Where do you guys learn this stuff? (Really…I want to know 
) I know very little about the history/social context of Africa, especially as presented in these two posts. Where can one learn about it?
Robin
Sometimes, perhaps, that which is called religion begets violent fanaticism, but, I think, it is more often that violent fanaticism likes to abuse religion for its own purposes. If one wants to have a revolution, it is easier if one can convince one’s compatriots that “God is on our side,” so to speak.
Lotsa books, Robin, too many to remember or list. The threads of my personal inquiry have been about various aspects of culture and history. I lived in an old Moghul city in India, Hyderabad, and had a very close friend who was a descendant of them. We had planned a trip through all the Islamic countries but it never happened. I have been studying them ever since. I have also studied their role in Spain, as well as the history of Jewish people and culture. And in the course of trying to understand American history and our role in slavery, I read up on the subject of who gathered, bought, transported African slaves to America. Many books on colonial history cover that.
For an interesting and well-documented book about the history of Western racism, with lots of perspective thrown in, I would recommend “The End of Racism” by Dinesh D’Souza. It’s brilliant. He has to touch on many cultural attitudes and outlooks, including the premises of modern cultural anthropology in order to cover the subject. A very influential book in my thinking.
No culture is innocent, I am not saying that. But I do contend that Westerners focus overly on their own sins while the same types of genocide continue elsewhere in the name of Islam.
There’s no “overly” about it. Perhaps the purest and most universal spiritual principle is that there’s no virtue in confessing other people’s sins; everyone has to confess their own.
The problem with the west is that we DON’T examine our own sins.
I’m with Weekenders on this one.
We need rid our societies of all potential extremist groups. That’s why all Muslims need to be returned to Muslim countries. I will admit that not all Muslims are extremists, but they all have that potential.
In the same way, Irish terrorists have bombed London many times and yet the Irish are free to live in our country. Although they are have called a cease-fire, all Irish people are potential terrorists and need to be deported for the stability of our society.
Mukade
Oooops, us Btitish are in trouble on this basis. We had the most expansive empire the world has ever seen. We killed more people groups than any other nation. On Mukade’s logic, we British would not be allowed anywhere.
ps you are a handsome chap Mukade
Some excepts from an article today. The writer is considered far right by Canadian standards
Terrorism Hasn’t Completely Fallen Out of Favour
David Warren
Pew Research has just published a 17-country poll of public attitudes touching Islamic extremism. The survey included six predominantly Muslim countries. It repeated questions from another survey done two years ago, from which we deduce that the popularity of Osama bin Laden among Muslims is receding.
This, at least, is the media headline: “Support for terror wanes among Muslim publics.” In fact, the surveyshows support for Osama has grown in Pakistan and Jordon, fallen elsewhere. The question why is left unanswered.
…
Since the chief targets of suicide bombings are Jews, it is noteworthy that overwhelming majorities in the Muslim countries continue to hold what the pollsters call “unfavourable” views of Jews. The “favourables” reach a high of 18 per cent in semi-Westernized Turkey; zeroes were scored in Jordon and Lebanon. The Pew survey shows that Muslims take a better view of Christians, but not by much. Only Lebanon were those “favourables” very high, and that country is nearly half Christian.
Contrast this with Western attitudes toward Muslims. Only in the Netherlands did more than half the respondents say they took an “unfavourable” view of them (51 per cent). The United States and the English-speaking countries continue to be well-disposed to Muslims, and France, too, remained strongly “favourable”. But across continental Europe, their image seems to be sinking for one reason or another.
In the main, it would be fair to generalize that we like them a whole lot more than they like us… but the fact itself should be assimilated: that our idea of “tolerance” is - our idea.
And while support for suicide bombings is happily declining, the truth is that, overall, something like on third of all the Muslims surveyed continued to approve of such tactics … While it is impossible to abstract numbers for Muslim respondents living in the West, other polls have consistently shown they tend to take more radical positions than Muslims in Islamic countries.
The standard “liberal” ciew is that perhaps one per cent of Muslims are fanatics and therefore potential terrorists. I do think the proportion likely to become suicide bombers is quite low: for regardless of religion, most humand beings instinctively avoid getting killed. But it is clear enough that the proportion of Muslims who do, in principle, support terrorism against the West is not low.
…
Now, a disclaimar is always necessary, for any poll that is conducted across national, linguistic, cultural and especially religious frontiers. The same question may take on a much different flavour, if asked in English or in Arabic; in a city or a village; before or after a major news event; to a Christian or a Muslim etc.
