Bad shit going down in Brussels

[Rico1304]

An athiest calling for progressive muslims? Weird athiest.

Might he not look at the society that feels the need to compell people who have nothing to do with terrorism to renounce terrorism?

Or when hes not ordering other people around and telling a whole group of people should be perhaps he might reflect on what other religions need to do judging by his website it wont happen anytime soon an I hate a bully pickin on the weak.

Perhaps he might reflect on the 262 school shootings in the usa since 2009 and relate it to tribal wars in the koran.

Here you go then, an actual Muslim asking for reform.

 

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/godless-spellchecker-podcast/id780794967?mt=2&i=364814230

[Rico1304]

An athiest calling for progressive muslims? Weird athiest.

Might he not look at the society that feels the need to compell people who have nothing to do with terrorism to renounce terrorism?

Or when hes not ordering other people around and telling a whole group of people should be perhaps he might reflect on what other religions need to do judging by his website it wont happen anytime soon an I hate a bully pickin on the weak.

Perhaps he might reflect on the 262 school shootings in the usa since 2009 and relate it to tribal wars in the koran.

An athiest calling for progressive muslims? Weird athiest.

Might he not look at the society that feels the need to compell people who have nothing to do with terrorism to renounce terrorism?

Or when hes not ordering other people around and telling a whole group of people should be perhaps he might reflect on what other religions need to do judging by his website it wont happen anytime soon an I hate a bully pickin on the weak.

Perhaps he might reflect on the 262 school shootings in the usa since 2009 and relate it to tribal wars in the koran.

He's had Creationists, Scientologists the lot on there. You think his attitude is bullying yet you defend....oh I can't be bothered you crank.

[moof]

He's had Creationists, Scientologists the lot on there. You think his attitude is bullying yet you defend....oh I can't be bothered you crank.

What do you think Dennis is defending?

[dennis tooth]

All polls are open to criticism. All polls have error involved. And, as Dennis is suggesting, some polls are also looking to get the answers they want. 

 

But unfortunately, given I do not have the time and resources to conduct my own stratified sampling of the global Muslim population I will have to try and form opinions based on the evidence available.

 

As I have stated before, the amount of error I am able to accept on those polls and them still have huge amounts of Muslims is staggering. I can give up a 25% error margin and it's still painting a horrific picture.

 

The reason someone would offer up different figures to those I have looked at it because they aren't some childish, defensive, intellectually meek person and actually want a debate that is backed up with something more than local anecdote and a belief in the good in the heart of man.

 

Show me something more convincing. Bring something to the table that speaks to reality and might convince someone that spends plenty of his time defending the right of the Muslims that are trying to be more progressive to not be tarred by the other sections of their religion that are not. Pretending the non-progressive element is a tiny minority does not help their cause at all.

But its unscientific, a leading questing from an organisation based in washington created by a conservative oil company man, with no control group or comparison study with other religions is not going to tell you anything.

Also appears to be a very small sample taken in some very dangerous countries where most of these home grown terrorists have never been to. Theres all sorts of issues with extrapolating anything from that. They didnt even define defend islam. Or which flavour of islam the participants and the small group who agreed with the statement are easily covered by a margin of error. In the abscence of any evidence the best you should do is withhold judgement sit on the fence, the same courtesy you extend to sds posts.

[Rico1304]

What do you think Dennis is defending?

I hope you aren't trying to understand what he's thinking - that way lies madness.

[moof]

I hope you aren't trying to understand what he's thinking - that way lies madness.

Mate, on this subject Dennis and I are largely in agreement

[Rico1304]

Mate, on this subject Dennis and I are largely in agreement

Stopped clock and all that. Plus, you're both wrong.

 

Listen to the podcast I just posted.

[Razoray]

Islamists and Jihadis - they are the problem. Lots of people more knowledgeable than me say Islam needs a reformation.

Even if Jehovas Witness was the religion of choice in the middle east for the past 70 years there would have been a backlash because of the way the people of these countries have been treated by the west. It's like saying the problem with the civil rights movements in the US and Northern Ireland in the 60s had so much of a following because the people were black/Catholic.

[dennis tooth]

Here you go then, an actual Muslim asking for reform.https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/godless-spellchecker-podcast/id780794967?mt=2&i=364814230

I cant get that.

Ive no interest in any one muslim says, hes no more representative than ISIS whats it got to do with him what other people do with their lives Im not sure where you are going with this. I make a cup of tea my way I dont care how other tea makers make it the dirty milk in first reform biffs.

You are citing him in order to convince.me what exactly, that a billion people need reforming like processed ham or take that?

 

How do we do that? Is it our right to do that? Who tells them what to do? Should we beam mohammed holograms into the sky to fool them just to tell them to reform they asses? Should we tell them to tell each other to reform?

Wouldnt it be quicker just to nuke the saudi palaces and have done with it?

