Snapped Shot

actually the funniest thing about this whole hubbub is how when the u.s. government publishes a report about the threat of domestic terrorism, so many rightwing bloggers thinks they're talking about the conservative movement!

once again, i read a dozen sites where liberals point and laugh at the stupidity of rightwing bloggers, and then i come here and see good old DMartyr jumping on that particular bandwagon. sometimes you guys are beyond parody.
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i'm shocked shocked to learn that DMartyr sees everything through his bizarre anti-islam lense.

i note that he didn't respond to my earlier comment explaining why it makes him look so stupid to anyone outside his crazy bubble:

http://snappedshot.com/archives/3732-The-Best-of-Mohammeds-Teachings.html#c10107
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"I have yet to have one of you 'all religions have their extremists' piglets explain why islam disproportionately has more 'extremists' than any other religion combined.

Oh, wait, they don't! In islam, an "extremist" is a 'peaceful' muslim. The majority are the 'normal' muslims."

yeah, they don't. you simply don't want to believe it, which is fine with me. all i was pointing out is that to anyone who doesn't already share your biases, you come across looking rather stupid. you can take my advice or leave it. but that doesn't make you look any less moronic than the people i see on jihadist message boards ranting about how violent and inhuman christianity is. from where i stand, you come across just as nuts as them.

"ake your pedophile-loving views elsewhere. No one forces you to read these, and you certainly haven't EVER disputed any of my posts. Like most muhamamdans, you think stooping to childish name calling somehow makes your argument valid."

now that's hilarious! first you call me "pedophile-loving" and then you accuse ME of name calling? i haven't called you names. i didn't say you ARE stupid (i don't know you, how can i know that), but rather i noted that what you write makes you look stupid to people like me--which happens to be true. but maybe that's too complex of a distinction for you to understand. oh well. i'm just trying to help out.

if you're wondering why i come here it's because:

(1) i actually like mr. ledbetter. i don't quite understand why he lets the fruitcakes run most of his farm here. but while we disagree on a lot of stuff, he seems to be fairly intelligent and is able to engage in a coherent discussion with people who disagree with him.

(2) you and cap'n are just funny to watch. frankly, so long as you two are the voice of the modern conservative movement, i don't think liberals like me have anything to worry about. you're doing a fine job marginalizing yourself. which is why i find it so fun to read your work.

oh, and i'm not a muslim (or "mohamadan" if you're committed to the 18th century term that was later dumped after europeans realized that it was based on a misunderstanding of the religion). i thought we went through that already! i'm an atheist who was raised jewish.

given your usual writing style, i guess it's not surprising that you would base your comments to me on a sloppy wrongheaded guess about who i am and where i'm coming from. that's all part of the fun!
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"Are you serious? You honestly believe 'extremists' in islam number no more than 'extremists' in other religions?"

i'm not sure if anyone knows how to measure that. first, the definition of extremist is going to vary a lot from person to person. and then there's the question of how we count violent people who happen to be a member of a religion but who don't overtly cite religion as their reason for being violent (i note that you often attribute violence to islam just because someone is from a muslim background. by that logic, jeffrey dahmer is a violent christian extremist)

what i am saying is that there are violent crazy people in all religions and that you seem to apply a criteria for finding violence and craziness in islam that you don't apply in any other direction.

"How many acts of terrorism have been committed in ... say... the last ten years, by muslim "extremists" compared to all other religions combined?"

see above, but also there's a problem of defining what is "terrorism". traditionally "terrorism" is defined as violence against civilians by irregular (i.e. not official military) groups for the purpose of advancing political or military goals. however, people use the word "terrorist" on all kinds of things that don't fit the usual definition. for example, attacks against u.s. forces in iraq are often referred to as "terrorism" even though they are non-civilians and thus doesn't meet the usual definition. another example, police forces are usually considered to be "civilian", that is blowing up police stations is considered terrorism. that's what it is called whenever a police station is bombed in iraq by insurgents. however, when police stations in gaza were blowing up last january, they were referred to as non-civilian.

