Iraqi refugee gets it right
└ posted on Sunday, 4 June 2017, by Novil
I found the following opinion piece/sketch by the Iraqi satirist and human-rights activist Faisal Saeed Al Mutar to be exceptionally witty and to the point:
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Germany has also been hit really hard, its own elected officials claiming that it’s good for Germany to bee invaded, because the Nazis (in reference to all Germans) don’t breed as much and that’s a good thing.
Seems a bit genocidal and these sick people the German people have somehow elected (I think someone cheated), are completely fine with their citizens being robbed, raped, tortured and wiped out. I spent roughly 15 years joking about all Germans being Nazis, because I knew they weren’t and barely anything seemed to happen other than High Chancellor Merkel commanding the EU though German supremacy. Kinda like High Chancellor Hitler, oh hey, that’s why it’s so funny.
I didn’t think Germany had really let in an ideology just as bad as the Nazis in the form of Islam. I won’t call it a radical fringe, it’s 1/8. Through surveys held in western countries, it is believed that 13% of 1,600,000,000 Muslims are okay with terrorism being used to spread the influence of Islam. It is constantly assumed that only 1% of 1,600,000,000 Muslims are likely to attempt to kill for their religion, but even if that is correct, we’re supposed to be okay with the idea that there are 16,000,000 suicide bombers, gunmen who mow down crowds of civilians and knife wielding thugs who behead children, just waiting for the right opportunity?
Even in Burma, Muslims have taken part in a campaign of genocide against Christians and Buddhists, before crying snake tears to cast blame on their victims for attacking Muslims.
If groups like the Westborough Baptist Church and KKK are Christian, ISIS and the rest of the “1% of Muslims” are Islamic. And the first two groups are definitely Christian organizations.
Well, if it where that easy… I do not completely disagree with that article. In the minds of the terrorists it is just the religion – that’s true. Also, there are unfortunately quite a few “regressive left” who’ve lost their common sense and prefer crying with the saints and wailing about social injustice over facing reality and dealing with the problem at hand.
Still I don’t think that’s the main problem of our time. Mostly we’re dealing with the symptoms while ignoring the cause of global terror. Of course: the symptoms are our “problems at hand” and have to be dealt with, but we’re not getting to a solution if we’re not dealing with the cause as well.
Religion is a dangerous accelerant but the nourishing ground of terror is despair. As long as we have this fatal global injustice and people with no perspective or any option to lead a normal life, we will have to deal with a growing amount of terror.
Nobody with a right mind is suggesting that global fairness can help us to get rid of all the terror. There will most likely always be some idiots who can’t be helped, but it still would help a lot. In my opinion, it is important to see more than just some religious idiots. Even though they don’t see it themselves.
Disturbing question…
So, the Quran calls for the murder of infidels.
Big shocker, so does the Bible (Deuteronomy 13, Deuteronomy 17, probably more passages).
Meanwhile, Christian terrorism is a thing that happens, too – it just happens elsewhere, so it’s “someone else’s problem”. The Anti-balaka in Central African Republic are virtually indistinguishable from ISIS, except for area of influence and choice of targets. They even get the “they’re not really Christians” treatment.
And in Sri Lanka and Burma, it’s Buddhists hunting Muslims. That’s right, even “not really a religion” Buddhism can foster genocide.
Either the problem is religion as a whole, or the problem isn’t religious at all. If ISIS were a Christian terrorist group, they’d attack the West for doing Christianity wrong – Northern Ireland managed to keep a Christian vs. Christian war going for decades.
Which religion someone uses as justification is interchangeable. Blaming the religion is like blaming the car used for the attack.
Religion and belief is at the core of what drives literally every person on Earth. Extremist ideas and actions stemming from that are not nearly unique to just one religion or idealism.
It just seems kinda weird, right? I mean, given the timing of these attacks, it’s almost as though they’re trying to affect to outcome of elections. I don’t think that’s ever been explicitly stated as their objectives, but you have to admit it’s weirdly coincidental. But why would that be? Surely these jihadists would want more liberal elements elected, and would stop the terrorist attacks during those times. It’s weird, almost like they want some kind of holy war.
