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A gunman fired upon thousands of people attending a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip Sunday night, in a brutal attack that is blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, 515 people were injured. At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert.
Editorializing: Interesting how media always emphasize ISLAMIC terrorists, but downplay domestic terrorism as psychologically disturbed individual lone-wolfs.
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Over 50 dead in mass shooting in Las Vegas
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I'm mentally OVERDRAWN! What's that SIGNPOST up ahead? Where's ROD
STERLING when you really need him?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:12PM (9 children)
There's a difference between two things which we'll call being a being a "believer" and being religious. My family is religious. And the reason they're religious, even though they would never admit it, is because they're playing Pascal's Wager [wikipedia.org]. They're getting older and are thinking more seriously about their mortality. They found religion as a means of appeasing their minds and anxieties about going down that final path we all take. I'd like to imagine I won't, but as the saying goes - there's no atheists in fox holes. If people actually believed in their religions they'd be seeking to die at the first opportunity, preferably in the face of oppression. After all, they know that the infinite happiness and pleasure of heaven awaits them, right? And they wouldn't arbitrarily redefine their religious texts to fit their whim of the day.
And this is where Islam stands apart from other mainstream religions. They have a large number of "believers." Many obviously do genuinely believe that if they die they'll wake up in a nonstop orgy with 72 perpetual virgins. And far from moderating their religion, the religion resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago with religious education, overtly religious politics directly converting religious blatherings into enforceable law, and more. I think a big part of the religion's success (from the perspective of a religious inventor) is because it requires people to overtly display the religion and their religiosity. Apostasy was considered the most grievous of sins by most religions, but in Christianity if a person stops believing you can't really tell it so clearly. In Islam it's genuinely expected that people prostrate themselves and pray out loud 5 times a day, women are covered in glorified trash bags (and yes - there are some exceptions, but they are the exceptions), and more. If you stop believing your apostasy is going to be quite visible unless you go out of your way to pretend to keep believing. And when everybody is pretending to believe, and the penalty for apostasy is death, it makes everybody afraid to ever stop pretending. It's likely not dissimilar from the situation with Nazis. The Nazis never had huge support failing to ever once win a majority vote until they cemented their control and banned opposition parties. Nonetheless, those 50% who didn't support them probably were never going to open their mouth when that'd be a good way to end up getting disappeared.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:08PM (8 children)
Islam very much resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago. Just about a thousand years ago (give or take a couple hundred) Christianity was going through their crusades cycle.
Modern Islam is about a thousand years younger (give or take several hundred) than Christianity, and here, today, we have Islam going through their own crusades cycle.
The big difference? A thousand years ago there was only so much killing any one individual could do using knives, spears, bows & arrows, etc. So while many were killed, there was a lot more work, and a much more up close and personal aspect to it.
Today, we have Islam going through their crusades, only with modern AK-47 rifles and modern explosives. Much more deadly than any of the weaponry of a thousand years ago.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday October 02 2017, @10:00PM (7 children)
Islam very much resembles Christianity of a thousand years ago
uh, nope.
Self appointed christians may have behaved like orthodox muslims, a thousand years ago and yesterday.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:08PM (6 children)
Bullshit. Show me the Christian army running around killing people of other belief systems simply because they have other belief systems. And don't even try claiming that of the US. You know damned good and well we don't give a shit who anyone worships. Our bad decisions are made for entirely secular reasons.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @10:20PM (3 children)
Well, Iraq believed they could stop using the Petro-dollar. Look how that turned out. You see, when your believe system is based on petroleum . . .
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @10:52PM (2 children)
Has nothing to do with religion unless you worship the greenback.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 02 2017, @11:01PM (1 child)
Are you implying the leaders of the US, if not most of the world, don't...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 02 2017, @11:11PM
Yup, I think it's more sexual than religious to them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @03:53AM (1 child)
Show me the Christian army running around killing people of other belief systems simply because they have other belief systems
The year was 1209.
The commander was Arnaud Amalric, the Abbot of Citeaux, acting on behalf of Pope Innocent III.
When asked by his crusader army whom among the captured to kill, he said, "Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" often translated as "Kill them all. God will know His own." [google.com]"
Your ignorance of history is showing yet again, whippersnapper.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Mykl on Tuesday October 03 2017, @06:12AM
Before mouthing off at GP, you may want to re-read his posts in this thread. He made the claim that current day Islamists act like the Christian Church of 1,000 years ago, but that the Christian Church of today is different.
Then you stumble into the conversation and bring up an example from 1209, supporting the GP's point succinctly, before telling him he's full of it. Nice job.