[Naz17]

I wonder if dennis thinks Islam had nothing to do with the Charlie Hebdo attack as well.

[Rico1304]

I cant get that.

Ive no interest in any one muslim says, hes no more representative than ISIS whats it got to do with him what other people do with their lives Im not sure where you are going with this. I make a cup of tea my way I dont care how other tea makers make it the dirty milk in first reform biffs.

You are citing him in order to convince.me what exactly, that a billion people need reforming like processed ham or take that?

How do we do that? Is it our right to do that? Who tells them what to do? Should we beam mohammed holograms into the sky to fool them just to tell them to reform they asses? Should we tell them to tell each other to reform?

Wouldnt it be quicker just to nuke the saudi palaces and have done with it?

He? It's a woman Den, oh dear.

[dennis tooth]

Stopped clock and all that. Plus, you're both wrong.

Listen to the podcast I just posted.

Id love to but cant

He's had Creationists, Scientologists the lot on there. You think his attitude is bullying yet you defend....oh I can't be bothered you crank.

Nar cos I havent defended anyone but you from yourself. Put the knife down and stop running into that ditch you dug.

[magicrat]

To my relatively simple mind people that blow themselves and others up are cunts irrespective of what geo-politcal shit has gone down.

We get one go around and to snatch someone else's life chance away is the ultimate sin . Twisted fuckers

[dennis tooth]

I wonder if dennis thinks Islam had nothing to do with the Charlie Hebdo attack as well.

Ah arise sir robin.

Definately not, Ive had this discussion on here before.

You ran away from our last talk bravely, when danger reared its ugly head you promptly tirned your tale and fled

[Stu Monty]

But its unscientific, a leading questing from an organisation based in washington created by a conservative oil company man, with no control group or comparison study with other religions is not going to tell you anything.

Also appears to be a very small sample taken in some very dangerous countries where most of these home grown terrorists have never been to. Theres all sorts of issues with extrapolating anything from that. They didnt even define defend islam. Or which flavour of islam the participants and the small group who agreed with the statement are easily covered by a margin of error. In the abscence of any evidence the best you should do is withhold judgement sit on the fence, the same courtesy you extend to sds posts.

 

Sorry, you're just muddying the water here with this control sample and small sample size stuff. 

 

The samples are standard sizes, around 1000-1500 is pretty standard.

 

If you want to tell me what sort of margin of error gets you 80% and above approval of sharia law down to something that isn't painting a dreadful picture then go ahead. I can give you a 50% error margin and it's still hundreds of millions of people.

 

I'm wide open to evidence to the contrary. 

[Section_31]

Good piece. 

 

http://www.newsweek.com/isis-brussels-belgium-islamic-state-attacks-dead-airport-terrorists-murdered-439695

 

 

About a dozen years ago, I stepped into a Brussels taxi and gave the driver a note with an address on it. He took it silently, set the meter and drove off through the city’s bustling, high-end hotel district. The gleaming steel and glass storefronts for Gucci, Tiffany and Dior soon gave way to grittier streets.

 

I was on a mission to find and photograph a house where a friend’s father, a B-17 pilot, had been hidden by the anti-Nazi underground during World War II. A riveting book about his daring escape from Brussels through France, The Freedom Line, suggested that the neighborhood where he was hidden was populated back then by middle-class burghers living in neat rows of pastel-colored brick townhouses.

“Why are you going there?” my driver asked, his North African, Arab features—dark eyes and wiry black hair—framed by the rear view mirror.

 

 

 

I told him my story.

“It’s very different now,” I recall him saying. “It’s all Arab.” And then, unprompted, he delivered a bitter lecture on the history of Arabs in Belgium, how they were imported from North Africa in the 1950s and 1960s as cheap labor to work in the factories. Most of those businesses had moved on, he said, leaving the immigrants unemployed with no real future for decades. In January, youth unemployment sat at nearly 23 percent, according to official estimates.

 

“Although there are no statistics for Muslim employment levels,” the Euro-Islam website says,citing the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “the foreign-born have unemployment rates more than twice that of indigenous Belgians.”

 

The street I was looking for in 2004 abuts the Schaerbeek neighborhood, where on Tuesday Belgian police were desperately searching for perpetrators of the spectacular attacks hours earlier on the Brussels airport and a metro station. The Islamic State group, known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed at least 31 people and wounded more than 80. The group has called for Muslims in the West to rise up and carry out attacks on their own.

 

Authorities have said their hunt for extremists since last November’s attacks in Paris have been hindered by a passive acquiescence on the part of Muslim immigrants to the presence of anti-Western militants in their midst.

(On Tuesday, an umbrella group of Belgian Muslims condemned the attacks, saying they “complicate the efforts of society...and the entire Muslim community in favor of a harmonious coexistence.” Previously, the group had been “criticized...for not condemning the violence of the group that calls itself the Islamic State," according to the Religion News Service.)

