people's humanity and dignity as individuals leads to corpses piling up very, very fast.
• havemylife 8y ago
  > The problem is people clinging to old time religious beliefs that women are inferior and must be veiled and that infidels are not worthy Unfortunately if you compare Islamic societies in the late 19th/early 20th centuries to those from middle of the 20th to now it's seemingly become regressive and insular. Let's not forget that if you go back a few centuries further Islamic societies were progressing and preserving scientific knowledge while Christendom was rolling around in mud (I'm exaggerating).
  • adventured 8y ago
    It's not a few centuries further historically. It's ~800-1258 AD. You have to go back to the Abbasid Dynasty to reach the Islamic renaissance / golden age, prior to the Mongol destruction of that and the moving of the Caliphate to Egypt. By the time the Mongols sacked Baghdad, the Abbasid Dynasty and the renaissance had much eroded compared to its former glory. We're nearing a thousand years that you have to go back to reach the Islamic golden age.
• kevingadd 8y ago
  "We've slowly dispelled Christian fervor" is an incredibly misinformed take. Christian fundamentalists are still well armed and causing trouble in the United States on a regular basis, even if the Crusades haven't happened in a while. The death toll is sizable. Big names in evangelical culture with TV air time or even visits to the White House also trumpet on a regular basis that the end times are near, blood will need to be spilled, the muslim hordes are invading, etc. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem was literally a move designed to please Christian fundamentalists who view that as a step towards the End Times, and the reaping that follows it. At most, Christian fervor is more polite now, if only because there are fewer lands left for them to conquer and they're more comfortable. Context: I spent a decade in the ministry.
  • 21 8y ago
    What is this death toll you speak of? Can you be more concrete?
    • boomboomsubban 8y ago
      The Iraq War for a start, Bush says God told him to "end tyranny in Iraq." Same with Afghanistan, and similar cases can be made for much of Western aggression for a while now.
    • mcguire 8y ago
      2008-2016: "115 right-wing inspired terror incidents. 35% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 29% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 79 deaths. "63 Islamist inspired terror incidents. 76% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 13% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 90 deaths. "19 incidents inspired by left-wing ideologies (including eco-terrorism). 20% of these were foiled (meaning no attack happened) and 10% resulted in fatalities. These terror incidents caused 7 deaths." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States... https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2017/06/22/home-hate/ https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2017/06/2...
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• cromwellian 8y ago
  Not all Islam is the same. Indonesian islamic culture is not the same as Turkish, or Arabian. It's way too simplistic to lump the situation of every country together. Are a minority of the people of Xinjiang committing violent acts because they want a Caliphate and to convert Han chinese, or are they doing it because the Uighurs are treated very badly by the Chinese government and they want autonomy and rallying around a common religious identity is their own recourse, especially if they want help from overseas? Why do we not treat the Northern Irish who rallied around their religious identity and attracted the sympathies and support of American Irish? Why when Tibetan Buddhists commit violence we don't say it's their religion and immediately start looking for geo-political or economic reasons? When people are abused, tribes develop and they rally around whatever they have left: skin color, language, religion. While I have problems with Islam's doctrine, and religion in general (especially Abrahamic religions), it's extremely simplistic to attribute everyone's motivations and actions to the doctrine and not look at what drove individuals to commit acts against the state.
  • bilbo0s 8y ago
    "...Why do we not treat the Northern Irish who rallied around their religious identity and attracted the sympathies and support of American Irish? Why when Tibetan Buddhists commit violence we don't say it's their religion and immediately start looking for geo-political or economic reasons?..." To be perfectly frank, a large part of the reason is just propaganda. For instance, are Buddhists slaughtering muslims in Myanmar? Yes, without question. But a lot of our policymakers probably are thinking, "Man, we invested a whole lot in the Buddhists against the military government over there." (You know, Ang sang suu kyi and all that.) We, kind of, can't go back now. Maybe it's a lot like the sunk cost fallacy. But on a geopolitical scale? You're only willing to fold when the whole thing just collapses. And it hasn't, yet. So we keep trying to make it work.
