Dylan Ratigan: A most excellent rant on 'War with Islam'

[Bill Mattocks]

I was referred to this on Twitter. Glad I watched it. Since it's an apparently unscripted rant by MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan, it runs a couple minutes too long, but the point is basic, clear, and true (IMHO).

http://gawker.com/5664744/the-single-truest-political-rant-ever-to-appear-on-morning-television

 

[WC_lun]

I think what he said right after the four minute mark particularly rang true.

 

[Cryozombie]

Ok, I'm uninformed on this...

What is the difference between a Wahabi (sp?) and a Muslim?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Ok, I'm uninformed on this...

What is the difference between a Wahabi (sp?) and a Muslim?

What's the difference between a Unitarian-Universalist and a Pentecostalist?

Seriously, Wahabists are Sunni Muslims. They represent a extreme fringe of Islam. It is mainstream in Saudi Arabia, but not in most Muslim countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi

Another militant branch of Sunni Islam is Salafist Jihadism. There are also militant Shiite organizations.

Here's a good report from 2003:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21695.pdf

 

[Bill Mattocks]

FYI, Wahhabis despise all 'mystical' groups within Islam. They'd love to kill the Imam of the so-called 'Ground Zero' mosque, as he is a Sufi and the antithesis of just about everything they believe in.

 

[Master Dan]

I understood that it was the Wahabi that by threat of force kept the royal family of Saudi Arabia in power only so long as they agreed to give them the money they want which was then used for terrorism?

So while on the face of it Saudi Arabi acts like a ali it is thier money mainly ours from buying oil that has funded much of the terrorism in the past?

We need to go Nuclear and other power issues and let it all go back to the goats and camels I hate seeing our best and brightest dieing for oil and corporate profits.

I we want the oil just take it what happend to Iraque reimbursing us for the cost of the war from Oil like Bush said in the begining?

What did we make all those Nukes for? Rememer when we first started shock and Awe. Lybia started saying OH America Friend please come look we have no wepons of mass destruction.

In WWII we had to drop two bombs not just to save our boys lives fighting longer but it was the only way to change the mind of a country that philosophically believed they were better than us and we should be killed or enslaved?

Stop spending Trillions killing our young guys just drop two Nukes don't give me the polution crap hell we exploded over 356 above ground just testing in our own back yard!!!

We may get a bunch of bad press for it so what! every country in history pays for its baking of dictators or facists governments its the price they pay for going along with it and indoctrinating thier children to hate us.
Hit one city the short guy in Iran will be out of office and all the other countries that are hosting or supporting terrorism put them on notice. The people will rise up and kill these fools or they face anilation.

No instead we spend billions on the most worthless airport security on the planet people so stupid theyd all be working for Mcdonalds or Walmart if it wasn't for out tax dollars and they wouldn't know a bomb from turd if they saw it?

Some will say its what they want to start the end and bring some mesia?
You know what? that little **** has a deep bunker he is thinking some of my people will die not me?

Well when they bring me the ballot to vote that has two boxes

One convert to Islam: Two Die : I pick number three that has a big red button.

I know I should not have had that second Mocha?

 

[Big Don]

What's the difference between a Unitarian-Universalist and a Pentecostalist?

Individuals may or may not self-identify as Christians or subscribe to Christian beliefs So, that is pretty different from Protestantism is one of the four major divisions within Christianity

Seriously, Wahabists are Sunni Muslims. They represent a extreme fringe of Islam. It is mainstream in Saudi Arabia, but not in most Muslim countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahhabi

Another militant branch of Sunni Islam is Salafist Jihadism. There are also militant Shiite organizations.

Here's a good report from 2003:

http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21695.pdf

No matter how much people want to deny the 9-11 hijackers were Muslim, they were.

 

[WC_lun]

I understood that it was the Wahabi that by threat of force kept the royal family of Saudi Arabia in power only so long as they agreed to give them the money they want which was then used for terrorism?

So while on the face of it Saudi Arabi acts like a ali it is thier money mainly ours from buying oil that has funded much of the terrorism in the past?

We need to go Nuclear and other power issues and let it all go back to the goats and camels I hate seeing our best and brightest dieing for oil and corporate profits.

I we want the oil just take it what happend to Iraque reimbursing us for the cost of the war from Oil like Bush said in the begining?

What did we make all those Nukes for? Rememer when we first started shock and Awe. Lybia started saying OH America Friend please come look we have no wepons of mass destruction.