But this is the whole point. We assume, glibly, that people from non-Western cultures share our basic values - life, liberty, happiness, and so forth. We forget that these (mostly unexamined) attitudes were implanted in the West through two millennia of Christian teaching; and would take centuries to root out.
Our values were once common currency in the Middle East, too, for most the that region was once Christian. But in the 14 centuries since the Islamic conquest, what we take for granted was in fact rooted out.
I do hope you are kidding… really… if you want to rid your, our or any society of potential extremists, you better get back to small village, non transitory living.
The glasses through which you view others, to determine if they are potentially a threat to you, are actually blinders.
If I were to use your “logic”, you’d be deported.
In this thread it had been suggested that liberals are soft on terrorism issues and favorable toward Muslims. It is irritating that conservatives feel the need to say what liberals favor. I am a liberal because I veiw conservatives as the greatest threat to my liberty. Conservatives would then assume that I would take the side of Muslims. And they would be WRONG! Personally, I was in favor of deporting every Muslim after 9/11. I still would favor deporting ALL Muslims. I think that would have done more to protect this country than invading and destroying two other countries. I don’t buy the argument that Islam is a religion of love and a few extremists cause the problems. I think Islam IS the problem. 
Pops, I don’t say that liberal-thinking people take the SIDE of Muslims. But I do charge that there is “dark-spot” thinking on THIS ISSUE (that is, a context of reasoning that has a dark spot of deniability or unwillingness to confront something very unpleasant); that in the attempt to be multiculturally sensitive and fearful of offending or oppressing people who are potentially terrorists, the plain fact of the rise of Islamic fanaticism is leaving people to feel as though their hands are tied. I want Brits to be more than tearful and I don’t want our leaders to soft-pedal the infiltration of our countries by people who wish to destroy us.
I know that many fear nationalism, zenophobia, internment camps, guilt by association, etc. because of painful historical episodes. But I contend that we are better off risking repeating these mistakes than continuing to allow sleeper cells and radical Imams who preach overthrow and violence to be unchecked. No more “dress up like a Muslim day” in public school while a chorus can’t so much as sing a Christmas carol, for example.
Unfortunately, Osama Bin Laden has stated clearly that he wants a war of cultures and religion and its perplexing in the extreme to grant his wish.
I can think of no more self-critical society than that in the USA.
I can’t speak for any group, but I’m a liberal and I frequently take the SIDE of muslims in situations in which I think that those muslims have been wronged.
~~
Deciding the rigths and wrong of a situation on the basis of tribe or religion is the problem, not any kind of solution. Even when it’s our “side” doing it, it’s still racism.
~~
That said, I’ll freely admit that I hold my friends to a higher standard of conduct than I do complete strangers. I know that there are people in this world who beat their wives or abuse their children. I don’t like it, but I’m not so deluded as to think that it doesn’t exist. However, if I discover that my best friend or my cousin are abusing their children, that’s very upsetting, and likely to rouse me to take action. If they persist, they are likely to lose my friendship.
The US is Canada’s best friend (whether canadians like it or not, one wit said). I find it extremely upsetting that our closest ally has taken up torture, illegal detention, secret prisons, “disappearances” and foreign conquest on such a massive and overt scale.
If you lived next door to your town’s police chief, and learned that he was torturing teenagers in his basement, wouldn’t you be disturbed?
I would, and I am. The US and the world will go on paying for this insanity for years and years to come.
I can. You make a large show of minor issues and ignore the rest.
No more “dress up like a Muslim day” in public school while a chorus can’t so much as sing a Christmas carol, for example.
[/quote]
You state this as if it is the norm for our country. I taught school 30 years and never once witnessed a “dress up like a Muslim day”. In every single year I taught we sang Christmas carols at school. 
Well, I guess it’s time for all of us “Americans” to get packing. Walden, congratulations on getting your country back.
Following up on recent comments on lead poisoning, I looked up Andrew Jackson. Now there was a great Indian fighter. Or, if you happened to consider the matter from a Native American point of view, I think there would be no doubt the man was an extremist and clearly a terrorist.
I think it’s important to bear in mind that the Christian/Islam culture clash goes back a thousand or so years, with many examples on both sides of absolutely horrid behavior, and not really so long ago on the Christian side, either.
I’m specifically thinking of the way the Middle East was carved up and handed to totalitarian puppet kings in thrall to the British and French after the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. We shouldn’t be surprised that there’s been a hardening against the West since then. (Edited to add, the U.S. overthrow of a democratically elected leader in Iran and his replacement with a totalitarian puppet king in thrall to the United States is another example.)
