Creeping Sharia: The Islamisation of the West

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I don't know how you turned that around...

Anyway I don't think you are bad person. I think you are maybe a bit naive, but that is hardly unique.

How so? The morality of Mohammad is pertinent to Sharia.

If not here then on another thread? Have you thought about it?

Never liked Paul.

He was all over the place and had a negative influence on Christianity.

At one point he was saying the world was about to end, and to not get married, but to join him. The guy was nuts.

The major players in the Protestant Reformation hitched their wagon to the sinister Paul and his screeds. Except scholars call his screeds and rants the Pauline Epistles. What you have now is not Christianity, but Paulianity.

Twelver Shia are like Catholics, they follow a head, a pope-like figure, and each group may follow a Mullah who's under this pope-like figure.

But they are not unified, there are those who do not follow the Iran's Ayatollah at all for political reasons, in Lebanon there are those who religiously (and politically) follow the Grand Ayatollah (ie.Hezbollah) and those who follow a local authority, the two authority figures don't overlap.
In Iraq the division is even sharper.




Not really, it was not a good thing:| I am not happy with the fact of a pope-like having a such power over the twevler shia, the social consequences of this centralization were dire, the Arab twelever shia communities are the most ones who went into a fundamental metamorphosis from totally liberal to totally radically conservative since the first Ayatollah took control, pro-Ayatollah Arab shias now are almost clones like cattle and they're now the strongest in those communities, the moderates and liberal in shia communities are totally oppressed by religious rulers and by their followers. I would say, the cancer of islamization and brainwashing took total control over the shias, Hezbollah for instance took control over the younger generation through schools and institutions.

The sunni communities (except in the Gulf and KSA) on the other hand, are way more heterogeneous, and the moderates are better positioned and strongly opposed against the radicals/islamist; you can see it in Egypt (Sisi's people vs brotherhood), you can see it in Tunisia, in Morocco, in Lebanon, and even in Turkey (despite Erdogan's power and his many attempts to islamize Turkey), they may lead to more conflicts but they have what shia communities don't have: Hope.

There are pros/cons it seems like, I feel like diplomacy could have a greater effect at bringing the Shia back into modern fold because a centralized authority means it is just one or few people and you can negotiate with one person. They are human, they could be bought. Knowing the history of Iran and the grievances they have against the United States, I do not believe they are mostly religious in origin but more a result of support of the Shah dictatorship and the Saddam's attempted invasion against the in the 80s. We did them dirty.

I'm not a Catholic, I was actually born into an ultra-conservative Lutheran branch who thinks that the Pope and Catholic church are the anti-Christ so I understand why Shia Islam may seem so distasteful to those that despise the idea of some earthly religious authority that is a man just the same as all us. I'd prefer they all become Christians or atheists in the region if it were possible, they'd be much better off.

So the question is why is their not fundamentalist Shia jihadist groups? I know Lebanon has a different perspective on this given their civil war and deep sectarian divides so I am sure you can name plenty of crimes that can be laid upon their feet but I don't know of too many incidents of Shia militants abroad committing terrorist acts against civilian targets and obviously it cannot be compared to the extremist Wahhabi and Salafi terrorists who respect no authority and to be truthful seem closer to the original form of Islam than than what is considered the mainstream now. Now there are extremist Christians but what they've done really borders on irrelevance relative Islamic Jihad. The hierarchy prevents their from splinter groups like ISIS because that go against their form of Islam that dictates that religious authority comes hereditary. Now, I wouldn't be a Shia Muslim but they seem significantly less threatening than fundamentalist Sunnis.

Basically my whole point is that it would be much more advantageous for the US to be allied with Iran rather the Saudi Arabia, Iranian influence is preferable to Saudi influence. The Saudis are the true enemy of the United States.

Pauline

It actually happened before the Reformation. It happened before Constantine.

Early Christianity would unrecognisable.

Oh but they exist, what do you think Hezbollah is? What do you think they call their fighters? Soldiers of Lebanon? Ha! no, they call them Mujahedeen.

That's a false idea that pro-Iran American politicians like Obama are trying to sell you, but they certainly have a very short memory.

The Islamic Jihad group that had slaughtered the American Marines with two suicide bombers was a Shia jihadist group, not Sunnite.

The Houthis, which their official slogan is "God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam" is also a Shia and racist jihadist group.

Hezbollah themselves had a history of suicide bombers too.

The thing is, the Shia religious authorities forbid suicide bombing for Islamic interpretation reasons (and not because they love you): they considered it as a suicide therefore it should be viewed as a sin; that's why you no longer see shia suicide bombers.

I would not call Obama a 'pro-Iranian' president, maybe not in comparison to someone like John McCain who is literally foaming at the mouth to 'bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.' The only people that would say that are neoconservatives and lobbyists for Israel or Saudi Arabia. Obama is more just an incompetent push over, the War in Iraq was always a mistake especially since the US banned so many Sunnis that were formerly part of Saddam's government and military from public life. So of course Iran takes advantage with it being a majority Shia country with massive oil reserves to its west, the Kurds have established a defacto state, the Sunni triangle unsurprisingly found this unacceptable and has always been a hotbed of extremism even back during the US occupation. That's where AQI made it's stand, that's where ISIS was born.

