I suspect you too have a bulging bookmark folder like I do of hypocritical western behaviour.

However the battle against militant jihadi extremists is one issue where 'we' are completely in the right. Completely.

No need to apologise for past wrongs. If we have regarded life as too cheap in the past, that is irrelevant to ensuring your own family cannot be killed.

Now prior actions of our own may have exacerbated, strengthened and accelerated the militant jihadis ( Iraq, Afghanistan ). But even without our own errors and crimes militant jihadis would have arisen eventually.

The jihadis have so many 'reasons' to kill us. If some 'reasons' did not exist because we didn't invade Iraq say, or we addressed other 'reasons' ( say for example we disbanded Israel ) there are just so many more 'reasons' left for the jihadis that single us out for killing.

Lets say Iraq was still under Saddam and Syria under Assad. No ISIS perhaps. What then about al Qaeda, the Taliban, al Qaeda in the Yemen, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah.

And the militant jihadis have found a brainwashing method that repeatably draws from a small but replenishing minority of evil, vain and stupid young people.

Young people join ISIS not because they are "evil" (what, are they Darth Vader?). They join because ISIS makes a compelling case that the world would be a better place if it was rid of western domination. I'm not saying we should try to prove them wrong by being really nice or something, I think it's too late for that, but it helps to understand this.

ISIS gives them a clear path to rectify the situation. Terrorism is pathetic militarily, killing 100 civilians is no accomplishment. However it is brilliant strategically.

Terrorist attacks cause the western world to completely fly off the handle and give the terrorists everything they could ever ask for. So far, we've gifted them 3 countries (there's no way they could have ever invaded by themselves, but we did it for them). We've also gifted them with a huge number of weapons, which were originally intended for such entities as "the free Syrian army" and "democratic Iraq".

All of this is made possible by the cowardice of western morons whose entire education on geopolitics comes from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Please stop helping the terrorists.

People love this kind of fantastical good/evil stuff. Who's good and who's evil depends on what side you're on, of course. Like that Russian book I heard about that's a rewrite of Lord of the Rings from Sauron's perspective.

Look at what games boys and young men so often choose to play. When I was seven I was out in the forests with my friends with fake guns. It was really fun. Then I put down childish things and got into Counter-Strike. I loved playing the terrorists. The AK-47 was just great and the avatars looked pretty cool.

This is kind of off-the-cuff sociological speculation or something, but: religion is a very powerful aesthetic phenomenon. In combination with war, you get a combination of thrills, ecstasy, excitement, danger, meaning, and hope that's hard to beat, for certain personality types.

Look at the ISIS propaganda videos. They're not laying out a rational strategy for improving the world. They're presenting an aesthetic image, a very masculine one, full of cars and guns and desert missions and fighting and stuff. Combined with the pious literalist faith that also has its own appeal. They do offer a hope for a future world, a glorious Islamic caliphate and whatnot, probably the deserts will bloom and peace will reign and Muslim Jesus will rise from the dead.

They say things like "Are you satisfied with your shitty life in suburban London or Paris? Do you like the way people look at you? Do you feel alive? Do you love your life? ...no? Come here. We not only have an exciting virile lifestyle full of action and terrible sublime beauty, but also we are the true messengers of the true prophet and God is on our side."

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

I will not speak about young people joining ISIS, but I've known people who joined or wanted to join the military strictly to kill. These folks exist. You give them a strong ideological or philosophical reason to kill for and it brings in some of those sitting on the fence. In the case of the US military, I've not known anyone who made it through bootcamp with these attitudes (though I'm sure plenty have). They actively weed out these folks because, while their main mission involves killing, psychopaths aren't usually good soldiers. Groups like ISIS have no qualms in this regard, so these attitudes will survive their equivalent of basic training.

And women can desire to kill too. Or see conservative Christian women in the US (where I am) choosing to deliberately set aside careers and other "modern" or "masculine" things for their beliefs.

I can't explain that either, seems bizarre to me to deliberately reduce your agency, but some people think it's the thing to do.

Bullshit. The people who are destroying ancient statues and slaughtering other Muslims didn't sign up for some grand scheme of bringing down the west after a reasoned argument. They signed up because they are violent psychopaths and they were given an avenue to do all of the fucked up things that struck their fancy.

I think it's more like gangs. Kids join gangs because they want to belong to something bigger than themselves. ISIS offers something similar to people who feel alienated from the West.

