Let stereotype go

[snopes]

Close your eyes and picture this: A jet with 111 passengers and crewmembers is about to land when a religious fanatic stands up and declares that he has a bomb.

Now open your eyes. Was your first thought anger that Muslim terrorists were at it again? Or perhaps you wondered why Muslims do this so often? Or maybe you're frustrated that we haven't done enough to stop these Arab terrorists from hijacking jets?

But this time, the alleged hijacker wasn't a Muslim. Or even an Arab. The suspect in the Sept. 9 Aeromexico Flight 576 incident is José Flores, 44, a Bible-carrying Christian who was overheard saying, "Christ is coming soon."

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/...eotype-go.html

[JoeBentley]

You know not to defend stereotyping, but there is a difference between a trend and a freak occurrence and between a large trend and a small trend.

So one insane Bible thumping hijacker doesn't reduce the number of Quran thumping ones. Nor does "But Christians can be crazy hijackers too!" really make me sleep any better at night.

[ASL]

Originally Posted by snopes

But this time, the alleged hijacker wasn't a Muslim. Or even an Arab. The suspect in the Sept. 9 Aeromexico Flight 576 incident is José Flores, 44, a Bible-carrying Christian who was overheard saying, "Christ is coming soon."

What do you want to bet your average racist of concern is thinking "Flores... sounds ethnic, probably darkish skinned. I'm sure he at least looks arab."

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

So one insane Bible thumping hijacker doesn't reduce the number of Quran thumping ones. Nor does "But Christians can be crazy hijackers too!" really make me sleep any better at night.

Tell me about it. I've long known that Christians can be insane killers too, and I still can't get back onto a normal sleep schedule. On the bright side, if I keep this up for another 9 months I'll be pre-adjusted to a US sleep schedule.

[UEL]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

You know not to defend stereotyping, but there is a difference between a trend and a freak occurrence and between a large trend and a small trend.

I follow you, but would like to submit that there has not been a trend of Islamic highjackers since the '70s. In the early part of this decade there was one large event and one attempted.

This does not a trend make.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by UEL

I follow you, but would like to submit that there has not been a trend of Islamic highjackers since the '70s. In the early part of this decade there was one large event and one attempted.

This does not a trend make.

True. But if you don't look at the 9/11 events as hijackings but as suicide attacks, the trend becomes a little clearer.

Christians haven't been strapping explosives, razor blades and rat poison to themselves and walking into crowded areas at rate of hundreds a year.

Everyone is a potential terrorist, that is smack you in the face obvious. But to pretend that every social/political/religious group has the same likelihood of producing one is idealistic nonsense.

Timothy McVeigh was a fluke. A lone idiot supported by the ideology of maybe a few thousand. Mohammad Atta was not.

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

. . . Timothy McVeigh was a fluke. A lone idiot supported by the ideology of maybe a few thousand. Mohammad Atta was not.

Tricky... Abortion clinic bombers and snipers are a fairly substantial class of terrorists. I know I'm going back a way into the past, but racist lynchings and the firebombings of black churches were, not all that long ago, horrifyingly commonplace, and the predation of white supremacists in the U.S. northwest were, more recently, a serious threat to many blacks, Jews, gays, asians, and others. The recent "FED" killing in Kentucky could be a lone incident, but it also might be the first overt act in a new campaign of domestic terrorism. American gays are well aware of "gay-bashing," a term that understates a wave of homophobic violence.

Ultimately, I agree with you that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is (slightly) more dangerous, world-wide, than fundamentalist Christian terrorism. The Christian world offers more alternatives, more ways by which we can get our point across. Our whole world-view is more tolerant of dissent; we don't have (not quite, anyway!) the mind-set that puts open death-threats on authors. Christian lunatic medievalists have been (slightly) more marginalized in our society than Islamic lunatic medievalists are in theirs. Ours protest funerals and put up crazy web-sites; theirs run entire nations.

Silas

[UEL]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

True. But if you don't look at the 9/11 events as hijackings but as suicide attacks, the trend becomes a little clearer.

Roger. I was referring to highjackings only, not to the greater terror toolbox.

