Islamic State VS Western Governments - Who is more morally wrong?

[Ibrahim (Banned)]

I'll take a page out of your book and point out the obvious red herring fallacy. 

"Ooops, things aren't going in my favor, time to call out the person who is even more inept then I am."

 

It's not a red herring. He was responding to CV's post:

 

- removed for rule break -

 

I agree with everything except the Nazi Germany part and you're simply nitpicking.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Four

[Naruu]

Funny Ibrahim intentionally themes himself after ISIS, but never gives actual proof that he does, just stays borderline.

 

That's basic trolling 101. All he's attempting to do is annoy people with the ISIS theme. Don't feed the guy.

 

I imagine an actual ISIS supporter, rather then a basement troll would be a lot more...blatant about it and would most likely get banned.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Naruu

[Belisarius]

I couldn't find the video but i did find this....

 

 

America may soon be paying Jizya to another Caliphate if it can't win this war. 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/32fvwm/til_the_us_paid_jizya_to_the_ottomans_until_the/

 

tl;dr - The money the United States paid to the Barbary states was meant to avoid North African pirates from pirating American merchant shipping. To confuse this with the jizya demonstrates both historical ignorance and a profound misunderstanding of what the jizya is. 

[Wayne]

We all piss in the same bucket.

[Stujenske]

If the answer to the question posed in the tile of this topic is "Islamic State"...

 

How are we judging what's 'morally wrong'?

 

Are we going by statistics or are we simply basing it upon our own subjective emotions?

 

Is beheading one civilian worse than air striking one hundred civilians for example (or just two civilians for that matter)?

 

Answer honestly|&|plainly: Do you place a lower value on the lives of the millions of civilians massacred by western governments in 'Muslims countries' as opposed to the hundreds of 'fellow' western civilians killed by IS in what they (IS) describe as 'retaliatory attacks'? And does the media hype strongly influence your opinion on what is and is not morally bad?

 

Lets discuss.

Well said on the bold, but I am socially progressive and strongly disagree with extreme sharia policies on LGBT people and women.

 

I'm fine with Muslims having their own opinions but I don't think extreme views need to be involved in the law.

[Hereno]

Islamic State is definitely very evil for sure. They rape and molest girls as young as age nine, even without the girls contest. They even treated them like slaves and traded them. Only one thing why they had gotten strong over the time is because people feared them.

 

Western societies has become more and more humane since 1800s by promoting equal rights, treatments and the like.

sorry if this has been addressed (quoting from page one), but it's worth pointing out that the afghani government backed by the US is also full of child rapists. not to belittle what ISIS is doing or anything, but holy shit WHY

[Hereno]

Because our politicians don't listen to our military.... Welcome to the West!

i mean i'd rather have the politicians not listening to the military than the military not listening to the politicians, but i see your point

[Stujenske]

Because our politicians don't listen to our military.... Welcome to the West!

Most veterans I've met are pricks. I wouldn't trust them if I were leader at all.

[Robert Ap Ioan]

I'm not a teacher and you are not my student's.

 

I will answer what i choose to answer and you're just going to have to deal with it.

You miss the point I was making; deliberately, I am tempted to say.

 

Why should we engage with you when you won't engage with us. Do you actually care about our opinions and are you willing to open your mind to the possibility you could be wrong?

 

If not I suggest we treat you as a troll and ignore what you say. There isn't any point in trying to engage with you. Discussion only works when people are willing to discuss.

Edited January 5, 2016 by Rob Ap Ioan

[Magneto]

This discussion is going too far. Let's keep things civil or I will get another moderator to help me drop a bridge on this.

[Victor Truchev]

I would argue the exact opposite. Almost every 'Muslim country' (only exception being Iraq) that America has invaded/bombed have had majority 'Sunni Muslim' civilian populations and millions of Sunni Civilians were killed as a result of the bombs that were dropped from American/Allied planes.This becomes more clear when you look at the American invasion of Iraq (which has Shia Majority) in which they almost exclusively bombed the Sunni Areas whilst propping up a criminal Shia Government that continued to massacre the Sunni population during and after America withdrew from Iraq. You can't put that down to simple "ignorance" when they did nothing about the countless Sunni civilians that were turning up dead every day in the streets of Baghdad after they were tortured and executed by the American trained Iraqi Shia death Squads. It was widely reported and Obama was well aware of it.... America gave them the green light to commit genocide against the Sunnis. This was in fact what gave rise to IS in the first place and it's also what is continuing to fuel it, so yes a point can be made that America (along with other western countries) have been/are engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims around the world.

