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bigverne
Joined: 12 May 2004
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 Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 9:02 am Post subject: |
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| Why aren't Hindus the world over despised and feared? |
Because Hinduism is not a religion hell-bent on world domination and because Hindus do not immigrate to other countries and try and impose their ways on the natives, let alone engage in terrorism against the host nation.
Inter-communal violence and atrocities committed by Hindus in India says nothing about Hinduism, and a lot about the tense relationship between Hinduism and Islam in India. Countless Islamic terrorist organisations, active in almost every Muslim country, and others with significant Muslim populations, and the fact that they have strikingly similar motives and justifications, does say something about the nature of Islam and why people have a negative opinion of it. |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 3:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Hindu extremists assassinated M. Gandhi, too. But the point is Islamic extremism derives from a religion bent on conquest that keeps insisting on reaching out and touching the rest of us, via aircraft hijackings, 9/11, Madrid, London, and now Mumbai.
How can you ignore the pattern this presents? |
I can see where you can cite some islamic passages as suppourting aggressive wars of expansion but let's be honest with ourselves.
What exactly do you mean by expansionism? If you were to suggest that certain sects of Islam deem it necessary to push their form of religion in order for it to gain supremacy within Muslim countries I have no arguement with you.
I for one have yet to be persuaded that the religion itself is the driving cause for the terrorism we have seen as late. Merely blaming a religion is a scapegoatist method of avoiding a kaleidascope of various soical and geopolitical issues involving muslims and their neighbours.
With the possible exception of some African conflicts, I admit my knowledge of African history isn't up to par, I can think of no current expansionist wars waged by muslims states against non-muslim entities for the purpose of expansionism.
Conflicts no doubt exist but I have yet to see conclusive evidence that Islam is some monolithic madness driving Muslims to conquer, kill and invade every country they can in some expansionist frenzy. I'm pretty sure the media would pick up some kind of crusade type military aggression.
So here is my challenge. Cite me ONE RECENT example of a Muslim STATE invading a neighbor for the sole express purpose of spreading their religion. Counter insurgencies/insurgencies and terrorism don't count. Those are small groups with certain ideaologies.
If your thesis is that ISLAM itself is an agressive, expansionist religion and the driving force behind all muslims actions then muslim nation states must be shown to follow these patterns as well.
Am I downplaying the threat of islamic terrorism? Absolutely not. But hyperbole and (not directing this at anyone is particular) trite explanations do no one any good. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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The Prophet began as a military raider in Medina. He took Mecca by force. Then he and his successors organized a military force that Arabized and eventually Islamicized the Middle East as we know it today through conquest and occupation. Islamic forces also embedded themselves in Spain for several centuries.
Two caliphates ruled the region as God's deputies, rulers, and commanders, from Syria and/or Iraq. The Mongols smashed what remained, especially Bagdad's centrality, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Then the Ottomans premised their empire on military conflict with the West, especially the Byzantines. They took Egypt, then Constantinople/Istanbul, and entered Eastern Europe by force. They projected power through the Eastern Med and, sporadically, even into the Atlantic.
Western civ's rise to global power between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries blunted this power and expansion -- another reason for their hostility towards us, which seems to manifest itself today in Iran and Syria's continuing intervention in Lebanon and Israel via their proxy, Hezbollah. And in my view, it seems likely that Iran, or Shi'ite Persia, aims to rebuilt a Middle Eastern empire approximating the older Safavid state.
I do not necessarily embrace the Clash of Civilizations worldview, and I think it erroneous to reduce Islam to militancy. But it would be just as erroneous to ignore these insights -- and Islamic history itself.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Dec 02, 2008 5:03 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24743163-2703,00.html
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Military chiefs urge raid inside Pakistan
PAKISTAN was bracing last night for a retaliatory airstrike by India against the sprawling headquarters of the al-Qa'ida-linked Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist organisation near Lahore.
As Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari warned the LET militants "had the power to precipitate war in the region", India demanded that Islamabad hand over a list of about 20 people, including India's most-wanted man Dawood Ibrahim.
India's military chiefs were exerting strong pressure on the country's political leaders to give permission to attack the headquarters, an 80ha site at Muridke, close to the Punjab capital of Lahore, just across the border from India.
The reports came as the Indian Government summoned the Pakistani high commissioner in New Delhi yesterday to demand "strong action" against the Pakistani militants who it says were responsible for last week's attacks on Mumbai.
New Delhi warned Shahid Malik that India expected Islamabad to take "swift action" to deal with the evidence of involvement by LET operating from bases inside Pakistan.
India demanded that Islamabad extradite Ibrahim, a fugitive Mumbai mafia don who it believes has links to LET, the terrorist group long allied to Pakistan's ISI spy agency.
India also asked for Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the LET founder, and Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was freed in exchange for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999.
Ibrahim, Mumbai's most notorious underworld don, is the head of D-Company, a feared crime syndicate, and one of the world's five most wanted men. He is widely believed to have worked closely with al-Qa'ida. He is also thought to have masterminded the 1993 Mumbai bombings, a series of 13 explosions that claimed 250 lives.
