Forums / Miscellaneous Discussions / Religious Extremist terror

Those who have actually ever read the Qur'an (Koran) do know that it is certainly not a very peaceful book. Neither are many other books, so I am not saying the Qur'an was the only hostile book around. I myself am opposed to any religion, not just Islam. I am saying this just to emphasize that I am not specifically anti-Muslim, but an atheist and even an antitheist--in many ways like Christopher Hitchens, for example.

Anyway, the Qur'an starts intimidating the reader right from the first Hitzb (2-4 Sura) and maintains this attitude throughout the book. The atmosphere of death, fear and severe punishment is always there. Don't take my word for it, but see for yourself; read at least the verse 154 in the 2nd Sura, The Cow. <- Click on the link.  If you have time, it may be worth reading from the beginning. It's scary stuff, if you believed in it. And think about how many millions do. Some of them get radicalized and start to act out their interpretations of the worst parts of the book.

I honestly believe these kind of religions are dangerous. You can find the radical stuff in other religious books too (in other religions). I have browsed the Qur'an quite a bit, and to me it seems very worrying. When I imagine millions of fundamentalists reading it and getting agitated by it, it is not a pretty picture. We are actually going to see more of that picture over the upcoming decades. A couple bombings here or there could still be a coincidence, but let me show you some official figures:

The following are official statistics from the Worldwide Incidents Tracking System (WITS) of the US National Counterterrorism Center:

Number of Incidents, Dead, Wounded, Hostage, and Total from 1/1/1973 to 5/27/2007

Grouped By Perpetrator Characteristic (confirmed Christian, Islamic or Jewish Extremist)

Perpetrator Characteristic:  [Incidents]  Dead  Wounded  Hostage = Total

Islamic Extremist:  [3'656]  13'122  31'692  1'542 = 46'356
Christian Extremist:  [81]  731  339  214 = 1,284
Jewish Extremist:  [4]  5  28  0 = 33

Islamic Extremist incidents are further broken down to:

Islamic Extremist (Shia):  [253]  596  1,889  307 = 2'792
Islamic Extremist (Sunni):  [3'012]  11'125  24'801  915 = 36'841
Islamic Extremist (Unknown):  [391]  1'401  5'002  320 = 6'723

The statistics show that Islamic Extremists are responsible for over 35 times more terror victims than Christian and Jewish Extremists together. And Sunnis are responsible for at least 80 % of those.

Other groups (especially political secularists and anarchists) are responsible for even more terror. Most casualties come from incidents where the perpetrator could not have been confirmed, but the above are from the confirmed cases. Anyway, the difference is so clear that there is no doubt Islamic Extremism really is far more hostile than Christian or Jewish Extremism. That is an undeniable statistical fact.

Part of the explanation for these levels of violence has to be in the Qur'an and the Bible, which are the main sources of inspiration for the extremists. I have read both those books (partially), and as unfortunate it might be, the imbalance of those statistics makes perfect sense to me.

You can call me a racist, but that does not change the statistical facts, nor that this is about religion and not about any race or physical appearance of anyone.

Unfortunately the US National Counterterrorism Center does not report incidents where the perpetrators are militant atheists or extreme antitheists. That is probably because they are so rare.

I dont really understand what thoose figures are ment to say, how many Jews are there in the world? If you look at the Palestine conflict Israel has killed 10 times more palestianians then palestinians have killed israelis.

Since america is somehwat of a fundamentalist nation, and the people making wars like Vietnam and Iraq possible are fundamentalist christians? Why not count in another 6 million victims. The worst scum in the worlds history were mostly christians. That dosnt mean christianity is a worse religion it just means that the nations that was christian had advantages over other places, christianity was of course the best way to justify the genocides.

The fact that so many Islamic people become fantatic has to do with their social situation. You cant compare third world illiterate people to us who got free education, say they are more extreme and blame it on their religion. Its not fair, its like talking about the white mans burden.

Im also an Atheist, I think beliving in something that dosnt exist makes your world view dissorted. Christians also belive in good and evil wich maked everything so simple for them and they become stupid dangerous people.

Ghouma, thank you. I was hoping someone would make those points as well. Slight provocation ignites more discussion.

Obviously those figures do not include war victims. Also wars produce considerable collateral damage and innocent victims. Nearly all of the victims of terrorism are innocent. Of course systematic violence like wars create way more victims.

Israel likes to wage wars officially and that does not count as "terrorism". Still that is equally or even more hostile than terrorism.

