Chewbaccca wrote:
No one is is slaughtering people in the name of a religion. Only Muslims. We are not able to sufficiently vet these refugees so doesn't it make sense to stop allowing into the country until they can be sufficiently vetted?
The conservative viewpoint on this matter is the more reasonable one. I hope in my post to debunk the foolish liberal and associated arguments, some seen in other posts in this thread. I use liberal as an ersatz term as I don't have a concise substitute. (To use the term apologist is an insult to the Saintly Christian apologists of early and medieval Christian history, and also to the selection of Muslim apologists throughout history who have done a fine and moral job, contributed to human civilization, morals and elucidated wonderful points, that, unfortunately, are lost and ignored in this time by many in the Muslim world)
Some of the liberals say that Islamic terrorism should be accepted as a baseline risk, like mass murders committed by white separatists/supremacists, deranged individuals. Some of these same liberals also conflate/extend the argument to non-human threats.
In the first place, this is a debate on public policy involving humans, human behavior, influencing, reacting and predicting it. Therefore, conflations with non-human threats are absurd, disingenuous and immoral.
In the second place, to argue, so abstractly, that there is a tradeoff between not just dealing with the threat of 1. Islamic terrorism
versus 2. "mass murders committed by white separatists/supremacists, deranged individuals"
in policy,
but of committing some mental resources to thinking about it,
is absurd.
Neither form of atrocious violence is acceptable whatsoever.
Without budging an inch towards the second class of threats, the facts, however, support that the Islamic terrorist threat is different in volume, quantity, quality, trajectory, global prevalence, per capita saturation (% of the source pool), etc.
Liberals are ignoring what statisticians and risk analysts call extreme or tail events, like September 11th, the Bataclan catastrophe, the Nice attack, and unfortunately too many other events one can keep on listing. It is well known but not oft repeated and discussed that Islamic terrorism is bent on causing as much destruction as they possibly can, as often as they can. If they could kill millions, they would. These facts alone confound any "averages" argument that liberals might try to summon by fudging the data.
Again, without budging an inch towards any condoning of the second class of threats, more should be said about the nature of the Islamic terrorist threat, in terms of its complete lack of morals and depravity.
ISIS (and to a lesser degree, Al Qaeda) demonstrated to the entire world its monstrous unsurpassed void of morals and celebration of its own immorality, by reveling, in anti-art, the brutal HD torture, murder and suffering of innocent scapegoats.
Across the whole spectrum of Islamic terrorism is evidence, with a ridiculous frequency of data points, of the lack of principles whatsoever, in their inconsistent application of anti-iconoclasm, Quranic sources, and in their destruction of fellow Muslims, as well as pretty much all non-Muslim cultures.
Many liberals try to apologize for Muslims in the name of tolerance and democratic values and freedom of religion, without, in fact, understanding these concepts on a deep level and, themselves being quite ignorant of Islamic history, Islamic theology, world religions, international politics and other disciplines and collections of thinking skills.
A genius and Saintly person could discover the consistency and perfection in world scriptures, in Christianity and Islam, after removing the muck and distraction of human error. But the functional fact is, people throughout history have been poor practitioners and have been failures, in terms of the high religious values of their affiliations, in the context of organized religion in the practical, actual flow of history. Now, before the liberal chime in about Christianity, we need to focus on the present day.
In the present day, in world religion and societies and cultures, Islam stands alone and starkly, in harboring its Islamic terrorism. There is nothing of remote comparison. Christianity and Hinduism have had dark periods before, but their conspicuous major dark periods are plainly demarcated in the past.
There are of course Muslims who espouse high wisdom, science, good human relations and virtues, but the problem is, Islamic terrorism, besides the overt rogue actors of political shadow workers, slum-recruits and already radicalized hell-bent scoundrels, has a pool of those on the fence, the bystanders in its culture and annals who, functionally, blend in with the laity. Then, therefore, the liberals have an easy time of getting the matter confused, in the superficial name of tolerance and protection of decent Muslims.
With less caustic and destructive immediate consequences, Christianity in societies fails to curtail bad behavior. In the immediate proximity, day after day, exist every kind of lousy group behavior, corrupting bureaucracy, etc. which are hallmark traits that, in more severe form, lead to suffering, injustice and destructive societies. These very same things are criticized directly by the Judges, Prophets, by Jesus and by the Apostles. The clouds of ignorance, the veil of illusion, exists because of group psychology, bureaucracy and institutional life, and the daily base motivations of societal life, are factors, themselves.
If this is true for Western Christian societies, it is also true and much more so for Islamic societies. Historical and cultural studies and interpersonal and personal experience confirm this. The narrative spun by the Islamic extremists, sold to the laity of Islamic society, of anti-Westernism and self-affirmation, with immorality and theological total error, hidden within the trojan horse, is too strong an opiate for its masses. Organized societies full of complication, distraction and bureaucracy make superficial and self-serving readings of the Quran too easy. With its constant and verbose, descriptive and sharp warnings of Judgment and hellfire and the sharp and sometimes militant language that lazy Muslims take as self-affirmation (but are rather part and parcel of the case by case storytelling of faith defense and apologetics, from specific examples centuries ago), functionally speaking, the lay interface of the religion is predisposed to justifying many manners of violent actions.
Functional reality is the key word here.
I think of new developments in the San Bernadino event. Apparently the husband got angry because he had to attend a Christmas party? The scoundrel moron didn't know that the Judges, Prophets and Jesus are celebrated and commended in the Quran. The scoundrel moron didn't know that a Christmas tree is perfectly fine in the annals of even Islamic icono-clasm as natural motifs feature strongly in Islamic art and architecture. He didn't know, didn't care. Functionally, it was irrelevant.