Jesus (or should I say Mohammad?), some sensible comments have finally been put forth in this thread!
Do you think his 72 virgins will still want him?
Backward sweeping
religiously loaded sentiment, to which I eagerly await Don Cardi's response. Since "redneck" is adopted as a term of affection these days, I don't know what to say other than "thick as fucking pig shit".
But hey folks remember islam is a religion of peace
Ah, such fine sarcastic wisdom from Iceman, as ever. If this is in some way meant to suggest that Islam is a "religion of war", I note that it's no more so than any other religion. Any monotheistic religion is
inherently exclusive; a "belief in God", by its very nature, amounts to the "belief in
my God
over your God". No religion is a religion of peace. The whole concept is absurd. I also point out that your President, and the ones before him, are inaugurated in the presence of a
bible; imperialist bourgeouis jingoism ties in very neatly with The Church, which is another instrument used by the state to exploit one class by another class.
Terrorism is an individual anarchic political act; its anarchy and its individualism is why it's very ineffective at making direct political progress. The opposite to a terrorist is a revolutionary.
Is Waterboarding and torture carried on by the U.S. terrorism? Many Americans would say not,but it is a tactic necessary to stop terrorism. Tell that to an innocent person who was rounded up and put in Guantanamo and waterboarded.
It is no more morally justified than terrorism, certainly not. And all the secret torture in the world does not prevent terrorism, or deter terrorists. It's equally ineffective.
We ought to all agree that the "War on Terror" is at the moment very ineffective. Its phrasing alone is vague and vacuous. Its a bourgeous quip to veil the real, concrete root causes of terrorism.
Why does terrorism exist? Against what are "these terrorists" opposed? It isn't enough to say that
religion alone is the reason why terrorism exists. And it's equally glib to say "terrorists are opposed to Freedom", because that's a meaningless buzz-phrase that allows the state and those who hold it in reverence to mask an imperialist bourgeois war "in the name of freedom", or "in the name of democracy", which is a gross injustice because America
remains a bourgeois democracy, opposed to universal suffrage and the equality of human beings. It's a joke.
Nowhere in this "War on Terror" is any rational thought given to the complex political ideologies surrounding such acts of terrorism. It's an irrational and self-justified hatred of "the Other", objectively manifesting itself in racism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim stereotyping in the news, in wide social circles of right-wing ignorance, on this very board even.
President Obama is right to refuse to refer to the "War on Terror," because Terrorism has been with us always.
Richard Dawkins argues that any "War on Terror" in the context of today's political climate should be a "War on
Religion". Relegating religion may indeed qualm or destroy all the religious terrorism happening in the world, but therein lies the problem: how might one "destroy" religion - especially when those declaring said war have been inaugurated "in the name of
God"? If religion is an autonomous cultural phenomenon, and a large part of moderate bourgeois liberalism - why the Church is an
instrument in the bourgeois state's armament against real equality - we'd be better to reorganize the economic structure of the country, so that the void in people's lives that leads them to religion is in a better state to disappear.
Forward to the revolution, then!