because of people play fast and loose with the definition of terrorism, there's a tendency to attribute any violence by muslims as "terrorism" and any violence against muslims as non-terrorism. so if you're looking at how these attacks are treated by people like you, the deck is hopelessly stacked against muslims. in essence, it is a fix.

but getting back to your question: before the iraq war, the region of the world with the highest incident of terrorism was latin america, largely because of the drug-related violence and kidnapping. if you're talking about suicide bombings, by far the greatest incidence over the past few decades has been in sri lanka. the hindu tamil tigers invented the practice of packing individuals with bombs to blow themselves up and had already done hundreds of those operations before the practice migrated to the middle east in the 1990s.

"As for you being a 'muhammadan', if it looks like a pig, oinks like a pig, and it acts like a pig... well, you know the rest."

fair enough. that's just more evidence that you don't know much about islam.
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"BTW, since you make the claim that "extremists" in islam are no more numerous than the "extremists" in other religion (which is very few - certainly a small minority), why don't you tell us which from the list is the small minority of "extremists" in this post:

http://snappedshot.com/archives/3746-Minority.html"

let's see, you're talking about the actions of the most fringe minority in the entire muslim world, a group that isn't just fringe in terms of the 1 billion muslims in the world, but doesn't even control most of afghanistan. but where they do control, it's undeniably awful.

but what does that have to do with any other muslim who is not living under the domination of taliban fanatics? (i.e. almost all of the muslims in the world)

what you're doing is just like what crazy muslims were doing after the virginia tech massacre, pointing at that and claiming that somehow means that christians across the world are crazy violent murders. what you're doing here is not a rational argument. which is why i think it makes you look stupid.
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"Now, muslims have committed over 13,000 acts of terrorism since 9/11."

where do you get that number from?

just last year there were over 5,000 killings of civilians by paramilitary drug gangs in mexico. that's just mexico. and it doesn't count the kidnappings or other acts of violence that didn't result in death.

when you add in terrorism in other latin american countries, i wouldn't be surprised if it exceeded 13,000 just last year! i don't even have to go back over nine years to get numbers like that. as i said above, latin america historically is the region with the highest incidents of terorrism.

catholics must be crazy violent people, eh?

"BTW, I know more about islam than most muslims."

that's a patently absurd statement. seriously, are you trying to convince me you're a moron? if an iranian who spent his entire life in iran came up to you and said "i know more about your home town than you do", you would conclude that the guy is a lunatic.

honestly, i don't think you've ever met a real live muslim. or at least you've never had a serious talk with a muslim about his/her religion. i'm also willing to bet that you've never been to a muslim country. one of my favorite things to do when i travel to other countries (especially in the developing world) is to ask people what they think america is like. the answers i get are almost always bizarre, and sometimes quite hilarious. and yet, so many foreigners fancy themselves as experts about this country.

that's what you seem like to me. you're hung up on crap that you've read about islam on anti-muslim web sites. isn't it rather obvious that the absolute worst way to learn about a religion is from a source that is against that religion? seriously, if you read stuff like that uncritically, you just end up looking like an ignorant fool.
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okay, so i guess you have trouble understanding what i wrote.

first, i asked you where the 13,000 figure came from and you simply dodged the question. does that mean that you don't have a basis for that number? that's what it looks like to me

then, you completely igored what i said about how good terrorism stats are hard to get because people regularly play fast and loose with the definition of terrorism, especially when Muslims are involved. why did you ignore it? who knows? but my best guess is either that you didn't have a response or that my point went over your head. maybe both.

then you ignored the stats i gave you about Latin America, noting that there have been about as many acts of terrorism in that region just in the last year, that you attribute (in your dubious 13,000 stat) over the past eight and a half years. once again, you simply pretend that my point doesn't exist. I guess you didn't have a response to that either.

that's three point dodged! are you trying to look like your incapable of addressing what i'm actually saying, or is this all going over your head and you're not aware that you're even doing it?
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