We need to draw a straight line between domestic violence and terrorism

[lapislzi]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36801763

Not a crooked line, not a dot-to-dot line, not a curve. A straight line.

The Nice killer was known to police for petty crime and allegations of domestic violence. He was separated from his partner, with whom he had children. I heard (sorry no link) on a BBC report that an order of protection had been served against him recently. Again, I can't confirm that, but it was reported on the BBC.

It is imperative and incumbent to acknowledge that domestic violence IS terrorism. Domestic abusers frequently kill their victims. There's no difference, except one of scale.

In this case, the animus turned from the partner to the western world, impelled by violent rhetoric of Islamic extremists who draw almost no distinction between beating one's wife and butchering apostates.

Scratch a terrorist, and you will find (usually) a man who despises women.

[Squinch]

1. Excellent, excellent, excellent point. And what is at the base of fundamentalist radicalism

in Islam and all other religions? The fear of women and the subjugation of women.

I had never made this connection before. Thank you for one of those "whoa" moments that brings understanding a quantum leap forward.

[lapislzi]

2. Thank you.

You make-a me blush <-- for all the people, and the people of the people.

[Squinch]

3. Seriously, though. This is very profound, and not something I have seen discussed.

[OneGrassRoot]

51. ^^^ What you both said. :). n/t

[Squinch]

4. This is sinking like a stone here, so I hope you don't mind that I posted a link to it in HOF.

[redstatebluegirl]

9. K&R

[RKP5637]

5. K&R !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[riversedge]

6. k and r

[GummyBearz]

7. But outlawing domestic violence infringes on their religion

"Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand."

[lapislzi]

14. If I'm not mistaken, that text comes from a BOOK

While some people might think that some books are infallible or present absolute truth, I am not one of them. Nor do I believe that any society that wishes to call itself civilized would think so either.

Any society that condones, encourages, or ignores violence against women is in serious need of a makeover.

(I do realize/hope you're being facetious in your post.)

[GummyBearz]

23. You are correct in your analysis

[Squinch]

36. For those who think it's not just Islam but it's all of the religions, I will throw in that I

remember, even as a very young child, that reading in a Christian church about, "Wives obey your husbands."

Even as a kid, I wanted to run screaming from the church every time that one came around. So yes, all the major religions teach this.

BUT I do think there is now a fringe in the Islamic faith that takes this to an extreme and then kills others for not doing the same.

Though the teachings from the Bible are just as bad, I do not see as many groups (outside the very abusive fundamentalists) who are taking it to the extreme, and even those are not killing others for not doing the same.

[lapislzi]

39. You're correct.

The blaze of jihadism is unlike anything seen since the Inquisition, or the Salem Witch Trials--the latter of which were limited and perpetrated by an equally crazy and fortunately short-lived group. Although their legacy lives on in some of the more regressive sects, notably the "prosperity gospel" people, who are direct spiritual descendants of the insufferable Calvinist Puritans.

[Squinch]

42. The witch trials were actually pretty widespread and devastating. And yes, I think they

came from similar impulses.

I was thinking the other day that Islam is now just about the age that Christianity was when the Crusades and the Inquisition came around.

I wonder if there is something meaningful there: an essentially violent religion (I include the one I was raised in in this description) gets to about 1300-1400 years old, and they engender a movement that wants to kill all those who don't follow them. They see any "apostates" as being personally dangerous to them.

[lapislzi]

47. Even worse, they think they're doing you a favor

For them, it's a win-win.

I was unaware that the witch trials were bigger than the microcosm of the New England Puritans that's so often cited, but I believe you. I know witches and "heretics" were burned throughout the Middle Ages, but I my memory of history isn't good enough to tell you when the practice died out.

