Pat Condell - Islam is not a victim

Yeah, a little. But some stuttering is needed sometimes. Besides, he's Pat.
 
I agree with him on what Saudi Arabia is doing. But again, why in the case of Islam, according to Pat, do the radical muslims speak for the entire group? What other religion is this standard applied to? How many muslims are on this planet? What percentage are radical? So why does that 0.00001% speak for everyone?

What he is arguing against is religion in general. Wether that be teaching of evolution in school, homosexuality, or any other issues that drive religion, any religion. The problem is he continues to choose to single out that one perticular religion.
 
No Limit said:
I agree with him on what Saudi Arabia is doing. But again, why in the case of Islam, according to Pat, do the radical muslims speak for the entire group? What other religion is this standard applied to? How many muslims are on this planet? What percentage are radical? So why does that 0.00001% speak for everyone?

What he is arguing against is religion in general. Wether that be teaching of evolution in school, homosexuality, or any other issues that drive religion, any religion. The problem is he continues to choose to single out that one perticular religion.
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He singles it out because he feels it's more relevant and pertinent to his culture and country, I imagine. Any Christian analogue in Britain is far more muted or at least less publicly acknowledged (unless a resident wishes to correct me otherwise). Why dilute the argument? Not every discussion of Islam needs to be brought back to some generalized argument against religion in general. Although that's not to say he probably knows he gets more attention by targeting Islam specifically.

I don't think he literally meant that radical Islamists speak for all Muslims, but they certainly spend a lot of time claiming they do. And his words carry the implication that with the silence of many so-called moderate Muslims when it comes to stating otherwise, it's easy to come to that conclusion.
 
He literally said that all muslims need to come out and say radical muslims don't speak for them. What other group is this kind of standard applied to? Does every mormon have to come out and condamn polygamy? Does every catholic have to come out and say pedophilia is wrong?

It's not a matter of trying to dilute the argument, it's a matter of putting it in context. Let me give you an example. Here in the states illegal immigration has become a huge story. What many "reporters" do here is they will constantly report on crime and illegal immigration to try and build a false perception that they are linked. Do illegal immigrants commit crimes? Sure they do. But so does every other group in this country. In fact according to the stats illegal immigrants commit far less crimes than US citizens and residents. Yet when you talk about crime and you single out one perticular group you create a very unfair and a very biased picture.

Is pointing that out diluting the argument? Again, in my opinion it's putting it in context.

When he talks about muslims being anti-gay in this video he is absolutely right. But again, what religion doesn't think this? When he talks about muslims trying to influance education in his country again he's probably right. But you are going to tell me christians in that country don't try to do this too? I know you and others have said that christianity in your country isn't that bad. But at the same time others living there have said that there are plenty of bat shit crazy christian fundamentalists in their area.

If he didn't single out muslims I would probably support the guy 100%. But what he is doing is making a convenient punching bag out of one group knowing damn well that he will get a lot more views as a result. There is nothing honest about this.
 
No Limit said:
I agree with him on what Saudi Arabia is doing. But again, why in the case of Islam, according to Pat, do the radical muslims speak for the entire group? What other religion is this standard applied to? How many muslims are on this planet? What percentage are radical? So why does that 0.00001% speak for everyone?

What he is arguing against is religion in general. Wether that be teaching of evolution in school, homosexuality, or any other issues that drive religion, any religion. The problem is he continues to choose to single out that one perticular religion.
Click to expand...

You have to understand, and I don't nessacarily agree with his picking on Islam, we have extremist muslims preaching hate, racism and suicide bombing on the streets of all major cities. Osama Bin Laden's right hand man lives here. A lot of people in Britain, rightly or wrongly, feel the same way he does. These muslim extremists say they are being oppresed, and then demand that we illegalise alcohol and make women obey dress codes. Its ridiculous.

I agree however, that it is ridiculous to suggest all or even most muslims are nutcases.
 
Condell is half right and half wrong in his stance on this. I dislike Islam, make no bones about it. However, the root cause of most of what angers Condell about fundamentalist Islam is the British culture of apologism when it comes to matters of free speech, mostly fostered by middle-class secular whites as well as most politicians and the government itself. This is part of a larger trend of passivity when it comes to protecting our civil liberties, and stems from us Brits becoming spoilt, spiritless shits who are too used to easy living - nothing to do with muslims at all. Criticising both groups - muslims and apologists - as if they share equal blame, or even reserving most of your ire for muslims as I feel Condell does, is to miss the point, since without their self-aggrandizing accomplices in government British muslims would be just as impotent as British christians.