Now, when looking at suicide attacks, I'll submit that there is only one religion and one cultural identity that accepts or promotes suicide attacks. So, identifying trends outside that would be difficult.

McVeigh's attack was an act of domestic terror. By classifying it as a bombing attack, it is a fluke. But, classifying it with other domestic terror attacks (shootings, anthrax etc) it may be the start of a trend.

However, I must confess that I don't know enough about this to carry on as well as I would like. However, a book I have read discusses the phenomenon of terrorism in the US. It was a book called Blind Spot, by Timothy Naftali. It identified trends in global and domestic terror from WWII to 2001. It's a good read.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by UEL

McVeigh's attack was an act of domestic terror. By classifying it as a bombing attack, it is a fluke.

Columbine was a bombing attack. It only turned into a shooting spree after the bombs failed to detonate.

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

Tricky... Abortion clinic bombers and snipers are a fairly substantial class of terrorists.

By "fairly substantial", we're still talking, what, a thousand times less likely to happen?

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

Ultimately, I agree with you that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism is (slightly) more dangerous, world-wide, than fundamentalist Christian terrorism.

And the United States military is (slightly) more dangerous than the military of Luxembourg.

[Malruhn]

Originally Posted by snopes

Columbine was a bombing attack. It only turned into a shooting spree after the bombs failed to detonate.

Snopes, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original plan to let the bombs go off, and then just shoot into the masses of fleeing students afterward?? I was under the assumption that the bombs were just a means to that end.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Malruhn

Snopes, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the original plan to let the bombs go off, and then just shoot into the masses of fleeing students afterward?? I was under the assumption that the bombs were just a means to that end.

The bombs were to be the primary means of killing as many people as possible; shooting those who managed to escape was just supposed to be a bonus. They also had bombs in their cars and intended to drive into the masses of law enforcement, emergency rescue workers, and reporters who responded and blow them up, too.

[Mad Jay]

Originally Posted by UEL

I follow you, but would like to submit that there has not been a trend of Islamic highjackers since the '70s. In the early part of this decade there was one large event and one attempted.

This does not a trend make.

Not true

Indian airlines flight 814
Air france flight 8969
Singapore airlines 117

[Silas Sparkhammer]

Originally Posted by Broken Sword

By "fairly substantial", we're still talking, what, a thousand times less likely to happen?

Well, where I live, there have been clinics firebombed by Christians, but no targets bombed by Muslims. So...no.

Silas

[Stoneage Dinosaur]

Originally Posted by UEL

Now, when looking at suicide attacks, I'll submit that there is only one religion and one cultural identity that accepts or promotes suicide attacks. So, identifying trends outside that would be difficult.

There are certainly nationalist and non-Islamic organisations which have used suicide attacks, the Tamil Tigers being one obvious example.

[Eddylizard]

I'm not sure it makes the damndest bit of difference to the terror angle if it's a suicide terrorist blowing up or shooting at innocent civilians, or a car bomb on a timer, or a concealed sniper with an escape plan.

Now debateably, the suicide bomber has the "better" delivery method, but that's where the distiction ends.

All this crap about aircraft has diverted everyone from the fact that there are still lots of soft targets. If you are so inclined go to the pre check in waiting area of an airport with a bag full of explosives. Go to a large mall on a Saturday afternoon. Go to a ball game. Why are aircraft the focus of security?

As the writer in the OP pointed out, there have been plenty of deaths as the result of non-muslim terrorist action. The IRA alone (allegedly Catholic aligned ) were responsible for the deaths of about as many people killed in 9/11 albeit over a period of decades rather than hours.

Then we have ETA (okay I'm not sure if their fireworks on the Spanish beaches have actually killed anyone) Baader Meinhoff, The Red Army Faction... None of them were are are muslim.

[Stoneage Dinosaur]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

The IRA alone (allegedly Catholic aligned ) were responsible for the deaths of about as many people killed in 9/11 albeit over a period of decades rather than hours.

