Antisemitism

[Fenris]

The pseudo-intellectual nonsense is just my personality

Understood.  Your personality renders you incapable of calling out injustice.

Our exchanges are an example to me of why some folks find listening to folks like you extremely difficult. While I do not think that mere hypocrisy or a cartoonish adherence to a simplistic that's-that, just-so view of the world is a refutation of a valid point in and of itself, I think it does illustrate why it's not the least bit confusing that people see that attitude and convulse with rejection of the ideas presented by the person with it.

You are not presenting any ideas. All you are saying is that "things are complicated". And sometimes they are. Higher mathematics is complicated. Particle physics is complicated. Microbiology and biochemistry are complicated. Understanding the nature of God is complicated. Studying the Talmud is complicated. 

You know what's not complicated? Calling out racism and bigotry and antisemitism. That's very simple.

Unfortunately George Orwell was correct. 'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.' Cicero made a similar observation some 2,000 years ago. "There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it."

I do not know if you agree with Rabbi that the world is full of idiots, but you do seem to not understand that your hostility toward whatever I say is the same kind of blind all encompassing unreasonable hostility that keeps folks from listening to anything you and others like you have to say.

Dude. I'm a religious Jewish guy. On a Christian message board. I have no problem listening to ideas that I disagree with. The qualifier being that they need to be grounded in some sort of internal consistency and logic. And nothing that you are saying is that. Jews are being attacked all over the world. And your supposedly deep response is "wellll its comliiiiiicated".

This thread seems to be full of folks wondering how something so obvious as rejecting anti-Semitism could fail to gain universal footing.

I'm not wondering. It doesn't have universal footing because that's how prevalent Jew hatred is. Because most people, in spite of what they may believe, are not moral individuals.

And then there's you, standing on the sidelines. Because "its complicated".

No one seems to be willing to consider that maybe there are some false positives in there whereby criticism isn't the same as accepting anti semitism.

Yes, and I'm also told that someone can be "anti Zionist" without being a Jew hater. And yet every Anti Zionist also hates Jews.

Crazy, right?

You seem incapable of considering the possibility that the people you would hold up as those of good will, historical knowledge, and moral clarity might not be viewed as such because of their other views attitudes and approach. Wile I believe that a good idea is a good idea even if the messenger is a dirtbag, that isn't how you act and it isn't what you actually promote and because of that it is incomprehensible that you actually feel that you should expect it. People that cannot separate the idea that Israel has made choices that were not in the best interest of Palestinians from the idea that Israel deserves retributive acts from the Palestinians for those transgressions are people that think in the same shallow binary way that you do. People that cannot both hold that Israel deserves criticism for bad choices they

Israel is a country. Like any other country, it is ruled by people. People who are flawed and can make mistakes. And yet. Nobody claims that other countries don't have the right to exist. They save that gem for Israel and Israel alone. Now why should that be, O great intellectual mind?

You do not seem to think that there is any room to do anymore considering than you have already done. You do not seem to think that your thinking could be improved in any way on this issue, and you do not see any parallels between your own rigid reactionary judgemental overly simplistic way of thinking and that of the people that will never ever hear you because they are doing the exact same thing. I think that there actually is a solution and it doesn't require an exorcism, or magic or a decision to be a coward . I think that acting better is a good place to start...act better than you have to, act better than you want to, act better than the people around you deserve, act better than you actually are... I think that thinking better is a fine place to begin acting better....But who wants to listen to a coward.

Well, yes. If "thinking better" means "incapable of making a simple moral judgement on bigotry" then I'm fine the way I am. Thanks.

[Fenris]

Last night, actress Gal Gadot chaired a screening of videos taken by Hamas on 10/7 at the LA Museum of Tolerance. Attendees were attacked outside by pro Hamas protestors. 

Today there were shots fired at two Jewish schools in Montreal.

A poll taken by the Jewish Federation shows that 70% of American Jews fear for their safety.

[Oscar_Kipling]

The pseudo-intellectual nonsense is just my personality

Understood.  Your personality renders you incapable of calling out injustice.

Our exchanges are an example to me of why some folks find listening to folks like you extremely difficult. While I do not think that mere hypocrisy or a cartoonish adherence to a simplistic that's-that, just-so view of the world is a refutation of a valid point in and of itself, I think it does illustrate why it's not the least bit confusing that people see that attitude and convulse with rejection of the ideas presented by the person with it.

