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Debate:Which is a more powerful ideology, Islam or communism?

2007-03-17T03:58:36Z

Wrightj:

== Apples and Oranges ==
[[User:Phist|Phist]]Well, one is a religion and one is a societal structure, so to a degree we are compairing apples and oranges here. You could, in THEORY have a country that is both communist and islamic. While religion was of course banned in communist russia, by that point they were so far from the ideal of communism that it really should have been called something else.

For the record, I like apples better.

Islam is more powerful. Commumism was a good idea in theory but it has failed enough times in real world countries that I'm ready to discount it as a valid possibility. It simply doesn't address some aspects of human nature, and I think it's only real power right now is as an alternative to capitalism for a working class tired of being poor. But one only has to point to the still-smoking ruin of the USSR to discount the validity of that ideal.

On the other hand, Islam carries a supernatural message of hope to an entire continent of anti-american people raised with extremism being a daily reality. When a man with complete hatred of something is told that destroying his enemies is holy, and that there is a place in heaven for those who die fighting, the man is turned into a weapon. Islam is volatile like no other religion in the world, and though I try to avoid bias any of us can turn on the news any day of the week to see turmoil in the middle east. In fact, I cant even think of the last time in history the middle east went 15 years without a major armed conflict.

Considering that there are over 1.4 billion Muslims I'd say it was Islam that is the more powerful ideology. Communism is like third, and the second is Secular Humanism for the most powerful ideology. Unless you consider that Secular Humanism is new age communism? --[[User:Orion Blastar|Orion Blastar]] 23:30, 9 March 2007 (EST)

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Actually, the Soviet Union never banned religion. It suppressed religion quite severely, especially in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the Soviet constitutions always included nominal guarantees of religious freedom. Also, Stalin made a point of restoring the legal position of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Second World War (part of his wartime efforts to appeal to Russian nationalism).

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Islam. Communism is fundamentally flawed.

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A more accurate characterization of Soviet religious policy would be to say that the regime persecuted and clamped down on official churches, religious leaders and the like, but that its main efforts focused on making religious leaders, priests, imans, etc. agents of the state, and to dissuade religious practice through education. This reflected an official belief (which many scholars would argue had its origins in Enlightenment ideals about reason and progress) that with improved education, scientific achievement and general social progress, Soviet citizens would come to recognize the falsity of religion and would thus turn their backs on religion of their own accord.

Moreover, while many term the Soviet Union an "atheistic regime," this is perhaps technically accurate, but wildly misleading. The Soviet government was "atheistic" in the sense that it did not have an established religion (such as the Russian Orthodox Church), but in this respect it was no more atheistic than the U.S. government has always been, or how any number of other states are, where the separation of church and state prevents the official establishment of a particular religion.

Religious belief and practice never ceased to exist in the Soviet Union, nor did the Soviet government ever formally proscribe it. --[[User:SmithHall|SmithHall]] 03:01, 10 March 2007 (EST)
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"Islam is volatile like no other religion in the world, and though I try to avoid bias any of us can turn on the news any day of the week to see turmoil in the middle east. In fact, I cant even think of the last time in history the middle east went 15 years without a major armed conflict." -Orion Blastar

This is an interesting statement. Does anyone remember history? What about the Christian crusades from 1095 to 1270 that accomplished little more than death and destruction? The third crusade was even focused on ransacking Constantinople, a fellow Christian state, for little more than funding further crusades. The crusades even turned internal targeting parts of southern France and the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II after he was excommunicated from the church by the Pope for returning to port after becoming ill on his way to accomplish the 5th crusade (which he later accomplished through peaceful means). There are many examples of volatility as well as many current examples of radicalism in Christianity.

"Considering that there are over 3 billion Muslims, and a good number of them are radicals or terrorists, I'd say it was Islam that is the more powerful ideology." -Orion Blastar

Also an interesting statement. Islam is the second largest religion in many European countries and only 20% of Muslims are from the Middle East. If Islam were so innately hate filled and "a good number of them" were radicals, why aren't more areas of the world with prominent Muslim populations "anti-American?" Just as an example, the two largest Muslim nations in the world are India and Indonesia - non-Arab. What is going on here is a gross generalization of Muslims and Islam. Think back to our very recent history here in the US. The KKK (Klu Klux Klan) was a very heavily religious organization. What religion did they espouse? Christianity of course. The KKK was responsible for many murders and terrorist acts and is still alive today. Should we generalize all Christians and Christianity to match the KKK? Should we say that "a good number of" Christians are radicals or terrorists because of the actions of the KKK? I would hope not and I'm sure you feel the same way. --[[User:Blubuster|Blubuster]] 02:18, 11 March 2007 (PST)
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I vote Islam. Or Communism. Wait...what was the question? Who's got the oil? Mmmm....oil.
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Islam. We haven't seen many Communists blow themselves up to go to that great workers paradaise in the sky which they don't believe exists anyway. And Communism as a civil government lasted about 70 years, whereas Islam as a civil government has lasted 1400 years. That is 70/1400, or 5%. Not much comparison. [[User:RobS|RobS]] 20:55, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

Islam is NOT an ideology, it is a religion.

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Ideology holds no power without behavior to support it. One may think that it is perfectly okay to strap a bomb to themselves or take private property for the sake of the government, however; until it is actually done, the ideology has no objective power.

