Re: 72 Virgins?

Bill Johnston wrote:
Note: Apparently failed to post originally.
On Apr 13, 9:10 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bill Johnston wrote:
On Apr 12, 7:11 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Bill Johnston wrote:
On Apr 9, 6:40 pm, Matt Giwer <jul...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hiscoming wrote:
But other muslims are expecting 70 virgins if they kill themselves and the
infidels.
Who is right?
How about who gives a ***? All religious beliefs are silly.
I won't argue with you on the latter point, but these crazy beliefs
*do* end up having real-world effects.
And the cumulative effect of dying to get virgins because you can't get laid in
this life is?
Considering that soldiers tend to be young, testosterone-drenched
males, I imagine it has had some kind of significant effect.
Obviously, the reward of immediate, guaranteed paradise after dying in
battle for Islam played a significant role historically, and the 72
virgins must have been one of the more vivid aspects of the reward to
horny young guys ("Join the army! See the world! Die gloriously! Get
laid!).
Young is why they fight, period. They don't need motivation to fight as they
are not going to die in the fight. There is no need to motivate young men
further than that. They will find their own excuses if they are given none.

Come on...you're saying they just naturally have no fear? That they
automatically have excellent morale? Then why are unmotivated
conscripts usually a recipe for disaster? Why do armies sometimes
flee in panicked routs? There are many ways of decreasing fear and
increasing morale in young soldiers, but telling them that death is
irrelevent and in fact gets you laid can't hurt, if they beleive it.

Were US troops in WWII motivated beyond being drafted? 96% were drafted. They fought. What was their motivation? Please explain Americans fighting in that war if it is other than they found their own reasons for fighting. I have found only one of Capra's "Why we fight" films and that could not motivate anyone beyond a low grade moron.

I would also imagine that such a sensual vision of paradise would also
have made many more attracted to Islam than Christianity, whose
paradise is frankly a bit on the sterile side.
And to make this even more clear to you, Christians have no such idea and is as
sterile as you suggest. There has never been a shortage of young Christians
ready to fight even with no sex at all in heaven.

Actually the Christian late Roman empire had a terrible time finding
army recruits. Thats why they had to hire barbarians.

Meaning the Mexicans will work cheaper than Americans. Or do you think increasing the pay would not have attracted Christians? Rome's first big problem with maintaining an army was when there were no more lands to conquer and thus no more lands to give in return for 20 years of service and no spoils to make up for low pay during those years.

Similarly the US cannot afford an army paid what it is worth so after the few patriotic types it is only those for whom it offers the only other prospect. And of course fast track citizenship for Mexicans and other illegals.

So yes you are correct. Rome did not have a draft and when it came to the duty of Roman citizens to serve the system was like ours during Vietnam. See Bush's champagne squadron for details.

But those who were drafted and sent to Vietnam did in fact fight. Why? To save the Vietnamese? When I was growing up in the 50s listening to the grown up men ridiculing anyone who said the war was to liberate Europe made me an early skeptic.

To make a case the virgin story makes a difference you have to establish it
made a material difference in the number or ferocity of the fighters as compared
to all other virgin free afterlife religions. Please feel free to indulge is
that fool's errand.

Is this why Muslims use suicide bombers? Suicide bombers were first used by
Jews in the Warsaw ghetto against the Nazis.

I'll take your word for this;

I don't have a link but there is a German report on suppressing it that holohuggers like to quote. Can't think of the name offhand. But there are an entire series of reports from the same source on it. I found them all online. It is much different from the one they like to quote from.

but anyway the circumstances were a bit
exceptional, as in they were doomed anyway.

Actually they did not know that as in the end they did in fact surrender. There is no reason to surrender if death is certain. That is why the military has a policy of accepting surrender and honoring its terms.

No current Muslim
population is in quite that desperate a circumstance.

I am talking Palestinians here. They are under much worse laws than the US Jim Crow laws which were worse then the Nuremberg Laws. The jewish squatters regularly attack them and even murder then while protected by the Israeli army. They are under military occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and occupied Syria. All of Gaza is under a military blockade.

If you read haaretz.com or jpost.com you will find they are regularly harassed, intimidated, arrested and murdered by the occupying forces. As there is no legal avenue for justice they have the absolute right to making justice personal. Even if there were nothing, occupation troops are lawful targets for any reason, for no reason, even just for sport. So also are nationals of the occupying country. And yes, Iraqis have every moral right to kill foreign troops in their country and also civilians from those countries.

So the method they choose is really their business. And I can guarantee you if you give them artillery, tanks, F-16s, smart bombs and all the rest they will give up on suicide operations in favor of using them. So what is your problem with using the most effective method available?

Jews also pioneered the car bomb in
Palestine against the British and the Palestinians.

Irrelevent, since they weren't suicide bombs that I recall. Lots of
guerilla and terrorist groups have used bombs and sabotage, suicide
bombs are very disproportionately Muslim although there are exceptions
like the Tamil Tigers about whom I know little.