Oh.
Or another comparison:
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar’s statement is the equivalent of a liberal American blaming Christianity for the Ku Klux Klan.
Those ISIS guys are certainly more “useful” terrorists than Osama was… While he hinted some anti-imperialism, they let themselves be easily labeled as stupid religious fanatics (which most of them most likely are). They serve perfectly as the new bogeyman, as a reason to buy more weapons and as an excuse for not making amends with the Islamic world for exploiting their resources.
I’m not a fan of religions at all, but I have to agree with Amakawa Yuuto. I think it’s far too easy, to blame the problem on religion alone and disregarding the obvious global imbalance. Keeping trace of global economics is like watching FC Bavaria Munich beating the non-professional team of Hintertupfing each Sunday. Winners usually don’t question the fairness of a game but I think it’s not too astounding, when the all-time-loser at some point doesn’t want to play by the rules anymore.
Faisal’s statement is… dumb. I mean I get where he’s coming from, but then we just dropped a MOAB a few months ago. To date, coalition forces have killed upwards of 60,000 ISIL fighters since this war began and that’s just the official numbers. That seems like a large number for counties who aren’t taking the threat seriously. I mean, what, do we need to wipe out the 10M+ Iraqi and Syrian refugees as well just to make a statement?
I should addend, because I realize he’s satirizing so the statement is out of context; the situation is complicated. Yes we shouldn’t just ban refugees, yes refugees have views that may differ from liberal ideals. Yes we shouldn’t be involved in nation building, but also yes that the best solution would be a stabilized Iraq and Syria. But there’s simply no way for everyone to comprehend just how complicated this entire geopolitical situation is. Even people who study it have a hard time explaining all the factors at play. So eventually you need to cut your losses, mostly for your own sake. This middling of the road approach just gets exhausting and goes nowhere. Plus the simple fact is, there’s never going to be a solution which perfectly fits with your ideals, hopefully just one within which the majority of us can live.
This is such a straw man argument.
Almost everyone on the left recognizes that there are multiple causes to international jihadist terrorism; their individual justification for attacks and their willingness to target civilians is based on their vicious personal religion, but their motivation for acting on it, and the reason they have a lot of support is probably largely based on they and their families being terrorized , Mr. Al Mutar, on the other hand, does see the nuance human thinking and tries to simplify a complex sociological phenomenon down to a single root cause, which almost no sociological phenomenon has.
So, really, Mr. Al Mutar is not just attacking a straw man, he is also projecting, being guilty of part of the thing he is accusing others of (that is, unjustifiably attributing a complex phenomenon to a single cause).
Threadnaught wrote:
Could you do me a solid and stop spouting those insane, rightwing conspiracy theories about my country? It is pretty insulting.
Thanks
Regarding the Article:
– I do not take the Suicide Bombers seriously. They are just nutcases promised glory by a false Prophet. Does not even mater wich fanatical cause he was used for. They are about as special as the average american school shooting
– As for the person in the back: They are too smart to believe that propaganda shit. They understand they could not defeat our cultures with those small scale attacks. Their goal – stated and written down – is to get our righwing nutcases into government positions. That will lead to isolation and oscastrication of citizens of muslim faith. Wich in turn drives more recruits into the fanatics arms.
Terrorists are my enemies.
And I refuse to ever do what my enemy wants me to do. It is one of those things from Art of War that just comes naturally to me.
Go back to writing your webcomic plz…
Wait, so… we’re not satisfying the terrorists and preventing them from spreading the message they want to spread? Golly, it sure sounds like something we ought to change!
TvTropesgotmehooked wrote:
What, because you don’t want to see opinions that don’t agree with you?