If they signed up because of this, boy I wouldn't want to be in their shoes once they realize their mistake! Judging by everything I read, ISIS rulers enforce a strict Sharia law, with patrols making sure everyone is using the correct dress code.

I've also seen a documentary with a woman going undercover into ISIS-held territory (I think it was by the BBC) which claimed that Jihadists that break the "law" get killed, and that in fact ISIS welcomes any reports of misbehavior of their troops and punishes them hardly. ISIS seems to be ruling their territory with an iron hand, it's definitely not the land of do as you please and kill whom you fancy.

I was comparing social attitudes not counting casualties of armed conflict and its repercussions. Comparing these two things quantitatively makes very little sense.

The conservative advocates of Sharia who execute people for their sexual orientation are executing people who live right now in those countries. They don't execute European or American racists from the 1950s and they don't do it as an act of revenge for the Iraq war (that I strongly opposed by the way)

Yes. So other countries should not encourage the tolerant co-patriots of those fanatics to adopt their attitudes -- e.g. by showing a plundering, hypocritical and hateful face of western democracies that destabilize the region, arm dangerous fanatics like ISIS and Laden, meddle in their politics, pillage their resources, and while condemning backwards islamism at the same time hi-five equally backwards Saudi regimes.

Because that's what has been happening. All of these countries were much more tolerant and humane 30 and even 50 years ago.

I'm also not really sure that I'd paint 1985-era Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Death-To-America Iran as markedly better than they are now. The region has historically been ruled by despots. Western intervention has occasionally (by design or accident) made things worse, but the West has the same responsibility in the rise to power of noted humanitarian Khomeiny as France's position during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-14-African-countries-a...

You are using the "someone did some bad things some time ago (and now that I've put things into perspective for you), lets be open minded about another someone doing another something bad right now, because it's only fare!" argument.

So many misunderstandings I don't know where to start.

First, did I say anywhere "lets allow another someone do another something bad right now, because it's only fare!"?

No, and that's why you didn't directly quote from my comment. In fact in it I very precisely write: "We should condemn all violence -- not forgive the one that has better PR and is done by cool looking people who have the same background as us.".

Second, I don't try to justify or excuse (I mean, Jesus!), just to put in perspective and explain. And one main I try to explain is that "40% of people" believing a horrible thing is neither irredeemable, nor unknown for even in our countries, even in the time of our fathers and grandfathers. Those people grew up in countries that resulted of those conditions and heard those horror stories from their relatives.

Third, as I noted it's not "some time ago", it's something ongoing. Foreign powers still plunder, meddle and hold those countries down, with unbelievably far greater blood tolls than all those attacks combined.

So, more like "If you fuck people over repeatedly, including having a history of enslaving their parents, you shouldn't be that surprised that they might come and hit you back, or that they develop a cult of hating you and what you stand for".

That's the point, you are putting in perspective unrelated things and unrelated places and unrelated times...

None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy. That's something inherent to the ideology and its resulting culture.

That's why it's called a perspective though: because it has to expand the places and times (the "perspective view") we're taking into account to explain a situation.

But while expanded, they are not "unrelated" -- the places that had those things done to them are the homelands of those people, all have ancestors, relatives and friends that suffered from those things. And similar things (interventions, plundering etc) happens to this very day. Heck, those ISIS fanatics were pampered initially by foreign powers to topple the, call it whatever but at least stable, regime.

>None of the events you listed are related to the polling results that almost half of Muslims think that death should be the penalty for apostasy.

When you hold people in misery, fear and bad living conditions (and poor education), don't be surprised if they revert or held closer to backwards beliefs. Carpet bombing and plundering creates more fanatics than investing or opening a school.

No. The bible says itself that those laws no longer apply.

Romans 7:6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Galatians 5:13-15 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another.

That never stopped Christian fanatics from selectively mix and matching the Bible.

For so-called Christians, ALL the Old Testament stuff should no longer apply when it clashes with what Christ said (which is like all of the time).

But they still prefer the Old Testament's more barbaric and base rules than what's in the Gospels.

Especially in light of this: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/nov/17/te...

Which shows that the people fleeing are mostly Muslim. Muslims are more likely to be the victims of terrorist violence, not the perpetrators.

Having read various internet comments over the past few days, I'm doubting if that number has gone down any since then.