Manchester Divided

The horrific terror attack in Manchester has brought with it debates surrounding Islam.  Some people are saying that Islam is a problem, with a subset of them accusing all Muslims of being terrorists.  And some people are saying that Islamophobia must end, with a subset of them blaming the West (or Global Warming or poverty or something) for terror attacks like this.  So I decided to look up some straight up poll statistics in an attempt to see what's going on.  I know plenty of Muslims here in the United States, and I don't believe any of them to be extremists or terrorists, but that doesn't mean that none exist in the U.S., and it doesn't mean that what holds true in America holds true throughout the rest of the world.  I know more Christians, some of them extremists and some of them terrible people, though none who have ever committed terrorist attacks.  I know Jews, atheists, and people of other religions as well, but I don't know any terrorists.  Yet they exist, and it does indeed seem that, right now, the only people committing terrorist attacks in the name of their God are extremist Muslims.  If it's in a Western country, we hear about it, but in non-Western countries, these attacks happen quite often without receiving media attention.  So what's true?  Are there many or few Islamic extremists?  Let's look at what the statistics say (the article I'm using, from May 26, is seen in the picture).

According to the article, as of 2015, there were around 1.8 billion Muslims in the world, nearly a quarter of the world's population.  It's the second largest religion behind Christianity/Christendom.  In the United States, only about 1% (3.3 million) of the population identifies as Muslim, and 63% of the U.S. Muslim population consists of immigrants.  One of the main arguments you'll find against Islam is against those who support Sharia law as the law of the land.  If you're unfamiliar with Sharia law, look it up.  It a nutshell, it's actually sexist, but not nearly as sexist as it is flat out horrific.  I won't go over all of the crimes and punishments, but suffice to say that apostasy is punishable by DEATH.  Yeah.  So you would think that not many Muslims around the world support Sharia law, right?  Well, here's another graphic from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/

Well, fuck.  Yeah, that's the extent of my analysis on these numbers, but I think that sums it up nicely.  A lot of Muslims believe that Sharia should be the law of the land, and that is extremely disturbing, because Sharia is extremely disturbing.  And yes, I've heard the arguments comparing Islam and Christianity, and sure, there are some Christians who think that their laws should be the law of the land, but even the majority of very conservative Christians believe in separation of church and state.  But even if they didn't, it's not even comparable, because apostasy isn't punished by death in Christianity.

Missing from the Sharia graphic is the United States, but the article does go on to state that 86% of Muslims in the United States (according to a 2011 survey) believe that "suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilians in the name of Islam are rarely or never justified."  However, 7% say that they are sometimes justified, and 1% say that they are often justified.  In the United States, seven percent is 231,000 Muslims and one percent is 33,000 Muslims.  That's a bit disconcerting, but we also find that in the rest of the world in general, Muslims (in most countries) overwhelmingly view ISIS as negative, as this graphic from the same article cited before shows:

Here's my problem with this: Even if we ignore the disturbingly high percentage of respondents who said they don't know whether ISIS is bad or not, those small slivers of respondents who have favorable views of ISIS, when added together, represent many tens of millions of people.  So, folks saying that a very small percentage of Muslims are in favor of ISIS are correct, but folks saying that many Muslims are in favor of ISIS are also correct.  Remember that there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

Based on these numbers, it's right to be in favor of vetting for immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries, but it's also clear why people would want to leave oppressive countries where Sharia is the the law of the land and seek refuge in the United States.  It's a delicate balance.  I have no problem with the vast majority of Muslims in the United States, who are peaceful people in general, but there is a problem with those who take a very strict and literal translation of the Quran, which can lead to supporting Sharia, and sometimes even ISIS and Jihad.  I also have a problem with Christians who take a very strict and fundamental view of the scriptures, but even the worst groups of Christians I can think of, such as Westboro Baptist Church, don't go around killing people.  They're hateful and terrible to people, but they don't kill them.  If there was a Christian group that took verses of the Old Testament out of context and out of the light of the fulfillment of the law by Christ Jesus, and decided it was a good idea to murder non-believers, that would be hugely problematic too, but also very much unsupported by the full weight of the Christian scriptures.  Also of note is that Jesus died as a 33-year-old virgin, while Muhammad had sex with little girls.

