Only 28% of Pakistanis Have Unfavorable Opinion of ISIS

It's not an argument. The "Islamic world" is an abstraction.

Those areas are spread out all over Asia and Africa and span dozens of independent countries with millions of people residing in them who are leading separate lives characterized by differences in sect, language, ethnicity, and culture. Your attempt to treat this diffuse, disparate assemblage of peoples and nations as a monolithic "Islamic world" is typical of your collectivist ideology which attempts to subsume individual identities under abstract, often simplistic group identities.

Not really. Thinking about something and acting on it are totally different things.

Unless you want to lump all Muslims into the same group, then it's just the "Islamic world".

Pakistan has been a US ally for decades.

 

29% of Christians do not have an unfavorable view of ISIS, this clearly shows what I have often thought. There is not much difference between the goals of ISIS and those of the Christian right if only they get the chance to have enough power. Nigeria is just such a country and that is why we can judge what the Christian Right really want.

" An overwhelming number of Nigerian Christians (71%) had an unfavorable view of ISIS"

 

I don't think we have to be "accepting enough of Islam". I just think the US government needs to stop subverting, invading, occupying, bombing, and torturing Muslims who committed no aggression against my country.

And, yes, being bombed and invaded can drive people to extreme forms of resistance, including joining a group that they would otherwise not join. Not a very complicated concept to understand.

You can't show that because the alleged talking point is not based on a conventional, quantitative metric (re: overwhelming).

 

I'm sure they would. So how many times has Hezbollah attacked our homeland?

Only if you consider any group who resists western imperialism to be "terrorists", which I don't. I reserve the "terrorism" label for groups who intentionally prioritize targeting civilians over targeting the military. Many militant Shia groups have attacked US armed forces in Iraq and elsewhere throughout the Middle East, but I don't consider that "terrorism" because it's directed at a military force and not civilians.

So when are you going to start patrolling the streets in order to stop rapists from waylaying women in dark allies? I mean, you disapprove of rape, right?

 

It's referring to areas of the world where the Islamic religion is dominant, like I stated.

The strength of Islam is that it transcends national borders in a very real way. It's how Muslim extremists living in the US, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere look and act very much like extremists living in the Middle East. And, thanks to the internet, this world is much more connected than it used to be. You're simply trying to obfuscate the issue by throwing in different details that they really don't care about.

But it's amazing how often the two go hand in hand together. The Muslims that get caught by the surveillance methods that libertarians oppose are almost exclusively radical in their belief system.

I never said there weren't regional differences. I can't decide if that's a strawman or a non-sequitur. Fallacious logic either way, though.

So what? Does that somehow change the fact that the majority of the country does not have an unfavorable opinion of ISIS? This is the same country that shielded Bin Laden for years, so it shouldn't come as a surprise.

 

Great, irrelevant to my point, which was that of a left-wing origin, signifying that we in the West need to tolerate Islam, or else the rejection might cause peaceful, good Muslims, who apparently reject extremist ideology, to decide to adopt that ideology anyway. Their goodness is a fragile thing, apparently.

When statistics show that the majority of a country does not reject extremist Islam, I can comfortably conclude that the "tiny minority of extremists" and "most Muslims reject extremism" talking points are defeated.

Even in other countries, I have a hard time believing most people are looking at 30-40% of the population as "tiny minorities", unless they are engaging in some sort of dishonest game of semantics.

 

I'm glad you agree that Shiites in Iran would be more willing to support Hezbollah. That really helps in addressing the point you made earlier about them not supporting ISIS, giving the impression that they don't support extremist groups.

Why should I care how you personally choose to define terrorist groups? You can define it however you like, using whatever subjective terminology you prefer at the time.

 

Those areas are not a monolithic "Islamic world". They are highly diffuse, heterogeneous, and idiosyncratic.

Again, "Islam" is not some monolithic entity that can be generalized about in the way you are attempting to do. Aside from the differences in nationality, ethnicity, language, and culture, there is the obvious schism between Islamic sects, the two major ones being Sunni and Shia. Acting like all Muslims belong to some kind of monolithic entity that can be generalized ad nauseam is nonsensical and simplistic in the extreme.