You are not presenting any ideas. All you are saying is that "things are complicated". And sometimes they are. Higher mathematics is complicated. Particle physics is complicated. Microbiology and biochemistry are complicated. Understanding the nature of God is complicated. Studying the Talmud is complicated. 

You know what's not complicated? Calling out racism and bigotry and antisemitism. That's very simple.

Unfortunately George Orwell was correct. 'Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.' Cicero made a similar observation some 2,000 years ago. "There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it."

I've presented plenty of ideas, you just pretty consistently choose to clip out a sentence or 2 and then restate it as something completely different than what I was saying. In the sense that "racism is complicated" was ever an assertion of mine (it never really was)  and not just something that you attributed to me because you refuse to see what i'm actually saying (it absolutely is), The complicated part has never been that it's not so simple to call out racism or even label it as bad, it has always been that I reject the idea that if a person engages in racism then labeling them as evil and worthless is somehow the only acceptable view and anything short of that is either cowardice or support for racism. What you mean by "calling it out" is a very narrow set of acceptable stances and appearently everything outside of that is bitter ashes in your mouth that you absolutely must spit out at me even if that is a position that you completely made up based on an unrelated post. More to the point, the exchange that prompted you to take me to task for my assertion that calling out antisemitism is complicated had nothing whatsoever to do with me suggesting that calling out antisemitism was complicated. Instead I was trying to talk about why instances of people of goodwill, knowledge of history and moral clarity might fall on deaf ears in the context of the piece that Sojourner posted. Instead you come along to completely misinterpret what I was asking as some sort of assertion about the complexity of calling out antisemitism. Again, your ridiculous behavior is a prime example of why It would require me to muster the best version of myself to not think of this everytime you want to make a point so that I would be able to judge it on its merits and not on your absolute clownery...and that was what I was trying to talk about, but lets see how you ignore this and go on to tell me about how I'm using all my pretty words to hide the fact that i'm afraid of racists or whatever.

I do not know if you agree with Rabbi that the world is full of idiots, but you do seem to not understand that your hostility toward whatever I say is the same kind of blind all encompassing unreasonable hostility that keeps folks from listening to anything you and others like you have to say.

Dude. I'm a religious Jewish guy. On a Christian message board. I have no problem listening to ideas that I disagree with. The qualifier being that they need to be grounded in some sort of internal consistency and logic. And nothing that you are saying is that. Jews are being attacked all over the world. And your supposedly deep response is "wellll its comliiiiiicated".

well, maybe you are really good at it usually Fenris, but in our exchanges you have made a piss poor showing of it...so I do not believe you. Again you've completely made up this idea that my response to Jews being attacked is "well, it's complicated". You spent a significant portion of your time in this thread bemoaning the reaction that the world is having to the  attacks and in so many words asking why the world will not "call out" the antisemitism in the way you appearently want them to. I think that outside of the fact that a lot of people are racist, the answer is, i'd argue, that many people are repulsed by the views and bearing of folks like you that believe themselves to be people of goodwill, possessing knowledge of history and strong moral clarity, but cannot even hear what a person with a slightly different view on an admittedly hot button issue is saying much less stop yourself from accusing them of all manner of derisive nonsense, cannot help but be absolutely belligerent and hostile toward the very prospect of listening to the suggestion that there is any complexity to the matter if they get the inkling that it might have the slightest chance of vaguely humanizing those that they refuse to accept as having any humanizing traits, Cannot accept anything short of consigning to worthlessness the humans you deem irredeemable else be tarred as cowards and so on...I think that actually is the complication, it is complicated to listen to or be lead on moral issues by people that demonstrate their moral...unreliability at every turn and wouldn't admit it even if they could see it, but they also cannot see it.

This thread seems to be full of folks wondering how something so obvious as rejecting anti-Semitism could fail to gain universal footing.

I'm not wondering. It doesn't have universal footing because that's how prevalent Jew hatred is. Because most people, in spite of what they may believe, are not moral individuals.

And then there's you, standing on the sidelines. Because "its complicated".
 

Again, a position that you made up for me. I do agree though, people believe they are moral when they are not. People believe they see through the BS when they are just cultivating their own heap of BS. People think they have the answers, that they've solved everyone else when they have not. You won't see past yourself because you don't think you need to, because you think you already have, and so too do many of the racists the you pride yourself on calling out.

No one seems to be willing to consider that maybe there are some false positives in there whereby criticism isn't the same as accepting anti semitism.

