Campeador
Active member
13602030:onenerdykid said:There is no doubt in my mind that belief leads to action. If I was told today that I had 6 months left to live and believed it, that belief would lead me to act in certain ways. The problem is that simply being a Muslim does not definitively tell you what beliefs that Muslim holds. The degree to which a Muslims believes will be the degree to which they act on those beliefs. Is the Muslim a cultural Muslim (a non-believer but has been brought up in a "Muslim" way, similar to most Americans and their association with Christianity), a moderate/liberal Muslim, a conservative Muslim, an Islamist Muslim, or a jihadist Muslim? Each type of Muslim has a different set of beliefs and these different beliefs lead to different actions for each believer.
For example, the cultural Muslim might not drink alcohol and he certainly will not think the will of Allah to be absolute in all regards, does not want everyone to submit to the will of Allah, and does not support spreading the will of Allah through violence. Whereas the Islamist and jihadist both do not drink alcohol, both think the will of Allah is absolute in all regards, they want us all to submit to the will of Allah, and support those who spread His message through violence (with the jihadist being the one who actually spreads the message through violence).
Christianity has/did have these exact parallels, as (most) every religion does. The problem is that Christianity has been exposed to more secular taming than Islam has, but this exposure has, unfortunately, taken hundreds of years to get to where it is today. The reality is that we don't have another 500 years to wait for Islam to get its shit together. We need more moderate Muslims and these refugees that are fleeing the extreme Islamists and jihadists are one of the best chances we have right now at doing that. If our vetting process is the least bit successful, the 10,000 refugees that will come into the USA will most likely be moderate Muslims, not Islamists or jihadists. It is much better to encourage the spread of moderate Islam than it is to shun the entire Muslim population.
For sure safeguards need to be put in place and people need to be monitored in order to catch the small percentage of Islamists/jihadists that sneak through the vetting process. As you've shown, there are these safeguards in place and we are catching them.
I'm not sure you can say Christianity has the same parallels. The teachings of the men at the center of Christianity and Islam are miles apart, and that affects the character of the those who follow each religion. While Christians carrying out evil were contradicting their religion, Muslims are following a more "pure" form of it.
The actions of ISIS are all supported by the Koran and Hadith.
Also, I think your optimism about "moderate" Muslims way be unrealistic. Nothing so far has shown that moderate Muslims have been reliable allies against radical Islam and terrorism. Over 80 mosques in the United States openly preach jihad.
Also, I posted a graph from Pew Research that showed that 13% of Syrian "refugees" support ISIS. Out of the 1,000,000 that have entered Europe, that means 130,000 harbor sympathies to Islamic jihad and the Caliphate. That is not a "tiny minority", or a number worth ignoring. I can find the source for you if you like.
Not to mention the tens of thousands that carry out "Tahharush" organized gang rape and sexual assault of European women. They may not support ISIS directly, but they are criminals and terrorists all the same, and frankly they deserve to be thrown into the ocean, it's too bad they weren't allowed to sink in the Mediterranean in the first place.
As I've said before, there are only two types of Muslims, the ones who follow Sharia and those who reject it. Muslims that follow Sharia are potentially dangerous, and should be regarded with suspicion. Those who reject Sharia should be supported and defended. No one who follows Sharia should ever be considered moderate.