How do I reconcile the fact that I have Muslim friends with my

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kill urselv i guess

>>5481689
u become a nice person

>>5481696
Why can't I ask Muslims to make their faith nice faith?

well it isnt all that different from christianity or LDS so maybe youre thingen about it all wrong

>>5481717
>it isn't all that different from Christianity
Only in the sense that they both believe in the abrahamic God, their doctrines are almost diametrically opposed.

>The first of the 10 commandments from the old testament is thou shalt not kill
>the New testament which overturned the old testament revolved around forgiveness as a high virtue
>Christianity had a reformation that clarified the Bible as an interpretive manuscript

>Islam's Koran has 164 verses specifically about how to kill non-believers and every Muslim's duty to kill non-believers
>Muslim faith specifies the Koran as a literal account of the faith's tenants and dictates the daily lives of modern muslims

>>5481689
Hate the sin but love the sinner.

>>5481749
from an outsiders point of view there really isnt a difference between hardcore conservative christians and hardcore conservative muslims. the only real difference is that in the west we are much more likely to be killed by christian terrorists than muslim terrorists. of course it is possible to be a peaceful christian or a peaceful muslim, but the political climate in the middle east is very conservative and so there is a lot of lunacy. you should probably be a lot more concerned with conservative lunacy than religion, because its really the politics that cause the big issues and we have plenty of lunatic conservative christians in the west to worry about.

>>5481764

Yeah, and i'd prefer that the rate of death by muslim terrorists REMAINS low. worldwide the rate of muslim terrorism has been increasing since 2010, with a lull last year since we've begun addressing the problem directly. there's no reason to let this stuff spread into the West.

>>5481793
It's worth noting that "conservative christain values" created this problem in the first place. The destabilization of Iraq into 3 warring factions was a very forseeable event that has been known for over 40 years by strategists. The spawning of isis didnt shock anyone with knowledge of the region. You have to consider the fact that so many politicians in the Republican party have been bought by the military industrial complex that they do not even attempt to act in our own best interests, but instead seek to create conditions where the most bombs can be dropped with the least public backlash.

The fact that saudi Arabia is our biggest ally in the region despite the fact that they have a state policy of exporting terrorism to weaken their neighbors should be another red flag for you, along with the weapons support we give to Israel, which adds up to billions of dollars that goes to private defense corporations every year.

>>5481820
While I don't deny that the MIC is extremely predatory, that American foreign policy to date has been hopelessly reactionary and largely incompetent, and that Republicans in general are hypocritical and corrupt, the primary drivers of the conflict in the Middle East are the Sunni-Shia divide, the relics of the Cold War, and neoliberal economic policies, which both "liberals" and "conservatives" are guilty of perpetuating.

I don't care what Christians told themselves about Gog and Magog to justify keeping the petrodollar alive, I don't care what liberals tell themselves about GDP and identity politics to justify converting the planet into a single bland monoculture, I just know that every group that feels like it alone possesses moral righteousness is hopelessly misguided in its analysis and will never lead us toward peace. All I care about is reducing the death toll and extricating the planet from the systems of economic control that keep us pinned to the will of government elites. Whatever it takes to bring back freedom to the individual. You're not going to find that hiding in whatever passes for "liberal" ideology today.

>>5481689
>>5481698
by realizing that your hatred of islam is a actually a hatred for the western imperialist powers supported salafist fundamental school and not islam itself

>>5481841
There is nothing more frustrating about the ME conflict than Muslims sitting around claiming they're not at all to blame, while Saudi Arabia and Iran spit at each other across the Persian Gulf and slapfight in Syria.

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>>5481839
>primary drivers of the conflict in the Middle East are the Sunni-Shia divide
this is wrong - a western contruct to 1. redirect attention from the real drivers which are oil, opium and power 2. to simplify the power struggles of the ME to more easily develop justifications for destabilization/installing puppets, inform yourself

>>5481848
I bet you jerk off to watching fox news you little cunt fuck off

>>5481839
Yes well today in America the liberal politicians are just lest corrupt versions of the conservative politicians who like to give lip service to reducing inequality while perpetuating the growing income divide and eroding what is left of our democracy. The Democrats all colluded against Bernie Sanders because he began talking about campaign finance reform to get dirty money and dirty politicians out of Washington. That makes them just as responsible for what is going on today as anyone. I'm just saying your preoccupation with Muslims is fucking weird when we have other shit to worry about and in fact have created the Muslim terrorist problem to begin with by destabilizing the region and partnering with the country that gave most of the money to isis as well as systematically creating the framework for terrorists to become extremist.

