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Monday, February 16, 2015

Our Fighters and Prettier than Yours

Why the Kurds are likely to defeat ISIS:

Yet there are people over here who wonder why muslims don't stand up to the radicals! Could it be because US media finds other story-lines better fit their paradigm?
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12 comments:

  1. Unfortunately, this has not very much to do with Muslims standing up to radicals, and a great deal to do with Kurds standing up to Arabs.

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    1. The Kurds are muslims. The Arabs in this case are radicals. The Kurds were attacked by the radicals, and they have been aggressively defending themselves.

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    2. I know that. But the Kurds aren't defending themselves because the Arabs are radicals. They're defending themselves because the Arabs are Arabs. Kurds and Arabs have a history of not getting along for over a thousand years, whether or not there were any religious disagreements to help the conflict along.

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    3. You could make similar observations about the US fighting Nazi Germany. Why is it important? No one is fighting ISIS merely because they are radical.

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    4. How would you make the argument for Nazi Germany? From my understanding Americans had no problems with the Germans until they allied themselves with a country that bombed our shores. It had nothing to do with us disliking them just for being German.

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    5. Precisely. No one goes to war and puts his life on the line for an abstraction. To demand that Kurds die without any self-interest involved is absurd.

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    6. Ah, I get what you mean now. Got it.

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    7. No one goes to war and puts his life on the line for an abstraction. To demand that Kurds die without any self-interest involved is absurd.

      This is true, but evades the point in dispute. My point is that the Kurds are not defending themselves because they are being attacked by barbarians using religion as an excuse for atrocities, but because they are being attacked by non-Kurds. They certainly are not standing up against ‘radical Islam’, which is nothing but mainstream Islam as interpreted by persons spoiling for a fight. No information that I am aware of would tend to support the idea that Kurds have a significantly different interpretation of Islam from any other ethnic group.

      I therefore find it exceedingly odd that you should offer them as an example of Muslims standing up to radicals. Kurds will fight Arabs even when the Arabs are not radical. Contrariwise, when the radicals happen to be Kurdish, the other Kurds are not particularly interested in fighting them.

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    8. The demand for ideological purity is puzzling. If I want to know what mainstream Islam teaches, I would read the fiqh of al-Azhar University. It is not entirely dispositive, as Islam is a protestant-style religion, but it is more informative than listening to lunatics.

      Did you know that Stalin was not fighting Hitler from love of capitalism? What kind of ally is that?

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    9. I am not demanding ideological purity. I am saying that it is odd to give the Kurds credit for ideological purity, as you seem to be doing.

      If I were to look for examples of Muslims standing up to radicals, I would look for Muslims who not only fight with bombs and bullets when directly attacked, but distance themselves from the radicals by saying that Islam does not call for such bestial behaviour. The current Egyptian government and the King of Jordan have both met this standard of late. I haven’t heard anything comparable out of Kurdistan; nothing (so far) to suggest that the Kurds have any objection to ISIS except that it chose to attack them.

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  2. What paradigm are you referring to? I'm a bit confused.

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    1. "Narrative" might have been a slightly better word.

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