The failure of Liberalism (Regressive left) to deal with Islam

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Thor

I want you to say it, for the proper effect.

Best just to loosely deny it by pretending you have no idea what it could be...

...for proper effect.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Thor

lol school marm, oh Peter...

Yes Secular Humanist, and yes I am well aware of the religious history of Humanism, we in Iceland work with Unitarians and other Churches in Iceland which are protestant on various issues and projects.

There have been and are many definitions of Humanist, and as a simpleton like myself I am a secular humanist, among-st other labels like Atheist, skeptic..

But I've always liked the AHA run down of what Humanism is and has been defined as: http://americanhumanist.org/humanism/what_is_humanism

I'm just bugging ya. I always enjoy your open-minded posts.

[Thor]

lol I know, I just love that you used Marm, ahahahaha.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Agamemnon

Whether or not this is true seems to be the original intent of the thread.

Thank you for saying that because it cuts away a lot of the pretense.

However, the original intent of the thread is to blame liberals for "dealing with Islam".

This presupposes that the problem exists, and that somehow liberals should "deal" with it. What does that even mean?

What's there to debate? It's a bonkers claim, and no one has even tried to prove that it makes sense, let alone that it matters enough to talk about.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Itse

Thank you for saying that because it cuts away a lot of the pretense.

However, the original intent of the thread is to blame liberals for "dealing with Islam".

For discussing why so many on the left "Regressives" are so unwilling or afraid to criticize or condemn Islam, Islamism, political Islam or whatever you want to define that as.

This presupposes that the problem exists, and that somehow liberals should "deal" with it. What does that even mean?

You live in Finland, surely you know whats going on in Sweden. Just recently Norway introduced classes for Muslim refugees to discuss the importance of equality for women, LGBT, and other values that they did not have in their own countries.

What's there to debate? It's a bonkers claim, and no one has even tried to prove that it makes sense, let alone that it matters enough to talk about.

Sad you see it as a bonkers claim, but at any point if I switched out comments against Islamic ideals, beliefs with the word Christian, I would receive very little opposition.

Islam is treated with kid gloves by the western liberals, where we on universities Feminist groups teaming up with a Muslim group to protest an Atheist from speaking at their university. The new generation of "liberals" with their safe spaces, attempts to shut down speech they don't like, the immediate attacks of bigot, racist, if you don't fully agree. The craziness of the feminist movement, SJWs..

But I'm most interested in why so many of my fellow Liberals are so afraid of discussing Islam, talking about the obvious clash of civilizations and beliefs that don't work. The UK, Sweden are such great case studies for us, with the problems of Islamic schools, The sharia family courts, the segregation, the rape problems in Sweden.

[Thor]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-islamism.html

The desire to impose religion over society is otherwise known as theocracy. Being veterans of the struggle to push back against fundamentalist Christians, American liberals are well acquainted with the pitfalls of the neoconservative flirtation with the religious-right. How ironic, then, that in Europe it is those on the left—led by the Guardian—who flirt with religious theocrats. For in the UK, our theocrats are brown, from minority communities, and are overwhelmingly Muslim.
Islam is a religion like any other. Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society. When expressed through violence, I call it jihadism. It is obvious to an American liberal that Christian fundamentalism must be made to respect personal choice. Likewise, it is as plain as the light of day to me—a Pakistani-British liberal Muslim—that any desire to impose any version of Islam over anyone anywhere, ever, is a fundamental violation of our basic civil liberties. But Islamism has been rising in the UK for decades. Over the years, in survey after survey, attitudes have reflected a worrying trend. A quarter of British Muslims sympathised with the Charlie Hebdo shootings. 0% have expressed tolerance for homosexuality. A third have claimed that killing for religion can be justified, while 36% have thought apostates should be killed. 40% have wanted the introduction of sharia as law in the UK and 33% have expressed a desire to see the return of a worldwide theocratic Caliphate. Is it any wonder then, that from this milieu up to 1,000 British Muslims have joined ISIS, which is more than joined the Army reserves. In a case that has come to symbolize the extent of the problem, an entire family of 12 recently migrated to the Islamic State. By any reasonable assessment, something has gone badly wrong in Britain.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Thor

For discussing why so many on the left "Regressives" are so unwilling or afraid to criticize or condemn Islam, Islamism, political Islam or whatever you want to define that as.