>>5481863
If you'd bothered to read the rest of the post, you'd see that I mentioned a variety of other contributing factors to the conflict, including the petrodollar system.

I mean you're demonstrating right now how the Sunni-Shia divide contributes to the conflict, since you're so obsessed with it that you ignored literally everything else that I said.

>>5481868
>I mean you're demonstrating right now how the Sunni-Shia divide contributes to the conflict
exactly, by debating this and constantly bringing it up it's made a real issue which ultimately affects western foreign policy in the ME leading to this artificial creation of an actual divide

>>5481865

What other shit could possibly be more important than the system upon which the USA hinges the entirety of its economic clout? A system that unfortunately for everyone requires cooperation with one of the most backward parts of the planet?

The "terrorist problem" is the direct result of economic development in the Middle East. Islamists understand that as Westernization continues, their religion will become more and more irrelevant. Given time, and the way countries like Bahrain and the UAE are developing, the entire Gulf will simply become a glitzy sky-scraper ridden cityscape, indistinguishable from any modern Western country.

Islam as a political force would be completely marginalized, which is something that the current bastions of power among the Shiite and Sunni clerics wish to prevent. They feed propaganda to gullible Westerners to absolve themselves of responsibility, while providing funding and training to extremists all around the planet. The problem fundamentally lies with Islam, specifically within the structures of power that currently dominate Islamic religious thought.

>>5481889
What in your mind necessitates us dealing with the middle east at all for "economic clout"

Our economic clout comes from the fact that we massively invested in research, science, and infrastructure following world war 2. We have been the center for study and development for the past 60 years but that will all change if we continue to cut education, cut public spending on science, let our infrastructure rot, and spew hatred that will drive away educated immigrants. China is spending a massive amount of public money on science and green technologies and it is not unreasonable to assume that they could be the next global leader if we towards the neofuedalist path we are on with giant corporations dictating public policy for their own private enrichment.

>>5481921

After WW2 we entered the Bretton Woods agreement, which established the USD as the primary global reserve currency. This was backed by Gold. When this system fell apart in the 60s, Nixon and Kissinger negotiated with Saudi Arabia to establish the petrodollar system, which is effectively the "Oil Standard." In short, this system forces countries around the world to maintain enormous reserves of USD. If the system were to ever collapse, the US would face massive inflation from a huge influx of dollars, crashing our economy, and likely taking a lot of the global economy with it, since so many currencies are pegged to the value of USD. We are forced to defend Saudi Arabia for this reason.

>>5481934

I want to reiterate a final point, about Islamic terrorism being a direct response to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a threat to everyone on Earth, since it sacrifices everything on the altar of "economic progress." Culture, beauty, individuality, all of it destroyed in the name of development. Muslims, in response to this, could become stewards of good, protecting culture from its inevitable evaporation. There are almost 2 billion of them around the world, a fundamental paradigm shift in Islam would change history and set us on a path toward freedom.

But instead, the religious authorities in the Middle East waste time with centuries-old squabbles and focus their energies on shadows cast on the wall by the West. Saudi Arabia could dissolve OPEC tomorrow. Iran could make peace with Israel. All the nations of the Middle East could lay down their arms and tell China, USA, and Russia to get the fuck out. But instead they have turned inward on each other, as they have been for centuries, with no end in sight. They compete to spread ultra-orthodox versions of Islam in Asia, they encourage terrorism, they kill innocents both within their own countries and without. None of this solves the problem. Which is why I cannot sympathize in any way with what Muslims are doing, and how outside of a few brave voices calling for a reform of Islam, they are squandering this opportunity to help Earth become a better world.

Just dropping by to say Christianity fucking sucks

>>5481936
Ok well then to answer your original question just know that letting your muslim friends into your world can make a huge difference in their lives and completely change their perspectives. I have had many muslim friends come over from the middle east with their heads in the koran who have since completely abandoned it.

>>5481940
Jesus loves you anyway :)

>>5481941
That's the thing, I don't want them to abandon their culture and become just another homogeneous Westerner. I just want them to stop going on jihad and murdering and abusing people. The Ahmadiyya have already accomplished this, they are Muslim without having to kill a bunch of people. Unfortunately they are considered heretics by most Muslims, since their founder declared himself to be the Messiah.

The issue is that jihad and other stone-age concepts are still heavily embedded in the Quran and hadith, and anyone who tries to change this is struck down as an apostate; nominally for religious reasons, but really for political reasons. The people who control Islamic nations, whether it's in Iran or the clergies of Saudi Arabia, do not want Islam to change. It doesn't matter if some people filter over here and then forget everything once they're free of their control, there's still the problem of millions of people being completely brainwashed and intractable. You can't solve that by just importing them all wholesale. You would just destroy both them and Westerners at once, as we're seeing now.