It's not amazing at all. Obviously someone has to think about something before they do it. But only a tiny minority of Muslims are actually engaging in acts of terrorism.

Which surveillance methods are those, exactly?

It is implied by your attempts to generalize every Muslim on the planet by lumping them into some abstraction you made up.

So the US government has been deeply involved in the internal machinations of Pakistan for decades, to include the past decade of bombing and special operations missions. Perhaps you should incorporate this fact into your understanding of the situation there.

 

"So when are you going to start patrolling the streets in order to stop rapists from waylaying women in dark allies?"

HMMM.......I already do <at least as much as one men can do.....>

So when ya gonna do something besides post 1 of some 28 THOUSAND times on this web site (and I'm really sure quite a few others!!!).
Sounds very silly for you, a 28 THOUSAND poser (opps...poster) to make that comment.
HMMM......let's say you've been on this website for 2 years. 28 THOUSAND posts means that EVERY day you posted over 35 times just on this site. Kinda don't have anything to do, do ya?

 

Except Pakistan does not represent the "Islamic world" or the "worldwide population of Muslims".

Why are you including the "don't know" category as extremists?

 

I don't know the exact number for Pakistanis who know about 9/11, but a poll that was conducted in 2008 said that 72% of the Pakistanis they asked said they did not know who was behind the 9/11 attacks, though I couldn't tell you how many of those people didn't know because they've never heard of the attacks. According to Imran Khan who is familiar with the tribal areas of Pakistan, the majority in those areas do not know what 9/11 is, but that's just the tribal areas

As for how many Pakistanis know about ISIS, according to your own source 62% of Pakistanis do not feel they know enough about ISIS to say whether they view them favorably or not. Though as we have seen in every Muslim country that exists today, the more people learn of the actions of these terrorist groups, the more they view them unfavorably.

 

Not at all my friend. Their first priority is and always has been to achieve territorial independence from the West. The call of quite literally every war mongering institution is that of self-defense. Even openly totalitarian regimes justify their wars in terms of self-defense: what better way to get the people on your side than to speculate on their imminent death due to foreign invasion.

Put yourself in the following situation:

• A few generations ago, foreigners came to your lands and changed your borders without mind to sectarian divisions
• For the past 30 years, foreigners have intermittently occupied your lands.
• For 9 years preceding that, an opposing group of foreigners occupied your lands.
• In the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone, 200,000 innocents were killed by these foreigners.
• Drones inhabit the skies, killing 1440 non-targets trying to kill 40 targets. Death or serious injury can come at any moment of your life - even at weddings and while peacefully farming.
• These same foreigners call you a terrorist regardless of whether you're a moderate or a fundamentalist.
• The pro-foreigner government which was set up following this occupation has excluded your religious minority from participation in government.
• Some ISIS recruiter comes up to you and asks "so... would you like to join the fight against these foreigners and the government in Baghdad/Aleppo?"

What exactly can one expect? This is, in large part, a situation created by ourselves in the search of geopolitical supremacy. The Middle East is a very important region strategically.

I am NOT SAYING that any of this justifies terrorism. But it's important in war to understand the motivations of your enemies. Our intervention in the region is the prime recruiting tool which ISIS has. Nor am I saying that non-interventionism is the only way out of this situation.

We have taken the absolute worst path when it comes to the Middle East. You need to either stay out of it, or you need to seriously commit. We have instead chosen to stay on the fence. This creates animosity in the community which your are occupying, and does very little to actually achieve military goals. War is like poker. You either fold, or you play the hand as hard as you can. Instead, we're clumsily bluffing every old Ace+5 hand. We are going to lose our chips.

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So I feel that my position is a bit more nuanced than "arghhhh it's all these evil corporate fatcats who are forcing the peaceful Muslims to attack us". Take it as you will, but it seems like we usually see eye to eye. I therefore respect your opinion and am anticipating your response.

Thanks Ethereal.

