Draigflag: (big LIKE to your post #19) When I meet a Muslim, I start with the assumption that they're just regular folks (AKA "not a terrorist, not an extremist"). So far, this attitude has allowed me to live happily and peacefully with other humans, including Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, secular folks, and others.

I don't know whether I am lucky, or "right" in my beliefs, but so far, they have only brought me, and others[1], more peace and joy.

Speaking solely for myself, I would rather die a peaceful, loving, and compassionate being, than to live my life in fear, suspicion, and distrust. But that's just me.

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[1] Except to those folks who believe I am uninformed, naive, and unrealistic, and are angered by my chosen way of being.

I admit to not reading a huge number, but the the climate change papers I have read have all admitted that today's climate change is caused by man. Even the ones which have charts and lines pulled out by the anti-AGW sites as proof that climate change isn't happening. What I've seen of the anti-AGW data is FUD. They do cry about lack of funds, but the raw data, like temperature records and satellite measurements is freely available.

If the CO2 concentrations increasing isn't from man burning fossil fuels, then where is it coming from. Natural sources like volcanoes are well studied, and, again, the data is available. Published satellite imaging shows CO2 concentrations higher around cities, and not these natural sources.

The anti-AGW side isn't offering alternate hypothesis to why CO2 is rising, or what is driving the climate change instead for the most part. Some even deny CO2 has any affect on the environment.
Why the exemption for religious minorities from those countries? Why repeatedly referring to it as a Muslim ban in the media? Why call for a 90 day ban, when those countries are already under some of the strictest visa vetting in the world? Why not expand the list to countries where the 9/11 hijackers actually came from?

This ban is merely political posturing to appease Trump's base that does the opposite of protecting the country by providing terrorist groups with propaganda for recruiting.

Anti-abortionists have committed murder and other crimes against those that don't believe as they do. I don't recall any in the US being Muslim.

The difference is that there isn't a substantial population of refrigerators causing US deaths because they would like to see a refrigerator caliphate.

There is a focus on this because events like the WTC bombing, 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting and the San Bernadino attack all involve actors claiming a specific motive for their acts.

Increased scrutiny of immigrants from countries that are home to like minded movements and non-existent security services that would allow meaningful vetting seems a prudent and modest option.


I'm wondering whether the life of a muslim in a stable canadian or american legal environment gives the best perspective on this issue. My muslim friends are pakistani and Saudi. They saw retrograde muslim populations as a problem decades before 9/11. The Shah was part of a 40 year movement to bring his people into a more cosmopolitan and functional world, and he was despised by those retrograde elements. Musharraf was seen as a savior of pakistani stability because he kept those elements out of power. The Saudi family wrestles with that faction constantly.

If so much of the muslim world sees these retrograde populations as a danger, we should be able to dispense with a notion that american action on this point is trivial religious bigotry.

Curious. More than 11,000 Americans die each year, on American soil, from firearm deaths (excluding suicide and peace officers acting in the line of duty), at the hands of fellow Americans, NOT due to terrorism, and there's very little focus on that compared to "The Terrorist Threat."

By comparison, if we take the the number of annual deaths and prorate them to a daily average, we get freakish statistics like: on an average 3 days, about the same number of Americans die on American soil, killed by other Americans using firearms, in NON-terrorist activity, as the number of Americans (about 100) who were killed by acts of terrorism across the entire planet over the past 10 years.

And yet, The Terrorists are a cause for fear, while fellow Americans with guns are not. Clearly, the actual risk of personal injury is not the determining factor in how much mind-share and fear each threat generates. Something else is afoot.

Your numbers are somewhat outdated, and current numbers are lower, but simply counting current numbers misses the point of the observation. An array of criminal homicides will not share the specific motives of a caliphist movement with a specific goal of taking lives in an active co-belligerence with some of the world's more barbaric regimes. The IRA may have killed fewer people overall than badly designed traffic signals, but the loathsome quality of IRA goals made addressing that threat a matter of public focus.

Moreover, your sense that firearm violence receives little public focus in the US is not correct. I can give you greater detail on this if you like, but it has been an evergreen issue since the late 1960s.

Aside from the fact that Americans may enjoy an explicit constitutional right pertaining to firearms, as a matter of public policy it is not clear that reducing legal firearms ownership and possession leads to greater public safety. Our larger cities are notorious for a history of burdensome gun prohibitions and regulations, yet are some of the most dangerous places in the states.

On the other hand, the Canadian experience of crime involves much higher rates of sexual assault, battery and occupied home invasion, all crimes in which a reasonable certainty that a prospect of victim will be unable to employ a lethal defense is useful. Whether that calculation is the driving force behind those higher rates would require speculation.

Explaining the American and Canadian Crime Drop in the 1990’s

The statistics are only freakish if you disregard the category error of positing general criminal activity as in all respects equivalent to an attempt to take down a couple of towers and kill tens of thousands of people in the process. (That the actual tally was only several thousand that day is not a tribute to caliphist kindness.)