Yes, and I'm also told that someone can be "anti Zionist" without being a Jew hater. And yet every Anti Zionist also hates Jews.

Crazy, right?
 

How would you ever know? if you've demonstrated anything it's that if someone says anything short of PURE EVIL! IRREDEAMBLE! then you are incapable of listening and just gleefully label them as whatever you want.
Your mind is made up, and it's inconceivable to you that a good reason to unmake it exists anywhere. If you had done anything but repeatedly with a self satisfied confidence show that you are pot committed to calling out what you view as morally objectionable ideas by ignoring, misconstruing misquoting and otherwise taking the least generous reading of everything i've said and using it to brand me with the most ignominious motives, intent and character that you could muster then I might believe that you haven't done the same to at least some of the people that you've labeled as Anti-zionists...as it stands it would not surprise me if at some point a guy said in passing that Israel should maybe reconsider their policy on supply truck access to the Gaza strip, and you flipped out and called him a disgusting Anti-Zionist anti-Semite that wants to see people of Israel blown up by a fleet of c4 laced box trucks.     

You seem incapable of considering the possibility that the people you would hold up as those of good will, historical knowledge, and moral clarity might not be viewed as such because of their other views attitudes and approach. Wile I believe that a good idea is a good idea even if the messenger is a dirtbag, that isn't how you act and it isn't what you actually promote and because of that it is incomprehensible that you actually feel that you should expect it. People that cannot separate the idea that Israel has made choices that were not in the best interest of Palestinians from the idea that Israel deserves retributive acts from the Palestinians for those transgressions are people that think in the same shallow binary way that you do. People that cannot both hold that Israel deserves criticism for bad choices they

Israel is a country. Like any other country, it is ruled by people. People who are flawed and can make mistakes. And yet. Nobody claims that other countries don't have the right to exist. They save that gem for Israel and Israel alone. Now why should that be, O great intellectual mind?
 

Man, this place is full of folks that are so judgemental of other people's intelligence and insecure about their own intellect that you guys really can't imagine that an appearently intelligent person doesn't think that IQ is all that important or crucial to any of these discussions much less that i'd value lording my intelligence over you for some reason. The only person in this conversation that is obsessed with intelligence levels or how intellectual anything sounds is you. Don't put your insecurities on me bro.


To the point, I guess death to America the great satan doesn't count really? I'd count it, but I can see how you could argue that the Israel hate is on a different level. I hope that you are just asking this as an aside and not because you thought that my point was that people don't irrationally hate Israel, because like, I was saying the exact opposite. Anyway, Israel or Jews are not the only people/country that anyone has wanted to completely eradicate, although it may have the longest standing genocidal imperative against it. Israel is also not the only country currently or throughout history whose right to exist has been disputed, rejected or fought over. So, on the face of it your assertion that Israel is unique in this way is incorrect.

You do not seem to think that there is any room to do anymore considering than you have already done. You do not seem to think that your thinking could be improved in any way on this issue, and you do not see any parallels between your own rigid reactionary judgemental overly simplistic way of thinking and that of the people that will never ever hear you because they are doing the exact same thing. I think that there actually is a solution and it doesn't require an exorcism, or magic or a decision to be a coward . I think that acting better is a good place to start...act better than you have to, act better than you want to, act better than the people around you deserve, act better than you actually are... I think that thinking better is a fine place to begin acting better....But who wants to listen to a coward.

Well, yes. If "thinking better" means "incapable of making a simple moral judgement on bigotry" then I'm fine the way I am. Thanks.

No, I don't think that thinking better would prevent a person from making moral judgements on bigotry. I think it would make one less likely to make a judgement like "this person is a bigot, therefore they are worthless & irredeemably evil and do not now and cannot ever in the future have any value to society"

[Fenris]

I've presented plenty of ideas...

I started this topic for two reasons.

The first, to highlight the plight of Jews in the world today.

And the second, to share my own personal feelings of isolation and to perhaps get some moral support.

You're not helping with either. If anything, you're making things worse.

So I am asking you, politely, to bow out of this discussion.

[Oscar_Kipling]

I've presented plenty of ideas...

I started this topic for two reasons.

The first, to highlight the plight of Jews in the world today.

And the second, to share my own personal feelings of isolation and to perhaps get some moral support.

You're not helping with either. If anything, you're making things worse.

So I am asking you, politely, to bow out of this discussion.

Okay, I will bow out. I hope you get what you need.