In WWII we had to drop two bombs not just to save our boys lives fighting longer but it was the only way to change the mind of a country that philosophically believed they were better than us and we should be killed or enslaved?

Stop spending Trillions killing our young guys just drop two Nukes don't give me the polution crap hell we exploded over 356 above ground just testing in our own back yard!!!

We may get a bunch of bad press for it so what! every country in history pays for its baking of dictators or facists governments its the price they pay for going along with it and indoctrinating thier children to hate us.
Hit one city the short guy in Iran will be out of office and all the other countries that are hosting or supporting terrorism put them on notice. The people will rise up and kill these fools or they face anilation.

No instead we spend billions on the most worthless airport security on the planet people so stupid theyd all be working for Mcdonalds or Walmart if it wasn't for out tax dollars and they wouldn't know a bomb from turd if they saw it?

Some will say its what they want to start the end and bring some mesia?
You know what? that little **** has a deep bunker he is thinking some of my people will die not me?

Well when they bring me the ballot to vote that has two boxes

One convert to Islam: Two Die : I pick number three that has a big red button.

I know I should not have had that second Mocha?

Dude, really? Do you honestly think exploding a couple of nukes would be beneficial to our goals in the long term? I think you are right about that second Mocha

 

[Archangel M]

No matter how much people want to deny the 9-11 hijackers were Muslim, they were.

And most importantly did what they did for religious purposes or under religious influence..the thing most "well Tim McVeigh was Xtian!" people conveniently ignore. First of all, its reported that he was agnostic, but most imortantly he did what he did for non-religious reasons. He was not participating in a Jihad nor was he trained or funded by a religious (or religiously backed) organization.

 

[WC_lun]

And most importantly did what they did for religious purposes or under religious influence..the thing most "well Tim McVeigh was Xtian!" people conveniently ignore. First of all, its reported that he was agnostic, but most imortantly he did what he did for non-religious reasons. He was not participating in a Jihad nor was he trained or funded by a religious (or religiously backed) organization.

No, they did what they did for political reasons disguised as religious outrage. Do you really think the guys that recruited and trained these men do what they do because of religion? No, they don't. They do it for power. Religion is the vehicle for men who will abuse it to gain power. It has happened in Christianity too. To think we are at war with Islam and that a religion attacked us on 911 is narrow minded, short sighted and does nothing but feed the hate and hysteria. But perhaps that is the goal. Using the hate and outrage to gain political power...right out of the playbook of totalarism and terrorism.

 

[Marginal]

And most importantly did what they did for religious purposes or under religious influence..the thing most "well Tim McVeigh was Xtian!" people conveniently ignore. First of all, its reported that he was agnostic, but most imortantly he did what he did for non-religious reasons. He was not participating in a Jihad nor was he trained or funded by a religious (or religiously backed) organization.

It's a lot like poor David Koresh. He just wanted to fondle under aged girls, stockpile weapons, and pretend to be Jesus. The evil government had to go and say no tho...

 

[Ken Morgan]

Insanity transcends all religious, racial and ethnic criteria.

 

[Archangel M]

No, they did what they did for political reasons disguised as religious outrage. Do you really think the guys that recruited and trained these men do what they do because of religion? No, they don't. They do it for power. Religion is the vehicle for men who will abuse it to gain power. It has happened in Christianity too. To think we are at war with Islam and that a religion attacked us on 911 is narrow minded, short sighted and does nothing but feed the hate and hysteria. But perhaps that is the goal. Using the hate and outrage to gain political power...right out of the playbook of totalarism and terrorism.

It still doesn't change the fact that most of the whackos we are dealing with NOW are of the Muslim variety...when they start reciting the hail mary before blowing themselves up I will re-evaluate.

 

[Cryozombie]

What's the difference between a Unitarian-Universalist and a Pentecostalist?

Seriously, Wahabists are Sunni Muslims.

Thanks. Like I said, I genuinely didn't know, and to me the Video clip made it sound like Wahabists were not Muslim, so I was looking to re-evaluate if what O'Rilley said was incorrect.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

No matter how much people want to deny the 9-11 hijackers were Muslim, they were.