Well there you go again. You are starting with the presumption that those are somehow the same thing, when a major point of the opposing argument is that they're not.

There's no debating when you want to insert these kinds of (frankly ridiculous) presumptions into the discussion.

You live in Finland, surely you know whats going on in Sweden. Just recently Norway introduced classes for Muslim refugees to discuss the importance of equality for women, LGBT, and other values that they did not have in their own countries.

Yes, we also have these in Finland, and there's something similar in quite many countries.

I fail to see how examples of liberal values turned into concrete policies back up your point. Unless you're against those classes?

Sad you see it as a bonkers claim, but at any point if I switched out comments against Islamic ideals, beliefs with the word Christian, I would receive very little opposition.

I am not following your train of thought.

Are you suggesting that liberals are also "failing to deal" with Christians?

Again, what exactly do you mean by "failing to deal"?

Islam is treated with kid gloves by the western liberals, where we on universities Feminist groups teaming up with a Muslim group to protest an Atheist from speaking at their university. The new generation of "liberals" with their safe spaces, attempts to shut down speech they don't like, the immediate attacks of bigot, racist, if you don't fully agree. The craziness of the feminist movement, SJWs..

This is so remotely connected to Islam, let alone Islamic terrorism that I'm really struggling to see your point.

I do however see the really weird idea that there is some kind of a monolithic group called "western liberals" that you are opposed to. And apparently you're also against feminists?

But I'm most interested in why so many of my fellow Liberals are so afraid of discussing Islam, talking about the obvious clash of civilizations and beliefs that don't work.

I have some really simple answers for this.

1) Liberals are not "afraid to discuss Islam". In fact, they talk about it all the bloody time. Some have literally dedicated their whole lives to studying it and talking about it. The reason they're not saying what you want them to say is not that they're afraid. It's that they don't agree with you.

Yes, I know it's nice to think that you're being "brave" when you're talking about something, but when literally just about everyone has been talking about Islam for years now in every possible media, I really fail to see how you can still hold on to the idea that for some reason someone is "afraid" to do so?

2) Liberals don't talk about the clash of civilizations because it's not a real thing. This is not a failure on their part. It's a failure in your part. You've bought into extreme far-right nonsense. This is literally Breivik stuff.

3) I hear Liberals talking about beliefs that don't work all the time. Again, just because they're not talking about the beliefs that you want to talk about is not because they don't want to talk about them. They just don't agree with you. It's not a failure on their part.

The UK, Sweden are such great case studies for us, with the problems of Islamic schools, The sharia family courts, the segregation, the rape problems in Sweden.

I fail to see how UK is a great case study. It's a country where first hundreds of thousands and now millions of Muslims have been living alongside millions of Christians (and other religions) with very little religious violence on either side for decades now, a country with consistently a really high standard of living and the vast majority of people living peacefully and abiding with the law.

The rape situation in Sweden is of course unfortunate, but again I fail to see how this is somehow an example of "failure of liberals to deal with it", as the recent growth happened at the tail end of eight years of right wing rule.

Sweden has btw always had statistically a high number of rapes, which is generally considered to be a result of unusually high rate of reporting rapes that have happened (a result of feminism) and an unusual way of counting the number of rapes. (For example if a person reports that he has been raped by their spouse for years, in most countries this is counted as 1 rape case. In Sweden they make an estimate of the total number of times that rape happened, which means that single incident like this can easily count as hundreds of rapes statistically.)

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Well, I'm pretty surprised that it took 17 pages to get to this stage, but I guess there were a lot of digressions.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Thor

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...-islamism.html

You just posted an article that's written by a liberal. (It says so in the article.)

The article is written by a person who famously makes a clear distinction between Islam and Islamism, and even explains the difference in that article.

Islam is a religion like any other. Islamism is an ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society.

The article also explains how Muslims are not monolithic, and should not be approached as such. (It actually quite a major point of the whole argument between Nawaz and the Guardian.)

It also discusses a series of events where Nawas was defended by numerous other liberals against The Guardian, a "leftist" newspaper. (It's not a totally unfair thing to say about the Guardian, but the Guardian is hardly a prime example of partisan news.)