"Millions of Sunni's" I'm not so sure America and her allies have been bombing the middle east long enough to reach into the "millions" quite yet. Should IS and other extremist "muslim" (Do you, I wonder, object to them calling themselves true muslims?) organisations continue to wage jihad against the Western world, I'm sure that death count will continue to rise. Sadly, this conflict between the extremist Islamic world and Western society is a "he said-she said" game. Who struck first? It won't matter by the end of the age old conflict, however that manifests itself. 

 

The Shia death squads in Iraq, I agree, are a serious problem. I cannot, nor will I defend the alleged actions of CIA operatives or contractors. Though I highly disagree that the rise of the so-called Islamic State is the result of such actions. The rise of Islamic State can be traced back to the allowed festering of Al Baghdadi's Al- Qaeda in Iraq, later gaining fame for actions in Syria after the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. Al Baghdadi splintered from the organization of Al Qaeda, snubbing his nose at Al-Qaeda Chief Zawahiri. IS built themselves off the back of the Syrian Civil War, and anchored themselves into Iraq after the humiliating defeats of the Iraqi military, further legitimizing their power. IS rising to power was pure politics. It was the opportune moment and Al Baghdadi took it. The rise of IS is only a symptom of a problem that has plagued Islam since the death of Mohammed. Is it the Shia's right to claim the Caliph, or is it the Sunni's? I remember a quote from somewhere: "Islam stops fighting itself long enough to wage war against the infidel." 

 

I'm going to stop here for a moment and let you respond. 

Edited January 5, 2016 by Victor Truchev

[Doktor Avalanche]

Daesh or Western Government entities- Who is more evil/morally wrong? Yes.

 

But the most evil of all is the United States government for warmongering for the one, true evil in the entire world, the Saudi Princes.The fact remains that the US is a puppet army for the Saudis.

[Ibrahim (Banned)]

"Millions of Sunni's" I'm not so sure America and her allies have been bombing the middle east long enough to reach into the "millions" quite yet. 

 

More than Two million Sunnis civilians were killed by America and western allies in Iraq alone:

 

1. Million+ (including half a million children) died as a direct result of the 1990 American led sanctions on Iraq.

2. Million+  died as a result of the American led 2003 invasion of Iraq.

 

More than a million Sunni civilians were killed by America and western allies in Afghanistan.

 

This is not to mention impoverished Muslim countries like Yemen, Somalia, Libya, etc were thousands of Sunni civilians have also been killed by American airstrikes and were many vital infrastructure have been destroyed that's very hard to rebuild. If you have time to do some reading i would strongly suggest reading this article.

 

Should IS and other extremist "muslim" (Do you, I wonder, object to them calling themselves true muslims?) organisations continue to wage jihad against the Western world, I'm sure that death count will continue to rise. Sadly, this conflict between the extremist Islamic world and Western society is a "he said-she said" game. Who struck first? It won't matter by the end of the age old conflict, however that manifests itself. 

 

Calling them "EXTREMIST" Muslims in an attempt to dehumanise them is a PSYOP tactic favoured by the mainstream media and it's wholly untrue.

 

They are typical insurgents who happen to be Muslim and happen to be fighting against Western/Russian Imperialism. Nothing they do is particularly out of the ordinary for an insurgent group. Just look at the tactics employed by the Atheist Viet Cong: They also used suicide bombers and carried out beheadings.

