Sweet

Why? He literally told everyone to buy. Everyone. Whereas before only a select few knew and chances are many of them made a lot of money from that knowledge one way another.

No Parsad, it’s true, because it’s a personal statement about what I remember. Quite different from saying there haven’t been any which I’m in no position to say that. It’s pretty simple. I can recall many Islamic terrorists attacks because there have been so many in my lifetime. Whereas I can’t recall a single Christian terrorist attack. And no, the IRA were not religious terrorists, although yes, religion had a part in that conflict insofar as the two sides largely broke down along Catholic and Protestant lines. I’ve explained it several times now, so I don’t know why it keeps coming back to me - it is a case of others believing I said one thing when I actually said something else. Here it is again: Terrorism committed for non-religious reasons by a Muslim, Christian, Hindu - whoever - is not religious terrorism. Terrorism committed for religious reasons is religious terrorism.

I’m not sure if Christianity had a negative or positive net effect overall. It wouldn’t surprise me either way but we can’t re-run the experiment again. However the renaissance was funded by the Catholic Church, and the main historical figures were devote Christians. But perhaps it hindered it too?

Fantastic short video

We discriminate every time we put someone in prison. We remove their basic rights and lock them up for years. People get hung up on the word discriminate, but we do it all the time. People are so afraid of the word because it assumes discrimination based on things like race.

He will confirm. Perhaps you need to read my first post to LC on the page over Dealraker. I’m not saying that religion had no impact on the Troubles - I’ve never said that. I am saying that the IRA were not motivated by their religion to bomb and kill in the way modern Islamic terrorists are. The IRA’s motivation was ‘Brits out’, it was political and nationalist, not religious. That is what I mean when I say the IRA are not Christian terrorists. They were political terrorists (debated by some) that happened to be Christian. This is the context of this discussion which began with LC the page before. Hopefully you see the difference.

Even if we accept that Christianity was a political force, it’s simply not true to say that was in keeping with the teachings on the New Testament. Jesus didn’t advocate the establishment of a Christian state, didn’t advocate war or conflict. What is it that is so hard to understand about this? Why is there a constant need to try and make everything equivalent when it’s clearly not? Are you a Muslim or come from a Islamic background?

Exactly. Islam is not just a religion, it’s a defacto political document based on founding their own religious state. It has intertwines religion and politics in a way that Christianity does not. And the people who get this the most, and are most critical of Islam, are former Muslims who renounced their faith.

The IRA were not motivated by religion, they were motivated by nationalism. The IRA were not bombing and killing because of some passage in the bible. Their goal was to get Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom, which they saw as a war of ‘liberation’. Catholics tended to be Irish Nationalists, Protestants tended to be Irish Unionists (British), but not always. Religion had nothing to do with the IRA, and the IRA had Protestants in it too. Don’t take my word for it, take the IRA at their own word. Pasted below is the IRAs own handbook which they issued to IRA members upon joining: https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/organ/ira/ira_green_book.htm I lived there for over 25 years from birth. Anyone claiming the IRA were a terrorist group motivated by religion demonstrates only that they know nothing about the IRA.

Yes. It really started about whether certain religions act more like ‘jet fuel’ (good analogy) compared to other religions.

I think I’ve explain everything fairly well in my other posts, it’s all there. In the specific post you quoted, I don’t believe they are examples of religious terrorism. Terrorism committed by a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist (whatever) for none religious reasons is not religious terrorism.

Dealraker, I was born and I grew up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, although I don’t live there anymore. There were bombings and murders, many of them, by the IRA and by other organisations. It is what some would call a ‘lived experience’ and I’m fairly certain you don’t have that experience. I know what I’m talking for at least one of the five, and respectfully, you don’t. I’ve never met anyone, friend or foe of the IRA (and I know many of both), who consider it a Christian inspired terrorist organisation. There is nothing macho crybaby in what I just said, only facts. But please consider that if you are confidently wrong on one, you might be confidently wrong on the others too.