This drama has gone round and round for many centuries and will continue to do so for many more centuries.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Between the likes of ChrisLaughlin and jGilder and the likes of The Weekenders and jim stone, there is plenty of bemoaning of almost every sort of issue.
“History is written by the winners,” as someone once said. Who won the Indian wars in the US is debatable, but certainly the Muslim terrorists are not losing, and they are not taking prisoners. Mostly they just look at us with incredulous expressions on their faces for what we allow them to get away with.
djm
Didn’t Jackson fight alongside the Cherokee when it suited his purpose? I see him less as a political terrorist as an opportunist. A deadly mean opportunist
The problem I have with this is, we’re actually empowering them with our response.
When Osama bin Laden’s followers attacked the World Trade Center, he expected and hoped that the U.S. would respond by invading a Middle Eastern country.
There was tremendous sympathy for the U.S. after 9/11 among mainstream Muslims and their governments. There was a great soul searching among them at that time, and a widespread movement to work towards moderation and cooperation against extremists among Islam.
This continued to be the case after we invaded Afghanistan, which virtually everyone in the world saw as a legitimate action in self defense. However, after we invaded Iraq, the sympathy disappeared very quickly, and the movement in the Islamic world to help us against terrorism became thwarted by the fact that our invasion of Iraq fueled tremendous rage against the U.S. among Muslim populations, effectively hamstringing those sympathetic among governments, religious leadership and influential people generally in those societies to do very much to help us.
Best wishes,
Jerry
I think you’re splitting hairs. The acts he and those of like mind perpetrated and condoned were illegitimate and murderous. Call them what you like.
From “Indian Removal” at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html
Early in the 19th century, while the rapidly-growing United States expanded into the lower South, white settlers faced what they considered an obstacle. This area was home to the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chicasaw and Seminole nations. These Indian nations, in the view of the settlers and many other white Americans, were standing in the way of progress. Eager for land to raise cotton, the settlers pressured the federal government to acquire Indian territory.
Andrew Jackson, from Tennessee, was a forceful proponent of Indian removal. In 1814 he commanded the U.S. military forces that defeated a faction of the Creek nation. In their defeat, the Creeks lost 22 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama. The U.S. acquired more land in 1818 when, spurred in part by the motivation to punish the Seminoles for their practice of harboring fugitive slaves, Jackson’s troops invaded Spanish Florida.
From 1814 to 1824, Jackson was instrumental in negotiating nine out of eleven treaties which divested the southern tribes of their eastern lands in exchange for lands in the west. The tribes agreed to the treaties for strategic reasons. They wanted to appease the government in the hopes of retaining some of their land, and they wanted to protect themselves from white harassment. As a result of the treaties, the United States gained control over three-quarters of Alabama and Florida, as well as parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and North Carolina. This was a period of voluntary Indian migration, however, and only a small number of Creeks, Cherokee and Choctaws actually moved to the new lands.
In 1823 the Supreme Court handed down a decision which stated that Indians could occupy lands within the United States, but could not hold title to those lands. This was because their “right of occupancy” was subordinate to the United States’ “right of discovery.” In response to the great threat this posed, the Creeks, Cherokee, and Chicasaw instituted policies of restricting land sales to the government. They wanted to protect what remained of their land before it was too late.
Although the five Indian nations had made earlier attempts at resistance, many of their strategies were non-violent. One method was to adopt Anglo-American practices such as large-scale farming, Western education, and slave-holding. This earned the nations the designation of the “Five Civilized Tribes.” They adopted this policy of assimilation in an attempt to coexist with settlers and ward off hostility. But it only made whites jealous and resentful.
Other attempts involved ceding portions of their land to the United States with a view to retaining control over at least part of their territory, or of the new territory they received in exchange. Some Indian nations simply refused to leave their land – the Creeks and the Seminoles even waged war to protect their territory. The First Seminole War lasted from 1817 to 1818. The Seminoles were aided by fugitive slaves who had found protection among them and had been living with them for years. The presence of the fugitives enraged white planters and fueled their desire to defeat the Seminoles.
The Cherokee used legal means in their attempt to safeguard their rights. They sought protection from land-hungry white settlers, who continually harassed them by stealing their livestock, burning their towns, and sqatting on their land. In 1827 the Cherokee adopted a written constitution declaring themselves to be a sovereign nation. They based this on United States policy; in former treaties, Indian nations had been declared sovereign so they would be legally capable of ceding their lands. Now the Cherokee hoped to use this status to their advantage. The state of Georgia, however, did not recognize their sovereign status, but saw them as tenants living on state land. The Cherokee took their case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against them.