(Obviously--and O/T--it was still operational during the period depicted in "Outlander.&quot

But you raise a very interesting point. Is there something in the intellectual evolution of a movement, a critical mass, that makes a portion of it implode into violence and hyperorthodoxy? As cultures and religions evolve, heterodoxy emerges and spreads. I guess this would be threatening to the parties with the most at stake in maintaining orthodoxy.

Needs further study. Thanks for the provocative point. Seems like we're kindred spirits!

[Squinch]

49. This is a very good thread. Thanks for posting it.

There are a lot of people thinking hard here.

[Oneironaut]

58. But gawd wrote the book!!1!

Of course, that makes no sense. If God were so serious about its laws, it wouldn't trust a human to record them. That would be foolish.

However, the fact that "Gawd wrote the book" is very convenient. What's baffling, though, is that these same people cherrypick the entries that they want to follow, and discard the rest. If you point this out to them, they fly into a rage and start launching ad hominem attacks on you without addressing the point.

Humans are weird.

[Squinch]

35. "If YOU FEAR arrogance..."

If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does.

Squash the arrogance of women and make everyone else squash it too. Even if it is just all in your head.

[KingCharlemagne]

8. i would wager that when you scratch the surface of these many white racist

cops so fond of killing unarmed black citizens, you will find a bunch of fucking wife beaters too.

Just a guess, but I read somewhere that domestic abuse is 40% higher in police households than among the general public.

[JonathanRackham]

13. I think police on the beat are subject to PTSD like combat veterans.

I think they should be rotated out to other careers from time to time. A steady diet of stress can not be healthy.

[KingCharlemagne]

29. Excellent suggestion and one I'd not considered before now. Thanks! - nt

[Francis Booth]

57. So true - these people see civilians at their worst

all day long. After a while, they start to believe that all civilians are assholes.

I believe that's why cops usually only spend their leisure hours with other cops.

[JonathanRackham]

10. Is it a conflict between cultural norms and religous norms?

I know Catholics who are religious and pious on Sunday and assholes the other 7 days. (Apologies to practicing Catholics who take it serious the whole 7 days.) I know people of the Jewish faith who do the same thing.

People are proud to wear their faith badge when it suits their need, a shield for their behavior.

I'm agnostic and probably heading to hell, I'd rather be there than with people who bullshit their way into heaven. Just my luck I'll be thrown in with the politicians..................

[Squinch]

37. No. I think it is a logical result of some religious teachings when they are brought to the extreme

and the culture is created around this extreme.

If you REALLY believe that women need to be subjugated, and that sex is an evil that women lead you to, you MUST demand that your culture keeps women down and blames women for your desire for sex. And if you make your culture around that, then you think all cultures should be made around that, and if they aren't they are a danger to your culture, because they might corrupt your pure women-hating.

[Democat]

11. What if a religion allows wife and child beating?

Should that religion be banned?

[lapislzi]

15. I'll give you two answers

As an atheist of the "Sam Harris" school, I think religion is almost always toxic and a source of many of society's ills.

That being said, "banning religion" is an absurd notion. You can't ban religion (ask the Soviets) any more than you can force me to believe in something I don't.

I think that there are religious practices that should absolutely be banned. Stoning comes to mind. Slavery. Rape. Execution of one's children. All of the above and much more can find sanction in some holy book or another. These books were written by people who didn't know where the sun went at night. Should we trust them with moral judgments of this magnitude? I think not.

Let's experiment with a little moral evolution. It has worked in many places in Europe that, coincidentally, have become quite secular.

I'd love a more secular world. If I can't have that, I'd like religion to police itself and stop encouraging conduct that the civilized world condemns as morally reprehensible.

[Democat]

18. Mostly agreed

Nazism is a belief system and it is outright banned in some places in Europe. How different are the genocidal views of ISIS from those of previous generations of Nazis? Should ISIS and Nazi ideology be allowed to flourish in secular societies as long as they aren't directly killing people?