Mostly what Nawiz rants against is that the Guardian gives so much space to Islamists of varying levels of radicalism. And not enough for other voices, such as himself.

I have no idea how true this is, since everyone famously thinks the media is biased against them. However even if we assume it's true, letting the Islamists speak is quite clearly part of the Guardians job. That's not a failure, as it brings a lot of light into the Islamists way of thinking. It doesn't mean they agree with those ideas.

However, if we assume that Nawiz is right and that they don't give at least a similar amount of space to moderate Muslim voices, that is a failure. However, we're really talking about relatively minor stuff.

Most specifically, I kind of fail to see how Maajid Nawaz is "silenced as inconvenient", considering he is one of the most quoted and most famous commentators of Muslim issues in the world.

So really he's argument seems to boil down to "The Guardian are treating me like poopyheads and they shouldn't let those other guys talk that much". He might be right on the first part. That second part? Very debatable. One of the principles of free speech is that you give even the people you don't agree with a chance to speak with their own voice.

[CaptainYooh]

Originally Posted by SebC

I think you're confusing liberalism with laissez-faire anarchy. Liberalism imposes restrictions on liberty to preserve greater liberties, and clamping down on radical Islam (which is a threat to things like the right to life) is a defense of liberalism, not a betrayal of it.

I don't. I believe that as soon as politics leave the central balancing point, they are destined to go wrong somewhere. Further they go, more wrong they tend to become. In fact, they only go in opposite directions in the beginning, as they leave centre; but once they go far off they bend into a circle and meet at the point diametrically opposite to the centre (i.e. fascism vs communism). So, why should the expectations of the "regressive left" be any different than those of the "regressive right"?

Liberalism is rooted in the ideals of equality and personal freedoms for all. But this is possible only in theory. One person's freedom often is another person's nuisance or insult. Whose freedom do you protect in the name of liberalism, as a philosophy, and liberal democracy, as a form of government: majority's or minority's? As soon as the freedoms of one group are being limited in the interests of another group, liberalism is no longer pure but selective, which brings us back to common sense being more meaningful and practical than liberal ideals in real life...

I really didn't (and don't) want to get dragged into this discussion any deeper, because it is practically impossible to have an intelligent chat on a serious and very multi-faceted topic without facing an opponent. Plus, this should be an entertaining conversation, not a confrontation.

[Crumpy-Gunt]

Originally Posted by Itse

I have some really simple answers for this.

1) Liberals are not "afraid to discuss Islam". In fact, they talk about it all the bloody time. Some have literally dedicated their whole lives to studying it and talking about it. The reason they're not saying what you want them to say is not that they're afraid. It's that they don't agree with you.

Yes, I know it's nice to think that you're being "brave" when you're talking about something, but when literally just about everyone has been talking about Islam for years now in every possible media, I really fail to see how you can still hold on to the idea that for some reason someone is "afraid" to do so?

2) Liberals don't talk about the clash of civilizations because it's not a real thing. This is not a failure on their part. It's a failure in your part. You've bought into extreme far-right nonsense. This is literally Breivik stuff.

3) I hear Liberals talking about beliefs that don't work all the time. Again, just because they're not talking about the beliefs that you want to talk about is not because they don't want to talk about them. They just don't agree with you. It's not a failure on their part.

Fantastic post.

I honestly think the right wing anti-islamic crowd see themselves as super heroes. People who are not only super intelligent but also super brave and not afraid to smash all the sensitive PC feminist sissy types or '####s' as they like to call us from time to time.. or SJW, thats another one they like. You see in their eyes, they are pretty much saving the world from Islam the 'regressive left', mass immigration and feminism.

Most of these fools in their minds think they are some type of Aryan-Christian alpha males fighting for the glory of the white 'race' and Christendom.

"They're raping our women"
"The white race is going extinct"
"We invented everything"

These types used to only be on sites like Stormfront and 4chan. Now I see them on reddit and commenting on everything to do with Connor McGregor. It was only a matter of time before CP.

These people are quoting Christopher Hitchens as if he's Plato and mentioning him alongside names like Darwin as one of the best thinkers of our time, even a visionary...

