Comment by minkles
Comment by minkles 2 days ago
[flagged]
Comment by minkles 2 days ago
[flagged]
Discriminating against a group of people on the basis of their religion can still be racist.
There's legal precedent for that in the US, Canada, the UK, France, the European Council on Human Rights, etc... Not Saudi Arabia though. Are you Saudi?
I don't see how that's "fucking scary" - the idea that only Arabs can be Muslim is itself racist, is it not?
It is somewhat understandable why some people associate terrorist attacks with Muslims, as unfortunate as that may be. Not that I'm saying that Muslims commit the most terrorist attacks, it just so happens that the most well known ones in the west happen to have been committed by Islamic extremists. E.g, WTC 93, 9/11, London Bombings, Boston Marathon.
> Yes, HN, saying that a Muslim is more likely to commit a terror attack is wildly racist.
What is wild is how you tried to defeat an argument by accusing someone of racism instead of citing statistics proving the OP is wrong. Further, "Muslim" isn't a race. Someone making a valid argument for racism would recognize this and correct for it.
If you have a read through the 2022 Country Reports on Terrorism [0] you'll see the GP is drawing a conclusion from valid data. It's not racist to see that the vast majority of terrorist attacks are caused by ISIS and Al-Qaeda spin-offs - both muslim terror organizations. There's also Hezbollah and other government back organizations - all muslim. The number of attacks committed in the Middle East and Africa are absolutely astonishing and dwarf any other number of attacks by any other religious group. A secondary conclusion, of course, is that muslims are also likely to be the victim of these attacks.
> What tf is happening here? Are people that scared of calling out war crimes, atrocities, and terrifying precedents?
This isn't a war crime. It's not even an atrocity. Terrifying precedent perhaps and will likely have a chilling effect on this type of stuff regardless. Though, anyone paying attention has been aware of this for a long time through the NSA leaks. There's a reason some companies provide anti-interdiction service.
> Why are so many forgetting that international law applies to all armed conflicts, even if you call one side terrorists?
Are you referring to the Hague Convention? The one that requires an actual war be declared before it even applies? Or the Geneva Convention? The one that doesn't apply to terrorist organizations and other guerilla combatants?
The most interesting conclusion you seem to be drawing is that this was also a terrorist attack - though you cite no actual evidence of such. This was a counter-terrorist operation by a group that has been at "war" (used extremely loosely here) for nearly the last year with Hezbollah. If anything, it's just another day in the war department.
[0] https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2...
Vast majority?
Violent white supremacists and anti-government, accelerationist, and like-minded individuals continued to promote violent extremist narratives, recruit new adherents, raise funds, and conduct terrorist activities in the United States and worldwide.
The leading cause of domestic terrorism in the USofA is anti-government, anti-authoritarian violent extremists (aka coup d'état cosplayers)
~ https://www.gao.gov/blog/rising-threat-domestic-terrorism-u....
Seriously, what is going on here?
Nobody needs to cite any statistics to proof that Muslims are in fact not more likely to commit terrorism. Claiming the need for such sources is hiding racism behind statistics, which is also a racist behavior. And on the flip-site citing any statistic to “proof” that Muslims to be more likely of terrorism is a fundamentally racist thing to do, and nobody should actually do that. The report you cited makes no such claim actually, it merely lists a number of terror organizations (with a western bias) and makes no conclusion about whether any group of peoples are more likely to commit terrorism. That was your leap of logic.
Terrorism is such a rare act that, and such an extreme act that any statistic is going to be dictated by either noise or third factors. If you find any group of peoples to be likelier to commit this act it is either because of random fluctuations or because of unrelated factors (including—and most likely because of—bias).
It is in fact a well known tactic among racists to hide their racism behind biased data. This goes well back to scientific racism of the 19th and 20th century, as well as among police districts justifying racial profiling (a deeply racist policy) in the 1980s and well into the 2000s.
I share your parent’s worry that we are having this debate here on HN, and that you are so willing to double down on an obviously racist idea.
why is terrorism most aligned with Islam? isn't it possible to frame any/every religion as "most likely to commit acts of terrorism" based on subjective interpretations of their tenets?
Only in recent times, with IS and similar organizations in the middle east. If you look at different historic periods you'd consider the Christians to be violent terrorists, even invading countries and starting lots of wars.
then we agree. personally i find the kind of terrorism associated with Christian Nationalism to pose more of an existential threat since i'm in the US and am exposed to a lot of it. despite that, i don't conflate christianity with terrorism.
the person i responded to thinks that Islam has a causal relationship with terrorism - what about the ideology leads you to believe that, besides the fact that the media you consume reports on it more often?
You started a hellish flamewar with this, even by the standards of this pretty hellish thread. Please don't do that again. Religious flamewar in particular will get you banned here, regardless of which religion you have a problem with.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41581653.