Random individual firearm use is not a matter of concerted state prohibition and in fact represents an ample social good. On the other hand, there is an American consensus that caliphist terrorism does not represent a social good, and therefore is the focus of government policy discouraging it. One would expect that an activity that is actively discouraged might be less frequent than one that is not.

That something other than a simple fear of personal injury is present is undisputed. There was once a time when violence at the hands of Indians was an overwhelming public safety concern. That threat having subsided, it is no longer a matter of public focus. On the other hand, caliphism has not subsided and in fact is a growing problem not just in the US, but Western Europe and Pakistan. It should not be a matter of mystery that people will address a growing, specific and current concern. Since the people most concerned about this are in fact themselves Muslims, the idea that addressing immigration from specific and problematic countries is the result of a religious or ethnic bigotry requires special pleading.

I remember reading that report.

Probably this one: Non-Muslims Carried Out More than 90% of All Terrorist Attacks in America

TL;DR
I know it sounds odd, given what's said in the media. Who knows...

But there is a growing threat of violence in North America coming from a particular group of people with similar beliefs.

1/29/17 French Canadian right winger (big fan of alt-right, Le Pen, Trump) shoots and kills 6 and injures 19 worshipers.

North Carolina Tea Partiers prepare to ‘start killing the hell out of’ Muslims to stop Sharia law

Hate Group Numbers in U.S. Rose for 2nd Year in a Row, Report Says

FBI arrests man in Myrtle Beach allegedly planning attack 'in the spirit of Dylann Roof'

Tennessee Man Convicted Of Plot To Round Up Militia, Attack Muslim Community
Robert Doggart, 65, will be sentenced in May.

Not to mention anti-antisemitism also being on the rise, with an entire Jewish cemetery desecrated.

What did Muslims do? They raised $20,000 to help rebuild the Jewish cemetary.

I'm Muslim. I think the issue people have with Islam (and more often than not, these people have never met a Muslim in real life) has more to do with Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia. And Sharia? All practicing Muslims follow Sharia in their everyday lives, whether you like it or not. From weddings, funerals, to diet, that's all Sharia, like 95% of it. You know, just like how Jews follow Jewish law and traditions. What people get up in arms with is the crime and punishment aspect, which is a fraction of it. Even then it's highly debatable for Muslims to agree on something and there is some flexibility for modern realities. After all, homosexuality was decriminalized in the Ottoman Empire, the last legit Islamic caliphate, long before it was in Europe. You'd be hard pressed to find Muslims in the West to support Gulf state style laws, which borrows a lot from Saudi culture and Wahhabism. The overwhelming majority of Muslims live in Asia and you hardly hear about them, so there's that.

This is an excerpt from a note written by Hamza Yusuf, arguably the most influential Islamic scholar in the West. And I would say this is something rarely said by mainstream Muslim scholars here.

If you're interested, read the full note here: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?no...54210987871544

Assuming the fact source is correct, which I doubt, it's STILL faulty logic. Just because American nationals carry out more terror attacks on American soil doesn't mean that the USA immigration screening should be relaxed.

That's like saying, "Gee. Why are you so upset about me putting a door ding on YOUR car, since your car already has so many door dings?"

Never gave an opinion on the travel ban, but I agree with your logic and sentiment and no one hates terrorists more than Muslims, who are on the front lines fighting against them. However, the vetting process for refugees is pretty strict as it is. Process takes at the minimum 2 years and they go through the UN and such. On the other hand, I did hear of Syrians using fake aliases or something like that. That may have to be checked out and if that was the case a temporary freeze isn't the end of the world.

I don't really mind extra screening for people coming from war torn areas (which already happens? lol), but when reports sprang up that Muslims from countries not included in the ban were being questioned about their religious and political beliefs by border agents and the issue with green card holders being turned away, that's completely unacceptable behavior.

Heck, I understand completely why Mexican nationals want to seek a better life for themselves or their families on American soil. I don't fault them. If not for my tremendous luck of being born in the USA (catchy words; would make a good rock song), I'd do the same!

But, regardless of how empathetic, it's STILL against our laws. We can't cherry pick the laws to ignore. Can I pick a law to violate with impunity?

The saying "All's fair in love and war" means when it comes down to your safety, your family's safety, and that of your fellow citizens, I don't care who feels insulted.

The "Trump Ban" is NOT a "ban". That was a liberal media interpretation. The "Trump Ban" is ONLY a 90-day pause to review the immigration standards. Wanting to lessen the chance of an attack on American citizens is a 90-day immigration pause unreasonable for a new administration to do?

That "report" sheds its credibility very quickly. It alleges Jewish terrorism in the US to be a far greater problem, then denies that the Boston Marathon bombing was an act of Islamic terrorism, then descends into a comparison to general crime in the states.

It is difficult to see this as anything but an apologetic or minimization of the history of the last two decades. That said, simply looking backward and making a straight line projection into the future is not a sound basis for prospect of policy. An ability to foresee threats before they take domestic US victims is desirable.