Do you read anything in this thread that anyone is denying the hijackers were Muslim? They were Muslim, Don. Nobody disputes that. What many people deny, myself included, is that they were representative of the majority of Muslims. They represent a fringe extremist group of Muslims, just as the group that called itself "Christian Identity" didn't represent the views of mainstream Christianity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity

...some of the Christian Identity movement's followers hold that non-Caucasian peoples have no souls, and can therefore never earn God's favor or be saved.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity#cite_note-0

Why is that so difficult to understand? All Muslims are not terrorists. All Christians are not terrorists. The first rule of war is to know who you are fighting. If we conflate 'All Muslims' with our true enemy, well, we'll lose.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

And most importantly did what they did for religious purposes or under religious influence..the thing most "well Tim McVeigh was Xtian!" people conveniently ignore. First of all, its reported that he was agnostic, but most imortantly he did what he did for non-religious reasons. He was not participating in a Jihad nor was he trained or funded by a religious (or religiously backed) organization.

Abortion clinic bombers and abortion doctor assassins have been avowed Christians, carrying out what they thought was God's law. They are not representative of all Christians, but perhaps of their subset fringe sect. Same for fringe Wahabists who support terrorists. They are Muslims, but they don't represent all Islam.

 

[Big Don]

Abortion clinic bombers and abortion doctor assassins have been avowed Christians, carrying out what they thought was God's law. They are not representative of all Christians, but perhaps of their subset fringe sect. Same for fringe Wahabists who support terrorists. They are Muslims, but they don't represent all Islam.

The difference is, the standard commentary, "They don't represent all Islam" in it's many forms, is repeated ad naseum, to the point it has lost all meaning. While any time a Christian, commits a crime, that same idea that they aren't representative of all crap isn't part of the news

 

[Bill Mattocks]

It still doesn't change the fact that most of the whackos we are dealing with NOW are of the Muslim variety...when they start reciting the hail mary before blowing themselves up I will re-evaluate.

That's poor logic. You have yourself admitted on several occasions, as I recall, that not all Muslims are terrorists. You would seem to be able to accept that being Muslims does not make one a terrorist. BUT when it is convenient, you use the fact that the terrorists were Muslim to indict the entire religion.

They were also men. Are all men terrorists? They were also English-speakers. Are all English-speakers terrorists?

The question has to be asked in terms of causation. Did the terrorists do what they did based on the fact that they were men? No. Did they do it based on the fact that they spoke English? No. Did they do it based on the fact that they were Muslim? Again, no. Did they do it based on the fact that they belonged to an extremist sect of Islam, which taught the validity of violent jihad? Yes. So what is the cause? I think it's pretty clear. Conflating all Islam with a violent sub-sect is exactly the same as conflating all Christianity with a violent sub-sect or all Caucasions with a violent sub-sect, etc. One questions the motives of a person who does this.

What you're saying - apparently intentionally - is that you choose to believe that all Muslims are terrorists on the basis of an causation you yourself know is false. That's weak. That's a bumper sticker philosophy.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

The difference is, the standard commentary, "They don't represent all Islam" in it's many forms, is repeated ad naseum, to the point it has lost all meaning. While any time a Christian, commits a crime, that same idea that they aren't representative of all crap isn't part of the news

First, the 'standard commentary' that they don't represent all Islam may have been repeated ad nauseum, but if so, it is done to counter the continued claims "but the terrorists were all Muslims!' as if all of Islam was made up entirely of terrorists. They represented a sect of Islam. It's good to know about that sect. Unless one ascribes to the theory that ignorance is good, and intentional ignorance is best.

Second, I don't agree that the media have gone out of their way to ascribe killings and bombings by people who were also Christians as representative of all Christianity. It seems to me that in every case, the media has tried to find out what specific church or branch the lunatic in question belonged to.

I haven't read a single news report that says Reverend Fred Phelps is representative of all Christians, have you? Nor about that fellow who wanted to burn the Koran down in Florida. I never read anything that said he was a typical Christian. So where are you getting that accusation?

And finally, your logic appears to be of the sort that says "It's OK for me to make erroneous accusations about others, because look, the media does it to!" Even if your statements concerning Christians who commit heinous crimes was true, that's piss-poor logic. If people rob banks, can you?

 

[RandomPhantom700]

It still doesn't change the fact that most of the whackos we are dealing with NOW are of the Muslim variety...when they start reciting the hail mary before blowing themselves up I will re-evaluate.

Ok, so what does that mean for us? Kill all Muslims? Change the law so that they're guilty until proven innocent? Let profiling slide?

As Mr. Mattocks has pointed out, even if ALL terrorists are Muslim, all Muslims are not terrorists. So what conclusion does constantly pointing out the terrorist's religious/ethnic background lead us to, other than feeding hate towards them?