Hezbollah and the Houthis seem much more like nationalist paramilitary resistance fighters than they do religious fanatics altho I'm sure it's all dressed up in religion to give them legitimacy but they don't seem to operate much outside their borders and conflict zones. The people Hezbollah and the Houthis are fighting right now seem a lot worse, the Saudis are supporting ISIS/al Nusra/whatever Sunni militant group. I don't see them as a threat to the United States as long as we stay out of these conflicts, I don't think they will come to America and attack us, it is usually the Iranians that make the biggest show of condemnation of terrorists and condolences for these attacks whereas some of these fundamentalist Sunnis are dancing in the street or at least that's what we hear. Being in the Middle East how would you describe Sunni feelings towards terrorism against the United States? You say they say things behind closed doors that they wouldn't say in public so what gives?


ISIS and al-Qaeda have specifically declared war on Western Civilzation and have been exporting their terrorist idealogy where ever they can. I don't think you can say the Shia are just as bad, there are way fewer from them but almost all the terrorism that has befell the United States in Sunni in origin of the Wahhabi or Salafi branches. The hierarchy just make the Shia much more predictable and easier to work with I think. From my understanding of Sunni Islam it makes it possible for people like Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Osama Bin Laden to declare religious authority and to preach hate, declaring fatwas and all that. Anybody can declare religious authority, all they need is followers.

Jacoby, the Qsama Bin laden/Qaeda were allies of the US at some point in the past.

While Hezbollah/Houthis/Iranian militias were your dire enemies.

Now things are shifting.

My point is, that they're all fundamental jihadists, their current state toward the US changes according to politics.

It's all about politics.

Hezbollah people were happy for 9/11 - when they falsely thought that Qeada's terrorism wouldn't come after them one day.

Btw, it is unfair to take Saudi Arabia as the typical Sunni society and compare it with Iran as the typical Shia society - KSA is the extreme example, KSA is the source of all radical sunni terrorism; if you compare let's say Morocco (90% Sunni yet religious) with Iran, you will see that Moroccans are way more liberal - Turkish society (90% Sunni) are also way more liberal, even Egypt is less conservative than Iran (The veil on women is not obligatory in Egypt for instance).

Iran was only recently zealous like this, back in the time Iran was like Europe and modern Turkey - and it's that religious regime which brought them background..so background compared to before, while KSA was born like this.

That is tenuous.

Osama Bin laden, at one point wasn't as extreme, that is about as far it goes. Al-Qaeda was initially formed to get foreigners out of the Arabian peninsular. It also had links to Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which arguably is a splinter from Muslim Brotherhood.

You are equating the Mujahedin in Afghan 1 to Al-Qaeda. The reality is Al-Qaeda did very little fighting in that conflict, although they like to claim it. Mostly they did a lot of talking and networking, with various Jihadis that were attracted to region. However it was an important stage in their development.

The gulf states and Egypt thought that releasing their extremist would attract them to the conflict against the Russians and they would end up getting killed. They got the first part right, they didn't consider they might come back.

^^ I don't get where it is tenuous, Bin Laden was an ally to US at some point in the past, I guess this is a fact no one can deny, you are just expanding facts on what I said.
In fact, your post enforces my point that most jihadist movements flip their attitude and violence toward the West according to politics - and this is true for both Sunni and Shia jihadist movements.
Just because one of them sounds nicer today, doesn't mean they will always be as nice.

Err no. At what point was Al-Qaeda a US ally?

You are saying by fighting the Russian they were allies. The Chinese fought the Russians and we weren't allies.

Al-Qaeda was formed on anti-Western sentiment.

I do get you point about internal politics flipping to anti-Western. However in the case of Al-Qaeda it was the US influence on the gulf states, plus events in Afghanistan than help formed, as well as the gulf state letting domestic extremist out of prison.

It's unfair and dishonest to compare Shi'a militants to Sunni terrorists. Shi'a Muslims have a long history of persecution by Sunnis, so the context for Shi'a violence is completely different. Shi'a don't practice the kind of rampant expansionism that most people assume is a universal trait of all Muslims; the revolutionary government of Iran, the only country with a Shi'a population close to 100%, has never once invaded another country. Had I not been born in Iraq (whose Shi'a population was brutally oppressed with the complicity of a powerful Sunni minority), I'd like to have been born in Iran. Shi'a violence is defensive.

I'm aware your perspective is different since Hezbollah are a prominent force in your own country (I suspect time will tell that Hezbollah's "crimes" have been greatly exaggerated), but as an Usuli myself I can assure you that Shi'a extremism is not a significant threat to the world at large.

A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist. It doesn't matter if the terrorist is Shia, Sunni, Khawari, Wahabi, or any of the other 69 sects of Islam, because a person who kills others in the name of Islam is just a terrorist.