 

Matthew Henman, the managing editor of IHS Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Center, says ISIS laid out its strategy to exploit European Arabs’ alienation last year in its online magazine, Dabiq. Its idea, Henman tells Newsweek, is “to divide the world into those who are with the group and those who are against it.” ISIS, he added, “aims to make elements within this marginalized population more susceptible to their narrative and then to radicalization and recruitment.”

 

Belgium’s recruiting pool is deep. Its Muslim population sits at 640,000, according to Belgian Arabist and author Pieter van Ostaeyen. And over 500 “were active in Syria or Iraq,” he wrote on his blog last October.

“This number means that out of Belgium’s Muslim population of about 640,000 individuals, there is roughly one per 1,260 who has been involved in jihad in Syria and Iraq,” Ostaeyen added. “At this point, Belgium is, per capita, by far the European nation contributing the most to the foreign element in the Syrian war.”

 

With factories closing amid cyclical recessions beginning in the 1960s, Belgium tightened its immigration controls, which peaked with a 1974 formal cap to limit economic migration, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. But starting with wars and unrest in North Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans in the 1990s, the pace of political asylum seekers showing up in Belgium quickened.

 

By 2010, Moroccans and Turks alone made up three-quarters of Belgium’s immigrant population. The country’s citizenship and cultural integration policies, meanwhile, were virtually nonexistent, the institute says, “shaped in a laissez-faire way for decades.” The immigrants were basically on their own, albeit subsidized by government benefits.

 

And it showed. In 2004, as my taxi inched along a narrow street lined with paint-peeling houses and kebab shops, young and old Arab men on the sidewalks, as well as women in black hijabs towing children, looked like they were looking for something better to do. This was only a few miles from the fashionable, orderly downtown and the stately headquarters buildings of the European Union, but a world away. Just coincidentally, I’d come to Brussels to attend a conference on terrorism.

 

The subject then was Al-Qaeda, which seemed far away and on the run, despite its airliner attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

 

When we stopped abreast the house at number 160 Rue Marie-Christine in northwest Brussels, we might as well have been in Morocco, Libya or Algeria. The men in the street eyed me warily as I stepped out of the cab, took a few steps and snapped pictures of the now-battered house where my friend’s father had once been hidden from the Nazis.

 

“It’s not good to linger here,” my driver said. I stepped back into the cab, and we sped off. Indeed, the street seemed like one of those proverbial pools of gasoline waiting for a match. On Tuesday, one of them exploded.

[dennis tooth]

He? It's a woman Den, oh dear.

As i said i cant hear it, it could be a hermaphrodite for all i care.

[Stu Monty]

To my relatively simple mind people that blow themselves and others up are cunts irrespective of what geo-politcal shit has gone down.

We get one go around and to snatch someone else's life chance away is the ultimate sin . Twisted fuckers

 

Well, that is rather simple isn't it. I'd rather you weren't calling my grandad a cunt for fighting the Nazis.

[Naz17]

Ah arise sir robin.

Definately not, Ive had this discussion on here before.

You ran away from our last talk bravely, when danger reared its ugly head you promptly tirned your tale and fled

I'm pretty sure i responded last in our debate and was waiting for you to respond. You can't be a real person. I'm definitely being trolled here.

[dennis tooth]

Sorry, you're just muddying the water here with this control sample and small sample size stuff.

 

The samples are standard sizes, around 1000-1500 is pretty standard.

 

If you want to tell me what sort of margin of error gets you 80% and above approval of sharia law down to something that isn't painting a dreadful picture then go ahead. I can give you a 50% error margin and it's still hundreds of millions of people.

 

I'm wide open to evidence to the contrary.

 

Its not got a control group and comparison has it? What kind of serious scientific way of demonstrating islam has a tendency for x, y or z without a control group?

How am I muddying the waters, this is standard A level fare?

 

For example, if I wanted to show Muslims have a tendency to wear purple the first thing Im going to need to do is get numbers for say, Christian, jewish and athiest purplic garment wearers. Otherwise Im just going to have a bit of useless data that may stigmatise muslims as purpellittes by people easily taken in by such shite.

[Mook]

Wearing purple is sooooo last year.

[moof]

Stopped clock and all that. Plus, you're both wrong.

 

Listen to the podcast I just posted.

What part am I specifically listening for? And what exactly is she saying that contradicts any of my opinions?

[Chairman Meow]

.

[SammyAftershave]

 

This thread appears to overheating. I'd just like to add my twopenny's worth.

 

[ZonkoVille77]

Wear your seat belt.

Be polite.

Wait your turn.

Thank you for working safely today.

Always smile.

Don't skip queues.

Don't show weakness.

Offer HELP when you can.

Don't lie.

Know what love is.

Beta blockers.

Safe from harm.