 

The Shia death squads in Iraq, I agree, are a serious problem. I cannot, nor will I defend the alleged actions of CIA operatives or contractors. Though I highly disagree that the rise of the so-called Islamic State is the result of such actions. The rise of Islamic State can be traced back to the allowed festering of Al Baghdadi's Al- Qaeda in Iraq, later gaining fame for actions in Syria after the beginning of the Syrian Civil War. Al Baghdadi splintered from the organization of Al Qaeda, snubbing his nose at Al-Qaeda Chief Zawahiri. IS built themselves off the back of the Syrian Civil War, and anchored themselves into Iraq after the humiliating defeats of the Iraqi military, further legitimizing their power. IS rising to power was pure politics. It was the opportune moment and Al Baghdadi took it. The rise of IS is only a symptom of a problem that has plagued Islam since the death of Mohammed. Is it the Shia's right to claim the Caliph, or is it the Sunni's?

 

They were only able to inflict a humiliating defeat on the American trained Iraqi Army due to the support of the local Sunni civilian population who were being massacred every day by the American puppet Shia Iraqi Government with the blessing from the white house. 

 

Fall of Mosul to the Islamic State: 

 

Iraqi Army had 30,000 troops in the city (Two divisions, with security forces outnumbering attackers by more than 15-to-1).

 

Islamic State Mujahideen had 800-1300 troops (no heavy weapons or armoured vehicles).

 

More than 2,500 Iraqi troops killed, 2,300 Humvees and the city taken by IS (along with many other weapons/vehicles/money).

 

Is it the Shia's right to claim the Caliph, or is it the Sunni's? I remember a quote from somewhere: "Islam stops fighting itself long enough to wage war against the infidel." 

 

I'm going to stop here for a moment and let you respond. 

 

The view of all Muslims is that the Shia are not Muslim and any Muslim who says the Shia are Muslim is himself not a Muslim, so how can they claim anything?

 

Islam is a religion: I think you meant to say "Muslims"? Muslims don't fight each other and they are not aggressive people but they do defend themselves. 

Edited January 5, 2016 by Ibrahim

[Licorice]

I don't know what's more laughable, comparing hundred's years old capitalist countries vs a 4 years old religious fanatical state in terms of "who did more bad stuff" or that people are actually applying morality to politics.

 

Gov will do whatever it is that benefits them self, just like pretty much any other individual and group on the planet, plain and simple.

[Rozalia]

The view of all Muslims is that the Shia are not Muslim and any Muslim who says the Shia are Muslim is himself not a Muslim, so how can they claim anything?

 

Islam is a religion: I think you meant to say "Muslims"? Muslims don't fight each other and they are not aggressive people but they do defend themselves. 

 

If this was true you wouldn't bother to call yourself a Sunni Muslim, you'd just be a Muslim. 

 

Muslims don't fight each other? But of course, they just say those they've butchered aren't Muslim and presto Muslims haven't fought each other! Still you'll find support for that view among people like Spite so you can safely keep attacking "Apostates", they're not worth protecting to them after all. 

 

Calling them "EXTREMIST" Muslims in an attempt to dehumanise them is a PSYOP tactic favoured by the mainstream media and it's wholly untrue.

 

They are typical insurgents who happen to be Muslim and happen to be fighting against Western/Russian Imperialism. Nothing they do is particularly out of the ordinary for an insurgent group. Just look at the tactics employed by the Atheist Viet Cong: They also used suicide bombers and carried out beheadings.

 

Well actually fundamentalism is naturally on the extreme side of a religion so they are extremists. However in Liberal terms you are correct. This guff about them being completely divorced from Islam and "not real Muslims" is ridiculous. 

 

A problem with your storyline there. ISIS want to dominate the world as they put it, and those who fight imperialism do not seek such things. They want to free their country from oppression, or if their people has been denied a country they wish to establish one. ISIS are neither of those things. The Kurds for example wish to establish their state and you wish them to not have a state... why? Because you march to the beat of Islamic Imperialism that the Kurd's should not be allowed a state. You are hardly innocent when we talk such issues.

 

This is not to mention impoverished Muslim countries like Yemen, Somalia, Libya, etc were thousands of Sunni civilians have also been killed by American airstrikes and were many vital infrastructure have been destroyed that's very hard to rebuild. If you have time to do some reading i would strongly suggest reading this article.

