Do You Know the Real Islam?

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Originally Posted by schmenke

Jesus Christ, why can't everyone just chill?!

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That is what most of U.S. society said till the ACLU decided that Christmas was bad, and they made money off of donations to kill it.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Take NI for an example. Its termed as a Catholic vs Protestant conflict but that really isn't the case. It is more a conflict between the native Irish and immigrants who are predominantly from the West coast of Scotland or England.

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I beg to differ on this. There is no way one can simply exclude the religious aspect, as clever as it may make one sound to attempt so to do.

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Originally Posted by Brown, Jon Brow

I'm confused by your suggestion that an atheist doesn't believe in the existence of good. Goodness in humans can have a Darwinian explanation.

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Do you believe in the equally simplistic concept of evil as well, then?

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

I beg to differ on this. There is no way one can simply exclude the religious aspect, as clever as it may make one sound to attempt so to do.

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There is a religious aspect but the divide comes from the migration of a Protestant and Anglo-Saxon population from the mainland. Its not as if the Irish themselves decided to split purely on religious grounds is it?

You can also take the anti-Catholic Church attitude of the IRA due to their Communist sympathies.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

So no, it does not surprise me at all that they find shocking acts of barbarity unacceptable when it has a neutral name on it but fine when it is done by Israelis. I think this isn't so much a religious factor (although I do agree religion plays a role) but is more a national trait, one honed by their experiences both in WW2 and more recently within the Middle East.

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Prejudices have long been discussed in this thread, but isn't this one of them? You have long been defending the prejudices against religious people, but now you have a prejudice against one whole nation? Or are those people extremists in Israel?

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Originally Posted by jens

Prejudices have long been discussed in this thread, but isn't this one of them? You have long been defending the prejudices against religious people, but now you have a prejudice against one whole nation? Or are those people extremists in Israel?

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I think similar prejudices exist elsewhere to an extent. I'd be very interested if a poll similar to the one originally described by Jon were performed on schoolchildren in the UK describing bombing an enemy city and killing civilians to destroy enemy industry. Would schoolchildren respond differently if the bombers were from the RAF and the city called Hamburg compared to if the bombers were from the Luftwaffe and the city called Coventry.

Ultimately though I stand by my point entirely regarding Israel, I believe they do have a special mindset where they simply give themselves far more leeway to abuse others than they tolerate in others.

The paragraph you didn't quote about walls was a direct comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and the wall being built by the Israelis to limit Palestinian movement. How do you think the confinement of Jews in Ghettos during the Holocaust is portrayed in Israel? How do you think the same confinement of Palestinians is portrayed? Why is there no public outcry? Why the national inability to see the direct parallel and cry foul?

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Originally Posted by Malbec

There is a religious aspect but the divide comes from the migration of a Protestant and Anglo-Saxon population from the mainland. Its not as if the Irish themselves decided to split purely on religious grounds is it?

You can also take the anti-Catholic Church attitude of the IRA due to their Communist sympathies.

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An underlying factor which will have been lost on many of those swayed in 1968 by, for example, the rhetoric of Ian Paisley. To many of them it was, surely, a religious issue, pure and simple.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

The paragraph you didn't quote about walls was a direct comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and the wall being built by the Israelis to limit Palestinian movement. How do you think the confinement of Jews in Ghettos during the Holocaust is portrayed in Israel? How do you think the same confinement of Palestinians is portrayed? Why is there no public outcry? Why the national inability to see the direct parallel and cry foul?

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Because successive Israeli governments ever since the country's creation have instilled in its citizens a sense of all-pervading paranoia regarding much of the rest of the world.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

An underlying factor which will have been lost on many of those swayed in 1968 by, for example, the rhetoric of Ian Paisley. To many of them it was, surely, a religious issue, pure and simple.

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Religion is the factor people identify with the most but it is hardly a religious conflict in the sense that the protagonists (with exceptions like Paisley) are fervently religious. Do you really think the awful treatment of Catholics for several centuries by the Protestants was driven purely because of religion or because one was ruled by the invading other? The history of the conflict dates back to Cromwell and the colonisation of Ireland, one driven by imperialistic ambitions. The inequities established at that point are the root cause of the current troubles and are due not directly to religion but the colonisation of one population by another who are most readily differentiated according to religious affiliation.

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Religion is the factor people identify with the most but it is hardly a religious conflict in the sense that the protagonists (with exceptions like Paisley) are fervently religious. Do you really think the awful treatment of Catholics for several centuries by the Protestants was driven purely because of religion or because one was ruled by the invading other? The history of the conflict dates back to Cromwell and the colonisation of Ireland, one driven by imperialistic ambitions. The inequities established at that point are the root cause of the current troubles and are due not directly to religion but the colonisation of one population by another who are most readily differentiated according to religious affiliation.

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But none of this, as true as it is, escapes the fact that to many who were there, supporting one side or the other, it was a conflict in which people divided along religious lines. I'm not arguing that it was the sole motivation, but I consider it to have been a stronger one than you are making out.