>>5481949
If you dont want them to abandon the koran but you want them to stop jihading and you think jihad is firmly a part of the koran then I have no idea what you want and it doesn't sound like you do either. And Europe didn't import muslims wholesale, they took a bunch of refugees that were created as a direct result of american and saudi action. Nobody is happy with the current situation but it is what it is.

I do think that friendship and understanding are valid ways of creating change. If we stop dropping bombs and start building bridges then progress can be made. Many of my friends who stopped believing in the koran were only here for college degrees and they have since gone back to their home countries and can create further change there.

>>5481961
The Ahmadiyya have already shown that it's possible to still refer to the Quran without reverting to violence. They've simply reinterpreted the definition of "jihad" to mean something entirely different. Look at modern Christians, the vast majority of them are still able to refer to the Bible without implementing most of its backward, violent aspects. I'm not saying they're perfect but Christian terrorism is much smaller on the global scale, and you don't see any explicitly Christian paramilitary groups trying to carve out vast swathes of territory for themselves while torturing and killing non-believers.

Reform involving the Quran is definitely possible, but it will require the effort of Islamic scholars and Islamic authorities giving a voice to reformers that currently have to hide themselves out of fear of honor killings.

The USA not dropping bombs would change nothing in Syria. It would change nothing about the animosity the Turks feel for Kurds and Armenians. It would change nothing about the enmity between Iran and Israel and Saudi Arabia, the divide between Pakistanis and Indians, the lingering jihadi presence in Afghanistan that would only grow if we simply left tomorrow. I'm glad that some of your Muslim friends experienced a change in perspective, because change has to come from within, we can't force it on them and we can't fix this mess for them.

And we certainly can't fix it if we just keep allowing them to abandon their homes and go to Europe instead. It's not just Syrians, Afghanis, and Iraqis. Europe is importing far more Muslims than you may realize. Over 100k illegal immigrants enter Europe per month via the Mediterranean. The vast majority of these people are Muslim. They don't speak the local languages, they don't work, they don't assimilate. It's an enormous problem and it's getting worse every month, not something that can just be waved away.

>>5481977
This seems to be going back to bolster the original point i was trying to make that the situation in the middle east is much more of a political problem than a religious one. Peaceful Muslims can exist if you remove the hardline conservative influence.

The situation in the middle east could absolutely be improved if it wasnt in a state of constant destabilization due to american bombings and invasions. What would happen in absence of destabilization would be that the old conservative crowd would die off and young people would forget why their grandparents hated each other. What has happened instead is that young people have been radicalized by the violence we have inflicted upon their people.

America has plenty of old racists still kicking around but they arent picking up arms and they arent raising racist children because america hasnt been a fucking war zone for the past several decades.

Also, keep in mind that terrorism has never really been a multi-generational phenomenon. There have been terrorist generations before, most recently in Ireland, and what happened is that the younger generations saw the folly in senseless violence. Since we in the west are the ones with more power in the situation only we can stop the cycle of violence and allow for peace to occur.

TLDR the comments

>>5481995
The problem with your point is that currently the politics of Islam and the religion of Islam are inextricable from one another. That can only change with secular reform, as we saw with Ataturk in Turkey, and is something that must be maintained with constant effort, as we are unfortunately witnessing as Erdogan systemically dismantles what Ataturk built. The Gulf States and Iran aren't even close to trying to reform themselves whatsoever, and until this happens a reform of Islam in general is fundamentally impossible.

We are past the point of destabilization. The old conservative crowd is already dying off - the terrorism they commit is their final gasps. The rate at which young people are being radicalized is far outstripped by the rate of people who are simply abandoning their culture.

What will probably happen is that the old conservative Muslims will keep fighting these pointless power struggles, and instead of adapting to form a unified bulwark against neoliberalism and globalism, they will be consumed by infighting until every last faction is evaporated by the inevitable secularization that comes with Western development. At that point the culture of the Middle East will disappear completely, replaced by an indistinct homogeneous mass lacking all identity. Terrorism would end, at the cost of culture.

This could be avoided - and terrorism could also end - if Islam could just reform itself. This isn't about young people "forgetting" about why their grandparents hated each other, this is about young people being robbed of both their past and future and not even being aware that it's happening to them.

The same thing is happening in the West. If you look at Ireland, you'll see that it's still split in two, and the two countries are quite different from one another. Because Northern Ireland's ancestors fought to preserve Irish culture, it still exists, and they've since reformed and are able to coexist peacefully with their neighbors.