 

Are you really trying to use Yemen to push this Sunnis are poor delicate creatures angle? How shameless can you bloody be? Saudi Arabia is doing what America has done in Yemen and where are you? Nowhere, because you're alright with interventions, killings, and so on as long as it's the "apostates" being killed. 

Edited January 5, 2016 by Rozalia

[Ibrahim (Banned)]

This discussion is going too far. Let's keep things civil or I will get another moderator to help me drop a bridge on this.

 

Thank you, everything's back on track now.

[Bilal the Great]

Both are disgusting and inferior.

 

Glory to South East Asia.

[Buorhann]

OP is trying to make the point that, even though ISIS are nuts and behead people, more harm has been done by imperialism. For example, ISIS probably wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for American meddling in Iraq. How much responsibility does America bear for ISIS? What about the Saudis? The Iraqis? The members themselves? The people who have accepted their rule as legitimate? The blame game can get pretty ridiculous but I've yet to see anyone really address the argument made in the OP.

 

Because it's a baited argument.

[Hereno]

I don't know what's more laughable, comparing hundred's years old capitalist countries vs a 4 years old religious fanatical state in terms of "who did more bad stuff" or that people are actually applying morality to politics.

 

Gov will do whatever it is that benefits them self, just like pretty much any other individual and group on the planet, plain and simple.

 

why should we not apply morality to human behavior?

 

you sound like an ayn rand type.

 

Because it's a baited argument.

how so?

[Buorhann]

I realize you just came back, but you can search up Ibrahim's arguments for the Islamic State.

[Spite]

There are two points which make this discussion meaningless:

 

Comparing evil is difficult and pointless. For example, Jack the Ripper murdered prostitutes on the streets of London. Stalin killed millions in his purges. Who is more evil? Stalin arguably killed more people, but can you quantify evil in that way? The answer is that they are both guilty of evil acts.

 

Secondly, intention does matter, and so does perception. To a Western, liberal, democratic viewer, ISIS are the epitomy of evil. They represent a foul murderous bunch of savages who blow up historical artifacts, behead aid workers and rape ethnic minorities for entertainment. Regardless of the intellectual justification, ISIS are unIslamic and are not practicing Sharia. This is hardly surprising since they're a mix of mercenaries, foreign fighters and opportunists who have little organisation or structure- more of a mafia than a state. Whatever Ibrahim thinks, I doubt most salafi muslims envisaged the coming of the Caliphate to look like this. The noble heritage of the Rightly Guided Kalifa, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Ottoman Empire....  the Islamic State. It isn't the same thing and everyone knows it.

 

From the perspective of the ordinary Muslim living in Iraq, the USA is objectively evil. Though they claim to aim their bombs, they can't help but kill civilians, and seem to be happy to kill half a dozen civilians to get one fighter. They tore their country apart and in the new climate of fear they are at risk every day. The promised aid and rebuilding money never materialised or was appropriated by the new ruling class. ISIS may like to bomb American cities, but they lack the capacity. The USA on the other hand doesn't want to kill civilians, it just does so by accident.

 

Anyway I could ramble on about intent all day, but I think everyone Ibrahim included accepts that if you bomb a military target and kill a civilian, it doesn't have the same moral weight as deliberately bombing say, a school. It is still bad, but the intention was not the same.

[Hereno]

There are two points which make this discussion meaningless:

 

Comparing evil is difficult and pointless. For example, Jack the Ripper murdered prostitutes on the streets of London. Stalin killed millions in his purges. Who is more evil? Stalin arguably killed more people, but can you quantify evil in that way? The answer is that they are both guilty of evil acts.

 

Secondly, intention does matter, and so does perception. To a Western, liberal, democratic viewer, ISIS are the epitomy of evil. They represent a foul murderous bunch of savages who blow up historical artifacts, behead aid workers and rape ethnic minorities for entertainment. Regardless of the intellectual justification, ISIS are unIslamic and are not practicing Sharia. This is hardly surprising since they're a mix of mercenaries, foreign fighters and opportunists who have little organisation or structure- more of a mafia than a state. Whatever Ibrahim thinks, I doubt most salafi muslims envisaged the coming of the Caliphate to look like this. The noble heritage of the Rightly Guided Kalifa, the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Ottoman Empire....  the Islamic State. It isn't the same thing and everyone knows it.