[lapislzi]

19. Hmmmm....

Some would say that ISIS is a gross perversion of a mainstream religion. Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. It's certainly taken the literal reading of an ancient text to an extreme. It thinks it's the distillation of pure Islam, and most Muslims are horrified by that idea.

Until the secular reading of the text becomes the only accepted interpretation, extremism is going to continue to fester, just as it does in the other Abrahamic religions (I don't know enough about non-Abrahamic religions to comment).

Christianity's been grappling with this for centuries. Judaism, less so, because they fought it out in the Old Testament, and then it was underground for 2,000 years. But we also know there are Jewish extremists; maybe in lesser numbers, but they exist.

Obviously there's no legislating belief or morality. Nazis gonna naz. They just can't do it in public, and if they hurt anyone with their nazism, they'll be prosecuted. The same should hold true for other religious practices that modern society has deemed unacceptable, like slavery. It's up to reasonable people to push the arc of reason. Expose the barbarity of the belief systems and change minds generationally. Lift up the ugly rocks and shame the people hiding under them.

No one said the high road was easy, or fun.

[Stonepounder]

25. Seems to me that people really don't want to follow their own religions.

If you look at the teachings of the founders of a religion - Jesus, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha and so on, they all teach fundamentally the same thing - peace, love, charity, non-violence, and so on. Even Moses and his 10 Commandments was non-violent (thou shalt not kill). But there are too many folk that don't really want to follow the teachings of their religion. Jesus never once mentioned gays, but oh my, look at how many 'religious' folk can work themselves into an absolute fit over gay marriage.

Folk cherry pick what they want from their 'religion' and blithely ignore the parts they want to. And it happens whether you want to talk about religion or secularism. Folk who want an excuse to commit mayhem can always find justification.

[WestCoastLib]

31. Here's the problem with what you said.

You aren't wrong, but here's the problem with what you said. Look at these two quotes of yours.

If you look at the teachings of the founders of a religion - Jesus, Mohammed, Confucius, Buddha and so on, they all teach fundamentally the same thing - peace, love, charity, non-violence, and so on.

Folk cherry pick what they want from their 'religion' and blithely ignore the parts they want to.

The problem is that Jesus, Mohammed, etc. also would be guilty of "cherry picking" what they want from their religion. That is not to say that what they chose to Cherry pick (peace, love, charity, etc) wasn't a better idea than what many choose to cherry pick. But, it's still just cherry picking, nonetheless. All of the various religious texts have plenty of awful things in them. Choosing to focus on the good is just as much cherry picking as choosing the bad...

Hence the root of the problem with religion.

[Stonepounder]

44. Well, yes and no.

You certainly could make the argument that 'founders' cherry-pick. But, at the same time, if we choose to eschew religion in favor of secularism, don't we also then have to cherry-pick the values we choose to try and live by?

How do we choose those values and where do they come from? Who do we look at as role models? Man doesn't exist in a vacuum, so there have to be people we admire that we want to be like and people we look at and say "I never want to be like him/her".

So, it seems to me that all life is choosing who to take guidance from, be it Jesus, Buddha, Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump, our parents, or the guy down the street?

[WestCoastLib]

50. True.

A. Individuals define their own morality and choose whoever they wish to take guidance from.

B. Collective groups of individuals (in the form of a government) define rules that they want to live by (in terms of laws).


Religion is kind of a bastardization of both of the above and really shouldn't be necessary in this process (not trying to make a judgement here).

[Squinch]

38. Yes. Or changed. Just as if a religion allowed for assaults on men, those should not be allowed.

[mercuryblues]

12. I have

thought for a long time that groups like the Taliban, A/Q etc. If it weren't for them, many of the members would be serial killers, spree killers and mass murderers. Now I will add your observation to the list. It fits.

They get off on the violence. Groups like those just give them a focus and a target. They claim to be religious. I see it as nothing more than using their religion to justify their murderous rage. It is also a power hierarchy. The leaders of these groups believe they are in control. When in fact it is the leaders of countries. As long as the kings and such can keep their rage focused on outsiders, they will not look within. They will not turn that rage on them. The common enemy and all. These groups are nothing more than pawns for the elite to maintain their status.