[Fenris]

I'm Arab and I Don't Understand Why the World Can't Acknowledge Jewish Pain
Nov 13, 2023 at 9:59 AM EST

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Many many years ago, I learned Hebrew out of curiosity and in a bid to penetrate into a world that I once thought was evil and conspiring against the Arabs and Muslims. Once in, I was surprised how wrong I was, how wrong almost every Arab and Muslim around me was. Israel was not on a mission to kill us all, was not conspiring against us. Israel wanted to live, and let live. In the Middle East, it's we, the Arabs, who never seem to let live, even if that means that we die.

These days, I watch both Hebrew networks and Arabic ones. The Israelis are suffering immense pain over the 1,200 of them who Hamas killed in cold blood on 10/7. Survivors are struggling with agony and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. All of Israel is living in anxiety over the fate of the 240 hostages Hamas took on the day Israelis now call Black Saturday.

In Israeli media, I see a lot of tears for the victims of October 7, now mixed with tears over fallen soldiers fighting in Gaza. The thing about all this Israeli pain is that it is almost exclusively in Hebrew. The world does not see Israelis hurt or hear them cry. All the world sees are Israeli fighter jets raining death on Hamas from 15,000 feet above the ground to punish those who killed Israelis and to free the hostages.

The world does not feel Israeli pain. It only sees and hears Palestinian pain. The world likes to take the side of the underdog, even when the underdog is guilty. Of course, they don't see it that way. One billion Muslims have a much louder voice than 16 million Jews, making it harder to hear the truth, easier to tell lies. So the world blames Israel, even when Palestinians started the carnage like Hamas did on 10/7.

The Jews understood a long time ago that the world is not a fair place. International justice is erratic and unreliable. This is exactly why the Jews went out of their way to create Jewish sovereignty, to establish a nation state and a government that can protect Jews anywhere on the planet, anytime. Even if the Jews are connected historically, culturally, and emotionally to this biblical land, Zionism has never been just about the land; the early Zionists were open to building their sovereign state elsewhere, though they reasoned that no spot could have attracted as many Jewish immigrants as the land of Israel.

Many Jews died to earn that Israeli sovereignty, and they continue to die for it—even now. Hamas's 10/7 massacre threatened Israel's existence, and Israelis are now fighting the fight of their lives—a second War of Independence, as they call it.

But what Israelis think and say remains mostly in Israel, far from global media. It is the Arabs and Muslims who set the global narrative, who have repeatedly turned the Jews' fight for sovereignty into a fight over real estate: We lived in this land thousands of years before them, therefore we are its rightful sovereigns. But who lived in this land before the advent of the Arabs? In fact, in many countries that we call Arab today, Jews lived and spoke Hebrew, then Aramaic, then Arabic, long before Islam even existed.

Israel must fight for its survival. The only alternative to war is peace. Yet one would be hard pressed to see one sign of peace in the thousands of protests against the war worldwide. Peace will only come when the Arab world recognizes Israel, but the protesters are not shouting for peace; they are shouting against Israel, hoping that a ceasefire can save Hamas.

I wish I had a magic wand to make my fellow Arabs and the rest of the world see what I see. There will never be peace without justice. Using our numbers as Muslims and Arabs to impose our narrative will not beat Israel and it is not the way to peace.

I write this to voice my dissent. I want peace, and peace depends upon winning the trust of those we want to live in peace with, not instigating the world against them. Peace requires admitting the truth. It requires admitting Jewish pain.

[Fenris]

The hatred that begins with antisemitism threatens the whole world

by Elisha Wiesel, Opinion Contributor

My father loved the Jewish story of the just man who wandered the town of Sodom, shouting the dangers of its inhabitants’ evil deeds.

It was a story he lived.  After bearing witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, he demanded that the world fight evil.  He warned that hatred which begins with antisemitism inevitably threatens the whole world.

But as with the just man, my father’s protests were ignored.

The United Nations did nothing in 1948 when the Arab Middle East violently rejected Israel’s existence.  Seventeen years later, it equated Zionism with racism.

“This is not the first time the enemy has accused us of his own crimes,” my father wrote of Israel’s trial in the court of world opinion.  “Our possessions were taken from us, and we were called misers; our children were massacred, and we were accused of ritual murder.”

Antisemitism at the United Nations has become a fact of life. Last week, the UN adopted eight resolutions, all of which condemned Israel. One of the resolutions was drafted and co-sponsored by Syria, whose dictator, Bashar al-Assad has murdered 300,000 of his own citizens.