Saying Islam has nothing to do with these attacks is as stupid as saying it’s the sole cause. Yes, there are terrorists for other religions too, but if we take christianity as an example, the vast majority do not take old testament books as literal truth. Obviously the actual jihadists within islam are a minority too, but the amount of muslims who would agree to statements like “the quran is the literal word of god and mustn’t be questioned” or “islamic laws are more important than the laws of the country I live in” is not such a tiny minority. We would need an islamic enlightenment movement that says maybe not everything in the quran or the hadiths should be taken at face value. Would this immediately solve the problem of islamic terrorism? Of course not! But it’s one aspect of it that has to be tackled, and that can’t happen if people keep denying that this has anything to do with islam.
Oh wow, turns out you’re a dolt ho’s willing to utterly Ignore the socio-economic reasons behind this radicalization, and instead blame a whole faith. I take it you feel the same about right wing Christian terrorists? yeah, didn’t think so. such a shame….
MidoriLuna wrote:
That’s a bit of a broad brush, there.
MidoriLuna wrote:
It took me less than 10 seconds to find the sort of “the West is to blame for terrorism, and it’s not about religion” blathering that the satirist is skewering here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ivan-eland/the-endless-cycle-of-terr_b_8574916.html
@ Killjoy:
Supposedly, it’s what separates us from animals; that human quality everyone is either eternally praising or bashing in dystopian novels. I’m not saying everyone necessarily has a religion, because many don’t; or even have a belief in anything per se. But it’s still a conscious decision for a person not to have those things, and lies at the core of who they are.
In my view, what groups like ISIS are doing, are taking victims of a broken society and culture and supplanting their beliefs with a corrupted version of their religion. It’s not Islamic, although it uses Islamic teaching. In my view, it’s like how the fungus cordyceps infiltrates the brain of an insect. Ultimately it controls the insect, guiding it to a point where it can cause maximum damage, and then explodes out of the insect and spreads itself to other victims.
Now of course, this is not mind control, these victims-turned-terrorists are making their own conscious decisions to be terrorists and become a part of ISIS. But although they may well believe they’re following the Muslim faith, they certainly are not.
@ MidoriLuna:
Don’t bother, man. Bigots don’t want to listen or reason. They have a target. It’s a shame the comic’s authors are this kind of awful.
Can not read the article or find the original tweet??? After research found the following on his own website. Please clarify that this is the same article!?
http://www.faisalalmutar.com/2015/11/16/i-am-a-jihadist-and-i-am-tired-of-not-being-given-credit/
nicktyrong wrote:
Let’s not jump to conclusions…
This reposted article does seem kind of undifferentiated to me too, but it is true that those idiots from ISIS believe that they “have implemented the truest most literal and honest interpretation of its [the Islams] founding texts” (although there are passages in the Koran that very literally say otherwise). Like all religious fanatics they pick an choose…
The question that remains is, what’s the conclusion the author proposes? Accept the declaration of a holy war, start a new crusade and give those idiots what they want? Let’s not make assumptions (“’cause when you’re making assumptions you’re making an ass out of you and mptions, weddo”). Hopefully it’s just some very dark humor, trying to point out, how messy and bizarre the whole situation is.
@ MidoriLuna:
And who are you exactly, to define what true faith is?
I read more of Mr. Al Mutar’s writing on his web site and it clarifies his position a bit. The Wikipedia blurb about “racism of lower expectations” sums it up nicely. He believes, as a person who experienced life in Iraq first hand, that the moderate Muslim majority in the Middle East need to do a better job handling their issues with extremism, on their own. He believes that this requires a shift in values towards secularism in Islam in general, for moderate Muslims to not only reject extremism themselves, but also to publicly condemn and fight against it.
As a consequence of this belief, it seems that not only does he dislike the interference of the U.S., Russia, et. al. in the Middle East, but for similar reasons, he dislikes the tendency of some Westerners to blame themselves/their own country for the actions of Islamic extremists. This self-blame gives moderate Muslims an “excuse” for extremism and is counterproductive to the Muslim struggle towards secularism.