Not all peoples in a difficult social situation take it to carry out terrorist attacks elsewhere, even in countries that have provided them with a refugee. Nor does the number of people correlate with the number of terrorist attacks. For example in China there hundreds of millions of religious people and many of them come from very poor conditions. How come we never hear from Chinese traditional religions, Taoist or Buddhist terrorists bombing anyone? There are almost as many Hindus as there are Muslims. Many Hindus come from poverty, but Hindu terrorism is not even nearly as common as Islamic terrorism. Some underdeveloped countries have even chosen to better their own lives and are now rapidly growing a prosperous economy.

I would still argue that religion has something to do with it and some religions are more hostile than others.

Yes, the old testament too is a very violent and often intimidating book.

skaala about your numbers i woud have to say that the CIA is behind most of them.

al quida and US pollicies there are the same. 2 ends of the same coint. al quada so called takes claim of some terrorist actions while its never even supposed to be there.

Its basicly a desparete attemt by the us millitary to take control. Im shure you have heard of it its called DEDVIDE and concour basicly the miltary attacks religious shia sites and them al quada takes responsibility.(they migh convinse some people as the situation worsens wich is the case now) so the people in iraq start to attack al quada itself and supposedly the US militaryy helps to cover things up.When the civil situations worsens and more iraqi's die its the all becouse of the civil war trying starting becosue of the military... ( i call it the military but the real evil doesnt have a name its jsut hides behindes groups of people like america/military)

Sakaal the problem is that terror from western states is not described as terror, america has by terrorism killed millions in central america, I would almost say that presenting figures that way is racist. America killed about 600.000 people in Cambodia without being in war with them, why are not thoose figures presented? Thats more then 200 times the 9/11 attack.

shure religeon was used for violance and wars all trough history.

later it was replaced in the west by nationalism. ofc its ezier to blame religion / nationalism for these things but that wont be true. Its just peope that turn them into these things. Only blameing religion for these thing is not much diffrent then blamgeing wanting to go to collage or wanting to become a US citizens for the war in iraq.Sinse those are the primary reason why people go into the military.

The only diffrence is that when you hear someone want to go to collage you dont start thinking of him as a soulless soldier who kills jsut becouse he is told to.

but when you hear someone is a muslim you do start to think that he is a terrorist.And maybe even start to make him think he is one.

Thats the problem.

Why would you think someone was a terrorist because he was a muslim? Thats crazy, how much muslim terrorism have america been a victim to? How many muslims is there? Im always amazed at how racist some people can be towards arabs, and that it can be tolerated in some countries.

And your right, we cant really lay all the blame for the relgious wars on religon. Its just a fact that uneducated people belive is alot more superstisous then educated people.

Wow..... seriously the stupid thing I have seen someone post Sakaal. FIRSTLY I am also an atheist. The Qur'an is not a book of violence of extremism, and you probably have rad very abstract phrases that lead you to believe it is.

And you facts are SOOOOO messed up. There have been so many Islam Extremist crime for a wealth of reasons.

One reason is that they have been in ongoing conflicts since 1979, and those numbers start at 1973.

Another is that Extremist crimes require very little resources to commit, they are basically cheap and effective. If you look at things like, oh I don't know... wars committed by member of a certain faith than you get way different facts.

Jews have such few extremist crimes because they are so few in numbers and prefer to wage war, and that is apparent in things like the 7 day war, and the amount of Israelis killed in comparison Palestinians killed.

Christians don't commit extremist crimes because the VAST majority of Christian nations are very developed and have much higher yearly GPD ratings (Gross Domestic Product, a measure of a countries Productivity). Christian nations haven't seen a single conflict in which they have needed to resort to those kinds of crimes, and when they do kill people it isn't by extremist crimes, but by other means. When you look at CIVILIANS killed in Iraq by CHRISTIAN soldier, the numbers are 66807-73120.

Also, you said that 80% of extremist crimes are committed by Sunni's, well that makes sense since 85% of Muslims are Shia.

                                               So to sum it all up:

You cannot base how violent a particular religion is based on how many times it has done 1 particular thing. The facts that you presented are completely unfair for so many reasons.

Mr. Ghouma Report 7/4/2007 5:09:52 AM

I dont really understand what thoose figures are ment to say, how many Jews are there in the world? If you look at the Palestine conflict Israel has killed 10 times more palestianians then palestinians have killed israelis. Since america is somehwat of a fundamentalist nation, and the people making wars like Vietnam and Iraq possible are fundamentalist christians? Why not count in another 6 million victims. The worst scum in the worlds history were mostly christians. That dosnt mean christianity is a worse religion it just means that the nations that was christian had advantages over other places, christianity was of course the best way to justify the genocides. The fact that so many Islamic people become fantatic has to do with their social situation. You cant compare third world illiterate people to us who got free education, say they are more extreme and blame it on their religion. Its not fair, its like talking about the white mans burden. Im also an Atheist, I think beliving in something that dosnt exist makes your world view dissorted. Christians also belive in good and evil wich maked everything so simple for them and they become stupid dangerous people.