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  • thevardanian 8y ago
    The reason we don't accuse Buddhism when a Buddhist commits violence is because very rarely do they explicitly say they're committing whatever they're doing in the name of their religion, nor in anyway to propagate their religion. That is to say, you don't have a doctrinal, linear, absolute, form of religiosity that demands conversion, demands superiority, demands singularity as is fundamental to Islam. Muhammad and his Quran is supreme, whereas in Buddhism you kill Buddha, and Sutras while important are not absolute. The Quran is equal parts a political construct, religion, and a sociological text that covers everything from spirituality, to the idea of man, to how to wage proper war. Whereas a Buddhist text is not, but rather simply a constellation of philosophical conjectures, and assertions that mostly pertain to one's own consciousness. The question is simple. Does ideology, and in extension religion, motivate people to be violent? I dare you to actually bring and propose to reinterpret the Quran. It simply won't happen, and until and unless Muslims in majority seek to reform/reinterpret the Quran, like it has been done in Christianity, you cannot progress Islam. I mean if we're going to be entirely reductive then I think we can also say that ALL ideologies are also the same. The Allies, and Axis powers were in essence both the same thing, and either party weren't in any way morally superior. The Nazis were the same thing as Americans, and whoever won the war is simply a mere coincidence. In a similar sense not all religions are the same.
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• dabbledash 8y ago
  It seems like, on a civilization level, humans have a fixed number of really bad ideas, and we just keep trying them out. “Religious fundamentalism seems really bad, guys. Maybe totalitarianism will help? I can’t remember if that has a downside.”
• partycoder 8y ago
  The philosophic foundations that made it possible for Christians to transition from theocracy to secularity (separation between "church" and state) come from Islamic caliphates. Take a look at the academic lineage of St. Thomas Aquinas and you will see what I am talking about. He studied from Saint Albert Magnus, a guy that studied from a vast bibliography left by the Islamic Caliphate of Al-Andalus (aka Islamic Spain) after the Spanish Reconquista. Without St. Thomas Aquinas by the way, Reinassance scientists that made the subsequent "European enlightment" possible would have been burned by the Inquisition and we would be in the middle ages, or at least 200 years away from being technologically able to manufacture a computer. Instead of being on Hacker News you would be dying of plague or in some dumb war. The Islamic civilization was not always as theocratic as it is today. This happened only after the Mongols razed them and nomadic tribes were left. These nomadic tribes were more militaristic and theocratic than the Islamic Caliphates razed by the Mongols.
• hapnin 8y ago
  Objectively, Western corporate-military ideology has been far deadlier in Asia and Africa than religious fundamentalism. The US has attacked far more countries and killed more civilians than religious extremists have.
• IkmoIkmo 8y ago
  This is disgusting. If you're so modern, respect a people's right to self-determination. Respect their freedom from oppression. Respect their freedom of religion. Respect the many rights of peaceful muslims in China, rather than make a ridiculous statement about global peace and islamic fundamentalism to become an apologist for China's consistent human rights violations on this matter. For someone who wants to espouse modernity you seem awfully uncritical of a totalitarian state. As for your view on Islam, it's narrow. What you'll find is that literacy rates and living standards indeed have risen quite a lot, look at the data. Further, you'll often find many of the views people hold aren't necessarily religious views, but regional cultural ones. Rape, domestic violence, abortion of girls, dowry, child marriages are all prevalent threats to women in India among its 85% non-muslim population, just like it is in its muslim population, or that of say neighbouring India. Islam isn't the source of a patriarchal system as often as it's claimed, cultural practices that preceded Islam often are, nor is it as often the source of conflicts, the underlying geopolitical situation usually is. What I would say is that Islam can retard modernisation because it makes some conversations (that Muslims have every day in their own societies) much more difficult to have. But none of that has anything to do with the Chinese situation. Stop saying that Islam is the problem. It's a facet, it ought to be considered, but it oughtn't be oppressed or seen as the sole or even primary reason different groups take political actions. It'd be as if I went around claiming the Troubles was a religious conflict or that Christianity was at the source of the violence despite it being a part of the story.
• mikeash 8y ago
  Seems to me that Christian fundamentalism is a far greater threat to world peace. Muslim extremists sometimes blow stuff up, Christian extremists invade and wreck entire countries. I mean, Muslim extremists would do the same if they could, but they can’t. I’m more worried about those who can.
• dang 8y ago
  This crosses into religious flamewar. That invariably leads to shitty threads that destroy what's good about HN, and so is off topic here, therefore please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html