Not irrelevant. It was in addition to the recitation of Jews using suicide bombers. This addition shows terrorist bombings by Jews. Their favorite targets were the Brits and Palestinian markets. Terrorists are terrorists. All that is under debate is the methods used. I suggest those on the ground have a better understanding of the practical methods.

Although almost invariably cheesy many Hollywood war movies center around or include suicide missions. It is hardly a foreign concept to the US particularly when so many of those movies were made during the war. I do not remember any of them leading to a denunciation of the mission because it involved suicide.

There is not even an
afterlife in Judaism save in an "us too" approach to Christianity and Islam. How
can one explain people with no official afterlife at all inventing suicide bombing?

I wasn't able to find any websites backing up what you're saying. At
any rate, it was under exceptional duress, and hasn't been repeated.
Meanwhile in the Muslim world its practically become an industry.

It has appeared for the first time when against overwhelming military superiority. I don't see the problem. Further it is only in two places in the middle east, Iraq and Palestine, and the entire middle east contains only a minority of Islam so you do not have an Islamic phenomenon but a geographic one.

And then you go to the reality. How many suicide bombers per year? I want a head count. And then I want to compare that to the size of the population from which they come. Iraq would be about 1 per 100.000. You can find 1 in 100,000 people who will do it.

With those two considerations how do you get an Islamic phenomenon out of it? Should be compare that to the Christian population and the Suicide-By-Cop phenomenon? Suicide is all that matters not the means. Virginia Tech was a big one so it made the national news. Follow your local TV news and hear of small ones about once a year in your location. Multiply by the number of locations in the US. I assume the area is a reasonable metro location size for TV coverage. Mine is Tampa and appears small but the TV ad rates are based upon reaching 6.5 million people. We have about one a year that is identified as such. At 1 per 6.5 million the US has about 50 a year. And that is with just personal issues that are bad enough.

This is not to say that suicide bombers are a traditional part of
Muslim culture, although the Assassins probably would have done it if
they'd had the tech. Its a mutation of the old jihad ideology into a
new form, utilizing the old reward system, but bringing in suicide,
which wasn't originally part of it. Most importantly, deliberately
killing civilians was to be avoided, not encouraged, under the old
jihad ideology. Something clearly is very badly out of whack with
Muslim culture today.

As a matter of fact suicide is universally condemned by what Islam has that passes for clerics. It only appears among militant resistance movements and so far only in two geographic areas which are a trivial minority of the 1.1 billion Muslims in the world. I see no credible basis for a generalization.

Many of the bombers today seem to be not just wild idealists, but also
ner-do-well loser crumbumbs (think Richard Reid). Virgins at work?

How many of them have you known personally? How many family and friends reports on them have you read after the fact? So tell me how you arrived at "seem to be" without evidence. You mean the way Israel portrays them? How do you expect Israel to portray their lawful attacks?

In context of the statement these virgins do not differ much from Valkyrie.
Valkyrie are suitable companions for warriors. See Valaria and Conan for
details. In sexually regimented Islam the young warriors get what is appropriate.
Although we in the west probably do not have the resources the libraries of
Tehran and Cairo and perhaps Damascus should have enough records to see if this
belief ever featured prominently in their wars. This as opposed to simply the
obligation to defend Islam with one's life in the first place. If it is just a
side benefit in return for fulfilling the obligation then it is a different
issue. One one hand if they do not defend Islam with their lives they can look
forward to meeting Satan as opposed to fulfilling the obligation and gaining
Paradise. Then the virgins are no more than a description of one of the many
things in paradise.
I will go with it being a "side-benefit", *part* of the motivation,
albeit probably a vivid part of it. Especially for offensive wars,
which I believe were not considered obligatory for Muslims to take
part in, rather than just something meritorious for those who chose
to.
The problem with at most a side benefit is it is not established as a
significant part of it. Again, there is no paucity of warriors in aggressive
wars conducted by any group regardless of the dominant religion.

It is very frequent for secondary sources I have read to say that the
promise of paradise gave the Muslim armies in the early centuries a
significant edge in combat. I will admit I have not read that many
primary sources. I am not an Arab historian :)

Getting back to the clerical condemnation, that means hell just as in Christianity. As for the promise of Paradise in return for dying for their religion, Mohamed stole that idea from Christianity which invented it. So the paradise part would have applied equally.

Obviously, it is not the only way to get people to fight, but it seems
to have been, and currently right now very obviously is, one effective
method.

It was part of the deal with the crusaders also in addition to all sins committed while on the crusade automatically forgiven.

In later centuries, as I have mentioned, one hears of persons,
sometimes riled up by clerics, going to the frontier to fight the
infidel in hopes of eternal reward. They were not, I gather, always
that useful compared to trained professional troops, although the
Turkish ghazis were a tough bunch. Although it probably helped
motivate professional troops as well.

And again one can make a comparison to the later crusades.

