Letters to the Editor
Fraud Guy
Published Letters: 337
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Apologists
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The question was:
Overall, do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Al Qaeda?
The answers were:
1% very favorable
4% somewhat favorable
10% somewhat unfavorable
58% very unfavorable
27% don't know/refused
What does favorable mean? Does that mean you favor some of their goals, all of their goals, one of their goals (Like getting the US out of Iraq and the Middle East)? Or you favor a single act, statement, several statements, their eviction of the Soviets from Afghanistan, or all of their actions? I can easily see some Muslims answering in the positive because of agreement with that sentiment, which is shared by over half of Americans according to other polls. Does that make them terrorist supporters (well, at least according to rational arguments)? Does that make them likely to act on that favorable rating? I have answered polls where I was asked if I had a favorable opinion of a particular brand of gasoline. I did. Do I buy it all the time? No.
Golden Boy's particular fallacy is his repeated equation of every respondant with a favorable opinion of Al-Qaeda with a potential terrorist, and he then further expands on that fallacy into equating every non-respondant into that group. He has no logical basis for doing so. In the survey, in countries like England, which suffered from a "homegrown" Muslim terror attack, there was not only a higher base of Muslims as portion of the population, but also a higher level of favorable to al-Qaeda responses. Yet there has only been one attack in England, organized by a very small group. Does that mean that there are thousands and millions of potential Muslim terrorists in England about to blow themselves up, or that, even among those favorable to al-Qaeda, there is only a small fraction of a fraction of a percent who would take that favorable feeling and turn it into explosive action? Since we do not hear of daily bombings in England, I have to favor the latter.
Terrorism is just like any other threat. In addition to considering the potential damage, one also has to consider the chance of occurrence, and the cost/benefit of any preventative measures. Since the likelihood of homegrown Muslim terror is extremely low, why take actions (like claiming that 30% or so of all American Muslims are jihadists and clamping down on all Muslim civil liberties to greatly increase the chances of radicalizing them) that do not effectively reduce the risk.
In fraud prevention, I could stop all fraud, but then my company would have no sales. A police state could stop all crime, but at the cost of privacy, initiative, and corruption and abuse by the police (oops, sorry, so there would be crime). We have these things called rights that tell us and our government that we are free. The police can act if there is reasonable suspicion. Golden Boy's suppositions are not a reasonable suspicion. Similar ones have been made about almost every ethnic and religious group in American history, with as little proof and less evidence of validity that was exonerated over time, except for the very, very rare exceptions which never warranted any special special suppression of the entire group.
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Extremists
[Read the article: Large number of Americans favor violent attacks against civilians]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Golden Boy said:
What the Pew poll reveals is what Muslims in America believe, as opposed to the relentless propaganda we are subjected to: That "extremist" views represent a hijacking (unfortunate word there) of the religion of peace by a small minority. It is demonstrable that neither the origins, doctrine, or practice of Islam is or was peaceful, and now we have some data on just how extreme the Muslim population in America really is.
And of course, those extremist Muslims within the United States have caused violence which has impacted a large proportion of our population, which is proven by the same poll. Not.
I have seen this type of sterotyping before. I used to regularly play role playing games. Back in the 80's, there was a huge dustup about how these games caused players to commit suicide on a regular basis, and should be banned. Supporters of this view trolled through news stories and came up with 7 (or so) instances where role-playing was associated with a person who committed suicide (note associated with, not cause of the act). This was over 3 year period, and out of a conservatively numbered population of over 3 million gamers.
At the time, the suicide rate in the US was some single digit number out of 100,000 persons annually. The rate of suicide among gamers, based on the statistics of the anti-gaming groups was smaller than that by a factor of 1,000. Maybe the correct conclusion was that actually gamers were much less likely to commit suicide (for various reasons). And in the few cases where they did, the trigger event (as evinced by the examples) was usually when they were denied the ability to game; i.e., their coping mechanism was taken away. The repression, not the expression, triggered the suicide.
Back to the present discussion. You claim extremism. You do not prove it. You wish us to find a way to deal with it. Most posters here counsel discussion and toleration. You wonder why we aren't worried (i.e., we should take a course different than we espouse, but which you won't name). You point out a big number and say we should be scared. Posters here point out rational reasons why we shouldn't. Maybe because arguements similar to yours have been made time and time again by alarmists (disinterested or intentional) whose solutions were much worse than the perceive problem. Much, much worse.