We see the same thing here. Not to the same degree, but here none the less. About 1/2 of the spousal murder rate could be avoided with one simple law.....take guns away from people who have a RO against them. States are dragging their feet on this and the NRA is fighting it. WHY?

[lapislzi]

17. Could it be that fewer guns would be sold?

Pardon my cynicism, but women's lives are cheap when you're talking about the profits of companies whose products are nearly indestructible and never wear out. You have to continually innovate and find new markets.

[dynamo99]

26. and what of...

those who kill by flying drones? Do they get a free pass because they work for the government?

The Taliban was a government once, too.

[mercuryblues]

34. Your concern is duly noted

What I wrote must be questioned and diminished because I did not address every aspect of a situation. Violence against women (and others in the way) is not as important as drone strikes. Whether the thread was about drone strikes, or not.

[Squinch]

40. I agree. When we see the atrocities that ISIS is perpetrating, those are sick, sick people

who are full of rage and personality disorders and evil.

But mostly they are monstrously entitled. If I am not mistaken, their ranks are filled with men who have been raised to think they deserve things (land, women, money, power) and they didn't have any of that until they joined ISIS and began beheading and raping and kidnapping. They think they are entitled to do these things because they think they are better than everyone else, and they think these things are owed to them (like the 70 virgins idea - I notice no one asks the opinion of the virgins)

[auntpurl]

16. I agree.

I would also use domestic violence as a litmus test for gun ownership. It is much more likely to predict future violence than, say, mental health issues.

[sheshe2]

20. K&R

[lapislzi]

21. Thank you!

I hope to get some discussion rolling amongst you smart ppls.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

22. K&R n/t

[lunatica]

24. I simply don't agree to this blanket broad brush kind of condemnation

Misogyny does not equate to terrorism. It may be swept up as part of it, but it is no indicator of someone who would murder randomly and in the name of some kind of twisted personal religious beliefs.

I was physically and psychologically abused by my first husband but he harbored no hatred against humanity. On the contrary he cared so much for being liked by the world that he worked very hard to fool everyone into believing he was wonderful in every way. The only person he wanted to hurt was me and that was probably because his mother heaped major guilt on his head from the time he was an innocent child. Even to this day, many decades later he believes himself to be a great guy who loves everybody and a real paragon of virtue.

In my opinion he's nothing more than a narcissist. A malignant narcissist in my case.

[lapislzi]

30. Two points.

I agree with you that not all misogynists are terrorists. Some are just assholes, like yours. (Maybe we were married to the same guy?!)

But, I think most terrorists carry in them the seed, if not the full fruit, of misogyny. Cultures that place low, little, or no value on women's lives are fertile ground for terrorism. And that domestic violence is terrorism on a smaller scale.

I am sorry to learn of your abuse, and I wish you healing and peace.

[lunatica]

33. I wish you healing too

It was many decades ago and it helped make me a much stronger person and an advocate for victims of all kinds of violence. I would have preferred to not go through that but I can say it didn't break me. Not even close.

[Squinch]

41. I am so sorry about your experience, and I am glad you got away. But let me ask you:

if you and your abusive first husband lived within a culture in which women were subjugated because of religion, meaning he was encouraged to abuse you and told that was a religious requirement, and if he fell in with a group that felt that same religion required them to kill people who in their estimation disrespected God, do you think he would have been more susceptible? If it were presented as something righteous, might he have joined up for that? After all, it would have been him just showing his virtue in that context.

[lunatica]

43. So you think I was lucky or something because he wasn't 'religious'?

I'm sure that misogyny and beating your wife and children is part of some people's definition of religion or in some cultures, but it's pretty common in countries and societies that don't condone it also so claiming it's a definite sign of terrorist rules is not reasonable.

