Syria and Muslim sectarianism

[Staggerwing]

we dont need the oil.  Europe and Asia need the oil.  its our connection to those economies that make it important to us.

Europe needs natural gas. If we were to sell our new gas bonanza to them rather than to the far east then we would have both leverage in the 'Eurozone' as well as taking Gazprom*cough*the*Kremlin down a few notches in influence.

[Boggit]

Are you hoping Syrians kill each other off, Muslims kill each other off, or all religious people kill each other off? It's a rather offensive comment, especially in the context of a tragic civil war in which most of the 80,000 or so dead are ordinary civilians slaughtered by a relatively secular government.

yes and I dont care if that offends you.  Im somewhat offended about roughly 3000 years of getting shit on by the christian and muslim world so suck it up and deal with it.
80000 dead....  pffft  not even a drop in the bucket from my viewpoint.

A pity. Is this a kneejerk response from you - You seem at the time of writing to have lost your humanity? Like you, I agree it's just plain wrong that Jews as a community have been persecuted and killed simply for being who they are (although - and it's irrelevant - you overstate the timeline considerably). Whatever, the brand of religion, fanaticism is fanaticism and some Jews are not immune from that trait either. I don't recall ever seeing in the New Testament any direction to kill or persecute Jews, so cannot think that in honesty Christians can justify such acts as "Christian" behaviour. If anything, such actions are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. I'd suggest that they are more reflective of societal prejudice and bigotry more than the core beliefs of that religion. I cannot speak for the Q'uran, since I have studied it only a little. If it were 80,000 Jews being killed would you have a different view? I would find it just as disgusting, regardless of the race or creed.

These not the fanatical nutjobs that would gladly see you or me dead. Like you, I have no sympathy for the murderous fanatics, but these are ordinary people. Are you insensitive to the fact that the vast majority of the civilians who have died have not hurt anyone. There are thousands of children amongst this number, are you ok with them being killed? I cannot believe that, on reflection, you really mean't what you said. I don't believe you are that inhumane. Didn't the Nazi's take such a callous view about killing innocent people too? You are better than this.

[GDS_Starfury]

I would say that theres a hefty dose of real politik at work here.  as a country, political system and religion (muslim) Syria has not only waged numerous wars of aggression against Israel but also actively supported terrorist organizations that have vowed to destroy every Jew it can.  as such I dont have much sympathy but neither do I know any Syrians over there either.  I look at their civil war as productive insofar as it removes some pieces from the chess board.  as for overstating the timeline Ill submit that for us its 2013.  for the Jewish religion its 5772.  if anything I understated the timeline.  and while it may not be Christian behavior there were partys like the Inquisition that were done in the name of the Church even though, and I agree, that prejudice and bigotry were the core driving factors.

If it were 80,000 Jews being killed would you have a different view?

of course I would, Im Jewish.  and heres my self admitted hypocracy...  as a human being I find the whole mess disgusting but as a Jew I couldnt care less.  my experience with Syrians that Ive met here in the US is that if 80000 Jews were killed  they would have a party.  perhaps part of the problem is that neither the Jewish or Muslim faith has that 'turn the other cheek' bit to it.

[Boggit]

I would say that theres a hefty dose of real politik at work here.  as a country, political system and religion (muslim) Syria has not only waged numerous wars of aggression against Israel but also actively supported terrorist organizations that have vowed to destroy every Jew it can.  as such I dont have much sympathy but neither do I know any Syrians over there either.  I look at their civil war as productive insofar as it removes some pieces from the chess board.  as for overstating the timeline Ill submit that for us its 2013.  for the Jewish religion its 5772.  if anything I understated the timeline.  and while it may not be Christian behavior there were partys like the Inquisition that were done in the name of the Church even though, and I agree, that prejudice and bigotry were the core driving factors.