Funny enough Islam isnt a threat to western/European global dominance. Radical Islam as you call it - Or Wahhabism as it should be known - was supported and propagated by the west because it was in their interests to have fundamentalist sects who would do war with their Muslim neighbors and disband any Caliphate. First they wanted to pit Arabia against the Ottoman Empire but they found pitting one group against another works really really well in the middle east. Read up on Lawrence of Arabia, The house of Saud, and the origins of Wahabi Islam. It is a tool of the brilliant western British/American intelligence to secure oil and destabilize certain regions and it has worked well for the west.

As an agnostic person who has lived in many Muslim countries and comes from a mostly Muslim family background I find a lot of people who talk about Islam and radical Islam to be basically regurgitating things they read on right wing sites like islamwatch and relying on the ignorance and fear of their audience. Basically uninformed fear mongerers pretending to be theologians and geo-political experts. Not to mention the vast majority of the right wing people I've engaged and talked to about topics like the 'regressive left' and radical Islam, when I am able to earn their trust and indulge them, they let me know how they truly feel. In my experience 99% are xenophobic anti-Semites who believe everything is some Jewish conspiracy against the white race or Christianity, depending on how religious they are; sometimes both. Basically these people take breaks inbetween watching films like 300, and shows like Vikings to go online and tell the world all the injustices against the white race and european/western nations - then turn around and call others SJWs for talking about actual social issues like gender equality and racism.

I just wish they would come out with it and stop dilly dallying around with this whole 'regressive left' and radical Islam thing. You lads arent fooling anyone who isnt already a fool. ISIS couldnt fill the saddledome. In my experience based on the hundreds, upon thousands of Muslims ive had the chance to get to know, I would say less than .01% of them would be the extremist radicals who are willing to cut some journalists head off because they view them as an infidel. 70% of the Muslims I met are either non-religious or moderates who drink and dont hold religious values at all. Close to 30 percent are religious Muslims who pray 5 times a day and fast during Ramadan but are totally against terrorism and violence. The title of this thread is cringe worthy. 'how are we privileged white males going to deal with this global religion of nearly 2 billion people' Thats almost as stupid as a police shooting thread titled 'how are we going to deal with white people' or 'the progressive lefts inability to deal with white people'.

But people like Hitchens and Maher want us to think there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. They are all, 100% of them frothing at the mouth wanting to rape our women and fly their flags on our soil.

The reason people dont take you idiots seriously is because we can all smell the bigotry Mr.Thor with the Iceland flag as his avatar.. You cant possibly be a right wing European nationalist can you. The biggest risk to the western domination of the world isnt Islam. Its actually going to turn out to be currency/economy and violent white nationalists causing civil unrest.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Crumpy-Gunt

The reason people dont take you idiots seriously is because we can all smell the bigotry Mr. Thor with the Norway flag as his avatar.. You cant possibly be a right wing European nationalist can you.

And there it is.

This is just so, so depressing.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Liberalism is rooted in the ideals of equality and personal freedoms for all. But this is possible only in theory. One person's freedom often is another person's nuisance or insult. Whose freedom do you protect in the name of liberalism, as a philosophy, and liberal democracy, as a form of government: majority's or minority's? As soon as the freedoms of one group are being limited in the interests of another group, liberalism is no longer pure but selective...

These questions are actually one of the central points of most liberalism and a starting point for numerous liberal policies.

Or in other words: if you're looking for the ideology that is trying to find answers to these problems, you're looking for liberalism.

which brings us back to common sense being more meaningful and practical than liberal ideals in real life...

"Common sense" is much more of a fantasy than liberalism.

First, if everyone agreed what "common sense" is, there would be no politics. So it's not actually "common".

Second, "common sense" gets things terribly wrong all the time. So it's not actually "sense".

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

And there it is.

This is just so, so depressing.

While I kind of agree, I'd like to point out that you find it depressing that someone is suspecting Thor of being a right wing nationalist, but you have no reaction at all to Thor believing in extreme right wing fantasy stuff like "clash of civilizations".

I find that more than a little bizarre. Which exactly is more harmful?

People believing that Islam will destroy our way of life if we don't fight back, or people accusing someone of bigotry very lightly?

One of these things is literally the stuff that is used to defend wars and genocide. (Although it seems that Thor mostly wants to rant about poopyhead liberals, as far as rhetorics go it's far from harmless.)