Yes, muslims on the whole tend not to understand or appreciate the tenets of free speech, incompatible as they are with the immunity-of-ideology that people of all religions secretly want to enjoy. But British muslims on their own don't pose any sort of threat at all to freedom, possessing little effective power in the UK. Not even their vote is worth all that much, when you consider that winning over muslim voters is to potentially sacrifice a colossal number of votes from people of the 'Muslims = terror = fire = BAD!!!' mentality.

No, it's our government who is the culprit for arguing and legislating on the side of Islam whenever an issue of Islam vs. Free Speech crops up. This all the more ingenious a tactic since it exploits the aforementioned British passivity over civil liberties; our politicians know that the populace will be less enraged at the government, for crippling a basic freedom, than they will be enraged at muslims, who they perceive as receiving special privileges that a non-muslim (read 'white man') wouldn't get.

At the same time, the freedoms of muslims (and of every other British citizen) are being curtailed in areas that are arguably more important than free speech, yet this seems to go unnoticed by Condell not to mention by the typically blinkered muslims themselves. The surveillance society and climate of fear which are being foisted upon everyone in the country, under the banners of "Nothing to hide; Nothing to fear" and "What about the rights of the people who get blown up??", are part of a paranoid authoritarian shift which is detrimental to everyone. It will be of most detriment to innocent muslims, however, when they start to find themselves locked up for 42 days (or having their heads shot off) for daring to arouse police suspicions.

The culprit again? The government. Yet on both counts they manage to shirk much of the responsibility they should bear for the current shitty state of affairs; they appease the muslims by saying 'Don't worry, we've banned the whiteys from insulting your magic man in the sky', and they appease the Daily Mail readers on the other end of the spectrum by saying 'it's cool, we're locking up the nasty brown men and chucking away the key.'

To see this longwinded post expressed slightly differently, see also: http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=2641324&postcount=17
 
No Limit, why do you just assume he wouldn't treat and expect the same of any other religion you could replace with Islam in this situation? You talk about double standards, but currently there's only one on display in these videos, and just because he attacks Islam doesn't mean he couldn't very well replace it with Christianity. Or at least he could if the British government was bending over for it the same way it has for delicate Muslim sensibilities. But that's not the case, at least not to the same extent. Either due to fear of violence (there weren't any Christian suicide bombers), a misguided ideal for multiculturalism, but also because there is no drive for it. I recall reading that Britain is a steadily increasing irreligious society, in that native Britons have little regard for religion. Muslim immigrants more often than not are pious, and the most vocal and successful pushes for curbing free speech and religious exception come from that demographic.

Although I agree with Laivasse that this would not be encourage, let alone possible, if the government handled this with some sense.
 
I didn't assume anything. I am simply pointing out that any time he goes after religious bigotry he seems to only concentrate on Islam, going as far as suggesting that all non radical muslims, you know all 99.99% of them, have to apologize for the small radical minority.

I'm sure that he also goes after christianity once in a blue moon. But you are completely missing my point, this has to do with context. If I mention the fact that 5% of all illegal immigrants commit crimes you'd be pretty alarmed by that if I just left it at that (I made this statistic up by the way). But if I also mentioned that 10% of legal residents commit crimes then that 5% stat wouldn't be that big of a deal any more, would it?

Religion trying to set us back 1,000 years is a serious problem and it is nothing new. It has absolutely nothing to do with Islam itself, it has to do with fundamentalists of all backgrounds. So why is Pat Condell not spending all this time attacking fundamentalists of all religions, why concentrate on Islam? How many millions of listeners/viewers has he gained as a result of singling out Islam as the main problem?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Voice_(UK)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Christian_Vote
 
Mr Stabby said:
Christianity is almost absent from British politics.
Click to expand...

And Islam isnt? Plus there is a lot of text you missed above that which explains why I posted those links, maybe you'd like to address that too?
 
No Limit said:
And Islam isnt?
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No, Islam is at the forefront of british politics currently. I would be willing to bet that if you did a survey amoung british people about the biggest political issue here, Islam (or immigration in general) would proboaly be at the top, particulary in the big cities.

