I'm not sure how much "discouragingly large" is, and you may not either.

There are stories on both sides that don't match reality. The reality is not all Muslims are dangerous and not all Muslims are peaceful.

What I see happening, mostly with people on the left, is they are so anxious to disassociate themselves with conservatism, Bush, and other political boogeyman, that they take sort of "enemy of my enemy is my friend" stance and take pains to discount the real and present problem of Islamic extremism in the world. That helps no one.

You said earlier that "some can't tell the difference between a Muslim and a suicide bomber." That is a problematic statement from a logical perspective, and why I've been trying to draw out - get you to admit the reality is that virtually all suicide bombers are Muslim. Your statement is like saying "people don't know the difference between an animal and a bomb sniffing dog." Not all animals are bomb sniffing dogs, but all bomb sniffing dogs are animals.

Anyone can take a realistic position on the problem of Islamic extremism without supporting Bush. The problem is when some think that if they are facing the problem of Islamic extremism as it exists, they are siding with a political faction which isn't the case. The last thing we need while solving this problem is that kind of disunity.

Surely the same can be said of any group of people.

True, but what can't be said of other groups is "this group is responsible for virtually all terrorist attacks in the last five years." (By "responsible for" I mean they produce the terrorists that carry them out.)

"They have two lungs and one stomach" can be said of any group of people too, but that little tidbit doesn't really add anything useful to the conversation either.

I guess that kind of illustrates what I was saying - a generalisation that can be applied to any group of people is not really a very useful thing. As I see it, the terrorists are a subset of Muslims, but they are also a subset of human beings too. Surely it's more useful to focus on the subset with one's anger and reactions - like focusing on Al Qaeda for example.

Perhaps a parallel might be whether when considering police brutality or corruption, one sees it as a thing associated with all police officers, or all authority figures (focusing too wide for usefulness) or actually focusing on just those who do those things. Focus too wide and the hatred gets spread around where it doesn't rightfully belong.

What is the reason for your love affair for Muslims? Why are you so defensive about them? Aside from their track record for being the chief producer of terrorism, they aren't doing so well in the human rights department either. Never mind their religious beliefs.

So why the cognative disonance? I can only think of two reasons.

1. You aren't really expressing what you consider the truth, you just look for any opportunity or excuse to disagree with me or distance yourself from my position.

2. You see the Muslim problem as a conservative problem, or an enemy of the establishment, or something like that - and you don't like the establishment or conservatives or America or whatever, and the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

Or maybe you think you appear enlightened by diminishing such an obvious problem?

We all agree there isn't a problem with every last individual Muslim, why can't you admit there is an institutional problem with Islam as a whole?

To answer your question about police brutality and corruption - hell yes that's a problem. Its an institutional problem. As you break it down to individual police departments and such, the problem becomes more focused. For police as a whole, the problem isn't big - I don't suspect every cop I see is corrupt or looking for an opportunity to beat me up. I don't believe there's a bomb belt in every Muslim's closet either.

There are enough cases of police brutality to be aware of the problem. Much more so with Muslims.

What's this? the 'either your with us or against us' school of thought creeping in maybe?

I have no particular love affair for Muslims (though if I did I'm sure there could be other reasons beyond the two you came up with). My concern is (as I think I have explained before) that by labeling the issue of concern (terrorism) as being a 'Muslim issue', you contribute to a significant level of xenophobia and hatred which is leveled at Muslims in general. This in turn can only lead more conflict. It is not helpful to the solution. Solutions always lie in recognising the cause. In this case, it's an issue of 'understand your enemy' - try to figure out why the terrorism occurs. It makes no sense to think that it occurs because these people are Muslims, simply because there are so many non-terrorist Muslims in the world.

Do you want to have a stab at why you think there is terrorism targeted at America in recent years?

First of all, I do understand the enemy. Its you with the blinders on. Their religion is the driving force and the one common denominator in virtually all terrorist activity around the globe. Race isn't it. Geography isn't it. The United States or George W. Bush isn't it. Their religious beliefs are.

Acknowledge that and we can move on. I'm eager to answer your questoins. As long as you continue to try to seperate Islam from Islamic terrorism, debating the other nuances is kind of pointless.

Seems like we need to start from the beginning then ... with a definition. What is it you are referring to when you say "terrorism"? Please explain your meaning and we can go from there.

The use of, or threatened use of, force or violence by civilians or non-sanctioned individuals or groups against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives.

If you would, lets stick with the rule rather than the exceptoins to the rule for starters until we establish some common ground.

I find the use of the term 'non-sanctioned' in your definition interesting - is this designed purely to excuse anythign 'sanctioned' by a Government from being defined as terrorism? If not, then my question is 'sanctioned by whom'?