Not the IRA alone, whilst they may have been reponsible for about half of all deaths during The Troubles, there were many other organisations involved. Here's a table from the CAIN web service which gives some estimates of the figures: Organisation Responsible for the death

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by Eddylizard

The IRA alone (allegedly Catholic aligned ) were responsible for the deaths of about as many people killed in 9/11 albeit over a period of decades rather than hours.

And honestly doesn't that drive the point home more than anything? The Provisional IRA Campaign running from 1969 to 1997 and involving about 8,000 active members and armed with a fairly respectable stockpile of military grade weaponry took almost a half a century to take as many lives as 20 hijackers did in one morning with 20 bucks worth of boxcutters. And the Northern Ireland events are probably the worst case of Western Religious based terrorism we have. The IRA would be the frickin' Salvation Army in many parts of the Muslim world. They are periods in recent history in the Middle East where if the entire IRA campaign had happened during a decade it would of been seen as a "lull in the fighting."

Oklahoma City, the Beltway Sniper, the abortion clinic bombings... yes these were all horrible events. But all together they killed about 200 people and are widely seen of as horrible events and the people who perpetrated them monsters within our own country.

Go into your local Starbucks and find someone who supports Timothy McVeigh, John Allen Muhammad, or James Charles Kopp. It would probably take you a while. Now go to a coffee shop in even a moderate Muslim country like Egypt and see how long it takes for you to find someone for whom Bin Laden is a personal hero.

I know saying things like "Religions ideologies don't matter" and pretending that terrorism and religious affiliations have no connections sounds nice and it has benefits from a political standpoint, but reality simply doesn't always work that way.

So yeah from a certain point of view all extremists are the same, but the society that create them aren't. There's a reason Fred Phelps is seen a raving loon by pretty much every person in the country who isn't related to him while a Muslim equivalent to Fred Phelps in many countries would easily be able to drum up support for his horrible ideas and put his terrible plans into action. Hell the Pope, the spirtiual authority for 1/6th population for whom about a billion people believe is the infallible word of God doesn't probably actually convice as many people to start slaughtering other people as a mid-level Muslim Cleric can.

There's an X factor at work here somewhere. I have no idea if it falls in the religious, political, or social realm but something, something in Western Civilization tends to marginalizes our extremists better then it does in the Muslim world and stops them when they are just crazy and not yet dangerous. To pretend we're all the same is a dangerous idea.

[Mad Jay]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

There's an X factor at work here somewhere. I have no idea if it falls in the religious, political, or social realm but something, something in Western Civilization tends to marginalizes our extremists better then it does in the Muslim world and stops them when they are just crazy and not yet dangerous. To pretend we're all the same is a dangerous idea.

I think more than anything else, the differrence is education, not religion. In Muslim faith (as in any other faith) well-educated communities tend me more moderate. If you have been taught to think critically, then you are going to question opinions put in front of you. If you aren't then appeals to emotion are going to work better on you. It just so happens that many Muslim majority nations happen to have low levels of education, which provides a constant supply of gullible recruits, and have the natural resources that can fund their activities on a global scale.

[Mr. Billion]

Originally Posted by snopes

Close your eyes and picture this: A jet with 111 passengers and crewmembers is about to land when a religious fanatic stands up and declares that he has a bomb.

Now open your eyes. Was your first thought anger that Muslim terrorists were at it again? Or perhaps you wondered why Muslims do this so often? Or maybe you're frustrated that we haven't done enough to stop these Arab terrorists from hijacking jets?

How are you going to continue reading after your eyes are closed?

[Broken Sword]

Originally Posted by Silas Sparkhammer

Well, where I live, there have been clinics firebombed by Christians, but no targets bombed by Muslims. So...no.

Your post mentioned racist lynchings, firebombings, white separatists in the U.S. northwest, kentucky, and extremism worldwide. I thought it would be fair to compare the prevalence of such terrorism on a worldwide scale, like you did in your post, rather than suddenly reducing it to where you live. You also mentioned snipers in the exact sentence where you said it was substantial - was that happening where you live too?


p.s. - do you have a cite for Christians firebombing abortion clinics where you live? I would especially like to see enough cites to establish that they are a "fairly substantial" class of terrorists where you live.