Christians are a dying breed in this country. The Anglican church is collapsing due to falling numbers, and is split over this issue about homosexual clergy. There is no greater demonstration of this than the removal of the blasphemy law.
 
Right -wing Islam is more political than right-wing Christianity in Britain.

Using almost non existent Christian organization to show that Fundamentalist Christians are the same as Fundamentalist Muslims, is misleading. Islamic fundamentalism is more prevalent in the UK than fundamentalist Christianity.

I don't really care if fundamentalist Christians or fundamentalist Muslims want to complain about society, neither have the power to cause any real problems. I don't agree in singling out any loony fringe beliefs for special criticisms, but that doesn't mean they are all equally as insignificant. Fascists, communists, Scientologists, and religious fundamentalists are all against western society, none of them will ever have the power to affect it, it's best to ignore them.
 
No Limit said:
Religion trying to set us back 1,000 years is a serious problem and it is nothing new. It has absolutely nothing to do with Islam itself, it has to do with fundamentalists of all backgrounds. So why is Pat Condell not spending all this time attacking fundamentalists of all religions, why concentrate on Islam? How many millions of listeners/viewers has he gained as a result of singling out Islam as the main problem?
Click to expand...

Probably because Islam today is inherently more despicable than most other religions, and its volatility is more pronounced in more areas of the world currently. Yes, there are moderates, but they're nowhere near as neutered as your average Christian who just prays to a man called Jesus without ever touching a Bible.

Christian fundamentalists in Britain are, at best, an annoyance. Muslims are given far more leeway for fear of being seen as racist or provoking unrest. Islamic fundamentalists don't just have some hateful book club that people can ignore. It is intertwined with political ambition, and it holds more significance than the two minor examples you've listed.
 
Probably because Islam today is inherently more despicable than most other religions, and its volatility is more pronounced in more areas of the world currently.
Click to expand...

More despicable in what way? The fact that there is Islam terrorism? Sure, it's a problem. But what percentage of muslims have commited terrorism? How does that compare to other crime? And should moderate muslims be responsible for that terrorism?

Yes, there are moderates, but they're nowhere near as neutered as your average Christian who just prays to a man called Jesus without ever touching a Bible.
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You have nothing to back that up. You are going off your own stereotypes. In fact I think I already told this story here before, my friends muslim father paid for our trip to Las Vegas, aka sin city.

Christian fundamentalists in Britain are, at best, an annoyance. Muslims are given far more leeway for fear of being seen as racist or provoking unrest. Islamic fundamentalists don't just have some hateful book club that people can ignore. It is intertwined with political ambition, and it holds more significance than the two minor examples you've listed.
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Examples? What have the 3% of muslims changed politically in your country? This question is also applicable to Stabby and atomic piggy.
 
No Limit said:
More despicable in what way? The fact that there is Islam terrorism? Sure, it's a problem. But what percentage of muslims have commited terrorism? How does that compare to other crime? And should moderate muslims be responsible for that terrorism?
Click to expand...

I find the contents of the Koran to be disgusting. The Bible as well, but much of Christianity today is based on the New Testament, which is an arguably softer, castrated form of the faith. Islam has no such analogue, and so it should come as no surprise that many Muslims still push (or wish for) Sharia law, treating women as second-class citizens, and punishment for heresy and apostasy. To the extent these are embraced may vary, but they are unequivocally tenets of Islam.

Moderates are not responsible for terrorism, but their overwhelming silence speaks volumes to others.

You have nothing to back that up. You are going off your own stereotypes. In fact I think I already told this story here before, my friends muslim father paid for our trip to Las Vegas, aka sin city.
Click to expand...

I have my own experiences. If yours are valid, then so are mine.

Examples? What have the 3% of muslims changed politically in your country? This question is also applicable to Stabby and atomic piggy.
Click to expand...

The US culturally different in being a first-world country run by Christian fundamentalists, and while it is nonetheless embarrassing, it is at least least supported by popular will. Policies enacted in favor of religious retardation are enjoyed by many.
 
I like to say Islam is just as much about politics as spirituality, because of Shari'a mainly -- Which 40% of British Muslims support introducing into Britain. Remember when Pat talked about fundamentalists driving a "wedge" into our society? Christianity does this, too, but they're limited to introducing this in small laws and trying to talk about Creationism as science. By the way, on that topic, The Discovery Institute is working together with Muslim creationists right now, with Adnan Oktar also known as Harun Yaha. Anyway, as Pat also says: You can't blame Islam for its followers doing this; the religion is just being true to itself.