Secondly, where does the role of providing training for, arming and funding so-called terrorist acts by others fall into this schema? Is it part of the terrorism too? If not, why not?

And thirdly, so we can confirm that there is no difference between acts of violence, as far as them being terrorism is concerned, on any criteria based on the particular ideologies of the parties involved. In other words, whether the so-called terrorist holds for example, communist or democratic principles dear as he waves his flag of resistance, is irrelevant to the question of whether he is a terrorist?

Are you trying for moral equivelency between Islamic terrorists and uniformed military? Would you like to tank the "non-sanctioned" out of the definition I provided? I really don't feel like following you down a rabbit trail.

I don't think I see your point ... you are saying that there is a difference in the morality of an act of violence because the perpetrators wear a uniform?

To me morality (or lack thereof) is something to be attached to an act, not a person.

Why are you so hell bent on changing the subject?

Yes, uniformed military can do something immoral like targetting civilians. An example would be Sherman's march to the sea during our War Between the States.

You asked me to define terrorism. I did. Now can we get on with the discussion we were having? It left off with:

"Their religion is the driving force and the one common denominator in virtually all terrorist activity around the globe. Race isn't it. Geography isn't it. The United States or George W. Bush isn't it. Their religious beliefs are."

I'm not really changing the subject at all. My issue here is that your discussion of terrorism seems to be based on a definition of terrorism that is quite vague. Any discussion based on such a definition seems pretty doomed and pointless to me. This is highlighted directly by your last sentence quoted above. Because you are excluding anything perpetrated by States (or individuals hired by States for that matter), you make the claim that virtually all terrorism is due to Islam. The very word 'terrorists', in my opinion, has become virtually useless because it has itself become a propaganda tool - in much the same way that the word 'communists' was in days gone by.

A guy walks into a family restaurant with a bomb vest. Civilian men, women, and children are dining. He pushes a button, the bomb blows up, and 15 people die.

Is that terrorism?

I tell you what, name the most devestating act of terrorism this year - in 2008 that was not related to Islam.

If you kill civilians with a bomb vest or with a cruise missile is the same.

How many US soldiers where killed? Few thousand. On the other side 100 thousand civilians. I guess you're right it's not terrorism, it's genocide the USA is committing.

You're just being arbitrary, there are bad people in Iraq just as everywhere else, but people defending their home country are slaughtered by soldiers because people believe the bs your preaching.

What's the message of that? Mass murder is all right when waving stars and stripes?

The people defending their home country - Iraq - are in uniform and fighting terrorism, the threat to their nation, side by side with the coalition troops.

Your pathetic argument for moral equivelancy lacks any iota of credibility. You might get a high five from other blame-America-first liberals who are more invested in posturing than facts and reality, but you're either delusional to the point of mental illness or you're being so intellectually dishonest that you've robbed yourself of credibility.

Name the last time civilians were targetted with cruise missiles. Who are these hundreds of thousands being killed by? Who are these hundreds of thousands? Are you lumping the innocents and the terrorists who attack them into the same pool of "victims?" Again, pathetic and dishonest.

So, how have you been doing? You haven't posted in a while?

I don't think the situation is that clear, and there are certainly people who don't see the coalition forces as the good, but rather as the bad ones occupying the their land.

So, do you decide who's a terrorist? The Coalition troops invaded a sovereign country killing their citizens without any justified reason, actually making false accusations, lying about evidence.


I didn't post anything as there wasn't much going on I felt like replying to.

I also don't think the situation in Iraq is as clear as you make it out to be. The 'Iraqi' army you refer to seem to me to have been effectively installed by the invading forces, making their credibility as a Government somewhat questionable. Therefore who is to say the so-called 'insurgents' (wrongly labeled terrorists in the media quite often) are not the 'true' Iraqi loyalists who should be recognized as such? The uniforms or lack thereof are really irrelevant and a reflection of wealth more than anythign else in this context I think.

As for "Name the last time civilians were targeted with cruise missiles" etc - this seems a difficult approach to take as I don't think we are given the whole story here, so we would really have no way of knowing. We can each, as always, only assess the situation based on the information we are given, and how valid and/or true we believe it to be.

One thing I am confident of though is Iraq is in the mess it is in because outside forces wrongfully invaded it. Arguments that 'at least we got rid of Saddam' are misinformed in my view. One brutal society has been replaced with another, as Sharia law comes romping to the forefront etc.

Another thing I feel confident about is that so-called terrorist acts are linked to causal factors other than the religion of the perpetrators. It is poor logic to assume that because most terrorists are Muslims, the reason they are involved in terrorism is therefore *because* they are Muslims.

You are too uninformed, deluded, or dishonest on this issue to discuss it with you a rational and constructive way.