I don't say things like that to disparage Muslims.  I say them because they are largely uncontested and accepted facts that some folks ignore.  But people who follow religions that are rotten to their core are still people, and should be treated as people and judged based on their actions.  There are a lot of Muslims who are wonderful people, and hate crimes and physical attacks against Muslims are in no way acceptable.  They should not happen, but they do, as do hate crimes and physical attacks against Christians, Jews, and others.  Actually, antisemitism is still running rampant in America compared to attacks against folks of other religions.  We live in a world full of evil.  And there are those who will mistake my views shared here as "Islamophobic," but I am simply pointing out facts.  The majority of Muslims are not to be feared, and there are so many other groups of people with people in them who commit heinous acts.  The very vast majority of violent crimes in the United States are committed by non-Muslims, which is not surprising when you consider that Muslims only make up about one percent of the U.S. population anyway.  But a look at the numbers does us good, because it gives us a chance to calibrate where we are, and see that something is rotten before we allow it to create a stronghold.  God forbid Sharia law should ever be acceptable anywhere in the United States.

It's strange to me that the Left calls out Christians for anti-women sexist things, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly, but rarely calls out Muslims for anti-women sexist things, when their prevalence and severity in Muslim culture, as evidenced by Sharia law and by every country under Muslim rule, is so great.  It is here that I can find common ground with some on the Left, such as Bill Maher.  But as for the handful on the far Left who are defending child marriages, or blaming them on global warming and poverty, or saying that forcing genital mutilation upon young girls falls under the umbrella or religious freedom, we have no common ground: you are a terrible person, and you should go visit a place under extreme Sharia law for a while.  Let me know how it went when you get back.  I won't expect to hear from you.

COMEwhatmaY

I've found myself watching less news lately.  Maybe it's because the weather is finally nice, maybe it's because it's baseball season, or maybe it's because both the mainstream media and the Trump administration are batshit crazy.  On one side is the Trump administration and Fox News, who largely believe that everything Trump and his administration do is right.  Not just right but good. Not just good but tremendous.  Believe me.  No one has done it better than them.  In history.  And on the other side is the rest of mainstream media, and they all believe that everything Trump and friends does is wrong.  Not just wrong but bad.  Not just bad but horrific.  Nixonian cover-ups bigger than Watergate.  The most inept administration in history.  Racist, homophobic, xenophobic, villainous, trying to destroy the environment.  And you know what?  Both sides are losing.

Mainstream media is dying, and President Trump and his administration are losing credibility.  And as a moderate Libertarian who leans right, I'm just getting tired of hearing how much more terrible the latest story about Trump is than everything else he's done so far, which were all things that were, at the time, much more terrible than the previous stories about what Trump did.  And I'm tired of hearing Trump talk about how great a job he is doing and how he's been treated more unfairly than any politician in history.  Lincoln was hated by half the nation and eventually shot and killed, and there are plenty more who have been treated more unfairly than our current Tweeter-in-Chief.  So, I'm just immune to the left-wing outrage and the right-wing ridiculousness.  We are at the point where, if Trump did something horrific, most people wouldn't notice because the outrage level and impeachment calls are already near their maximum, and if he did something spectacular, most people wouldn't notice because hardcore Trump supporters already think everything he does is the best fucking thing in history.

The latest stories have revolved around James Comey and Russia, not unlike a high percentage of the stories since the 2016 campaigns started.  When Trump fired Comey, the man many Democrats (perhaps partially correctly) blame for Hillary Clinton's loss in November, suddenly Democrats who wanted him fired decided that he should not have been fired, and his firing was essentially evidence that people from Trump's campaign colluded with Russia during the election (as if firing Comey magically makes this investigation disappear).  And shame on Trump for not heeding Saint Barack's sage advice to not tab Michael Flynn as national security advisor.  Maybe former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates wasn't fired for refusing to support Trump's travel ban after all, but rather for knowing too much about Flynn!  Oh, and Trump got two scoops of ice cream when everyone else in the room only got one.  I think that's called Ruski ice cream.