Anyway, I can see there are parallels between Christianity and Islam, but Islam is inherently more political. Islam could be at the same status as Christianity, but we have allowed it to run the path it would like - Gradual domination, and we have ourselves to blame for that. In the recent times there have been tests to freedom of speech like the muhammed cartoons, and we need to have more of that. If you don't mind I wanna talk a little about how Islam is different - Where I live, Denmark, we faith-based organizations representing various religions. I'll translate the names semi-literally: The Mosaic belief-society, the Islamic belief-society, etc. The Mosaic one is a somewhat seclusive one, perhaps a bi-product of the low number of Jews in Denmark, and the Islamic one... Well I'll tell you a little about it: The Islamic one has been dominated by Islamist radicals since its inception it seems. During the cartooon-crisis as we all it, these supposed representatives of Islam in Denmark went on a tour of the middle-East, not to talk sense into anyone, but to further inflame the situation with fake drawings. But hey, anything for the Ummah, then more recently, another representative was caught advocating suicide bombings of our parliament. The two main representatives of Islam in Denmark, fundamentalist assholes. And my point with mentioning this is that this is not an insolated phenomenon. Look at Australia with the whole Al-Hilaly thing, it's the exact same problem - Person gets to speak for Muslims, we find out he's an Islamist, and then we just get another Islamist in his place. Everywhere in Europe, revisionist Islam is being trampled down in favor of actual Islam. In Europe we have our fake pretend-Christianity, and that's what works best for us it seems, but the Muslims can't seem to get stuff like that organized it seems.
 
Absinthe said:
I find the contents of the Koran to be disgusting. The Bible as well, but much of Christianity today is based on the New Testament, which is an arguably softer, castrated form of the faith. Islam has no such analogue, and so it should come as no surprise that many Muslims still push (or wish for) Sharia law, treating women as second-class citizens, and punishment for heresy and apostasy. To the extent these are embraced may vary, but they are unequivocally tenets of Islam.
Click to expand...

I actually find the Quran quite reasonable, after watching a documentary on it .
The Quaran actually for example tells Muslim to be peaceful to Christians and Jews. But in Saudi Arabia they've made modifications to it adding passages such as (kill the Jews) and statements that ask for peace they've added that is was cancelled by Mohammed and they actually added telling Muslims to get there Tank,plane,missiles ready.They've also added passages telling Women to always accept if there Husband wants sex. None of this is in the original Quaran. But the Saudis print millions of Qurans a month and distribute them for free so a large potion of the Muslim community get the hateful version. Also saying that many Muslims push for Sharia law is not fair, a lot of Muslims that have come here came here to get away from it and a load of them don't want it, in a survey they did here a large potion of Muslims said they did not want Sharia law in Britain, the ones who said yes were Young Muslims who know **** all about it and think it's cool.
 
I find the contents of the Koran to be disgusting. The Bible as well, but much of Christianity today is based on the New Testament, which is an arguably softer, castrated form of the faith. Islam has no such analogue, and so it should come as no surprise that many Muslims still push (or wish for) Sharia law, treating women as second-class citizens, and punishment for heresy and apostasy. To the extent these are embraced may vary, but they are unequivocally tenets of Islam.
Click to expand...
Just because there is a new testiment doesn't mean the old one becomes invalid. The old testament is still biblical law that most christians must follow. You hit on an interesting point though, most of today's christians don't really follow it, most don't even understand it. So why is that? Is there something different between the western christian world and the middle eastern muslim world? Such as education and poverty rates? Wouldn't that tell you that the content of the book has nothing to do with it? It's all about the civilization you live in?

So instead of protesting mosques maybe you should be happy with muslims growing up in your western country since it means they will grow to be part of the majority modern muslim population. What I'm afraid of is that if you start pushing muslims away, the way that Britain has done, those muslims that would have other wise been moderate start building up a hate for your country and the west as a whole.

