Large portion of ISIS members are well versed... Oh crap I didn't know that, I'm glad they completed your pop-quiz to show you that. Baghdadi is a native speaker (Ahhh...Okay) with a PhD? Again, oh crap thanks for the update, I thought nobody really knows if he finished his PhD and people in his neighborhood where he preached can't recall this guy. Even people at the faculty can't remember him. His terrorist buddies in Al-Qaieda considered him a nobody. The only thing this guy is known for is developing the most extreme and brutal group after his capture and got the various Sunni groups to fall into line with their end goal to gain power with the region. Nobody sits there and listens to his enlightenment on Islam, the crazies sit their and listen to his political murderous garbage that he spews. Again that region is very complicated, only idiots would say yes these guys are scholars and know their sheet.
Yes, many of them are and if you happen to be Shia or a secularized Sunni Muslim in the region don't be the idiot assuming they aren't well versed and roll up to one of their 'Who's a true Sunni Muslim' pop quiz checkpoints thinking you can out wit them.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>No explanation by <a class="hashtag" action="hash" title="#Obama">#Obama</a> on flags not lowered to half-staff for <a class="hashtag" action="hash" title="#Chattanooga">#Chattanooga</a>: <a href="http://t.co/jjLrxIHYsW" title="http://www.stripes.com/news/us/no-explanation-by-obama-on-flags-not-lowered-to-half-staff-for-chattanooga-shootings-1.358915">stripes.com/news/us/no-exp…</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/Travis_Tritten">Travis_Tritten</a> <a href="http://t.co/FFYLIdFRVU" title="http://twitter.com/starsandstripes/status/623231162282962945/photo/1">pic.twitter.com/FFYLIdFRVU</a></p>— Stars and Stripes (@starsandstripes) <a href="https://twitter.com/starsandstripes/status/623231162282962945" data-datetime="2015-07-20T20:41:02+00:00">July 20, 2015</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I think it gets lowered for acts of violence over 10 people being injured or more, or for leaders. They didn't lower it for the Charleston shooter either. I don't think these kinds of obsessions with flag lowering accomplishes much either.
Except those aren't the only groups. There are also the Kurds who are taking much of the brunt of the fighting. Last time I checked the Kurds were still Muslims. This is again the type of dangerous absolutist thinking. This is the type of thinking that is driving the extremists which they can use to portray themselves as the defenders of Islam.
I'm not really sure what you are arguing here for. Are you still sayign that Islam itself is the problem? Would you consider Muslims who are fighting on the front lines like the Kurds as part of that problem?
If they lowered the flag every time there was a multiple-victim shooting in the US it would never be seen at full height.
I believe a distinction can be made between the ideology of Islam along with how the founder, Muhammad, INTENDED for the religion to be practiced and individual Muslims.
It's Commodore. He's not trying to accomplish anything. He just uses this place to retweet random things.
Other than academic interests I don't really care that much about what Muhammed intended Islam to be. If I believed or found the teachings of Islam to be valuable I would be a Muslim. As a non-Muslim what my concern is how we approach this conflict. Many are looking at this as a conflict between Islam and the rest of the humanity and see no distinction between ISIS and those who are on the front lines fighting them. You see that right on this page of this thread. If that is the case then what is the answer? Should I be looking at my Muslim neighbors with distrust? Should we as the Non-Muslim world seek to wipe out the Muslim one? That is largely the same narrative that ISIS and Al Qaeda have preached that this really is a war of civilizations between Islam and the West and they are the ones who are fighting to save Islam. I don't buy that and I don't think the vast majority of Muslims believe that either. The more though we view this conflict as us vs Islam itself that feeds into that narrative.
Last time I checked, the Kurds, while a majority of them is Sunni Muslim, were a diverse people, about 500,000 of them Yazidis, 1 million Yarsanis, some Zoroastrianists and some Christians. But don't let facts get into the way of your little statements.