 

Yet they all arrived at Islam being the dominant religion in their lands.

Approximately 90% of Muslims around the world are Sunnis, so that "schism" you referred to is not really a material one. Furthermore, Sunnis and Shiites disagree on very little on a spiritual level. Their differences were mostly political in origin, with Shiites recognizing one successor to Muhammad, while Sunnis did not. Both sects follow Muhammad's teachings, both have engaged in violent jihad, both in the present and in the past.

Criminals are the minority in every society, that doesn't mean the rest of society shouldn't be concerned about them and the crimes they commit.

Wire tapping, internet surveillance, etc.

I'm not responsible for what you choose to interpret. I'm only responsible for what I actually write.

Perhaps, but I still don't see how this would cause the majority in Pakistan to not have an unfavorable view of ISIS, a group who has killed large amounts of Muslims across the Middle East and elsewhere. I also don't see how Pakistan generates more extremism, when Palestine deals with Israel and its US backer in a much more constant situation.

 

I don't really care if they support "extremists" or not, as long as those "extremists" stay in their region of the world, which is what they typically do.

I never said you should care. I don't really care if you care, to be honest. It's just my opinion and I'm providing it for the edification of whoever wants to read it.

But assuming you were interested in a logically sound conception of terrorism as opposed to just mindlessly deferring to the US government's arbitrary designations of such, that would be one reason why you should care.

 

Which is probably why I included other countries on the list.

So it means nothing that 20-30% of Muslims polled "don't know" whether they have a positive or negative opinion of ISIS? That they are indifferent towards the group?

 

In other words, you aren't doing it. So, according to your logic, that must mean you're not genuinely opposed to rape.

What does my post count have to do with your weak arguments?

I was being sarcastic...

 

So 72% of Muslims polled in Pakistan think that it could have been someone else, besides radical Muslims, who perpetuated the 9/11 attacks. Sounds like an extremist belief. They likely thought the Jews were behind it, or George W Bush. The latter theory actually has had some support among the Western left, oddly enough.

But this contradicts your earlier claim that most Muslims didn't know about 9/11 in Pakistan, doesn't it?

That might not be how they are answering this question. They may know a lot about the group, but don't know how they feel about it, because they see things they like, and other things they don't like. They're indifferent, in other words, not feeling too strongly one way or the other.

 

And how do you reconcile that with your support for open borders?

What makes you think I'm operating under the US Government's definition or designation of "terrorist groups"? Is there no other possible way to define what an Islamic terrorist group is?

 

you misunderstood the poll

1. It wasn't a poll that was exclusive to Muslims

2. The 72% doesn't represent people who answered incorrectly, but rather 72% who said they did not know.. 4% thought it was Al-Qaeda, 4% thought it was Israel, and the remainder thought it was someone else. So as I said, 72% of the Pakistanis they asked said they did not know, but I couldn't tell you how many of them didn't know because they didn't know what 9/11 is

As for your apology on the people who said they didn't know what their position was on ISIS, that could absolutely be the case for many of them. I cannot claim to know how many of them said they didn't know because they didn't know enough about the group, and how many of them didn't know because they only partially supported their actions. However, as we have learned in the past, the more people know about these groups, the more they view them unfavorably

 

Of course it's a material schism. Entire countries are based on it. And even within the Sunni sect, there are schisms over languagen, ethnicity, nationalism, and ideology. That's why, for example, Sunnis are fighting on both sides of the civil war in Syria.

Your attempts to over simplify and generalize simply don't represent reality.

You mean a tiny minority from within those sects have engaged in violent Jihad. Most of them are just minding their own business trying to put food on the table, like anyone else.

Let me know when someone says we shouldn't be concerned about Islamic terrorists.

What sort of wire-tapping and internet surveillance? The warrantless variety? The mass, indiscriminate variety that sweeps up the private communications of millions of innocent Americans?

My interpretation is sound. Your attempts to subsume every Muslim on the planet under the collectivist abstraction of the "Islamic world" is simplistic and nonsensical.