You can not change somebody's religion, all of you should already be smart enough to know that. So it's not very wise telling someone you can't change spiritually that they are "primitive pigs whose only achievement in life is to be born with a penis in one hand and a Qur'an in the other". Making sure they get a proper education and a quality life would be much smarter in my opinion. I have no official statistics on this but I would bet you money that if you did a scientific poll in Britain that the more extreme muslims come from a poor background. I'm sure there are exceptions to this (as we've seen in prior terrorist attacks) but in general I think I'm right on that assumption.
Moderates are not responsible for terrorism, but their overwhelming silence speaks volumes to others.
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You say silence. What silence? Do you really expect every moderate muslim to start coming out on national TV and condamning radical Islam? Do you think these moderate muslims would even get air time on your networks to preach that message? And are you sure many already don't, I'm pretty sure I've seen plenty of muslim communities here in the states be outraged by the 9/11 attacks? In fact I can't remember a single muslim community happy about it.

I have my own experiences. If yours are valid, then so are mine.
Click to expand...
You have your own stereotypes just like I do. My point was what you said was not fact, it was based on those stereotypes.

The US culturally different in being a first-world country run by Christian fundamentalists, and while it is nonetheless embarrassing, it is at least least supported by popular will. Policies enacted in favor of religious retardation are enjoyed by many.
Click to expand...
You made a point that christian fundamentalists have taken over the US to some degree which is very true. But this isn't what I was asking you.

You originally said Islam has political ambitions in your country. What examples do you have of the 3% of muslims actually gaining any political ground in the UK?
 
Supposing the Koran is not as bad as it is often made out to be, that in no way makes it reasonable. Perhaps for its time and place, but certainly not by today's moral standards, no matter what few positive gems may be embedded within it. Mohammed preached peace in one breath and then relegated conquered infidels and apostates to second-class status or execution. And to blame all of its violence on Saudi Arabia is naive, as an important part of the Islamic religion is the emulation of Mohammed. While there are of course many different interpretations of the Hadith, Mohammed was still a warrior. And so it should come as no surprise when Muslims use violence and martyrdom to institute change, citing specific chapter and verse in the process.

Younger Muslims are doubtlessly drawn more towards aggressive interpretations. But that's not to say they're invalid. I'm not claiming Islam is totally defined by bloodthirst or never contributed anything to the world. But it is antiquated, outdated, and is largely incompatible with modern society and morals. We should drop the ruse and leave it for the history books, which goes for Christianity and other faiths as well.
 
If the Bible was interpreted as strictly in America as the Quran(sp?) is in Iran/Sudan/Saudi Arabia etc, then America would be very similar to those nations. It's not the religion itself, it's how it is used.

Maybe i'm stupid or something, but I can't seem to come up with paragraph after paragraph supporting my opinion like everyone else in this thread...
 
PimpinPenguin said:
I actually find the Quran quite reasonable, after watching a documentary on it .
The Quaran actually for example tells Muslim to be peaceful to Christians and Jews. But in Saudi Arabia they've made modifications to it adding passages such as (kill the Jews) and statements that ask for peace they've added that is was cancelled by Mohammed and they actually added telling Muslims to get there Tank,plane,missiles ready.They've also added passages telling Women to always accept if there Husband wants sex. None of this is in the original Quaran. But the Saudis print millions of Qurans a month and distribute them for free so a large potion of the Muslim community get the hateful version. Also saying that many Muslims push for Sharia law is not fair, a lot of Muslims that have come here came here to get away from it and a load of them don't want it, in a survey they did here a large potion of Muslims said they did not want Sharia law in Britain, the ones who said yes were Young Muslims who know **** all about it and think it's cool.
Click to expand...

O rly?

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/inj/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/int/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/women/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/sex/long.html
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/interp/long.html

Oh and look, suprise surprise, those horny muslim men can jack off to lesbians but gays are murdered:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/gay/long.html


Only a few reasonably tolerant parts can be found: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/good/long.html
 
I've more to say later on this, but whenever we talk about the Qur'an we have to note that it is a problematic text. It is highly unstable because its language is far more open to interpretation than that of the King James Bible which has become the standard Christian scripture - so open, indeed, that supposedly no one translation is at all sufficient to encompass its ambiguity. The possibility of interpretation is especially important when you consider Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist printing industry, or the highly questionable colonialist/Orientalist translations that titled it a Koran and that have been standard in the Western world for far too long.

The documentary that PimpinPenguin mentions was on the BBC recently. It was called "The Qur'an" and it really is essential viewing; everybody who reads this should attempt to aquire a copy.
 
After watching a lot of the footage from Dagestan, I believe that Saudi Arabia is certainly pulling the strings in a lot of the fundementalist efforts oversea's.

Still though, if they have knowledge that their Qur'an's are being manipulated, why not make a form of protest?