 

From the perspective of the ordinary Muslim living in Iraq, the USA is objectively evil. Though they claim to aim their bombs, they can't help but kill civilians, and seem to be happy to kill half a dozen civilians to get one fighter. They tore their country apart and in the new climate of fear they are at risk every day. The promised aid and rebuilding money never materialised or was appropriated by the new ruling class. ISIS may like to bomb American cities, but they lack the capacity. The USA on the other hand doesn't want to kill civilians, it just does so by accident.

 

Anyway I could ramble on about intent all day, but I think everyone Ibrahim included accepts that if you bomb a military target and kill a civilian, it doesn't have the same moral weight as deliberately bombing say, a school. It is still bad, but the intention was not the same.

actually, the US does deliberately kill civilians. there's this thing they do called a "double tap", where they hit targets and then wait for medical personnel to show up to the scene and then bomb the same site again. they do it so that even if the fighters are wounded or whatever, nobody will come and help them so they die. hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the US government, and one of the justifications they used to classify them as such was the use of double taps.

[Robert Ap Ioan]

actually, the US does deliberately kill civilians. there's this thing they do called a "double tap", where they hit targets and then wait for medical personnel to show up to the scene and then bomb the same site again. they do it so that even if the fighters are wounded or whatever, nobody will come and help them so they die. hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the US government, and one of the justifications they used to classify them as such was the use of double taps.

If this is true one thing has to be said, the US have really good skills when it comes to bombing.

[Hereno]

>if this is true

 

Late in the evening on 6 June this year an unmanned drone was flying high above the Pakistani village of Datta Khel in north Waziristan.

 

The buzz emitted by America's fleet of Predators and Reapers are a familiar sound for the inhabitants of the dusty hamlet, which lies next to a riverbed close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan and is a stronghold for the Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur.

 

As the drone circled it let off the first of its Hellfire missiles, slamming into a small house and reducing it to rubble. When residents rushed to the scene of the attack to see if they could help they were struck again.

 

According to reports at the time, three local rescuers were killed by a second missile whilst a further strike killed another three people five minutes later. In all, somewhere between 17 and 24 people are thought to have been killed in the attack.

 

The Datta Khel assault was just one of the more than 345 strikes that have hit Pakistan's tribal areas in the past eight years but it reveals an increasingly common tactic now being used in America's covert drone wars – the "double-tap" strike.

 

More and more, while the overall frequency of strikes has fallen since a Nato attack in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained US-Pakistan relations, initial strikes are now followed up by further missiles in a tactic which lawyers and campaigners say is killing an even greater number of civilians. The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that rescuers often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack.

 

"These strikes are becoming much more common," Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who represents victims of drone strikes, told The Independent. "In the past it used to be a one-off, every now and then. Now almost every other attack is a double tap. There is no justification for it."

 

The expansive use of "double-tap" drone strikes is just one of a number of more recent phenomena in the covert war run by the US against violent Islamists that has been documented in a new report by legal experts at Stanford and New York University.

 

The product of nine months' research and more than 130 interviews, it is one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to understand – and evaluate – Washington's drone wars. And their verdict is damning.

 

Throughout the 146-page report, which is released today, the authors condemn drone strikes for their ineffectiveness.

 

Despite assurances the attacks are "surgical", researchers found barely 2 per cent of their victims are known militants and that the idea that the strikes make the world a safer place for the US is "ambiguous at best."

 

Researchers added that traumatic effects of the strikes go far beyond fatalities, psychologically battering a population which lives under the daily threat of annihilation from the air, and ruining the local economy.

there's more of it but that's the beginning of the article:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/outrage-at-cias-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-8174771.html

 

alternate sources:

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-drone-tweets-reveal-double-tap-plan-2012-12

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drones-strikes-target-rescuers-pakistan

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24557333

Edited January 5, 2016 by Hierophant

[Robert Ap Ioan]

Fair enough. I tend towards cynicism at the best of times. The sources you provide are reputable.