The Cherokee went to the Supreme Court again in 1831. This time they based their appeal on an 1830 Georgia law which prohibited whites from living on Indian territory after March 31, 1831, without a license from the state. The state legislature had written this law to justify removing white missionaries who were helping the Indians resist removal. The court this time decided in favor of the Cherokee. It stated that the Cherokee had the right to self-government, and declared Georgia’s extension of state law over them to be unconstitutional. The state of Georgia refused to abide by the Court decision, however, and President Jackson refused to enforce the law.
In 1830, just a year after taking office, Jackson pushed a new piece of legislation called the “Indian Removal Act” through both houses of Congress. It gave the president power to negotiate removal treaties with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi. Under these treaties, the Indians were to give up their lands east of the Mississippi in exchange for lands to the west. Those wishing to remain in the east would become citizens of their home state. This act affected not only the southeastern nations, but many others further north. The removal was supposed to be voluntary and peaceful, and it was that way for the tribes that agreed to the conditions. But the southeastern nations resisted, and Jackson forced them to leave.
Jackson’s attitude toward Native Americans was paternalistic and patronizing – he described them as children in need of guidance. and believed the removal policy was beneficial to the Indians. Most white Americans thought that the United States would never extend beyond the Mississippi. Removal would save Indian people from the depredations of whites, and would resettle them in an area where they could govern themselves in peace. But some Americans saw this as an excuse for a brutal and inhumane course of action, and protested loudly against removal.
Their protests did not save the southeastern nations from removal, however. The Choctaws were the first to sign a removal treaty, which they did in September of 1830. Some chose to stay in Mississippi under the terms of the Removal Act.. But though the War Department made some attempts to protect those who stayed, it was no match for the land-hungry whites who squatted on Choctaw territory or cheated them out of their holdings. Soon most of the remaining Choctaws, weary of mistreatment, sold their land and moved west.
For the next 28 years, the United States government struggled to force relocation of the southeastern nations. A small group of Seminoles was coerced into signing a removal treaty in 1833, but the majority of the tribe declared the treaty illegitimate and refused to leave. The resulting struggle was the Second Seminole War, which lasted from 1835 to 1842. As in the first war, fugitive slaves fought beside the Seminoles who had taken them in. Thousands of lives were lost in the war, which cost the Jackson administration approximately 40 to 60 million dollars – ten times the amount it had allotted for Indian removal. In the end, most of the Seminoles moved to the new territory. The few who remained had to defend themselves in the Third Seminole War (1855-1858), when the U.S. military attempted to drive them out. Finally, the United States paid the remaining Seminoles to move west.
The Creeks also refused to emigrate. They signed a treaty in March, 1832, which opened a large portion of their Alabama land to white settlement, but guaranteed them protected ownership of the remaining portion, which was divided among the leading families. The government did not protect them from speculators, however, who quickly cheated them out of their lands. By 1835 the destitute Creeks began stealing livestock and crops from white settlers. Some eventually committed arson and murder in retaliation for their brutal treatment. In 1836 the Secretary of War ordered the removal of the Creeks as a military necessity. By 1837, approximately 15,000 Creeks had migrated west. They had never signed a removal treaty.
The Chickasaws had seen removal as inevitable, and had not resisted. They signed a treaty in 1832 which stated that the federal government would provide them with suitable western land and would protect them until they moved. But once again, the onslaught of white settlers proved too much for the War Department, and it backed down on its promise. The Chickasaws were forced to pay the Choctaws for the right to live on part of their western allotment. They migrated there in the winter of 1837-38.
The Cherokee, on the other hand, were tricked with an illegitimate treaty. In 1833, a small faction agreed to sign a removal agreement: the Treaty of New Echota. The leaders of this group were not the recognized leaders of the Cherokee nation, and over 15,000 Cherokees – led by Chief John Ross – signed a petition in protest. The Supreme Court ignored their demands and ratified the treaty in 1836. The Cherokee were given two years to migrate voluntarily, at the end of which time they would be forcibly removed. By 1838 only 2,000 had migrated; 16,000 remained on their land. The U.S. government sent in 7,000 troops, who forced the Cherokees into stockades at bayonet point. They were not allowed time to gather their belongings, and as they left, whites looted their homes. Then began the march known as the Trail of Tears, in which 4,000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way to the western lands.
By 1837, the Jackson administration had removed 46,000 Native American people from their land east of the Mississippi, and had secured treaties which led to the removal of a slightly larger number. Most members of the five southeastern nations had been relocated west, opening 25 million acres of land to white settlement and to slavery.
Best wishes,
Jerry