How widespread is the use of anti-Islamic material in the US military?

Tidbits from article:

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes...&utm_term=plustweets&utm_medium=MasterAccount

On a more positive note, after reading this article I'm beginning to warm to the idea of pilotless drone attacks.

 

I hate that word, because despite what the dictionary says, humans do not agree with one definition, generally leaning towards whatever theory fits their values.

When I see the word Islamist, I immediately assume it's a Muslim who believes in a very far right version of Islam, which is usually the group that believes it ok to spread Islam by war. Given their conservative views, you can hardly blame them, this is pretty much what every Caliph post-Abu Bakr did. This is the group which believes Sharia should rule the world (whatever version sharia they happen to follow), and are willing to use any amount of force available to them to achieve it.

Unfortunately, IMO the term is used so loosely that it is only right maybe 10 or 20% of the time. This is because the media seems to enjoy blurring the line between Islamists and non-Islamists. This gives room for the racists and bigots and religious extremists to further propagate that Muslims are evil, going to hell, must kill them, etc.

What's a Christianitist then? A Judaist? Hinduist? These all exist too, but Islamists just happen to be the most relevant right now.

 

Ibn Warraq is not a real person btw, it's a pen-name used by various writers historically to be critical of Islam without revealing their identity. Look it up.

I can not see what expertise some of these people have.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a nobody intellectually speaking. She was a victim who has endured a lot of suffering, and she serves a great cause by speaking for people who can't/don't speak. But she has no more (and I would argue far less) expertise and knowledge of Islam than the average Muslim, yet she always seems to involve herself in highly technical aspects of Islam. She is completely out of her depth as an analyst of Islam and it would serve her better to focus on helping people who need help, rather than taking personal vengeance.

Her life is no different than many many Muslims today, and if she is any authority on the matter, so do they. The key thing is that she holds a very extremist view of anti-Islam, whereas most others do not despite going through the same unfortunate experiences. This is what gives her popularity among some.

As you listen to what she preaches, and the people who like her and follow her, you will realize she fills a very common role in society. She fills the role of the person who, because of their appearance and origin, almost hate their origin and hate the things which their followers link to their appearance. If you hate Muslims and hate Arabs, it makes it easy and fun to become a supporter of Ayaan Hirsi Ali since she is vicious and non-constructive in her attacks on Islam IMO. Obviously, this doesn't apply to all of her fans, but even the ones who it does apply to will obviously respond "yes maybe some people, but not me!"

I don't like these letters. They imply that extremist Muslims are not welcome in a world where extremist Jews, extremist Christians and extremist anythings are functioning members of society, and in many cases functioning members of government. I look at the American political spectrum, I see people who strongly preach war/murder and rely on religious ideals, and I see those people getting a lot of votes. In the Israeli government, there are extremist Jews, extremist Muslims.

IMO we are not dealing with a problem that is specific to a religion. We are dealing with a threat that is a TYPE OF PERSON. That is, a conservative person who believes in extreme values. If we are serious about getting rid of these TYPES of people, I'm totally on-board.

But I am not about to join the latest witchhunt for this type of person within one specific religion. We have done this to Jews. We've done this to Christians. Now we're doing it to Muslims. Usually, the people doing the pushing are also the extremists on your own side. So it's extremist Muslims that preach hatred of extremist Christians. It's extremist Christians that preach hatred against extremist Muslims. So on and so forth. This is just another episode in a series of extremist-led violence. The only determinant of these episodes are: who is the most beneficially exploitable, and who has the best weapons. One set of extremists will have the powerful weapons, the others will be the most explotable. One is terrorist, another is freedom fighter. Over and over again. Same propaganda, different decade/century.

Whenever there's a group which is ready to recognize that extremists exist everywhere, they can count me in. They vary according to tons of variables such as culture/religion/education/poverty/circumstances. This will lead to some of them being crazy armed fighters, while others will not need to fight personally and will kill people from behind their mahogany desk wearing a crisp suit with expensive cufflinks and a red button which says "kill". To me, these people are the same, but the variables in their life led them to different places. It wasn't even in their control where they would be born and most of what they would experience, so why would I differentiate between these two?

Wake up and stop falling for this BS. The only witchhunt worth pursuing is against the people who hate all of us, rather than just some of us.

 

I have no doubt that Pro-Christianity and Anti-Islam overlap at times, though both are equally troubling. Similarly, extremely Pro-Islam contains some anti-Christianity.

The real question is: why on earth do soldiers need to know about the religion of the people who they are commanded to kill? It is clear that this information is not there to assist in negotiating, or to somehow show respect to culture and customs.

 

No it's not a joke, it's wrong wherever it happens. Everywhere. Even if all Muslims in the world preached hatred of Christians, it does not mean the secular US military/government should preach hatred of Islam.