Why the West has lost the ideological war against Muslims?
- Thread starter S.A.M.
- Start date
Godless said:
It is your assumption that the slaughter is due to religious ideologies. I could just as well look at all the same evidence and say it was a struggle for power. The ME for e.g. The earliest instances of war between the tribes in the ME were related to theft of camels or horses. Since most of them were nomadic in nature, the tribe was a unifying concept and they fought with each other irrespective of religious beliefs. Later, when the Ottomans (non-Arabs) took over the ME and established their imperialistic rule they ruled for 600 years until the British (with their imperialistic ambitions) came forward and defeated them. Inspite of promises to give autonomy, the British divided the ME based on their economic ambitions for oil and without any input from the religious or ethnic groups residing there. They established puppet governments not desired by the people and together with the US crushed nationalist uprisings with disproportionate shows of military power, culminating in the current distrust of Western ideals in the ME. This evidently pushed people to an anti-Western stance and they embraced fundamentalistic ideals to distance themselves from Western ones (e.g. Iran was a democracy before the CIA coup of 1952).
Looks like power and resources to me, not religion.
Similarly all wars with apparent religious ideologies could be interpreted as power struggles over a particular territory.
Besides, people of the same religion fight each other all the time when the unifying ideology is other than religion.
So it provides evidence that religion is not the cause per se of violence, it is a unifying ideology used to perpetrate violence. Hence in the absence of religion, man will look for other unifying ideologies such as nationalism, democracy or ethnicity.
Besides, people of the same religion fight each other all the time when the unifying ideology is other than religion.
So it provides evidence that religion is not the cause per se of violence, it is a unifying ideology used to perpetrate violence. Hence in the absence of religion, man will look for other unifying ideologies such as nationalism, democracy or ethnicity.
Anthropological theories
Several anthropologists take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learned by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed, war would disappear. To this school the acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the religious, ideological, and nationalistic surroundings in which we live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
In reality Sam there are many ways to look at war, either by secular aggresion or religious, it comes down to conflicting idealogies, and those conflicting idealogies, wether you like it or not, more often than not, happen to be RELGIOUS!
Several anthropologists take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learned by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed, war would disappear. To this school the acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the religious, ideological, and nationalistic surroundings in which we live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War
In reality Sam there are many ways to look at war, either by secular aggresion or religious, it comes down to conflicting idealogies, and those conflicting idealogies, wether you like it or not, more often than not, happen to be RELGIOUS!
Godless said:
Oh come on! Nurture?
What about "flight or fight"?
We are born with the instinct to fear or fight. It's biological. Don't you see it in animals?
There are people who are naturally very aggressive although how they channel their aggressiveness may depend on nurture. But human beings are territorial creatures. Why else the notion of tribe, community, nation, color, class, ethnicity? We differentiate based on qualities that appear similar or dissimilar. And we fight to protect what's ours. Men kill for power, women, land everywhere. Why do so many people keep firearms in their house?
Look at ancient history, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Aztecs.
Which one of them did not fight? And what did it have to do with religion.
Violence is a part of nature. What is the reason for domestic violence, gang wars, corporate wars(bloodless but wars just the same)?
And look at the causes of war.
Nations go to war because:
* They have or perceive no other options for resolving differences or grievances.
* They face an immediate or perceived threat from an aggressor.
* They want something that another nation has, such as land, wealth, natural resources, slaves, technology, etc.
* An immediate need for essential provisions for survival (food, water, and shelter) may push a nation to go to war in order to secure these resources. For example, if a nation gets its water supply from a single river, and an enemy force captures that river, that nation would then go to war for the purpose of securing that river again so it can continue to use it as its water supply.
* Areas of a country (such as provinces, states, and colonies) may choose to fight for their independence from that country.
* A long standing hatred between nations that has built up over a number of years (rivalry or other antagonisms).
* Belief in one nation's or race's superiority over others may cause wars as that group attempts to cast aside people it sees as inferior.
* Religion can cause wars if the nations involved cannot agree on what is morally right or wrong. Religious texts, customs, beliefs and ways of life may prohibit compromising with another nation or force.
* Ideological differences can often trigger conflict in a manner similar to religion. For example, Nazism's hatred of Communism contributed to the outbreak of war between Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The Sino-Soviet Split nearly became an armed conflict between the Soviet Union and China over the goals of Communism.
* Some nations may wish to pursue global domination, but all historical attempts at this have failed.
How many of these causes have to do with religion?
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Godless said:
How you raise these premises (in bold).....
Godless said:
... to get to this conclusion is strange - you seem to be admitting that there are many social inputs to violence, ranging from the religious to the non-religious, but then tag "blame religion" on the end.
If, as you seem to be suggesting before you get to your conclusion, that war is intrinsic to human nature, wouldn't you expect to see religion taking the guise of violence in parts of the world where religionis prominant? - and wouldn't you expect to see economic development play a role where resources are an issue? And wouldn't you expect to see race playing a role where ethnicity is an issue? And wouldn't you expect .... (etc etc)