If it were 80,000 Jews being killed would you have a different view?

of course I would, Im Jewish.  and heres my self admitted hypocracy...  as a human being I find the whole mess disgusting but as a Jew I couldnt care less.  my experience with Syrians that Ive met here in the US is that if 80000 Jews were killed  they would have a party.  perhaps part of the problem is that neither the Jewish or Muslim faith has that 'turn the other cheek' bit to it.

At least you're honest :) and despite the aforesaid I believe that underneath the "as a Jew I couldnt care less" bluster you're actually a decent man.

I understand and empathise with your anger about those people who target Jews and Israel, simply because they are Jewish. An aggressive attitude to those who would hurt you and yours, or your extended family is fine with me. I share that view. I am not talking about those people.

I just see that 80,000 or so civilians who haven't done harm have died, many in horrible circumstances. I don't wish that on anyone, except perhaps the fanatics who commit the atrocities. Maybe you're right that Jews, and Muslims are so entrenched in their mindset (well some anyway at least) that they can't see each other as human beings, which is sad and just makes them both a part of the problem. I'd be just as concerned and saddened if it was 80,000 Jews. I cannot help but think that callous outlook on both sides is exactly the same stance the Nazi's took towards Jews and others who didn't fit their world view. Muslims may not have had the same appalling treatment suffered by Jews, but you'd think that Jews at least having been through that awful experience would be sufficiently disgusted enough by the Nazi's not to adopt the same callous line of thought in respect of innocent victims themselves.

I recently saw a documentary on Britain's surveillance of Hitler's Generals at Trent Park. It was quite disturbing to hear transcripts of people casually discussing mass murder as though it was nothing.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/spying-on-hitlers-army-secret-recordings/4od#3528251
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/transcripts/bugging-hitler%E2%80%99s-soldiers-program-transcript/950/

Why can't people learn to overcome their bigotry? :'(

[TheCommandTent]

^ What makes this even sadder for the innocents is that it is their own people killing them.  This isn't some other group coming in and trying to exterminate or destroy a people group it is Muslims killing Muslims so it is hard to draw correlations to the slaughtering of the Jews by outside people.

[GDS_Starfury]

Muslims may not have had the same appalling treatment suffered by Jews, but you'd think that Jews at least having been through that awful experience would be sufficiently disgusted enough by the Nazi's not to adopt the same callous line of thought in respect of innocent victims themselves.

I think that they would love to be disgusted by whats going on and most probably are.  but thats a really hard attitude to maintain when you have pizza shops blowing up, rockets landing in your border towns and a crap load of wars.  I have an uncle that visite there about a month ago.  while he was in northern Israel he had to get to a bunker 3 times over the course of a week because of rockets.  I think Israel would like nothing more then to be left alone and unfortunatly the civil war in Syria makes that easier to obtain.

[GDS_Starfury]

^ What makes this even sadder for the innocents is that it is their own people killing them.  This isn't some other group coming in and trying to exterminate or destroy a people group it is Muslims killing Muslims so it is hard to draw correlations to the slaughtering of the Jews by outside people.

not when dealing with the number of people killed specificly.

[Boggit]

Muslims may not have had the same appalling treatment suffered by Jews, but you'd think that Jews at least having been through that awful experience would be sufficiently disgusted enough by the Nazi's not to adopt the same callous line of thought in respect of innocent victims themselves.

I think that they would love to be disgusted by whats going on and most probably are.  but thats a really hard attitude to maintain when you have pizza shops blowing up, rockets landing in your border towns and a crap load of wars.  I have an uncle that visite there about a month ago.  while he was in northern Israel he had to get to a bunker 3 times over the course of a week because of rockets.  I think Israel would like nothing more then to be left alone and unfortunatly the civil war in Syria makes that easier to obtain.

It's not the civilians in Syria who pose the threat to Israel. It's the politically motivated military/paramilitary/Jihadists. I don't have a problem with you saying the bad guys are killing each other and that's great for Israel. It's a question of separating innocent ordinary people from those terrorists who would do you harm.

