Daschund wrote:I put it to you that there are many young men in England - literally millions - who feel alienated from society. You will typically find them living in England's most economically and socially deprived neighbourhoods, in local authority districts like: Middlesborough; Knowlesly, Liverpool; Bradford; Burnley; Birmingham and Great Yarmouth to name but a handful of the many severely disadvantaged and underprivileged regions that exist in England today. In these places there are no shortage of young men who have grown up living in dire poverty and all of of the harsh privations that it brings to bear; and it is not surprising that they might hold a perception they have been the victims of unjust discrimination; not surprising that they might feel an acute sense of being politically marginalised, of being culturally forsaken/ isolated and otherwise profoundly alienated from life in the mainstream of British society. I have no doubt whatsoever that many of them DO - and I cannot blame them ! The point I wish to make is that despite the profound sense of alienation that afflicts millions of young men in England, the overwhelming majority of them DO NOT, in consequence, ultimately decide that they must strap a belt of high-explosives to themselves, walk into the foyer of a concert hall full of innocent teenagers and detonate the bomb they are carrying with the express intention of murdering as many of them as possible in the name of Allah.
Essentially the same point is made in the speech by David Cameron (just after the part where he called you a fascist) which I've already told you I agree. Here:
David Cameron wrote:On the other hand, there are those on the soft left who also ignore this distinction. They lump all Muslims together, compiling a list of grievances, and argue that if only governments addressed these grievances, the terrorism would stop. So, they point to the poverty that so many Muslims live in and say, ‘Get rid of this injustice and the terrorism will end.’ But this ignores the fact that many of those found guilty of terrorist offences in the UK and elsewhere have been graduates and often middle class...
True to your usual form you have been cautious and non-committal in stating that social "alienation and (lack of) empathy" are merely one of the "many reasons" that a British youth may become an jihadist and perpetrate an atrocity such that which occurred in Manchester.
I add qualifiers like this because life is complicated and different people do things for different reasons, but it's not usually possible to add these details into a single post without making it unwieldy. But unlike you, I do not like to make sweeping generalisations about people, such as saying that all Japanese people are monsters who deserved, inshallah, to be killed with Nuclear weapons. We're talking here about the clarity or ambiguity of words and whether we think they should stand on their own or need to be interpreted. As I've said, if you think the words of the Koran stand on their own as exhortations to commit immoral acts then you need to accept that so do your words.
Anyway, yes, another one of the reasons why young men commit atrocities like the one in Manchester is that they appear to believe they are doing as the Koran commands them to do.
While it is technically true that the experience of social alienation arising from factors like socio-economic disadvantage and cultural/racial discrimination may play a role in propelling a vulnerable young man along a trajectory that ends in his becoming an Islamic extremist, the notion that social alienation is, in any sense, a root cause of tragedies like the suicide-bombing in Manchester totally misunderstands the true locus of radical/extremist Islamic terrorism.
As I said, I agree that such things as social alienation and anger at the perceived injustices of western governments towards Muslim countries are not the only reasons why people do these things.
If you are ever to fully understand the FUNDAMENTAL, PRIMARY CAUSE of terrorist outrages like the one in Manchester you must first understand that the ideology of radical/extremist Islam is ROOTED IN ISLAMIC SACRED SCRIPTURE
Daschund,
You've told me before that you're not prepared to talk to any Muslims about this subject. But you are prepared to talk to me, and some other non-Muslims here, at quite considerable length. Why?
Spectrum says he's spent years studying the Koran. Great. We apparently have an expert witness. But clearly a witness with a strong pre-existing agenda. So what other expert witnesses might there be? Presumably Muslim scholars. But they presumably have a strong agenda too. The opposite agenda to Spectrum's. Ideally we want someone who has studied Islam in depth for many years but who has no axe to grind and can be objective. But there are many possible subjects that we can spend years studying, so there are relatively few people who have the time and inclination to study this particular subject in the required amount of depth unless they have a strong pro or anti Islam agenda that drives them to do so, at the expense of studying other things. I know I haven't got the time or inclination, for that very reason.
So what to do?
In these situations the usual thing to do is to find expert witnesses but to balance the pro against the anti. We've heard from Spectrum. And you appear to claim some knowledge too. You're both anti. So find some pros. Talk to some Muslim scholars.
But you won't do that. You say you won't do it because you don't need to because you claim that your side of the argument is self-evidently objectively correct. So tell that to a Muslim scholar and see what his rejoinder is. Then the audience can decide for themselves whether they think your claim to self-evident objective correctness is justified.
Likewise, I claim it to be true, based on your words, that you advocate slavery and ethnic cleansing, because that is what a literal interpretation of various "verses" from your posts shows. Should I just declare this to be non-negotiable objective truth? Or should I challenge you to defend those words?