So obviously, the promise of paradise, of which 72 virgins was a part,
was influential in the past, and it is clearly influential today,
otherwise Al-Qaeda and such wouldn't be so big on trumpeting it, and
there wouldn't be serious debates about what female suicide bombers
get as *their* reward.

I still do not see where you have established the virgin part added to the Paradise part.

As for being clearly influential today please tell me where you got your hands on the inner discussions of al Qaeda to learn this. While the politicians may have al Qaeda under every bed and in every closet the official number of members has never been higher than a few hundred.

The main comparable reward system I can think of is the Christian
Crusade ideology- Papal dispensation, forgiveness of all sins and all
that, more stick than virgin..err, carrot, but that has prettymuch
lapsed.

You are leaving out the entire immediate heaven for dying in combat part.

I think its probably no coincidence that the society with the most
conspicuous reward system for dying in combat against infidels also
leads the world in suicide bombings and other volunteer holy
warriors. The phenomenon is a bit too glaring to just be a
coincidence.

The only version in Islam is the same as it is in Christianity, dying to defend the faith. There is nothing else. It is not simply fighting infidels. More is required.

Of course during the later centuries most soldiers were slave-soldiers
or mercenaries, but even then you had people who had joined up with
the purpose of dying for Islam and attaining paradise, ie the ghazis
in Asia Minor.
But the initial expansion is when they were all volunteers and the composition
and the results are as I described.
Now I am not interested in going over this with Islam bashers. For centuries
Christianity has offered immediate heaven for those who die for the faith.
This is true. However, at least initially I don't know that it was as
closely associated with death in battle as in Islam. During the
Crusades this was clearly the case, yet earlier you'd find people
refusing to serve as soldiers because of Christianity.
No you did not. You found them refusing to serve under pagan officers leading
to religious divisions in the army and speeding the collapse of the empire.
I would be
curious to investigate how this really developed. Its possible that
the Crusade ideology was somehow influenced by jihad ideology;
although I've also heard that the Byzantine counterattack against
Persia under Heraclius had crusadey aspects.
Without verifying names and assuming that is the one I am thinking of, it was
one of a long string of wars that had been going on since real Romans tried to
expand the empire into Persia. It was one of a long series of traditional wars.
And again if I have the right one, the last one as the mutual destruction of
both sides is what laid them open to the armies of Islam. They were both out of
combat age troops and money.

The war had strong religious overtones- it was church-financed, they
carried the True Cross into battle, and desecrated Zoroastrian
shrines. Of course this goes back to Constantine painting the Chi-Rho
on his soldiers. This of course conflicts with a pacifist
strain..well, Christianity is a very conflicted religion. And what
about all that trinity stuff? Does it really make any sense.
Christianity is a mess. A device for brain torture in many ways. Which
probably explains why Europeans had to invent the Age of Reason, which
maybe means that having a kookoo religion has its advantages.

I have no brief for Christianity. It is a rather poor narrative when it comes to religions. Being a mystery religion where knowledge of (and belief in) the Trinity is more important that doing what Jesus taught it is not a practical religion like Islam and Judaism. The latter two have simple precepts. Whereas Judaism is total ritual/taboo, Islam is Judaism Lite. There are only five requirements instead of hundreds, the prayers are shorter and simpler and I think fewer times a day.

And the absence of clerics eliminated one layer of tyranny from the people. In Christianity and Judaism the priestly and rabbinical tyrannies were enforced by the civil authority. In Islam the civil and religious ruler is the same. While there are experts in the religion they never had the power to levy taxes and tithes on the people for the civil ruler to collect and punish for non-payment. You can see a very self-serving interest in converting to the religion. Also there was an interest in merely spreading it to live under it as the Muslim ruler would not collect taxes and tithes for the priest and rabbis.

There is much made of the Dhimmi tax by the Zionists but Muslims had a requirement for charity that was socially monitored. Seems to me this tax was simply to get the equivalent money from non-muslims. And if paid they were left alone and protected by the civil authorities. Jews in Europe would have loved such a deal.

===========

I have no brief for Islam and it is not closer to its own ideal than any other religion so I am not interested in dealing with Islam-bashers. But I have looked into their religious ideals and find nothing out of the ordinary in them particularly in terms of the time when it spread not today.

Take a simple example of the daily prayers. Back when Islam started the same number of daily prayers were required for Christians and Jews. Today only Catholic priests and the Orthodox (real) Jews still say them. So that was no change but different prayers.

And then the more I looked into Islam at its start I began seeing parallels with historical Christianity and Judaism.

I can go further but if you honestly look at the US a century ago the social mores of the middle east are a near perfect match. Women always wore a hat in public, period. There was no such thing as "sexy" clothes. No more skin was seen than in Islam. (The veil is an Arab custom unrelated to the religion.) In the US men didn't stop wearing hats in public until the 60s. Adult men showing bare legs in public as in shorts happened in the last century and at first shorts were only with kneehigh socks.

So
the only disagreement is with a particular aspect of the reward in heaven.
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