In the UK recently we had a soldier grotesquely murdered by an Islamist. My first impulse was to think he should be nailed to a tree to die and that if a couple of mosques were fired it would send the right message back. When I'd calmed down I realised that it is not your ordinary muslim who had done the murder but a politically motivated Jihadist and I was ashamed of the fleeting thought of retribution to a community that was not responsible for the attack. I don't have any problem with you wishing bad things on those people that would hurt your family, but when you think about it, to blame an entire nation for the action of some segments of that society is wrong.

To quote Bishop Arnaud Amalric's infamous words at the sack of Beziers in 1209 "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" (Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His.) illustrates the inhumanity of failing to make distinction between those who are your enemies and those who are not. (Incidentally - for an alleged Christian and church leader it wasn't a particularly Christian attitude towards human beings even if they were Cathars ;))

[Boggit]

^ What makes this even sadder for the innocents is that it is their own people killing them.  This isn't some other group coming in and trying to exterminate or destroy a people group it is Muslims killing Muslims so it is hard to draw correlations to the slaughtering of the Jews by outside people.

It is not so simple as that. The Syrian "nation" is fragmented into a multi ethnic, multi religious society with a long history of oppression towards the other segments of society. Under Ottoman rule the Sunni's were top dog, giving everyone else a hard time. Since the French occupation the Alawites took precedence and the Sunni's became second class citizens. The Druze, Kurds and Syrian Christians have aligned with the Alawites for survival as much as anything since the Sunni Jihadists are not exactly well disposed towards them either. Safer to be with the enemy of my enemy... Both sides commit atrocities on the other. Each "side" does not see the other as their own people. It is not muslims vs muslims either, specifically being a Shia alliance versus a Sunni alliance. It is a "war of religion" as much as the French Huguenot Wars or the Thirty Years War with much the same decency being shown to non-combatants as those wars did.

[Gusington]

We sitting here bathed in the comforting glow of our PC screens have no way of knowing who is innocent in Syria and who is not. I do know that saying "most Syrian Muslims would not give a rat's ass if I died in five seconds" is not much of a stretch, because I'm a jew. I feel comfortable saying that about most Muslims.

I stopped caring about Muslims around 9/11 when there were spontaneous Muslim celebrations, some right here in the U.S., some right in NYC. Sorry if that is callous, but it's the truth. And then there's this guy. He may be a Syrian, he may not be. He may be a Muslim or he may not. There are a lot of this guy out there, but I've stopped counting.

[Boggit]

We sitting here bathed in the comforting glow of our PC screens have no way of knowing who is innocent in Syria and who is not. I do know that saying "most Syrian Muslims would not give a rat's ass if I died in five seconds" is not much of a stretch, because I'm a jew. I feel comfortable saying that about most Muslims.

I stopped caring about Muslims around 9/11 when there were spontaneous Muslim celebrations, some right here in the U.S., some right in NYC. Sorry if that is callous, but it's the truth. And then there's this guy. He may be a Syrian, he may not be. He may be a Muslim or he may not. There are a lot of this guy out there, but I've stopped counting.

Gus :)

You are correct that we don't know who are the innocent and the guilty in Syria. I'm not betting that the vast majority of women and children killed fall into the guilty camp.

My concern isn't for the guys who want to hurt innocent Israelis, or celebrate 9/11. As far as I am concerned they are a gang of bastards that deserve the worst.

My concern is especially for the women and kids that have been killed not only in the fighting, but in the targeted murders of families who have done no more than be in the wrong community at the wrong time.

You say "I do know that saying "most Syrian Muslims would not give a rat's ass if I died in five seconds" is not much of a stretch, because I'm a jew." IF, that's true, they should be ashamed of themselves. The fact you are a Jew is no reason to take that attitude.

You also say "I feel comfortable saying that about most Muslims.". How many have you met, or are you talking about the rent-a-mob's you see burning the American flags? That some muslims celebrated 9/11 is shameful. How many didn't? Do you know or did you form an impression at the time from the news clips?