Well, 62% of them responded "don't know", which could simply indicate they don't actually know enough about ISIS to form an opinion one way or the other. But even if that were not the case, there is still the extensive involvement of the US government in the internal machinations of Pakistan going back decades, which would include collaboration with the Pakistani central government, which many Pakistanis view as corrupt and oppressive. Hardly surprising, considering the fact that Pakistan is a highly tribal society that typically eschews centralized authority figures imposing on their way of life.

 

I don't think the communication channels are as bad in the Islamic world as you are pretending. I suspect the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world know who ISIS is, know who Al Qaeda is, know what 9/11 was, etc. People in Pakistan were very aware of the Draw Muhammad Day contest on Facebook, and their riots, protests, and internet shutdowns were done at a national level. For those same people to not know of a movement like ISIS in another Islamic country seems preposterous.

 

The rest of the countries show most of the Muslims living there have an unfavorable view of ISIS. The only country that is even ambiguous is Pakistan.

How do you know it's not because they don't know who or what ISIS actually is? It's not like everyone in Pakistan has TV and internet.

 

I'm not for "open borders", as that implies I recognize the validity of those borders. But if Texas wants to build a giant wall on their southern border, then I definitely won't stand in their way. Conversely, if California wants to open their borders completely, I won't stand in their way either. I don't believe there is any constitutional authority for the federal government to subsume state borders under its own authority. Immigration policies should be left up to states and localities, which is the standard libertarian position on most issues of federalism. I'm not going to presume upon either State's right to determine its immigration policies.

Sure, there are other ways. So what way are you defining it?

 

what percentage of Pakistan do you suppose know about the draw Muhammad day? I think you're filling in the blanks yourself and saying because you saw a protest on TV that was somewhere in Pakistan, that people in Pakistan as a whole were "very aware" of that contest

It's really not that preposterous an idea, 72% of the people asked in Pakistan didn't know who was behind 9/11, and a similar poll showed that more than 90% of the people asked in Afghanistan didn't know what 9/11 is.

It is also very plausible for the people in Pakistan to know less about ISIS given that they are not one of the countries that are at war with them, similar to how Americans know very little about the terrorist organizations they are not at war with, only multiplied

 

I'm not over simplifying. Islamic believers view themselves as part of the ummah, a worldwide collection of believers. This concept transcends the details you are using to obfuscate away from this point, such as nations, language, ethnicity, etc. It's how white Americans can convert to Islam, become radicalized in a local mosque, and then feel an urge to board a plane to the Middle East and participate in jihad, alongside other Muslims who they've never encountered a day in their lives. The Syrian civil war is not a religious war between Sunni tribes with disparate views on their religion. It's a political war, like most wars. Two groups fighting for land and power, in this case.

Yes, that's certainly the talking point. Unfortunately the statistics show the minority is not exactly "tiny" unless you attempt to play semantics with the word, or ignore everyone who supports jihad without physically engaging in it. But that doesn't affect what I said. Both groups have engaged in jihad.

It's said often that Muslims do not present a threat to us, even though we know a non-tiny percentage of them either engage in, or support, Islamic terrorism.

Whichever one libertarians complain about with regards to surveillance.

I never claimed there weren't regional differences between Muslims. You fabricated that point, so I don't see how the interpretation can be sound.

The same country that knew all about a Facebook contest would likely know enough about ISIS to have an opinion, one way or the other. Pakistan is arguably a more developed country than Burkina Faso and some of the other countries on the list where the "I don't know" answer was less of a factor. The issue is that Pakistanis simply can't decide if they like ISIS or not. They hate America like so many Muslims and their progressive allies, but I would think they would also hate ISIS for killing so many Muslims in the world. Perhaps it's just a wash for these people. Either way, it can definitely be said that the majority do not reject the group.

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No, other countries have 30-40% as "I don't know" or "favorable". Hardly the overwhelming rejection that is commonly said of Muslims and terrorist groups.

How'd they know about the Draw Muhammad day event on Facebook? Obviously their communication network is not as primitive as you seem to believe.