I guarantee that many so-called enlightened or highly civilized countries have plenty of wife beaters. As a matter of fact it's far more universal than something just accepted in religious or cultural practices. It's also done up and down the economic strata as well.

It would be just as logical to say that beating your wife is the same as being rich, or a plumber or whatever.

[Squinch]

45. No, not at all, and I am sorry if it came out that way. I am just trying to

say that in some places the abuse that we are horrified by and call a crime, in some places that abuse is an expectation because a man who "keeps his wife in line" is respected.

In a subset of these places, men believe that everyone else must live by those rules or be killed.

I think such a place will make an abuser think his abuse is righteous, and extrapolating that abuse out to the wider world in order to make it "pure" is also righteous.

And yes, religion does not create domestic violence any more than, as you say, being rich or a plumber. But it is logical to think that if a religion is one that encourages domestic violence it will also encourage wider violence.

[lunatica]

46. I didn't take it personally

And you're argument and the poster's make sense, but violence against women is pretty much universal and is basically accepted by everyone as you can see when people will assume women must have done something to bring it on. You know that's very common even in this country when women are blamed for being raped.

To say terrorists and only certain cultures condone it is not correct. Even if a culture encourages it, it's just as common in other cultures that don't actively condone it.

Violence against women is a Thing in itself and common to all countries and societies. It should never be conflated with some religion or a few cultural beliefs. It's rampant in all cultures on the planet and should be fought against as the evil it is, not as something we can blame other countries on.

[Squinch]

48. I'm glad you didn't. I truly did not mean that, and I apologize for saying something that

might in any way be construed to mean that. I would hate to think I had shown anything but respect for you and your ability to survive the abuse and get away from the abuser.

And that is a good point too, that it is as prevalent in places where it is not institutionalized and encouraged as in places where it is. It is even hard to talk about places where it is "not institutionalized." I do see how our culture aggrandizes it, though in a very different way than violent fundamentalists do.

[lapislzi]

54. I'd like to make a quick clarification

With no disrespect to anyone intended.

My main point was to draw attention to the correlation between domestic violence and terrorism. Domestic violence is terrorism on an intimate scale. I didn't put religion into it specifically, but it's hard to ignore it as an aggravating factor.

I was speaking more generally about societies that don't value women. Religion is a common element in these societies, and can fan the flames of both religious extremism (jihadism) and extreme misogyny. There is a correlation, but not a causation.

[awoke_in_2003]

27. If you will abuse your spouse

then you will abuse strangers

[niyad]

28. k and r

and would you please cross-post in women's rights and issues as well?

[lapislzi]

32. Doing, doing!

As mom would say.

[applegrove]

52. There was an article about mass murderers and domestic

violence on Facebook today. I think the publication was 'the cut'. I can't cut and paste it as I'm on my cell phone. But it was on this exact topic.

[HassleCat]

53. OK, but...

This discussion always seems to end up with a lot of talk about how Islam teaches disrespect for women. Many religious movements have institutionalized bad treatment of women in the name of some deity, so it's not the only one. Be careful of these "one thing leads to another" arguments.

[lapislzi]

55. Correlation doesn't equal causation. That is agreed.

Saying "they all do it" doesn't excuse anyone!

At the moment, Islamic extremism is the points leader in oppression of women and systemic violence. But that was not the intent of my post. It was to underscore how societies/cultures/groups that condone domestic violence also seem to produce more terrorists.

You can beat your wife for 50 years and never blow up a school. That doesn't make you any less a terrorist, even if it's only one person you're terrorizing.

Throw some radical religious rhetoric into the mix, however, and you may get a different outcome.

[lostnfound]

56. Recommending. There's a dysfunctions personality type tied with a broken ego

The opposite of a healthy ego - it's an ego that hates itself and feels powerless, and perhaps relieves its inner demons through abuse and terror.