so i am terorist  i am forteen years old so you imagine me with guns and all things kills

did muslims invent the guns ?

did muslims even when they knew gun powered killed with it ?

did muslims invent the nucler missle ?

did muslims attked from behind ?

did muslims took englind or englind took the muslims lands ?

did muslims and did

so you are the people invent the mess in the world and say because asimple bomb was made by brain and cleaver with no chmechist  made you call us terorist

george washnton was called terorist in this day 4 july when he fought for freedom by english king

as you said jews forteen million made a mess around the world .

i am a new uncle my sister got a boy his age is 7 days . is he a torerst or you imagine his photo with bomb belt .

do a mother like her son to die even if he is going paradise and i tried that when even i was joking .

look and see how many countries we muslims took by power and how many countries is taking from us and yes from us

irak             by america

afganstan            by america

palestine              by israel

kshmeer               by indea

jolan                     by israel

sheshan                 by russia

give me countries muslims took it and islam is not the main relegion in it

i say america is a tororist but in good uniform in army uniform

Islam.

It's all in a word.Many Muslims tell you it means peace,but it dose not the correct meaning is"submission to Allah" and i can see how crackpots bent on death can twist this to their own sick notiones.

the fact is Extremists hate us not for anythin we have done in the past but for our way of life our liberilism,they hate our gender equality they hate our freedom,basicily they hate our way of life, they believe we belong to "the house of war" and untill we surrender to "the house of Islam" we will never find peace.

I do not mean to offend any Muslims out there, I reilise Islam mostly teaches peace and love, but there are always maniacs who are bent on destruction on one from or another.

How do i know this well,I grew up with the IRA bombings in Northern Ireland though i live in the borders of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and although i oficily lived in Ireland British troops would storm over the border and put towns like mine under marsil "British" law, in an atempet to catch the bambers.

Like the Muslim bombers they where fighting for a cause to unite Ireland,I like every other Irish man would love to see a united Ireland but only through peaceful terms.

so you can see I have a fair idea of the mind of a maniac,all i can say to Muslim fanatics is that we will never surrender to"the house of Islam".

so you support these blood thirsty killers?

we have same point and same relegion we are brothers as god made us brothers in islam

Barny, there are always many points of view to every human issue. I also posted relative figures. Maybe you didn't notice the post of 7/4/2007 1:29:18 PM above.

Ghouma, I did not say there is no Hindu terrorism. I said there is more Islamic terrorism than there is Hindu terrorism. However, I don't have any other statistics at hand to support that except the NCTC figures I posted earlier, and they do not account for Hindu extremists separately. So, from those figures it only seems likely that Islamic extremist violence is more common, but it is not yet established in any explicit terms. We would need some other source to really confirm which religion really was more violent.

My main argument is that some religions are more violent than others. I still think that Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all definitely more violent than Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucianism for example.

And if some religions are more violent than others, then why couldn't there be a difference between Islam and Christianity?

I've skimmed through this and seen many ignorant statements so exuse me if I missed an explanation or this has already been done.

-someone said America does not teach evolution: It does.
-America =/= christianity sure christians are the majority, but they are not killing as a result of their beliefs, they kill due to orders from their commanding oficers and the military is made of many religeons.
-America runs on the belief of seperation of Church and state so the church and most of its followers have nothing to do with US policy

I'm sure if I looked I could find more errors.

Excellent point, Iwasfrozen IV. Even if I am an atheist, I like the moral teachings of Jesus very much. They are very peaceful and loving. Way better than the old testament. I believe that really is one reason why Christianity appears to be far less violent than Islam or Judaism for example (see especially the figures I posted 7/4/2007 1:29:18 PM).

The new testament might be about as peaceful as Buddhism or the Chinese traditional religions? Of course exact comparison may be impossible or irrelevant.

terrorist's want the world to follow Islamic law,the western tredition of seperating church and goverment angers them.

Thats not a western thing, in europe most nations have not seperated church and state. That dosnt mean naything, America has and they are still fundamentalist. To become secular is something that comes with education, the more inteligent you are the less likly it is that ur religious.

ghom

ghoma i am with you , what is your relegion

what that mean ?

so i am only with you into defend islam and sy its not the bad.

we also dont have the perfect unite here but soon in about a year all palestinian will be unite

I dunno, im atheist and I would like to see the whole world atheist.....No wait actually I just want people to stop beeing so stupid and stop killing each other because they think some stupid book says it.

Though purely becomming atheist wont stop this, as the religion of a person has NOTHING to do with his morale.

perhaps it would be best if everyone became buddhist.......

Yes but since there is no evidence for it you will have to take it being called stupid.

well im not killing thousends of star wars fans becouse one of them did sometging