I mean yeh. The entire region was Jewish and Christian and it was conquered by a Muslim army. But to fight back is somehow forbidden. The Ottomans were laying siege to Vienna in the late 17th Century, their demand was surrender and convert to Islam or every inhabitant would be killed. They were pushed back, and over time the Habsburg and Russians eventually pushed the Ottomans out of most of Europe. I genuinely I think some of this narrative is a dislike of white people and European culture.

The Chinese have been supplying the Russians and helping they get around sanctions for a long time. I doubt ideologically Xi cares one way or another, but in Putin he has an ally, and he probably doesn’t want to see them defeated.

The IRA, nothing about their terror campaign was about religion, it was nationalism. The KKK, racial superiority, not religion. The British empire, imperialism, not even terrorism and not about religion. The Crusades, on stronger footing because it was religious, but war is not terrorism. Nobody claims that the Ottoman or the Muslim conquests was terrorism. You are reinventing a definition to suit you.

Because it is a culture and religion all of its own. It’s not about reality or facts, it’s a world view through which facts and reality are filtered.

It’s boring to hear the same old lines picked out as a ‘got ya’ while the entire message and behaviour of Jesus is ignored. Jesus was not a warlord and the New Testament is not a book about military conquest. By contrast Muhammad was a warlord and violence is an integral part of the Quran. Re the wiki - terrorism carried out by Christians is not the same as terrorism in the name of Christianity. Nobody can point to the New Testament and say ‘this passage’ or ‘this book’ justifies terrorism because militarism and violence are not a part of Jesus’ story. That’s not the case for Islam, and the violence in Islam is used by Islamic terrorists to justify their terrorism. I don’t really know why people as clever as you can’t get it straight. ’It’s all make believe anyway’ - yeh maybe it is. ’It’s all the same make believe stuff’ - no it’s not. Stop defaulting to your lefty ‘all cultures and religions are the same’ bs. Unplug, use your eyes and engage your brain.

I can’t take you seriously when you say there is no difference between the message of ‘turn the other cheek’ in one book, and a message of jihad in another. I’m all for generalising when it makes sense, but not when the differences matter so hugely. I can’t remember a single act of terrorism in the name Christianity - not one. Or any other religion for that matter.

Thanks Maddo, very interesting, and wonderfully written.

Based on some of comments and links provided by others, but I could be wrong. I don’t know a lot about AfD.

Perhaps, but look at Europe in general. Every country there is a large shift to the right on immigration. Many of parties in those countries are labelled as ‘far-right’ when some are not. In the UK that party is Reform, it’s certainly not far-right but it doesn’t stop the Guardian readers from claiming it is. AFD does seem to be different, but who should the Germans vote for to reduce immigration and start mass deportations?

We are talking about the afd because there is a large section of voters who aren’t being served. I’m British, and many people, most of I’d say, want drastically lower migration, and deportations.

Spooky, you are posting the Guardian which is quite far left on the political spectrum. To the guardian, anything right of the UK Labour Party is considered fascist. One of the organisations quoted is the ‘Global Project Against Hate and Extremism’. I went to their website and it lists the Celtic cross and ‘LGB’ as being symbols of extremism in the UK - no they aren’t. That’s truly moronic. The founder of that site, Heidi Beirich, is quoted in the article. She is apparently an expert on the far-right. Included in one of the forms of extremism is ‘anti-immigrant’ - which is a weird way of saying anti-immigration. That’s not an extremist view by any stretch for all sorts of reasons. Zuckerberg has overhauled the content moderation on Facebook, not because of it was too far right, but because the fact checkers which were moderating the site were too liberal or politically biased to the left.

I would like to caution against thinking that this is manufactured by social media algorithms. My recollection of social media, just a few years ago, and prior to Musk taking over Twitter, was that it was dominated by left-wing views. Views not falling within the liberal consensus on immigration and things like gender were quickly censored. Some of the things in that article are of course genuinely far-right, but I am willing to be that most people supporting afd just want much lower immigration, and want large scale deportations.

Perhaps, but as Dinar says, who else can they vote for that platforms issues they are worried about? It’s the mainstream political parties pushing people to fringes.