Comment by danbruc
11 years ago
Islamic extremism is a relatively new phenomenon, early 20th century. And it has pretty little to do with religion, it's more some kind of revenge for what we, the western world, did to them. Indonesia is the country with the largest Islamic population in the world yet there is little extremism and - it may of course be coincidence - the western world did never much care about them although they have a lot of oil, too. Religion is just the means to an end. All my personal opinion of course, I am by no means an expert on history or religion.
Peaceful folks in Indonesia only killed thousands of Chinese descents and rapped hundreds, in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1998_riots_of_Indonesia
It was a really horrible event and I'm ashamed that it ever happened. Whilst racial and ethnic tensions [1] have always existed in Indonesia to a certain degree, the event should not be a reflection of the general populace.
I would like to offer you some context FWIW.
Indonesia was in a really bad economic shape [2], the people were frustrated and angry, and were looking for someone to blame. There were already a lot of resentment due to the wealth disparity between the minority ethnic Chinese and the rest of the population, and the riots and violence escalated very quickly.
The Indonesian army could have defused the situation right away through intervention (i.e. deployment of troops), however they was seen as rather complicit in this event for their non-action. Looking back, the more plausible explanation is that they were busy with their own internal power struggles (there were strong rumours of a Coup de Etat, splitting the army depending on their support of Soeharto).
In the 15+ years since the event, the Indonesians have made significant efforts to repair the relationships with the minority ethnic Chinese, and some progress were made. Just to give two examples (which were unthought of in the Soeharto, New Order era):
Gus Dur (Abdurrahman Wahid), one of the President post-Soeharto, is a proponent of pluralism and provided significant goodwill by declaring Chinese New Year as one of the public holidays, and allowing the ethnic Chinese to publicly embrace their cultural heritage.
Ahok (Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) is the first ethnic Chinese Governor of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. Despite constant opposition and smear campaign from fundamentalist Islamic parties, he is very popular and has a lot of support from the people.
Notes:
[1] - Indonesia has over 300 ethnic groups. Most people speak more than one `language`: `Bahasa Indonesia` and various local dialect(s).
[2] - Currency was highly devaluated (Rp.2000/$US down to Rp.10,000/$US), businesses closed down, and a lot of financial institutions went bankrupt and most of the surviving ones went to a firesale to foreign entities.
thanks for the update.
New phenomenon? Have you had your head in the sand?
Classical civilization was destroyed by Islam!
Headlines from a few Centuries ...
5th Century - Spain: knights defeated and heads cut off, placed into a pile so high a man on horseback could not see over it.
7th Century - Muhammad sends Khalid out, destroys Jazima tribe. - Khalid at the Battle of Olayis spend 2 days rounding up the loses and cutting off their heads in a dry stream bed until it ran red with their blood. - Khalid takes the Captain of the Zoroastrian tribe, cuts his head off and lets the blood drain into the soil then rapes the wife of the Captain on the bloody soil! This is the nature of Jihad! - Umar's conquest of Jerusalem; makes all Christians and Jews dhimmis (3rd class semi-slave).
8th Century - Attack on Sind: 26,000 Hindus slaughtered. - Armenian Nobles and their families (children too) herded into a church and burned alive in it. - Euphesus: 7,000 Greeks enslaved.
9th Century - All new churches destroyed. - Amorium: massive enslavement of ALL Christians. - Egyptian Christians revolt over the jizyah (the dhimmis tax under Shariah).
10th Century - Thessalonica: 22,000 Christians enslaved. - Seville: All Christians massacred. - 30,000 Churches destroyed in Egypt and Syria.
11th Century - 6,000 Jews in Morocco murdered. - Hundreds of Jews in Cordoba murdered. - 4,000 Jews in Granada murdered. - Georgia and Armenia invaded. - Hindustan: 15,000 murdered; 500,000 enslaved.
12th Century - Yemen: Jews forced to convert or die. - Christians of Granada deported to Morocco. - India: many cities wiped out, convert of die: 20,000 enslaved in a single town, the rest beheaded.
13th Century - India: 50,000 Hindu slaves freed by conversion. - 20 year campaign created 400,000 new Muslims out of Hindus. - Buddhist monks butchered, nuns raped. - Damascas and Safed: Christians mass murdered. - Jews of Marrakeesh massacred - Tabriz - forced conversion of Jews under threat of death.
Are you getting the TRUE PICTURE yet??
14th Century - Cairo riots; churches burned. - Jews of Tabriz forced to convert (see above) - Tamerlane (makes Hitler look like a saint!) in India kills 90,000 in a single day. - India: another 30,000 slain. - Tughlaq took 180,000 slaves.
15th Century - Tamerlane devastates 700 villages. - Iraq: Tamerlane annihilated Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. - Constantinople falls to Islam after 700 years of relentless wars.
16th Century - India: son of Tamerlane destroyed temples, forced conversions. - General build two towers of human heads following victories so high you could not see over them. - Nobel women commit mass suicide to avoid sexual slavery and rape.
17th Century - Jews of Yemen and Persia forced to convert or die. - Greek Christians forced to convert or die. - Persia: Zoroastrians persecution taken to new heights. - India: 600,000 Hindus murdered by Akbar.
18th Century - Zoroastrians nearly wiped out world wide as persecution increases. - Jews of Jedda expelled. - Jews of Morocco wiped out. - Hindu persecution continues in increasing levels.
19th Century - Iran: forced conversion of Jews (do I need to say it?) under pain of death. - Jews of Baghdad wiped out. - 250,000 Armenian Christians slaughtered in Turkey. - Remaining Zoroastrians in Iran wiped out.
20th Century - over 1,000,000 Turkish Armenians massacred in jihad.
Are you getting the drift on how BAD ISLAM is?
Let me say it again: Classical Civilization was DESTROYED by Islam!!
Of course, but you are not entitled to personal facts. Islamic extremism is a 7th century phenomenon and it never went away.
7th century? This is pretty immediately after the inception of Islam. What happened during that time frame?
Rome wasn't a world power anymore and nothing had replaced it yet in Europe. Because of that, if you look at the 7th century on world scale, it is surprising for modern westerners how few European conflicts are worth mentioning. See for example http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:7th-century_conflict..., http://www.fsmitha.com/time/ce07.htm
The earlier Romans and later Europeans, starting with Charlemagne and the Vikings in the 8th century, make up for that, though.
Muslims were cruel in those times, but I don't think they were anything special (read that section about Constantinople in 602 in that first link, and think of Rome, the crusades, and the colonization of Africa, centuries later). They just happened to have the overhand for a while.
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It seems the QuRan (like the Communist manifesto etc) provided an ideology that drove people to conquer and feel good about it. There have been many reasons to expand and conquer in the past, and they were all usually driven by some ideology. Hellenism, Communism, are two examples.
The political idea that a society should be run according to the principles of Islam is sometimes called "Islamism". A huge reason there isn't much "Christianism" today is that the New Testament was written by people who didn't have much power and so focused on peaceful proselytizing. That is not to say that the Church and other institutions didn't at times wield great political power and seek to maintain it. But rather that the WRITINGS advocate for more like anarchism than a philosophy that encourages converting others by the sword.
Judaism has never placed emphasis on proselytizing - whether by the sword or not. It had a much more exclusive character so there is no sense that Jews living in a democratic country would dream of converting that country's structure to one that follows the rules laid out in the Torah.
So Islam in a political and cultural sense is closer to Communism than Judaism and Christianity. And we see much of the same dynamics. McCarthyism in the USA and the Red Scare are now replaced with fear of radical Islam.
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