Shootings at 2 New Zealand Mosques
 

https://www.rt.com/news/453857-new-z...osque-shooter/

https://apnews.com/ea1a8d5dcc2746fd95e7b5cb0e509949

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Sky News reporting at least 40 people dead.
https://news.sky.com/story/live-sign...sques-11665829

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A terrible loss of life.:(

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Horrific.

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Tragic, seems trivial to point this out but wasn't the lead murderer an immigrant to...

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https://www.theage.com.au/world/ocea...o.html?ref=rss

Rotherham was written on one of the weapons he used.

40 confirmed dead.

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49 confirmed dead now

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Australian it seems.

He had some sort of manifesto and was streaming it on social media. I read one story that he shot a young girl who ran screaming for help.

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So much hate

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He shot her down then ran over her dead body as he left.

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Just saw it. Made me sick.

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Cowards!

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If only all the attacks on churches around the world received the same media attention.

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49 innocent people have just been murdered and you choose this as a good time to come out with that crap.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

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And how many people have been killed in churches and indeed mosques, prior to this. I'm trying to draw attention to those innocent victims that are never mentioned. The real "fake news" problem is what ISN'T reported.

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There is a time and place...

You're quite obviously aware of neither.

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And the time and place for mentioning the "forgotten" was at the times when it happened, but did it happen to the same extent?

Link

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Seems like the guy was into white nationalism and 'great replacement' theories. Some alt-right figures have been removing their videos on YouTube this morning.

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Also seems like some left-wing outlets are trying to palm him off as a "Christian terrorist" when his manifesto appears to lean more towards white supremacy than Christian.

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A very sad day - my thoughts are with the victims' families and friends.
Shocked to read of the gunman's footage being shared on social media.

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Peace and respect to the victims of this diabolical act, and best wishes to their family and friends. Sadly I think there could well be some form of reprisals happening in the near future... Hopefully not.

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Says a lot about the character of those who watch or share the footage as if it were some sort of entertainment.

This is as shocking as the event itself.

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MI5 are investigating any associates/links to the far-right the shooter may have had in Britain: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/m...oter-qcnl03ck8

Yes this is very sad............... :(


They wont pretend it didnt happen like the US seems to do........

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Can we swap Mrs May for this PM?

'Real leaders do exist': Jacinda Ardern uses solace and steel to guide a broken nation

We need this approach to the same problem we face in this country ..

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Whilst I don't agree with what this bloke did it was only a matter of time something like this happened, its sad because its a never ending circle.

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Why was it a matter of time?

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I’ve worked in NZ a lot, and the Maoris are very welcoming and friendly.

btw, it was an Aussie who carried out the shootings, not a Kiwi, and they have very different mind-sets.

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It's more about the behaviour of the group that is not allowed to be criticised.

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This sounds an awful lot like victim blaming.

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Wow!

"If only they had stayed where they came from, this wouldn’t have happened".. :rolleyes:

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I think you think you’re being abstract, but there’s nothing abstract about four dozen people being murdered for practicing a religion outside of its region of origin.*

“Reducing opportunity” is the same argument used to insinuate that a woman’s choice of Friday night outfit is a factor when she gets raped. You simply can’t advocate simplistic cause and effect arguments in situations where humans are involved. We are moral beings; we don’t operate from instinct, we have moral understanding of one kind or another and we make moral choices.

If a man rapes a woman, that is entirely due to his disregard for what society considers morally abhorrent; likewise if a man guns down a lot of Muslims.

* Fun fact, Christianity also originated in the Middle East, as did Judaism for that matter.

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You are being too simplistic here. Define "culture"? You are assigning the same moral code and religious dogma to all Muslims. They, as we do in the West, have a spectrum of moral & belief constructs: some facist and evil, most benign and inclusive.

The far-right trap, repeated throughout history, is one of: "look, they are not like us, it must be their fault".

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There are MANY cases where Muslims kill other Muslims, simply for being the wrong "type" of Muslim. There are MANY other attacks on Mosques(and Churches) by ..... Muslims. And that is before you get into the attacks of various kinds on non-Muslims for being non-Muslim by ..... Muslims.

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:confused:

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Are you seriously suggesting that what I said isn't true?

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How is it relevant to what Chris said? He said people are responsible for their own actions.

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If you embed your replies in someone else's then this happens :)

As to your point: if you generalise then, as I mentioned, you can fall into the historical trap I outlined.

You talk about "incompatible cultures". This has no real world meaning as it is too coarse grained to apply in any meaningful sense. It is the Islamist ideology that is the danger here not the Muslim population per se. This distinction must always be made ..

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I don't see the relevance of this post and it doesn't address Chris's point that you cannot blame the victims of crimes. And, you could cut and paste "Christian" in place of "Muslim" in that sentence if you wanted to.

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:tu:

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:tu:

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Not all Christians,Hindus,Sikhs,Buddhists are homogeneous and they all have their dissidents within their religion.Islam or Muslims are no different and to lump everyone in a religious group as having the same viewpoint and attitudes is very,very simplistic.

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Whilst this is absolutely true nobody in their right mind could ignore the fact that Islam appears to attract far more murderous nutters than any other faith. For whatever reason this part of the problem never seems to be properly addressed by anyone.

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Islam isn't a race.

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The vast majority of Muslims are just boring ordinary folk doing boring ordinary stuff. Going to pray, going to work, going to shops, feeding the family. The same boring ordinary stuff as everyone else.

It’s ridiculous to assert that some clash of cultures caused anything like this. A racist psychopath with access to weapons did.

