To be fair I don't think any of us are trying to argue that what goes on is not a shameful stain on humanity, it's the constant Islamaphobia that is driving us all nuts!

Getting back to some sweeping statements before that there are very few Muslim terrorists (at least I think it was this thread, they are all the same!) Been a busy weekend. Off the top of my head.

4 killed and many wounded in a drive by shooting outside a Christian church in Egypt. One an 8 year old girl and her 12 year old cousin.

16 motorists killed in Nigeria by Islamic militants at a checkpoint .Some were hacked to death.

40+ killed in Iraq

6 killed and 30 injured in Russian bomb blast by a recent convert to Islam

2 Muslims arrested in London who were planning an attack.

Sure I have missed others

Also Andrew Parker head of MI5 said there are 7000 Islamic fanatics in Britain who are prepared to attack the UK.

Statistics are a bugger.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics, in other words. They have to be interpreted very carefully and in proper context.

For example, about 14 or 15 thousand people are killed in the US every year.

What does that say about Americans? If anything? Are Americans more violent than Muslims (of whom there are 1.6 billion in the world, to a paltry 317,000,00 inhabitants of the USA)? What about American Muslims?

http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/?...t-wsj#view=all

And in that report you will find the oft-quoted fact that black people have a higher rate of murderers as a % of the population. But then you will also find that they have a much higher rate of being the victims of murder. The causative agent here appears to be poverty, not race or ethnicity. Yet some quickly jump to the conclusion that it is race by looking only at one half of the numbers.

It is best to take great care with selective use of statistics.

Amen.

Or possibly inshallah.

It makes you wonder why people want to go to visit or live in the US, if it is so bad.

I might be a good idea to move Disney world to somewhere more peaceful like Tehran or Iraq.

I daresay.

I would choose Iraq in a minute over Disney, but that may just be me.


Be that as it may, we could have a reasoned, reasonable discussion where you address my point about the validity of the use of statistics. I'm really not much interested in anything else.

Statistics, statistics eh.
Maybe yours are also a bit misleading.

I stand to be corrected, but off the top of my head I would guess that the majority of black murders are actually black on black and of those I would guess that a good percentage are drug, turf war and gang related which you also conveniently omit.

Furthermore I would hazard a guess that many of those involved in such activities are far from poverty stricken.

If I am correct it kind of turns your point on it's head, but it's far too late in the evening for me to be wading through statistics, so I'll leave you to it..

Er, they aren't omitted, they are right there for you to read. Which is why I posted the link, strangely enough. And as for "black on black" that is exactly what I said and is what the data shows. So I'm not sure what you are saying here.

You might hazard that guess, and you might be right. In general though, levels of violent crime are far higher in poor areas than in wealthy ones, at least in the US, and as far as I know, in most places. I would be willing to bet that a little research would bear that out. Drug and gang turf wars typically occur in poor areas, too, rather than in wealthy ones, and they are a product of those communities. The wealthy drug lords at the top recruit from the poor kids to do their dirty work, not among the Harvard bound.

I think you haven't quite got my point - which is that assuming that it is being Muslim that makes one blow stuff up is about as valid as saying that being black makes one commit violent crime.

My second point is also that as a percentage of a population, the % of the 1.6 billion Muslims who are blowing stuff up is pretty miniscule.

And my third point is that it is a risky and usually invalid assumption to generalize from the specific to the general - ie from the fact that some Muslims are blowing stuff up to the hypothesis that Muslims are dangerous per se - that makes about as much sense as saying that the USA and its inhabitants are dangerous per se, based on the rate of violent crime here. In both cases, it's an invalid assumption.

Sorry to interrupt, but a couple of the previous posts in this thread are a bit close to the knuckle. Lets keep it civil ... thanks.


As you were .........

As is the same with the mad Mullahs and their suicide bombers. In fact amid all the revenge attacks during the worse years of the Intifada many moderate Israelis began asking how to break the link between poorly educated Palestinians and their brain washing Mullahs and almost every answer came back with one word... Education.

Yes, I think it could be you, but not just you, there are a couple of posters on BE who would probably prefer Iraq to Disney too.

Probably not Iraq but Iran or maybe Afghanistan over Disney... or maybe southern Iraq then yeah, absolutely.

I can´t see Iran taking over from Disney as a tourist destination, even if it does have its own version of FLOG IT.

Just had to go back to this.... Do you honestly believe this? Is this not like the whole "Stranger Danger" rubbish? If there were actually that many they would all be in custody, if they KNOW they are planning an attack and are "preparing" to attack then they have already broken the law.... so why aren't they in jail?

It's tosh, just like all the crap at the moment about benefit fraud and people coming over here for free NHS treatment, it's all so insignificant that it's not worth worrying about!

No I don't believe it, I think there are more.