BF2S Forums "You Stay Classy San Diago"

Kuffar wrote:

The point is not that the West hasn't meddled in the Middle East, it has. The Middle East has also meddled in the West, taking over Spain and getting as far as the gates of Vienna in its expansionary phases. No civilisation that currently survives in the world today has clean hands in terms of historical imperialism or power politics. There is no doubt about this.

But if this meddling is genuinely the cause of modern extremism then why is that Islam produces more extremists than any other civilisation today, given that everyone is or has been meddling? Furthermore how can Islamic extremism and terrorism be explained away as the result of Western meddling when the majority of the victims of Islamic extremism and terrorism are other Muslims?

You are right about Wahabhism being a core threat to peaceful coexistence and that not all Muslims subscribe to Wahabhi views. The problem is that Wahabhism, like the salafism of Al Qaeda and, in its own way, the Khumeniist Shiism of Iran has as its primary motivating force the belief Muslims will always be weak unless they follow precisely the requirements of the Koran and sharia. Only then will Allah reward his people with the supremacy that Muhammad promised them.

Muhammad's ultimate vision of Islam was of an expanding Islamic state that would eventually take in the entire world. This is the Caliphate that Osman Bin Laden wishes so desperately to see restored where Muslims have no loyalty to anything but their Caliph and their Prophet.

The name for the process by which Islam is to be spread is 'jihad'. The name for the successful conquest of previously non-Muslim lands and the conversion or subjegation of their peoples to sharia is 'Fatah'. You may recognise the words.

This stuff is not confined to the Wahabhi interpretation of Islamic doctrine and religious duty, it is part of the warp and weft of Islam.

Kuffar wrote:

Regarding sharia courts: just because you do not yet feel that they affect you does not mean that they do not. One of the primary guarantors of democracy is that all citizens are subject to the same law, established and motivated by one set of secular principles.

This not only limits the power of the state to abuse its citizens but historically has also limited the power of an overmighty Christian church to abuse the indivdual. That this limitation of religious power has been overturned in 21st century Britain makes us all less free, and exposes Muslim women to the abuses of sharia. If this does not affect you, you have no right to call yourself a progressive, which I suspect you do.

Equating right-wing Christianity with either neo-conservatism or Wahabhism is silly. Right-wing Christians hold a range of views. Neo-conservatives do believe that democracy can be spread by intervening to remove dictators and creating the space for democractic process, but this is not an imperial impluse, neo-cons do not seek to conquer territory and hold it, they believe that by turning hostile theocracies and dictatorships into democracies they safeguard democracy at home. Neo-cons do not train their children to hate others or to venerate and become suicide bombers to honour their beliefs.

Wahabhis on the other hand believe that Islam imposes a religious duty on all Muslims to conquer the entire world and force it to become Muslim or live as second class citizens under Islamic law. This is the common belief of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut tahir, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda, Saudi wahabhis, Iranian Shiiite imans and many many more groups and Islamic ideologies besides.

Furthermore, sharia courts have already ruled on criminal cases. Specifically domestic violence. The women withdrew their complaints, the police released the suspects and the courts are delighted as 'the marriages have been saved'. Over time the courts will seek to expand their jurisdiction and the supine PC police service and the CPS et al will fall over themselves to assist them. Sharia in the UK is a process, not an event.

Kuffar wrote:

I hear what you are saying about the interpretation of the Koran. I do not speak Arabic, nor, in fact, do the vast majority of Muslims worldwide. I am not saying that this is my interpretation of the Koran. I am saying that this is the interpretation of the Koran that dominates Islamic thought around the world today and is relayed through mosques and online to all those non-Arab Muslims that also do not speak Arabic.

I am taking these guys at their word when they say 'this is what we believe'. I have read many commentaries that reference not only the Koran but the collections of hadith that are most influential and authoritative in the Islamic world e.g Bukhari that support these interpretations.

While these interpretations of the sunnah remain the dominant mainstream theological and doctrinal analyses within Islamic thought (as opposed to what Muslims believe when they are left to their own devices) and while the forces that promote them have global power and influence based on oil money then we will face extremism and terrorism regardless of how we behave.

As to your second point, this is not my apocalyptic vision but Muhammad's but yes there is considerable emnity between various Arab and Muslim states based on a range of historical factors. However, while no-one does internal wrangling quite like Arabs, if you observe the actions of the Organistation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at the UN, you can see that they are quite capable of uniting to hijack not only the UN's Human Rights committees and processes but also to effectively outlaw any criticism of sharia law on human rights grounds and in fact they have produced their own Declaration of Islamic Human Rights within sharia.

Kuffar wrote:

The argument that if Jewish court judgements are legally enforceable then Muslims must have the same right is basically unanswerable. What we must do is to amend the Arbitration Act of 2006 so that these arrangements do not apply outside of the secular or commercial sphere. In other words, to keep sharia out of Britain, British Jews must be deprived of their courts also. There can only be one system of justice if we are all to be equal before the law, which is one of the defining prerequisites of a free society.

Kuffar wrote:

As to stoning and executions, these are punishments handed down by sharia courts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. I do not believe that we will see them in UK sharia courts however one powerful tool the Wahabhis have to encourage Muslims to regard themselves as part of the ummah rather than citizens of Britain or any other country is to remove them from the mainstream of national life. Opting out of the normal processes of civil and criminal law is an important step down this road.

Sharia will therefore increase Muslim self-isolation within Britain, it will contribute to the rise of extremist views among Muslims and ultimately it will increase the numbers of individals who accept the wahabhi analysis and become terrorists.

Sharia immeasurably weakens Britain as a democracy and weakens any forces of moderation that exist in British Muslim life.

That is a big deal.

Last edited by Braddock (2008-09-17 05:20:09)