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Not quite true. The Quilliam Foundation plays an active role in anti-Islamist discussions. Maajid Nawaz, on LBC Radio and a founder member of this Foundation also discusses this regularly on his phone in show.

It is the Government that is not doing enough to promote education & discussion on this important distinction between being Islamist and being Muslim. Maybe this has something to do with the money this country, specifically the powerful armament manufacturers, receives from arm sales to Saudi Arabia, clandestine backers of ISIS.

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:clap:

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I think it is true. Quilliam does do a lot of research but it does seem to be only them.

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The Governments 'Prevent' program also exists to try and combat radicalisation at an early stage albeit it's focused on all types of extremism.

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It would fall short of focussing on why Islam attracts the nutters though but then again we don’t know what work they do behind closed doors.

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And the Muslim Council of Britain launched a programme last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ive-to-prevent

Unfortunately, bad things make good headlines, while preventative efforts are treated as low profile events by the media.

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Again, ”Terrorist Muslims" incite fear and make good headlines, whilst stories like these are relegated to the inside pages/not reported/downplayed by some media.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47645863 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8794476.html

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That’s a preventative measure which is invaluable of course. But none of these appear to answer the question of *why* Islam attracts such a murderous element.

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Wherever there is a dictator seeking to radicalise people to his cause, or a community leader outraged at oppression (whether perceived or real), they will seek to harness the ideology or beliefs of the community to their cause.

Islam exists in many places where those factors presently exist.

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Oh absolutely but surely that still begs the question of why said dictator/community leader was attracted to Islam in the first place. There are bad apples as leaders in all faiths (as well as in those who don’t have any faith) but they don’t appear to use other religions/beliefs to attract the nutters.

With white supremacists the clue is in the name, they want to be supreme over those they see as “lesser” so at least there a kind of ‘logic’ you can follow to explain (not excuse) their evil acts.

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I think the concept of identity is powerful there as well. Giving insecure and socially isolated people a sense of community and identity. That seems to be a common pattern either with Islamic extremism or white nationalism.

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But is it that different? They're both about being part of a 'tribe' and that being 'threatened' by the outside world...

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I do think it’s different (but equally repugnant). The mainstream religions teach about love, peace and tolerance or thereabouts. White supremacy (as I understand it) is as far from these as possible.

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Well to be clear I am not equating white nationalism with religion obviously. :D

However I think there is similarity between them with the concept of radicalising, often vulnerable and isolated, people behind some form of community and identity. I also don't think the religion they're feeding these people is the religion of love, peace and tolerance you mean either.

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No I agree, that’s why I don’t refer to them as Muslims.

There may well be a similarity but I don’t consider them absolutely comparable. There are murderous elements in both sides obviously but I’m pretty sure you’ll agree it appears those claiming to be of Islam have killed far more than those subscribing to “white supremacy”.

Edit: and for clarity neither am I suggesting one side is any better or worse than the other.

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Another thing they should look at is how many highly educated people get suckered into the cause, I'm sure there's plenty of nutters but there's a worrying number of highly educated people secumbing to. That and the prisons, the obvious breeding ground where sometimes conversion is based on something as banal as a way of getting better dinners

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Said community leaders are usually already Muslims. They use what they know, they don’t go looking for a novel ideology. The religion forms part of the cultural identity which they claim is being attacked/threatened and which they are standing up for.

At other points in history, and at other times, Christianity has been used in the same way. Hinduism is used as a nationalist cause in India. Even Budddhism has occasionally been used as a rallying point for nationalist violence.

Every religion contains within it enough teaching about the imperative of moral purity to allow someone so minded to twist it into an excuse for violent resistance or crusade.

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Again I don’t disagree but surely you can’t overlook how in this day and age it seems to happen far more in Islam (or in its name) than other faiths regardless of location around the globe.

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I don’t overlook it, but your thinking is three-dimensional .... at other points in history Islam hasn’t been that source of trouble, but Christianity has. In the medieval period crusades were an excuse for all sorts of raping and pillaging, and the crusaders sometimes didn’t even wait until they arrived in the Holy Land before getting started.

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Yeah I’m aware of that. The point I’m making in relation to history is we can’t change it, we can only change what happens now and in the future. And surely trying to identify why Islam attracts more of the murderous element is a good way to effect just that.

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At the risk of going round in circles ... the reason is that the socio-political circumstances that give rise to that sort of violence are presently often to be found amongst the poor and radicalised people whose community religion happens to be Islam.

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There is an important point here: the religion of Islam specifically lends itself able to be misrepresented by zealots. The Koran and the Hadith that follows it claim to be the "revealed truth of God" and as such are immutable. The ability of the modern day followers of religions to interpret the holy books is key to being able to defuse and invalidate the attempt to transpose the rules & edicts from 2000 years ago to today's societies.

Even fundamentalist Christians do not try and impose the many capital offense Old Testament laws today whereas the Islamists do exactly this because, and here's the distinction, the Koran is the last revealed truth of God as such cannot be changed.

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There are plenty of fundamentalist Christians who try to apply as much of the Old Testament as they can get away with to modern life, believe me.

The difference in interpretive method isn’t due to Muslims holding the Qu’ran to be the “Last Testament”; Christians hold the New Testament also to be the “Last Testament”.

The difference in interpretive practice between Muslims and most Christians is most likely due to the fact that the New Testament claims to be the writing of people who were inspired by God, whereas the earliest Muslim leaders claimed the Qu’ran was actually dictated to Mohammed by God. (This is also why many of them won’t read it in anything other than its original language, Arabic, whereas Christians are content to translate the Bible out of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into whatever language they require).