Religious fundamentalist calls for non-believers to convert or be killed

[Simfan34]

What is this? I didn't know Phil Robertson was a clergyman.

Also, more bizzare ISIS apologism from Indy Texas.

[Simfan34]

What is this? I didn't know Phil Robertson was a clergyman.

Also, more bizzare ISIS apologism from Indy Texas.

Most of the family are clergymen.

I thought they were duck hunters. Then again I've never watched their show.

What is this? I didn't know Phil Robertson was a clergyman.

Also, more bizzare ISIS apologism from Indy Texas.

More? Where was the first ISIS apologism? How is pointing out the similarities of our own mouth-breathing fundamentalists to theirs an apology?

I've already had right-wing Democrats call me an amoral war criminal for suggesting that Assad is the lesser of two evils in Syria compared to ISIS.

I distinctly recall you telling us to be skeptical about the killing of Christians because there had been some fake stories about an old church being blown up that ended up not actually existing, and you seemed to act all offended when I said that they would have blown up the church had it actually existed and that there seemed to be few atrocities they were unwilling to commit, as if ISIS members were some long-suffering minority oppressed by right-wing neo-conservative imperialist bigotry.

(Okay, I might have taken a few liberties with that last bit but your reaction was certainly strange)

[Simfan34]

...I'm an apologist for ISIS because I suggested factchecking breaking stories due to some of those stories later being proven to be untrue?

I'm pretty sure that saying people did X when they didn't isn't excusable just because "they would have done X if they had the chance." We're not making value judgments. We're talking about things that objectively did or did not happen. And the church burning that was referenced in that thread did not happen. Neither did the forced female circumcisions some news outlets were reporting. I realize this isn't NYT, but surely we can have higher standards than Faux News.

Let's revisit what you said.

I just want to remind everyone that there have been a lot of reports coming out of Iraq that have later been debunked as false. I myself was guilty of posting one recently regarding the destruction of a historic church. There was also a rumor going around that ISIS was requiring female circumcision, which ultimately turned out not to be true either.

In a war zone, it's easy for rumors to get started and information to be misinterpreted. It's happened before. During the Gulf War, you had nonexistent Iraqi soldiers taking nonexistent Kuwaiti babies out of nonexistent hospital incubators in order to kill them. During the Iraq War, you had Saddam Hussein allegedly feeding political enemies into a nonexistent human-size paper shredder.

It might be wise to "embargo" links to atrocity-related posts for a day or two until all of the facts actually come in.

You were actually referring to the killing of Yazidis, first of all. You disingenuously compared fictionalised atrocities that conveyed a sort of moral depravity that did not actually exist to an (extant) atrocity whose existence or lack thereof would not make any sort of difference in terms of heinousness. The sort of sanctimonious tone you used might have been appropriate had the veracity of the act had any real effect on our understanding of ISIS- but it would not have. I mean, the fact they didn't burn that non-existent church doesn't make them any better. No one is going to change their opinion on ISIS simply because that was found out to be true. It is as if you were arguing whether 792,304 people were killed in the Rwandan Genocide as opposed to 792,305. That difference is completely irrelevant in understanding the magnitude of the atrocity and this stress on "fact-checking" frankly pointless. Which I summed up succinctly as:

And the obvious conclusion is that if these people have no problem with beheading children, there is nothing beneath them. If that Church in Mosul actually existed, they would have undoubtedly blown it up. There's little I would doubt these people would do.

Are you angling for a Fox News internship or something?

There you go, acting like I'm mischaracterizing the actions of the poor, misunderstood ISIS fighters to achieve my repugnant political ends. That we would find the "truth" about them to be so very different than what we're being told now if we only had "objective reporting". It seems as if you cannot see the forest for the trees here.

[Simfan34]

...what? Did you read anything I said? Anything about "relevance in comprehension"? I mean that first paragraph is neither here nor there. And you also seemed to miss my point about plausibility. Your example of me somehow accepting ISIS's spontaneous materialisation in Europe is nonsensical, and the idea this is somehow on the same level of expectedness as killing "kaffirs" even more so. For one thing, that certainly was not not the first time they targeted non-Muslims, but that is not the point.

What I am saying is that when someone does something that is generally (here, morally) equivalent to what they have been known to be doing and have done before it would not change the facts of the situation. It does not change things. Again, if we found out, after this was all resolved, that ISIS slaughtered one fewer village they were thought to have, this would not change our understanding of what they did and the fact that it was bad. That fact would be of no use to anyone except to those trying to get an exactly tally of victims or targets.

I mean, if they were to blow up a dam, I would seek to have that confirmed- that has not happened before. But if there was a story about their blowing up their tenth dam- what difference would it really make? And could you stop with this hackery about "Fox News", "Donald Rumsfeld", etc?

[Simfan34]

It isn't apologism to claim that its bizarre to talk about converting an enemy under the pain of genocide.  Then again maybe ISIS must be annihilated but we have never  annihilated anyone that are not Native Americans yet. If that's not enough, they brought  conversion in as a sole condition of surrender. Maybe it would be cool if we were governed by Octavian or Richard II. But this isn't 1205 AD or 5 AD.

This. And "convert them or kill them" implies that the problem isn't their violence, but that they believe in the wrong god.

Yeah, this was the most disturbing part of his statement. Apparently if you can convert some ISIS militants to Christianity they're suddenly good people.

Well, I imagine conversion would entail being "born again" and that, yes, they would suddenly be good people. I'd say he's actually being quite generous- most people would just call for the "non-believers" to be killed outright.

[Simfan34]

It isn't apologism to claim that its bizarre to talk about converting an enemy under the pain of genocide.  Then again maybe ISIS must be annihilated but we have never  annihilated anyone that are not Native Americans yet. If that's not enough, they brought  conversion in as a sole condition of surrender. Maybe it would be cool if we were governed by Octavian or Richard II. But this isn't 1205 AD or 5 AD.

This. And "convert them or kill them" implies that the problem isn't their violence, but that they believe in the wrong god.

Yeah, this was the most disturbing part of his statement. Apparently if you can convert some ISIS militants to Christianity they're suddenly good people.

Well, I imagine conversion would entail being "born again" and that, yes, they would suddenly be good people. I'd say he's actually being quite generous- most people would just call for the "non-believers" to be killed outright.

What an embarrassing mindset. Let's all hope Hitler wasn't "born again" 2 seconds before he killed himself.

Now, I may be Catholic, but even I'm uncomfortable with declaring a large swath of the country's religious beliefs an "embarrassing mindset". And what you've said begs the question of whether you believes, for example, criminals can be rehabilitated?

[Simfan34]

Well the assumption is not just the person is merely converting but is discarding the former self and starting anew. So they would have genuinely changed, or so they say.