It seems that his view is that both of these actions (military interference and masochistic self blaming) are insulting to Muslims in the Middle East since they imply a refusal to let Muslims in the Middle East clean up their own mess. These phenomena, which manifest in both the “right” and the “left” of Western politics (albeit in different ways) are arrogant and possibly even racist. His argument seems reasonable, and born out of pride and optimism.
I think part of the reason that his satire piece has angered people is that it used the phrase “regressive left”, and the U.S. is so politically polarized into “right vs. left” mentality that both sides are overly sensitive to anything resembling blame. But this isn’t really about Western right vs. left. Both the original military interference (largely supported by the extreme “right” of U.S. conservatives) and the masochistic self blaming in the aftermath of that interference (largely a dysfunction of the extreme “left” of U.S. liberals) are things that Mr. Al Mutar objects to. It seems very appropriate that Mr. Al Mutar, despite self-identifying as a “liberal” in many ways, is willing to criticize political extremism on both sides.
@ Saru:
An anonymous person on the internet with an opinion on a very complicated issue.
@ JJitter:
Yeah, but when I say he’s trying to be in the middle, he gets upset when he’s quoted by liberal or conservative media because he feels he’s taken out of context like this: http://www.youngcons.com/facebook-post-between-isis-terrorist-and-progressive-is-going-viral/ and sure, he’s doing an important job by adding nuance to the discussion, but he’s going to have to defend it ad infinitum because we’re not at a point where people can widely understand that nuance.
Also, while he’s against US intervention per se, he’s also on record in support of Trump’s missile attack on the Syrian airport. He’s for coalition intervention, but not the coalition that invaded Iraq. Maybe it has something to do with it being after war has broken out; so I’d like to see what he’d think about intervention in the Phillipines, or Ukraine, or with the steadily degrading Qatar situation.
@ realist:
I don’t have to make assumptions. The author’s intent is QUITE clear.
@ MidoriLuna:
Agreed about nuance and context. Unfortunately I don’t see any way around the problem of being taken out of context by propagandized media. Acknowledging the complexity of a problem is still useful for those who care about truth rather than “being right”.
Thank you for the info about what intervention he would support. It makes some sense to me; in modern history, a lot of the conflicts that the U.S. entered with U.N. approval and/or with intent to remove a proven, dangerous threat, went well. A lot of the conflicts that the U.S. entered against the wishes of the U.N. went poorly (for both the U.S. and the contested nation). Since U.N. approval has historically been a good predictor for both justification of interference and success, it makes some sense to be in favor of coalition action but not U.S.-only action (or Russia-only action, or China-only action).
I imagine some in the U.S. would respond to that with “we don’t need help from anyone else to win a war”, which has probably been true for the last few decades, and they would claim that coalitions like the U.N. are too cautious, too beaurocratic etc. The issue, though, is that the failure of the U.S. interventions in the past hasn’t been due to lack of military strength. It has been due to poor decisions about who to supply arms to, and if, when, and how to intervene – poor decisions which cause problems in the future. Taking advantage of the gathered intelligence and experience of other nations in the U.N. can prevent those mistakes. If I had to guess about why someone with his views on Middle East independence would support some interference (destroying chemical weapons and coalition action) but not others, that’s what I’d guess.
nicktyrong wrote:
We did not say “all Germans are bad”, even after the “racial Religion” had kileld Millions.
We did not say “all Irish” or “all Catholics are bad” during the terror of the IRA in Ireland.
We did not say “all socialists are bad”, when the Red Army Faction – a pseudo Socialist group – made 33 high Profile Assasinations in Germany.
realist wrote:
There is a US sect of Christianity that believes “that you have money shows that god loves you, you are detined to go to heaven.”
While Jesus is literally quote in the bible at Matthew 19:24 with “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
LITERALLY the exact opposite to what is written in that book.
One of the higher ups of that sect was at the Inaugration of Trump.
realist wrote:
Osama got the US to invade Iraq under Bush. Wich added a ton of instability to the region, resulting in stuff like the Syrian Civil war. And thus the formation of ISIS. Without him, ISIS or something comparable might not even exist today.