Are you saying that it's ok with you that in the Syrian war families have been dragged out of their houses and killed in cold blood simply because they were likely to be muslim? It makes my blood boil to think it, but how would you feel if that happened to your family, and then someone said to you "well, they were just Jews"?
(Don't answer that last bit. I know exactly how you'd feel, and believe me, I'd help you pull on the rope when you'd finished with them.)

I'm not a Jew. I've met a few unpleasant Jews in my time, some of whom deserve a bad end in my opinion. But I know many more Jews who are very nice decent people who certainly don't deserve that. How can I condemn all Jews on the basis of a few bad apples, since it's plainly unjust? How can you say the same of most muslims on the basis of the acts of a minority?

As to the guy you show. He should be ashamed of himself... and not be surprised if he then gets beaten up for insulting the memory of those people who died. Simply because some people are human sh1t doesn't mean that we have to sink to their level.

[GDS_Starfury]

It makes my blood boil to think it, but how would you feel if that happened to your family, and then someone said to you "well, they were just Jews"?

perhaps the disconnect is that this has actually happened to roughly half my European family once upon a time and it never happened to yours.  not only that but those events were drilled into every post war Jewish kids head from day 1.  now that I think about it happen to half the European side under hitler and the russian side had about a quarter 'purged'.  it tends to make one fairly unforgiving.

[Boggit]

It makes my blood boil to think it, but how would you feel if that happened to your family, and then someone said to you "well, they were just Jews"?

perhaps the disconnect is that this has actually happened to roughly half my European family once upon a time and it never happened to yours.  not only that but those events were drilled into every post war Jewish kids head from day 1.

My mother in law was a child in Coventry during the Blitz. Their house was destroyed by the Luftwaffe and my wife's grandfather narrowly escaped being killed after returning to get my mother in law a toy. She still remembers the fire all around at the time. The same nearly happened to my grandfather (on my mum's side) and he was eventually wounded in Germany in 1945. Had the Nazi's overrun the UK in 1940, there's a good chance half of my wife's family would have ended up in a concentration camp for lineage issues.

Don't you tell me that my family wasn't touched by those bastards when you don't know what happened to them. Bombs and aerial mines kill people too.

I have every sympathy with your family. There but for the grace of God could have gone some of mine - my wife has some Romany Gypsy ancestry, which would be enough to put some of her folks in a camp. I hear what you say and whatever you might think, understand where you are coming from. One of my best friends' (friends for over 25 years) grandfather's was bought out of Dachau by his neighbours' from the Bavarian village he grew up in. Not all Germans hated the Jews. Unfortunately, Bruno's brother and most of his family died in Dachau and Auschwitz. They were nice people and had done nothing wrong. Bruno's dad was a war hero from the First World War serving the Kaiser, but that didn't save him. I know something of what Jewish kids get brought up with, because I have Jewish friends I grew up with, including the Best Man at my wedding.

Sorry for the rant. You didn't know what my family's experiences were. I really am sorry for the circumstances surrounding the loss of your family. I don't like innocent people being murdered either the way the Nazis did it, nor the way it's happening in Syria. I don't care if they are a different religion or not, they are still innocent people and don't deserve to be murdered.

[GDS_Starfury]

Don't you tell me that my family wasn't touched by those bastards when you don't know what happened to them

I wasnt trying to.  Just some clarity about where my mindset is at.  you do however bring up an interesting point.  Americans simply dont have the kind of experience base as civilians that a typical European family has about war.  I would imagine just about every family has those stories about WW2, the Cold War, Spain, Bosnia etc.  its really not part of the typical cultural conscience except as an abstract.

[Gusington]

My family was split into three groups...the branch in Europe, the branch in Israel, and the branch in America. The branch in Europe were all killed before 1945.

I have known some Muslims personally. They were regular people just like anyone else. And I have actually lived among very wealthy Syrian Jews and Christians, but not Syrian Muslims.

As for the picture above, is shirt is much more acceptable around the world than we would like to think...almost like wearing a home team jersey to a home game.