Muslims with their promised 72 virgins look pretty tame when compared to some of our own

[NNN0LHI]

Polygamist cults. Rattle snake handlers. Pedophile priests. Jim Jones.

Sheesh.

Don

[Jamastiene]

1. We are a freaky country.

At least some in this country are. There's good freaky and then there are the things you mentioned. Our good to bad freaky ratio in this country is way way off.

[keep_it_real]

2. 72 virgins is in the after life not here on earth

[NNN0LHI]

4. OK so I left out the nitwits who are all primed up for the rapture

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

3. Hold on are you honestly saying

This Mormon cult is on the same footing with the belief that killing people gets you to paradise and 72 virgins to boot?

[NNN0LHI]

5. I thought everyone gets the 72 virgins?

If I am mistaken I apologize for the error.

Don

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. Only the martyrs get the fast track to paradise, with the promised

virgins.

And it's not the killing that gets them there - it's dying for Allah. So the devout islamist soldier who is killed fighting the infidels in Iraq ALSO gets the same treatment, even if he is killed before slaying any of the enemy.

There are, in fact, fatwahs out that say that if an islamist deliberately kills innocents in his fight, then he will be DENIED paradise - but of course, the Islamic fundies cherrypick their scripture just as the christian fundies do here.

[madokie]

13. with all these virgins

maybe we need to look and see what they mean by virgins.I get it, when they're born again that wipes the slate clean, hmmmm ok :-)

[stillcool]

7. No comaparison between a Mormon cult...

and Islamic Terrorists. Some people are really, really bitter.

Blowback
excerpted from the book
Blowback The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
by Chalmers Johnson
Henry Holt, 2000
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blowback_CJohnson/Blowback_BCJ.html

p8
The term "blowback," which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of "terrorists" or "drug lords" or "rogue states" or "illegal arms merchants" often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations.
p9
One man's terrorist is, of course, another man's freedom fighter, and what U.S. officials denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previous American imperial actions. Terrorists attack innocent and undefended American targets precisely because American soldiers and sailors firing cruise missiles from ships at sea or sitting in B-52 bombers at extremely high altitudes or supporting brutal and repressive regimes from Washington seem invulnerable. As members of the Defense Science Board wrote in a 1997 report to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors that is, terrorists from one country attacking in another."
The most direct and obvious form of blowback often occurs when the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S.-sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a CIA-engineered overthrow of a foreign political leader. All around the world today, it is possible to see the groundwork being laid for future forms of blowback.
------------------------------------------
Terrorism(by definition)strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The innocent of the twenty-first century are going to harvest unexpected blowback disasters from the imperialist escapades of recent decades. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price-individually and collectively-for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Before the damage of heedless triumphalist acts and the triumphalist rhetoric and propaganda that goes with them becomes irreversible, it is important to open a new discussion of our global role during and after the Cold War...
------------------------
"Blowback" is shorthand for saying that a nation reaps what it sows, even if it does not fully know or understand what it has sown. Given its wealth and power, the United States will be a prime recipient in the foreseeable future of all of the more expectable forms of blowback, particularly terrorist attacks against Americans in and out of the armed forces anywhere on earth, including within the United States. But it is blowback in its larger aspect-the tangible costs of empire-that truly threatens it. Empires are costly operations, and they become more costly by the year. The hollowing out of American industry, for instance, is a form of blowback-an unintended negative consequence of American policy- even though it is seldom recognized as such. The growth of militarism in a once democratic society is another example of blowback. Empire is the problem. Even though the United States has a strong sense of invulnerability and substantial military and economic tools to make such a feeling credible, the fact of its imperial pretensions means that a crisis is inevitable. More imperialist projects simply generate more blowback. If we do not begin to solve problems in more prudent and modest ways, blowback will only become more intense.

The American Empire: 1992 to present
from the book
Killing Hope
by William Blum
2004 edition
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/American_Empire_KH2004.html

Following its bombing of Iraq in 1991, the United States wound up with military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Following its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the United States wound up with military bases in Kosovo, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia.
Following its bombing of Afghanistan in 2001-2, the United States wound up with military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Yemen and Djibouti.
Following its bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States wound up with Iraq.
This is not very subtle foreign policy. Certainly not covert. The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed
And that is the way the empire grows-a base in every neighborhood, ready to be mobilized to put down any threat to imperial rule, real or imagined. Fifty-eight years after world War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; fifty ears after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea.
"America will have a continuing interest and presence in Central Asia of a kind that we could not have dreamed of before," US Secretary of State Colin Powell declared in February 2002. Later that year, the US Defense Department announced: "The United States Military is currently deployed to more locations then it has been throughout history."