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2015/jul/21/abdulazeez-lived-two-lives/315648/ The windy road to Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez's Hixson home is peppered with churches and subdivisions. In Colonial Shores, where Abdulazeez once played with the neighborhood children, American flags hang above neatly manicured gardens. It's the kind of place where teenage boys get paid cash to run lawnmowers in the heat and retirees wave at drivers while they tend to their tomatoes. And, by all accounts, Abdulazeez and his family fit in here. They smiled. They were friendly, neighbors say. Youssef Abdulazeez was a soil engineer for the City of Chattanooga. His only son and four daughters were bright and handsome; two had engineering degrees and another was working on her masters. Rasmia Abdulazeez, who has a soft, round face in pictures, was like most mothers, celebrating her children on Facebook. When Abdulazeez graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga she posted a picture of him in a cap and gown and wrote a blessing. Friends ogled over her recently married daughter, Deena, who had a Palestinian-themed wedding but wore a mermaid-cut wedding dress that showed her slender figure. In the spring, they hired a friend of the family to take portraits in Coolidge Park. In one picture, the siblings lay on the grass, their heads pressed together, their mouths agape from laughing. In another, they make funny faces, sticking out their tongues, rolling their eyes. But the family had secrets. The son had secrets. For years, according to a family spokesperson, the clean-cut only son — the wrestler and mixed martial arts fighter who friends and acquaintances say was funny and loyal and competitive, the jester who made fun of his Middle Eastern name in the Red Bank High School yearbook — felt depressed. The family, which is of Jordanian descent, took Abdulazeez, who was born in Kuwait, to a child psychiatrist when he was in his early teens. He was placed on medication, but the depression never lifted. Then, when he was 19, his mother filed to divorce his father. In the complaint, she said Youssef beat her in front of the children and sexually assaulted her. She also said that he told her he wanted to take a second wife, which is permitted under Islamic law. Both of Rasmia's brothers flew to Chattanooga from Washington, D.C., and Kuwait, to help the couple reconcile, which they eventually did. An agreement was signed between the two, in which Youssef promised to attend counseling, give her an allowance on the fourth day of every month, and spend an hour every night with her discussing family issues, like when a child was disrespectful. While the family instability may not have worsened Abdulazeez's mental state, it didn't help it either, said a person close to the family who didn't want to be identified. The depression persisted, intermixed with states of manic. By the time he was in high school, Abdulazeez was already using mar1juana and alcohol to self medicate. Several years ago, when the family recognized a serious addiction, the family spokesperson said Abdulazeez's parents tried to intervene and send him to rehab. His most recent trip to Jordan was to see his uncle and grandfather who were supposed to help distance him from "bad influences" at home. "The hope was that the supervision would help him get back to his best self," the family spokesperson said. Still, his dependency worsened. The drug use would eventually lead to his job loss in Ohio in 2013. He failed a drug test at FirstEnergy Nuclear Power after working there for just 10 days. For months, he lived in Ohio without a job and only told his parents that he had been let go when he ran out of money. The failure left him deeply embarrassed and ashamed, the family spokesperson said. He wasn't seeing a counselor, but he did see a psychiatrist periodically. Yet didn't take his medication regularly. It was during this time that he started to scribble notes to himself. On loose leaf paper, he wrote about his suicidal thoughts and expressed admiration for anti-American extremists. Later he would tell family members that he was deeply in debt and considering bankruptcy. Then, in April, a month after the happy family portraits in Coolidge Park, he was pulled over by police because he was driving in and out of lanes, speeding and then slowing down, stopping at green lights. In the incident report, the police officer wrote that he smelled like alcohol and burnt mar1juana. His eyelids were droopy and white powder was on his nose, which he told the officer was crushed caffeine pills he had snorted. Some friends say he was changed when he returned from Jordan in 2014. When he came home to see his family during Ramadan, he went to mosque. He fasted and prayed. He grew his beard long. In two blog posts written three days before he killed five military service members —Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Randall Smith and U.S. Marines Carson Holmquist, Thomas Sullivan, Skip Wells and David Wyatt — and wounded several others before being shot dead by police, he seemed to have found clarity. He wrote that some people thought that the Sahaba, the companions of Muhammad, were priests "living in monasteries" but that that wasn't true. "Everyone one of them fought Jihad for the sake of Allah. Everyone one of them had to make sacrifices in their lives." In the next post, he called for action. "Brothers and sisters don't be fooled by your desire, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to Allah might pass you by If you make the intention to follow Allah's way 100 percent and put your desires to the side, Allah will guide you to do what is right." By this time, he was taking sleeping pills to help him rest for his late night 12-hour shift at his job and painkillers for a back injury. He mixed those with opiates, mar1juana and alcohol, the family representative said. His July 30 court date was quickly approaching, and some family members had just learned of the charges. Online he Googled about martyrdom, wondering if he could be absolved of his sins through martyrdom, the family spokesperson said. In 2013 He followed videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, an Al Qaeda cleric who is popular among jihadists, and did research for Islamic guidance on committing violence, according to an ABC News report. He had guns at his family's home. A family spokesperson said his parents had asked him to give them up, but he used them for target shooting and hunting. On July 11, he bought ammunition at the Hixson Wal-Mart. Then last Tuesday morning, the 24-year-old left home. He rented a silver Mustang and told his parents he would be gone for a work trip. But instead he went on a drug and alcohol bender, driving the Mustang with friends, at times as fast as 100 mph, the spokesperson said friends have told the FBI. They never heard from him again. It seems the shame he tried to escape, he left with them.
That is rich considering you tend to paint with one of the broadest brushes out there. Do you consider that Iran is also very ethnically and religiously diverse when you criticize it or even the vast diversity of Islam itself? In this very thread you're arguing against the diversity of Islam and basically saying it is basically all the same. If we're talking facts as you note the majority are Sunni Muslims there are also many who are Shia. So out of a population of 30-35 million taking your own figures non-Muslims are definite minority of Kurds so it is very likely that most of the Kurds fighting ISIS are Muslim.
I criticize the government of Iran, and the Mullahs. If you cannot understand that distinction, it's your failure. Nope. I never said that. But just continue to invent lies. And what's your point? Is your attempted point that that somehow absolves the ideology of political Islam? You fail, all around.