Although that's not to say he probably knows he gets more attention by targeting Islam specifically.
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He tends to talk about it because of the overwelming privledge its received instead of due scrutiny -- that and the fact the British Body Politic appears to be catering to militant Islamists. Learn it from our country; don't do it (e.g, the christian body politic).
 
Oh man, can you imagine if all the Abrahamic religions united against the world?

3.8 Billion followers. :eek:
 
Oh, I'm sorry!

Did I mention the possibility of us being double ****ed then should that happen? :rolling:

EDIT: 6,700,000,000 appears to be the rough estimate.
 
K e r b e r o s said:
He tends to talk about it because of the overwelming privledge its received instead of due scrutiny -- that and the fact the British Body Politic appears to be catering to militant Islamists. Learn it from our country; don't do it (e.g, the christian body politic).
Click to expand...

I think this is the 3rd time I am asking this, do you have any examples? What political ground have muslims gained in the UK?
 
As I said in my post, I believe that UK muslims have very little effective political power. The Muslim Council of Britain have fallen from grace and from the government muslims don't get more than token sympathy over anything, which then evaporates further whenever terrorism or extremism is being discussed.

But to play devil's advocate for a moment, one significant political victory that muslims had against free speech in Britain was the passing into law of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. Muslims and Jews have been at eachother's throats for ages, as we all know, but I believe it is a sore point for British muslims that they are not legally considered a 'race' of people in the way that the Jewish are. Essentially the law as it stood before the R&RH Act said (rightly) that discrimination against muslims is not inherently racist, and so this new law was conceived by the government IMO as a votewinner for angry British muslims, by way of trying to confuse the two concepts of religious discrimination and racism at the expense of civil liberties. The law was already sufficient to deal with racial discrimination against Pakistanis/Bangladeshis/whatever. It also dealt perfectly adequately with issues of unfair discrimination, incitement to violence, and so forth. As such, this Act was an entirely unnecessary bit of appeasement for religious blowhards, and serves only to threaten the freedom of expression of political/social commentators, comedians, playwrights - and even if is never interpreted by judges in that way, it could cause those people to self-censor, thus detracting from the creativity of society as a whole.

Other than that, the list of political victories for British Islamic fundies is pretty sparse afaik. Politicians tend to side with them only when the casualty is civil liberty as a whole, and not their own grip on power - at other times, paranoia over Islamic terrorists is a surer votewinner.
 
K e r b e r o s said:
After watching a lot of the footage from Dagestan, I believe that Saudi Arabia is certainly pulling the strings in a lot of the fundementalist efforts oversea's.

Still though, if they have knowledge that their Qur'an's are being manipulated, why not make a form of protest?
Click to expand...

Dagestan... I wonder if that place could have been a nice play if Chechnya hadn't attacked it and dragged it down the gutter of Islamism. Anyway, they don't need to protest. If they protested Islam being used for violence, they would apostates, and "should surely be killed".
 
Nemesis6 said:
Dagestan... I wonder if that place could have been a nice play if Chechnya hadn't attacked it and dragged it down the gutter of Islamism. Anyway, they don't need to protest. If they protested Islam being used for violence, they would apostates, and "should surely be killed".
Click to expand...

Doubtful. Chechnya and Dagestan have been quite close for centuries and each consider the other to be a sort of 'ethnic brother'. In fact, Chechens were first introduced to Islam from Dagestan. The way I see it, Basayev and Khattab believed they were assisting their 'brothers' (both religious and ethnic) in 'liberating' themselves from the Russian federation. Even if they hadn't invaded in '99, you'd still see problems there.

And I definitely agree that wahabbists in Saudi Arabia have been pulling strings in regions like Chechnya/Dagestan. The fact that Khattab was a Jordanian with close Saudi ties helps show this. Then you've got the mujaheddin training camps that were set up in Chechnya in the late '90's. Camps like those take money, something Chechnya didn't have much of after the first Chechen war.
 
Pat Condell doesn't critisise Christianity because Christianity has neglegible influence in Britain. Of course it has followers who are just as bigotted and hateful as fundamentalist muslims, and of course it has a lot more influence in America. But Condell is speaking to a British audience, who are concerned with British affairs. He could rally against Christianity, or religion in general, but there's no point doing that because neither of those are real problems in Britain; Islam is.
 
Yeah go read the Daily Mail more pls.
 
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