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Newsweek reports that ISIS has announced a new curriculum banning the study of math for students in areas of Iraq and Syria it controls. Also banned will be the teaching of music, social studies (especially anything about elections or democracy), and sports. Books cannot include any reference to evolution and teachers must say that the laws of physics and chemistry "are due to Allah's rules and laws." Students will instead learn all about "belonging to Islam," and how to "denounce infidelity and infidels." Teachers who break the rules "will be punished," according to fliers posted in ISIS-controlled territory.
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The Islamic State Bans Teaching Math to Students
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(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Saturday September 20 2014, @06:05PM
troll-tastic
Seriously, it's like busting into a thread about starving refugees and complaining that western culture is no better because western restaurants never manage to cook your steak the way you want it.
My main disagreement with you is that AC is a troll. The comment was a relevant response to GP's post that the IS desires to go back to the "dark ages". The major unspoken argument for or against taking action against IS is whether to consider them a violent terrorist organization or a legitimate cultural-political entity that desires to create a state founded on rejecting Western influence.
Whatever the true nature of the IS, The current Western view of IS is a cultivated propaganda against recognizing the IS (any by association Muslims in general) as having any legitimate goals or beliefs. The fact that this very thread is a response to a baseless and deleted CNN article gives weight to my argument that the Western powers-that-be have a goal to stereotype the IS as a "just another terrorist organization". But the reality that they are drawing "converts" from many Western countries means that there is a larger context that is being ignored.
That context was alluded to by the AC, and by my own arguments that AC is not "just another troll". Your quibbling over minor details of AC's post, and dismissing their critique of Western "improvements", signifies that you have swallowed the propaganda -- hook, line, and sinker.
I challenge you to re-consider AC's "troll" post -- particularly the last paragraph -- in the context of American corporatocracy. Since you're on Soylent, I think we can at least begin with that common foundation.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday September 23 2014, @12:03PM
OK, it looks like I misunderstood you. I still don't agree with you though.
> The major unspoken argument for or against taking action against IS is whether to consider them a violent terrorist organization or a legitimate cultural-political entity that
> desires to create a state founded on rejecting Western influence.
Maybe, but I don't really subscribe to that. It seems to me they are more about creating a state based on their interpretation of Islam than about rejecting Western influence (although fundamentalist Islam and western ideals are pretty much mutually exclusive, so it's a fine line). My personal view is that yes, we the west brought this on ourselves via two centuries of imperialistic dicking around in middle eastern politics. It's time to withdraw, apologise and let them get on with it. I wish we could help but we really can't. We've fucked things up so badly that we can only make it worse. Let our only presence there be commercial and humanitarian. Maybe then we can start to earn some trust and respect. Nothing we can do there militarily will ever do any good.
> The comment was a relevant response to GP's post that the IS desires to go back to the "dark ages".
I guess this is the crux of it. IS want to ban science and mathematics, reduce women to chattel and rule through overt violence and brutal capital / corporal punishment. That sounds pretty "Dark Agey" to me. Yes, there are some wacky people in the west who vehemently deny science. There are Western countries who still practise barbaric torture and executions (glares meaningfully across the Atlantic) and some folks with strange and poisonous attitudes about women, but those problems are not endemic and they do not represent the West as a whole.
> The current Western view of IS is a cultivated propaganda against recognizing the IS (any by association Muslims in general) a
No, I don't think anybody but the far right fuckwits on Fox are saying that "Muslims in general" don't have legitimate goals or beliefs. IS do not represent Muslims in general.
> to stereotype the IS as a "just another terrorist organization".
Again, I couldn't give a crap what the media wants to paint them as. The word "terrorist" is so over-used as to be meaningless now. If I had to characterise IS I think I'd have to go for "brutal, medieval shit-stains." That's not a judgement on Islam or the middle East or anyone else, it's specifically on that organisation currently running about Syria and Iraq executing aid workers and raping the local populace. Yes, the people of the middle east have legitimate grievances about western meddling , but there is no excuse and no justification for beheading peaceful people and gleefully raping entire townfuls of women. Trying to compare IS favourably to any western country - even America - is either unbelievably misguided or out and out trolling.
> That context was alluded to by the AC, and by my own arguments that AC is not "just another troll". Your quibbling over minor details of AC's post, and dismissing their critique > of Western "improvements", signifies that you have swallowed the propaganda -- hook, line, and sinker.
Well AC clearly didn't allude hard enough. All I read was a barely coherent attack on a few cherry-picked products of Western culture, with the implication/ context that IS stands for something better and nobler. You then proceeded to take me up on my "quibbling", which is why I continued down that path. I haven't swallowed any propaganda, but neither am I blind to the fact that Western culture, for all is myriad faults, is a hell of a lot better in almost every measurable way - justice, women's rights, medical care, (lack of) exposure to real violence, social mobility, a desire and ability to recognise and address its own shortcomings - than the peculiar version of hell that IS are planning to impose upon their conquests. We have been trying to impose our culture on them by force for a couple hundred years now, and that was a mistake. The British learned this the hard way when the Empire collapsed, and now the Americans are learning it too. What we are seeing now are the consequences of those mistakes. Regrettably, the people suffering are not the people responsible. So while I can understand the desire of the locals to free themselves of western culture, I maintain that to reject everything that we have to offer them and retreat back to the middle ages is their own mistake - a knee-jerk reaction that will ensure they are stuck in war and poverty for the next hundred and fifty years.
> I challenge you to re-consider AC's "troll" post -- particularly the last paragraph -- in the context of American corporatocracy. Since you're on Soylent, I think we can at least
> begin with that common foundation.
I acknowledge that the west isn't perfect, and that the corruption at the heart of our government / corporate class is at the root of most of our evils. However IS are no better - do you really think their noble and idealistic leaders will selflessly usher in a fair and balanced islamic paradise for all of their people? I don't think so. When IS get the control they want I guarantee that within twenty years you'll have an elite ruling class, immune to the strict rules that shackle the masses, enjoying the most corrupt and decadent of forbidden luxuries and shitting in solid gold toilets while their populations starve and bleed and suffer. We've seen it before, again and again throughout history. Expecting it to play out differently this time is lunacy. That's why I still think Western culture is better - we are at least trying to move forward into a better future (even if the path is unclear and we make mistakes along the way) rather than back to an ignorant past that was ugly, violent and cruel.