That suicide terror attacks are not effective tools to kill many people is obviously. In the US on average 150 people die in 2 days to firearms. Terrorism ist not even remotely in teh same ballpark.
They are fully aware of that. The deathtoll was never the goal of this form of Terrorism. The political screewups that followed were. Osama might literally have prevented Islamic Terrorism from dying out with that action.
You know, the highest ranking Muslims explain why terrorists are no proper Muslims and don’t actually follow the Islam at all. And they’re right, because killing people for religious beliefs is just Satanism.
Also terrorists are created by society not giving them any other choice. No human with a happy life will just throw it all away for mass-murder. I don’t blame myself at all, because I’ve been consistently voting for the German Pirate Party ever since it became possible, so it’s not my fault Merkel is in power. I blame the EU for taking away money from the refugee camps, forcing them to sail to Europe and die in the sea, and throwing 20 times as much at Erdogan.
Merkel wants the refugees here, not because someone’d want Germans to breed slower, but because she wants cheap work slaves in a time where more and more European people start to stand up against getting ripped off.
@ Alex:
Or she’s a decent human being trying to give scared, hungry refugees a home away from war. Maybe that?
So you´re preferring the easy answer to a complicated problem, that also provides you with a handy scapegoat for said problem.
Sad…
That was a funny bit of reading, really well written!
I will have to look up & bookmark Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, I enjoy his sharp wit!
The rest of my post will be on the topic of terrorism.
Summary: Terrorism as a cause of death is weaksauce.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/202871/number-of-fatalities-by-terrorist-attacks-worldwide/
Only about 30k people die from terrorism each year.
Using 2014 data:
Terrorism causes 0.00044% of deaths.
Fires are 11 times as deadly.
Stress is 21 times as deadly.
Traffic is 42 times as deadly.
Peanuts are 1/13th as deadly.
All those together only cover 0,8% of the global annual deaths.
Draw your own conclusions about how effective terrorists are.
My opinion? If your success rate as a mass murdering movement is between peanuts and fire,
then I will just have a few cold beers and relax a bit.
You wanna know the top 2 causes of death?
(This is from a different dataset, and this stuff is hard to categorize so there will be overlap with the previous list)
– Heart problems.
– Preventable diseases.
Both cause about 1/3 of deaths with preventable diseases having a tiny lead globally though heart problems have a tiny lead in rich countries with good health care.
I could give you a link to my source, but the different methods of categorization means that it is equally easy to get completely different numbers with the same data. The point is: Don’t sweat the small stuff.
@ Jones:
True, but he is funny while doing so.
@ realist:
I agree, and that won’t happen while people who are so caught up in their own selfish interests, I’m looking at you top 1% of America, are in charge.
wasn’t her mind erased after that arc
Amakawa Yuuto wrote:
There is one fundamental difference between Judaism/Christianism and Islamism. The God of Judaism and Christianism does not order a holy war against infidels. Go read the passages you cited and you see that the commendament to “kill the infidels” was a law specific for Israel people. Furthermore, the New Testament works as an “constitutional amendment” (that is the reason it is called *NEW* testament) which lifts this punishment. Reading the Paul letters one can see that the punishment to being infidel stays entirely on the spiritual level (see 1 Corinthians 6). Thus, if you do not believe in such things, you have nothing to worry. The spread method of Christianity left by Jesus was through teaching, not by war (see Mark 16). Thus, anyone who says that is doing a war in name of the God of the Bible, didn’t actually read what is actually written on it (or is just using an excuse to further its agenda).
Now, the Kuran in contrast has texts about Jihad scattered all over it. Here is a list: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/violence.aspx . Notice the difference? It isn’t about a law restricted to a people in a geographic area. It is about going to war to kill non-believers. This is a unique trait in Islam. They do not spread by teaching what they believe, but by conquest and killing of non-believers. That is the reason why in the Middle age they conquered all North Africa and even invaded what is today Portugal and Spain. To say the problem is with some islamics, not with the islam is the same thing as saying the problem were the nazists, not the nazism.