What is the worst that people who accuse other people of bigotry do? Get people fired for no good reason?

[peter12]

Has anyone here read Huntington's book? Did they try to understand it? It is not right-wing fantasy. Haha oh boy oh boy.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Itse

What is the worst that people who accuse other people of bigotry do?

Create (along with the mirror image of this behaviour) potentially irreparable political polarization that is at present doing its level best to slowly erode the foundations our society rests on. Which is what this thread should be about rather than focusing on Islam specifically, I guess, but it's not my thread so what do I know. And besides, I know there's not much point in saying so; you've just spent about a page trying to convince anyone who will listen that this issue is all in Thor's head and there's nothing to worry about.

Anyway, I'm not sure that anyone is arguing that Islam must be destroyed lest it destroy our way of life. I would say that some might take that position with respect to religion generally, if they weren't particularly nuanced. One might also take a modified version of that view with respect to Islamism; namely that a clash with that particular political ideology is inevitable as its adherents can't be negotiated with.

Modified to one of those two views that I think people actually hold, they can be disputed, obviously. I would say that discarding them as fantasy is essentially useful idiocy, but that's beside the point - you can offer rational reasons for rejecting what you've characterized as the "clash of civilizations" perspective. You can't dispute a self-righteous manichean attitude like Crumpy-Gunt's; it's an instant death sentence to rational discourse.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Create (along with the mirror image of this behaviour) potentially irreparable political polarization that is at present doing its level best to destroy society.

First, I'm not sure that anyone is arguing that Islam must be destroyed lest it destroy our way of life. I would say that some might take that position with respect to religion generally, if they weren't particularly nuanced. One might also take a modified version of that view with respect to Islamism; namely that a clash with that particular political ideology is inevitable as its adherents can't be negotiated with. Modified to one of those two views that I think people actually hold, they can be disputed. You can't dispute a self-righteous manichean attitude like Crumpy-Gunt's; it's an instant death sentence to rational discourse.

Very, very, very well-said.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

And there it is.

This is just so, so depressing.

lol all you can do is laugh, but hey at least its Norway, a place I'd love to live.

[Crumpy-Gunt]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Create (along with the mirror image of this behaviour) potentially irreparable political polarization that is at present doing its level best to slowly erode the foundations our society rests on. Which is what this thread should be about rather than focusing on Islam specifically, I guess, but it's not my thread so what do I know. And besides, I know there's not much point in saying so; you've just spent about a page trying to convince anyone who will listen that this issue is all in Thor's head and there's nothing to worry about.

Anyway, I'm not sure that anyone is arguing that Islam must be destroyed lest it destroy our way of life. I would say that some might take that position with respect to religion generally, if they weren't particularly nuanced. One might also take a modified version of that view with respect to Islamism; namely that a clash with that particular political ideology is inevitable as its adherents can't be negotiated with.

Modified to one of those two views that I think people actually hold, they can be disputed, obviously. I would say that discarding them as fantasy is essentially useful idiocy, but that's beside the point - you can offer rational reasons for rejecting what you've characterized as the "clash of civilizations" perspective. You can't dispute a self-righteous manichean attitude like Crumpy-Gunt's; it's an instant death sentence to rational discourse.

Ouch that hurt my feelings a bit.

You are silly. "namely that a clash with that particular political ideology is inevitable as its adherents can't be negotiated with."

Do you truly believe in your heart of hearts that WESTERN BLOODY CIVILIZATION and all her armies and resources are in any way threatened by a group of bearded extremists in their tens of thousands.

You seem to put so much effort into coming across (via text) as a smart person but really you cant be that smart if you think political Islam is a dangerous opponent and an inevitable clash. Not China or Russia?

What will the scope/nature of this clash be? Canada vs political Islam? Europe vs political Islam? Western civilization vs political Islam?

Wow. I never saw this coming. I thought political Islam was the biggest enemy and danger to the lives of Muslims living in the middle east and the well-being of majority Muslim nations such as Syria, Iraq and Libya.

How do you go to sleep if you think there is some impending clash of civilizations? Have you joined the army? Can you shoot yet?

[Crumpy-Gunt]

Allskonar fyrir Aumingja..

Is this like some Icelandic communist saying or something?
All kinds for the poor? Super deep.