The Simchat Torah bombing of a Parisian synagogue in 1980 shattered any sense of French Jewish post-war safety.  My father lashed out at those who denied the Jewish people’s right to exist.  “Perhaps the killers think we have forgotten our history”, he wrote.  “We have forgotten nothing.”

Antisemitism in France has exploded over the last decade. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a ceasefire that would give Hamas time to regroup.  He declined to participate in Sunday’s rally of 180,000 Jews and allies marching against antisemitism, saying “I have to make choices… otherwise, I’d be at demonstrations every week”.

It was only 80 years ago that more than one-third of the global Jewish population was wiped out in Europe.  My father saw Israel as the only guarantee against a second Holocaust.

In 2014, Israel was widely attacked in the media for responding militarily to Hamas rocket attacks against civilians. My father published an ad exposing Hamas as a death cult, guilty of engaging in child sacrifice through its use of human shields. The London Times refused to run the ad; fellow Jews he thought of as friends attacked him for it after his death.

So many of us have woken up since Oct. 7 to a nightmare where we are told that we must accept terror attacks as the price for living in our ancient homeland.  We are told that we may not destroy enemies that are trying to destroy us.

We are victims of constant psychological warfare. We are glued to our screens, watching images of suffering among Gaza’s civilian population that have now replaced the Israeli victims. You and I look at it and say: this must stop.  Which of course is what Hamas wants. Our moral reaction is what they are counting on in order to be able to kill again and again.

We must reject the gaslighting. Israel could turn Gaza into dust from the air, but she is sacrificing her precious heroes in a ground war precisely to avoid civilian casualties.  Meanwhile, Hamas seeks to maximize those casualties by hiding its military equipment and personnel in hospitals, stealing resources meant for civilians, opening fire during civilian evacuations through humanitarian corridors.

Former President Barack Obama, on a recent podcast, stated that “all of us are complicit to some degree” in the violence unleashed on Oct. 7.  But that isn’t so. My father was not complicit, because he was not convinced of the wisdom of unlocking billions of dollars for Iran that could ultimately fund Hamas and this attack.

Israel is not complicit, either. Nothing could ever justify the rape and desecration of women in the southern Kibbutzim of Israel or the dragging of a corpse through the Gaza streets for Hamas supporters to spit upon.

We will likely not convince the skeptics that we deserve the same rights as every other people: to secure our borders and defend our citizens. And yet today we will march, regardless, several hundred thousand of us coming together resolutely on the National Mall. For the just man speaks up, not only to convince others.

Heed my father’s words: “In the beginning, I thought I could change man. Today, I know I cannot. If I still shout today, if I still scream, it is to prevent man from ultimately changing me.”

We deserve to exist in peace and security. Neither Israel nor Gazan civilians can afford this to be anything other than the last battle. This war can only end with the complete destruction or surrender of Hamas. The world may not want to listen to these truths, but we, like my father before us, must shout them nonetheless.

Elisha Wiesel, is the son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.

[ProDeo]

The hatred that begins with antisemitism threatens the whole world

by Elisha Wiesel, Opinion Contributor

My father loved the Jewish story of the just man who wandered the town of Sodom, shouting the dangers of its inhabitants’ evil deeds.

It was a story he lived.  After bearing witness to the horrors of Auschwitz, he demanded that the world fight evil.  He warned that hatred which begins with antisemitism inevitably threatens the whole world.

But as with the just man, my father’s protests were ignored.

The United Nations did nothing in 1948 when the Arab Middle East violently rejected Israel’s existence.  Seventeen years later, it equated Zionism with racism.

“This is not the first time the enemy has accused us of his own crimes,” my father wrote of Israel’s trial in the court of world opinion.  “Our possessions were taken from us, and we were called misers; our children were massacred, and we were accused of ritual murder.”

Antisemitism at the United Nations has become a fact of life. Last week, the UN adopted eight resolutions, all of which condemned Israel. One of the resolutions was drafted and co-sponsored by Syria, whose dictator, Bashar al-Assad has murdered 300,000 of his own citizens.

The Simchat Torah bombing of a Parisian synagogue in 1980 shattered any sense of French Jewish post-war safety.  My father lashed out at those who denied the Jewish people’s right to exist.  “Perhaps the killers think we have forgotten our history”, he wrote.  “We have forgotten nothing.”