I was on business travel last week, and before and after the in-flight movie (JetBlue is my favorite airline, by the way), I flipped through the channels and saw the headlines.  The big story on CNN, MSNBC, etc. before departure was that Trump shared classified information with Russia.  That sounded pretty disturbing.  Trump sharing classified information about ISIS with an ally of Syria?  Sure, as President, he can decide what to share or not share with a foreign country, and even what is or isn't classified in that situation, so no crime was committed, but it still didn't sound good.  The political pundits were talking about how this is so much worse than anything else he's done.  This is impeachable.  Treason!  This should bring everyone together against Trump.  I flipped to Fox News and they were all twisting themselves into pretzels trying to defend Trump.  Was this a big story or a typical media day?  I flipped to one of my three free in-flight movie choices.

After the movie was over, we were still in the air, so I flipped through the channels again.  The headlines were all new.  This wasn't even two hours later.  The big story was that anonymous sources had leaked some more shit, and this time it was a James Comey memo about a conversation he had with Trump in which Trump allegedly suggested that he should stop investigating Michael Flynn.  If true, this presents legal problems to both men involved in the conversation.  If false, well, I guess they'll have to find some other reason for impeachment hearings.  Maybe anonymous sources will find something else again.  Or maybe we should just wait to judge until we hear from both Comey and Trump on the nature of the alleged conversation.  Folks on CNN and MSNBC were calling for impeachment for obstruction of justice now.  Fox News was defending Trump again.  I wondered what happened to the huge story from earlier in the day, and I don't even remember which network I was watching when someone talked about how Israel was fine with the information that was shared, Russia was saying they could prove it wasn't classified, and most importantly to me, H.R. McMaster said he was in the room and that Trump didn't do anything he shouldn't have done, and McMaster is a guy who has earned my respect and trust.

CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPO and the like all know exactly how this is going to turn out.  Fox News, Breitbart, and Trump know exactly how this is going to turn out too.  Except the left and right know opposite and conflicting truths, thus someone is wrong.  Or both sides are wrong.  Truth is not relative.  I'm going with the idea that both sides are wrong, because I don't have a clue how this is all going to turn out.  This could be more nothingness drummed up by Leftist media organizations, fueled by anonymous sources.  Or Trump could end up impeached.  I'd like to hear from Comey, from Trump, from both sides.  I'd like to hear from Flynn and Manafort, and from those who claim to have evidence of their wrongs.  I would also like to hear more from Sally Yates, and from those investigating the sources of classified leaks.  Heck, I'd like to hear more about why Huma Abedin hasn't been charged with a crime yet.

As far as Comey, I think he should have been fired, though the timing of his firing was not ideal.  I don't think he was doing a good job, and I don't think most Americans were confident in the job he was doing.  I also think he's a massive attention whore who likes being in the spotlight.  All three of his major announcements during the election cycle were ridiculous and uncalled for, and others from the FBI even had to clarify some of his recent comments in front of Congress because they weren't exactly accurate.  The Clinton e-mail investigation was closed, then re-opened, then quickly re-closed again, and the Russian collusion investigation continues to drag on.  No word on investigating classified leaks, Huma Abedin, or Lois Lerner.  Or maybe there was, but the media didn't cover it very thoroughly?

And Trump doesn't help himself at all.  He uses hyperbole like Jose Canseco used steroids.  He complains about being treated more unfairly than any politician in history.  He brags about how he ran the best campaign of all-time, set records for crowd sizes, and set records for electoral vote counts.  He gives ridiculous and implausible reasons for firing Comey, after having fired Comey at a rather bizarre moment in time.  He talks about how he should maybe cancel press conferences, and how great all the things he does are.  He calls out the mainstream media lies and half-truths and then pedals his own.  He tweets, he golfs, he makes Leftists fondly remember the days of President George W. Bush.  I didn't think that day would ever come.  Leftists hated Bush.  I was a student at Wesleyan University when Bush was President, and most people there thought Bush was Satan.  But now Trump is Satan.  I wonder if Leftists will long for the days of the Trump Presidency when the next Republican President is elected, but mostly I just hope we'll have a Libertarian President sometime soon.

Also, I'm toying with the idea of calling a mainstream media organization as an anonymous source with a YUGE story about Trump or someone connected to him.  I wonder if a story I made up would get traction.  Or maybe it would turn out to be true.