New Delhi issued its demands after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged Pakistan to co-operate with India as she prepared to visit New Delhi to mediate between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
The heavily guarded LET complex near Lahore, known as the Markaz-e-Taiba (Holy Centre), includes mosques and madrassas with more than 3000 students. Theoretically it is the headquarters of the Jamaat-ul-Dawah Muslim welfare organisation that is closely identified with LET.
Saeed, the LET founder and spiritual leader, lives in the complex.
Reports yesterday said that if India attacked the complex -- possibly to kill Saeed -- an attempt would be made to justify the action by pointing to the way in which the US was launching pre-emptive strikes inside Pakistani territory using unmanned drones to kill al-Qa'ida and Taliban targets.
Indian sources have confirmed that investigators have established strong links between the group of terrorists who attacked Mumbai and the LET leadership inside Pakistan.
Intercepts of calls made on a satellite telephone used by the group before they disembarked from the "mother ship" that brought them from Karachi shows a series of calls made to Muridke.
Indian officials said that all the militants were from Pakistan and that the only one captured alive had admitted to being part of LET.
Yesterday, the surviving terrorist, Ajmal Amin Kamal, in a new interrogation by Indian investigators, again linked the Mumbai attack to LET, saying he had joined the organisation at the behest of his father to raise money for his family.
He named an LET commander who, he said, paid his father for his services.
Pakistan reluctantly announced a formal ban on LET in 2002 after coming under strong international pressure to clamp down on the organisation. This followed a spectacular attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001, launched by LET together with the Kashmir-based JEM.
Although still technically outlawed in Pakistan, LET has managed to expand its membership and activities and has also established itself in other countries.
To get around the formal ban on its activities, LET renamed itself Jamaat-ud-Dawah, which gained considerable influence across Pakistan as a result of the "welfare" work it did after the devastating 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. The US Government has also classified Jamaat-ud-Dawah as a terrorist organisation and said it is no more than an "alias" of LET.
Indian investigators are convinced there is no doubt of LET's involvement in the Mumbai outrage.
Mr Zardari insisted the militants who attacked Mumbai were "non-state actors" with no links to any government.
Reports yesterday said India received warnings in October from US intelligence of a possible terrorist attack "from the sea" on targets in Mumbai.
Unnamed American intelligence officials told US television news service ABC that they had warned their Indian counterparts in mid-October of a potential attack "from the sea against hotels and business centres in Mumbai".
One intelligence official even mentioned specific targets, including the Taj Mahal hotel, ABC said.
Additional reporting: The Times |
That would be interesting. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Oh yeah: add Afghanistan and Sudan's supporting Osama bin Laden's organization and its jihad against the United States to my list, Yawarakaijin. And sooner or later we will probably have to add Pakistan to that list. |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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A good summary of Islam's history and let it be known that I for one am very glad the west was able to resist the original Islamic expansionism of the past. Some people on this board however equate Islamic expansionism of the past with it's goals and desires of the present. Let us not forget that most of pagan Europe was originally "civilized" in the name of Christianity as well.
To suggest that religiously driven Christian and Islamic expansionism is still the driving force behind our two societies today would be laughable. Terrorist/insurgent elements merely claiming to be acting in the name of Mohammed simply does not constitute a re-emerging expansionist Islamic threat. The day an Islamic nation state launches a full scale aggressive war of expansionism is the day said country will be sent back to the stone age, therefore to be honest, I don't give the threat that much thought.
Whether or not population and demographic changes lead to a more Islamic Europe is another matter entirely. We have seen how much change the lowly ultra-PC white has brought to our society. Christmas cards that actually say "Merry Christmas" becoming the rarity rather than the norm, mounties wearing blue turbans ect,ect.
I do believe we must safegaurd our institutions through practical immigration goals and an asserted effort to "assimilate" new arrivals. The previous statements come from a man who is completely non-religious and has decided to live the majority of his life overseas living within other cultures.
We can protect ourselves and our society without falling into the gross generalizations and often sensationalized explanations offered by the media and certain bigots. I think many posters here fail to notice the difference between Islam and Radical Islam.
In response to the post that popped up before my original response. India should absolutely bomb the crap out of that site. If it is a known terrorist base and those terrorists took the fight to Mumbai then they should suffer the consequences. If the Pakistani government doesn't have the ability to deal with them India should absolutely act unilateraly.
I do not protest whatsoever taking the fight to regimes that knowingly harbor terrorist. Quite honestly they should be punished. The only thing I object to ( and again not pointing fingers ) is intellectually dishonest, lazy,and or racist ideology being used to justify said deserved punishment. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 8:43 pm Post subject: |
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| yawarakaijin wrote: |
| Some people on this board however equate Islamic expansionism of the past with it's goals and desires of the present. Let us not forget that... |
Or that many in "the civilized West" found life much more tolerant under the Ottomans -- especially the Jews that Spain expelled after 1492. Actually, I know little about European history; I have always avoided it because too many European specialists exist, and I much prefer the Third World anyway.