Antisemitism in France has exploded over the last decade. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a ceasefire that would give Hamas time to regroup.  He declined to participate in Sunday’s rally of 180,000 Jews and allies marching against antisemitism, saying “I have to make choices… otherwise, I’d be at demonstrations every week”.

It was only 80 years ago that more than one-third of the global Jewish population was wiped out in Europe.  My father saw Israel as the only guarantee against a second Holocaust.

In 2014, Israel was widely attacked in the media for responding militarily to Hamas rocket attacks against civilians. My father published an ad exposing Hamas as a death cult, guilty of engaging in child sacrifice through its use of human shields. The London Times refused to run the ad; fellow Jews he thought of as friends attacked him for it after his death.

So many of us have woken up since Oct. 7 to a nightmare where we are told that we must accept terror attacks as the price for living in our ancient homeland.  We are told that we may not destroy enemies that are trying to destroy us.

We are victims of constant psychological warfare. We are glued to our screens, watching images of suffering among Gaza’s civilian population that have now replaced the Israeli victims. You and I look at it and say: this must stop.  Which of course is what Hamas wants. Our moral reaction is what they are counting on in order to be able to kill again and again.

We must reject the gaslighting. Israel could turn Gaza into dust from the air, but she is sacrificing her precious heroes in a ground war precisely to avoid civilian casualties.  Meanwhile, Hamas seeks to maximize those casualties by hiding its military equipment and personnel in hospitals, stealing resources meant for civilians, opening fire during civilian evacuations through humanitarian corridors.

Former President Barack Obama, on a recent podcast, stated that “all of us are complicit to some degree” in the violence unleashed on Oct. 7.  But that isn’t so. My father was not complicit, because he was not convinced of the wisdom of unlocking billions of dollars for Iran that could ultimately fund Hamas and this attack.

Israel is not complicit, either. Nothing could ever justify the rape and desecration of women in the southern Kibbutzim of Israel or the dragging of a corpse through the Gaza streets for Hamas supporters to spit upon.

We will likely not convince the skeptics that we deserve the same rights as every other people: to secure our borders and defend our citizens. And yet today we will march, regardless, several hundred thousand of us coming together resolutely on the National Mall. For the just man speaks up, not only to convince others.

Heed my father’s words: “In the beginning, I thought I could change man. Today, I know I cannot. If I still shout today, if I still scream, it is to prevent man from ultimately changing me.”

We deserve to exist in peace and security. Neither Israel nor Gazan civilians can afford this to be anything other than the last battle. This war can only end with the complete destruction or surrender of Hamas. The world may not want to listen to these truths, but we, like my father before us, must shout them nonetheless.

Elisha Wiesel, is the son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.

Impressive testimony Fenris.

Do you think it's an accident the Al-Aqsa Mosque is build exactly on the place of the Jewish Temple?

I don't.

It's a spiritual battle.

Not very comforting, I know.

[RabbiKnife]

On the brighter side, 260k+ marching in support of Israel in the swamp today

[Fenris]

Impressive testimony Fenris.

Do you think it's an accident the Al-Aqsa Mosque is build exactly on the place of the Jewish Temple?

I don't.

Well I mean that was the Muslim MO when they conquered places. They would build a Mosque atop another religion's holy sites to show that Islam was ascendant and powerful. They did the same thing in places like India.

[Athanasius]

For the same reason that "Allahu akbar" isn't just "God is great", but "God is greater". They gotta keep telling you, showing you, and killing you because how else will they convince themselves?

[IMINXTC]

 I personally witnessed the murder of an innocent elderly fisherman by a man yelling "Allahu akbar."
 I cannot be convinced that there is not a violent demon named Allah.
He can be either tacit or implicit in his murderous aims.

[Athanasius]

I personally witnessed the murder of an innocent elderly fisherman by a man yelling "Allahu akbar."
 I cannot be convinced that there is not a violent demon named Allah.
He can be either tacit or implicit in his murderous aims.

That is awful. I'm sorry that happened, to you both.

[Fenris]

For the same reason that "Allahu akbar" isn't just "God is great", but "God is greater". They gotta keep telling you, showing you, and killing you because how else will they convince themselves?

Ah, this is deep. very deep. Islamic societies are all failures by any metric. So they all have to go around convincing themselves that they are ascendant. Even as Israel blows up the Hamas parliament building, Hamas police HQ, Hamas military academy, they still feel powerful.

[RabbiKnife]

Self delusion is indeed the most powerful form of delusion.