Reactions to Extreme Islam Post
A couple of days ago I posted my calculations about how the radical or extreme faction of Islam is not microscopic or tiny but probably makes up 20% to 33% of the total religion. I had been frustrated that so often it is portrayed that only a tiny proportion back Osama bin Laden when in fact at least 175 million support what he does. Not 10,000, not 100,000, not 1,000,000, not 10,000,000, but over 100,000,000.
Personally I think the fact over 100 million people support flying airplanes into buildings is a bad thing and can’t work out why people think it will all be okay so long as one doesn’t talk about it. All sorts of wonderful rebuttals appeared such as the KKK claim to be Christian so that is just as bad. Yeah right.
Over at Public Address Che Tibby compares high levels of Islamic support support for suicide bombings, flying planes into buildings etc with the fact most people in the US support the death penalty.
Now let’s look at this wonderful case of moral equivalence. It is comparing terrorists deciding to kill innocent bystanders with the fact the 270 million living in a democracy have voted to have a system of laws, that where someone is charged with murdering other people, where twelve of their peers find them guilty, where generally 20 years of appeals all fail, then they are executed as punishment for their original crime.
Now don’t get me wrong I am against the death penalty. I would not vote for it. But really what planet do you have to be on to compare someone voting in favour of the death penalty for convicted murderers to someone who supports blowing up kindergartens and flying planes into buildings. I mean I’ve seen some moral equalising in my time but this may set a new record.
The same people who no doubt treat publishing an offensive cartoon as being the same as burning down an embassy to protest against it. I mean seriously how many more people are going to come out and think that somehow it is *balanced* to say well yes they shouldn’t burn the embassy down but those newspapers shouldn’t have published the cartoons either. How hard would it be to perhaps add on that the two acts are not equivalent in ‘badness’ (if one even accepts publishing was bad).
Oh yes people should also check out Christian Briggs who accuses me of Islamophobia (never mind In almost every sentence I keep making the point that I have no problem with moderate Islam, and that I have praised the local Muslim community several times for their responses to the cartoon controversy) and even has a photo of me up to scare the kids off.
Christian mainly takes issue with my stance that accidental civilian deaths in a war are not the same as deliberately targeting civilians or as he puts it “They murder and we accidentally kill”.
By this logic I imagine Churchill and Eisenhower were morally as culpable as Himmler and Goering. Which is why of course I disagree.
I will agree that not all civilian deaths in a war are accidental, perhaps I should add on or unavoidable. As in if someone places their gun battery beneath an apartment block then it is not an accident when you bomb the apartment block, but it is unavoidable unless you actually want to get mowed down by the gun battery yourself.
There are times when of course even “the good guys” do bad things in a war. The overall WWII policy of unconditional surrender etc was absolutely necessary but even I am unconvinced that Dresden for example was necessary or justified. But again even if one concludes that Dresden was not justified, this still doesn’t equate the Allies as being the same as the Nazis and Eisenhower or Harris being a Himmler or Goering.