The point is not to demonize or reduce Islam to militancy, but merely to recognize that it plays a major role in Islam, past, present, and future. More or less hard-wired into the religion, especially in certain factions. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:12 pm Post subject: |
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...At the center of India's probe was the lone suspect in police custody, who Indian authorities say is Pakistani and was trained by Lashkar-e-Tayyiba -- a Pakistan-based terror group allied with al Qaeda. The group has denied responsibility for the attacks.
However, U.S. counterterrorism officials say signs point to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and they haven't seen anything to rule it out. However, they will not definitively say the group is responsible.
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said during an appearance Tuesday at Harvard University said the Mumbai attacks were carried out by the same group responsible for the parliament attack and a series of bomb explosions aboard trains and at railway stations in Mumbai in 2006 -- though he didn't specifically name Lashkar-e-Tayyiba... |
CNN Reports |
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yawarakaijin
Joined: 08 Aug 2006
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 1:00 am Post subject: |
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When they do find out who carried out this attack I hope the Pakistani goverment has the wherewithal to punish those responsible because if they don't, I can see a very harsh response coming from India. Politically it would be much less messy if Pakistani forces went in and wiped them out rather than the Indians being forced to do so.
Terrorism in an unfortunate fact of life, always has been. Governments allowing actual terrorist bases and giving them support is not acceptable however and every goverment that does it needs to get punished if direct connections can be shown. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Wed Dec 03, 2008 9:08 am Post subject: |
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/02/AR2008120202968_pf.html
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| "He went through different stages of training. At first, it was the recitation of the Koran and lectures about jihad. He was being prepared mentally. Then small-weapons training," Bharti said in an interview. "Then came the hard physical, marine training. At first, Kasab used to vomit. They were taught how to survive at sea, on ground, and how to control thirst and hunger. From a batch of about 25, 10 were handpicked for the Mumbai mission." |
But islam is a religion of peace!! How could he find motivation in a peaceful book to go kill the infidel? Isn't this about poverty/Israel/discrimination?
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/Quran/int/long.html
Oh, yeah. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:07 am Post subject: |
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http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/US-India-Weve-proof-of-ISI-role-in-Mumbai-attacks/394263/
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New Delhi India has proof that ISI was involved in planning the Mumbai terror attacks and training the terrorists who killed 183 people during a 60-hour siege of the country's financial capital, sources said.
The names of trainers and the places where meticulous training took place are also known to the government, the sources said.
The United States is believed to have even more evidence some of which it has shared with India, they said.
Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, who was in Pakistan on Wednesday, is believed to have told his Pakistani interlocutors that Washington had enough evidence to show a Pakistani hand in the attack, the sources said.
Sources also refuse to believe that the Pakistani army did not have knowledge of the Mumbai operation given that ISI is controlled by it.
At the same time, sources do not believe that the civilian government in Pakistan is involved in the attack. In fact, one view is that the civilian government itself may be a target of the strike which may be used by the army to heighten tensions with India to return to power.
Washington has asked Pakistan to crackdown on Lashkar-e-Toiba, which now goes under the name of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, and to arrest its chief Hafeez Mohd Saeed because it has evidence of their involvement in the attack, the sources said.
The attack was planned, equipped and organised in Pakistan where the terrorists were trained and provided logistical support.
Contrary to the version that the terrorists used a hijacked Indian fishing boat to reach Mumbai after sailing from Karachi, the view is that much more sophisticated means were used.
The sources spoke of a clear disconnect between the Pakistani civilian government and the all-powerful military establishment, which is causing difficulties for India in dealing with the situation.
Islamabad's about-turn on sending the Director General of ISI to India is cited as an instance of this disconnect.
During a telephone conversation Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the Mumbai attack, President Asif Zardari had referred to an earlier Pakistani proposal for a meeting between the ISI chief and the head of India's external intelligence agency, RAW.
Singh told Zardari that this was acceptable to India, after which Pakistan government had announced that the ISI head would travel to India.
After a post-midnight call on Zardari by Army chief Gen Ashfaque Kayani this decision was reversed with the President taking cover under a �miscommunication� with the Indian Prime Minister.
Instead it was decided to depute a Director-level officer to India.
When the terror attack took place Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was in India and had consciously decided not to cut short his visit. However, the Indian government was told at 2.30 am that a special aircraft was being sent less than 4 hours later to take him back to Pakistan.
In what observers see as a clear message to the civilian government, the Pakistan army chief's plane was sent to Delhi to pick up Qureshi, who boarded the flight around 7 am. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:17 am Post subject: |
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| Bad news all around. Dark storm clouds gathering over there. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 8:19 am Post subject: |
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No kiddin.
Does Pakistan have any ability to fight a conventional conflict? Or do tensions go from bad to nukes right quick? What does Pakistan do if India starts bombing camps? Interesting times... |
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