A Brief History of U.S. Interventions: 1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.

[NavyDavy]

8. not all muslims believe that, and these guys raping little girls in

my opinion is up there with some of the worst things!!

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

17. Other things commonly legal in the ME and Islamic culture

Female Circumcision
Multiple Wives
Ages of consent for the purposes of marriage starting at 9 (Yemen) 10 (Saudi Arabia) and 11 (many nations)

--

BTW the OP talked specifically about the '72 virgins' clique which is the people who believe if you kill yourself (and others) in Jihad you get paradise and 72 virgins..

--

I'm not defending the kooks in Texas by *any* stretch but I don't think saying 'wow they are worse than Islamic Extremest' is intellictually honest..

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

18. That's African culture not Islamic culture, dipshit.

At least get your bigotry straight.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

19. Umm, no..

1) Female circumcision *also* and *firstly* happened in African cultures but it has been adopeted in *many* parts of the middle east

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_genital_cutting

Female genital cutting is today mainly practiced in African countries. It is common in a band that stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Ethiopia on the East coast, as well as from Egypt in the north to Tanzania in the south; see Map. It is also practiced by some groups in the Arabian peninsula. The country where FGC is most prevalent is Egypt

Egypt is not only in Africa its also a part of the 'Middle East'

2) Multiple wives is most *certainly* a part of the culture in SA where 3 wives are allowed

3) I posted age of consents for nations in the Middle east (Yemen, SA, ....)

--

So please, please, don't call an honest accounting of the facts 'bigotry'..

[Hugabear]

11. Mormonism has had its share of violence and controversy

Give them time, they haven't been around as long as Christianity and Islam.

[mitchum]

15. Google "Mountain Meadows Massacre"

[kestrel91316]

25. When researching one of my ancestors on the internet,

I uncovered enough pieces of evidence that, all put together, place him right at the center of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He and his men followed the wagon train and then shortly afterward came back north in possession of property known to belong to the pioneers - and it was observed and recorded by an independent non-Mormon observer who knew nothing of the massacre until later.

Yikes. Fascinating. Hamblin took the fall for the real perpetrators.

[Nitrogenica]

6. A Muslim Charter school in Minnesota has receives death threaths now because of this OP.

http://www.startribune.com/local/17406054.html

"Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, "due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing." But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond -- even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day's schedule included a "school assembly" in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform "their ritual washing."

These are elementary school aged students. People who are afraid of terrorists act like terrorists.

[LSK]

14. they are getting threats because of a post on DU from 1 hour ago?

:shrug:

[Nitrogenica]

16. No, just because of the OP link I posted and quoted.

You know what I meant. What are you trying to say about me with this lame-ass reply?

Explain please.

[LSK]

24. OP is short for Original Post

Obviously, I am trying to say you should brush your teeth more . Paranoid much? I am not saying anything about you personally.

[OwnedByFerrets]

9. Streets of gold and Pearl gates???

Why would heaven need gates??:rofl:

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. Hey, if you had streets of gold, you'd insist on gates.

Tell the truth, now!

:evilgrin:

Heaven - the original gated community!

[DCKit]

20. Only the criminally stupid, religiously brainwashed and utterly sexually repressed...

would consider the "gift" of 72 virgins anything but a living hell. I'll take one talented slut and an open relationship any day. There are no STDs (or unwanted cherubs) in Heaven you dumb shits.

The only possible upside to virgins is their ignorance: "I've never seen one so big" and "You're the best I've ever had" are two possible attractions, not to mention the rape fantasies that seem to be endemic in repressive societies.

If someone simply explained the facts of life to these guys, the number of willing "suiciders' would likely plummet.

[Egalitariat]

21. I think the TX polygamists got their 72 virgins w/o having to die first***

nm

[DCKit]

22. They hate us for our virgins. n/t

[damntexdem]

23. They're just not as sophisticated as we are.

After all, consider just how inexperienced 72 virgins would be. Hey, our pols go for experience!