Debate:Is democracy even possible in Iraq?

2007-03-17T03:53:48Z

Wrightj: /* yes */

== yes ==

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Yes!!!

Democracy is possible anywhere in which a majority of people wish to have a minority under their thumb. Democracy is in essence mob rule, so if you can get enough people to agree on a few things and turn on the ones who do not feel the same way, then voila! you have a Democracy. Personally, I find nothing more frightening than the idea of pure Democracy.

'''Comment'''--- If you would please explain your opinion.(This ''is'' supposed to be a ''debate'' topic and one finds it just a touch hard to debate a simple "Yes")

It MUST be possible. Otherwise, why would the President have invaded? --[[User:Fullmetajacket|Fullmetajacket]] 22:33, 10 March 2007 (EST) (Ah, so that's how it works!)

* I fail to believe that any of the reasons for the invasion was just to promote Democracy. We're bigger enemies with Communist Cuba, why aren't we shoving some good ol' American Democracy down their throats? --[[User:Cpryd001|Cpryd001]] 19:09, 12 March 2007 (EDT)

:How much oil does Cuba have? --[[User:Scrap|Scrap]] 21:43, 14 March 2007 (EDT)

== No ==

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== Comment ==
:There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world's mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning —the sense and meaning implied when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being "capable of self-government"; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some time or other which ''wasn't'' capable of it—wasn't as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it. The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the nation only—not from its privileged classes; and so, no matter what the nation's intellectual grade was; whether high or low, the bulk of its ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to govern itself. Which is to assert an always self-proven fact: that even the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the same is true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the lowest.

::—Mark Twain, ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.''

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 15:28, 23 January 2007 (EST)

== Comment ==

I don't believe that we should have invaded Iraq in the first place. Although Saddam Hussein was a terrible, evil man, was it really our place to remove him? All of these alleged crimes were done before, and during the Gulf War, yet we didn't bother to call him out on them until now. We even allied with Saddam during the Iran/Iraq war.
I also raise the point that many gruesome dictators are allied with us, and we wouldn't think of invading their countries. We helped bring Augusto Pinochet into power, and we are close friends with Pakistani dictator Pervez Muscharraf. Why is Saddam any different? Removing Sadddam upset balance in Iraq. With him, the people were miserbale. Without him, the people are still miserable, and the risk of death has increased dramatically.

I do not think democracy is possible in Iraq. Whether or not you think so, Iraq IS in a Civil War. The Sunni and Shi'ite militants couldn't commit all of these attrocities with Saddam Hussein in power, as he would crush any form of insurgency almost instantly. With him gone, there are militants and suicide bombers spawning at speeds too rapidly to stop. They are recruited faster than cockroaches are born, and we can never crush them completely. Sending more troops in will merely add more guns to the fight, and more killing. It might be different if we were fighting a war. But we're not. The militants do not follow the traditional rules of combat, and use guerilla tactics that allow only two people to take out an entire platoon.

We can't invade other countries and force democracy on them. It will not work, and it will make us seem like bullies and cause the rest of the world to hate us. We should have left Iraq alone.

:Well, we're there now, so we can't leave until we've won! (And by 'we' I mean "President George W Bush", and by 'win', I mean "hold out until 1/21/2009, when some other poor chump will have to find a way out of this monkey trap".) --[[User:Ballon|Ballon]] 17:55, 11 March 2007 (EDT)

:What the hell is victory? Killing more insurgents? There will always be more. Screw "preserving the morale of the soldiers". They all hate it too, and all the Government officials are trying to do is sell this war that's bankrupting the nation and killing thousands of innocent Americans and Iraqis. We can't end the war in Iraq without screwing everything up, so we might as well screw it up less by leaving instead of hurting ourselves more. The Iraqis didn't treat us like liberators when we first invaded, so why would they think of us as liberators after all of the atrocities committed in Iraq? --[[User:Raptor Jesus|Raptor Jesus]]

::In Iraq, they essentially want to create a theocratic democracy. This type of government is a contradiction within itself. A democracy where people are fee cannot exist when they are being held under the prejudices of a religion. The nature of religion is discriminatory, because of the time period they were formed in. If a country uses the sometimes discriminating laws of religion as a major part of their own constitution, then true freedom for all cannot exist. The problem is that the Iraqis are so devout that it is very unlikely that they will back down from their concept of a theocratic democracy. --[[User:KyleR|KyleR]]

:::What about a variant of said theocratic democracy? The constitution would have to recognize the plurality of religion, but as a compromise, requires every citizen to take up one of those religions (maybe one of the two dominant denominations of Islam). Indonesia has that kind of government (I would know--I was born and raised there), and with the exception of the last few years, they have been relatively alright. No, it's not "real democracy," but it should be enough to bring temporary stability.

:::Of course, Iraq has none of the heterogeneity of Indonesia, so the big issue will still be reconciling the Sunni and the Shi'ite. However, there have been rumors now that Al Qaeda has some relationship with the Iran government (at least according to our government...), which, if true, shows that it is possible for Sunni and Shi'ite muslims to have a peaceful relationship.--[[User:OldManWrinkle|OldManWrinkle]] 15:15, 15 March 2007 (EDT)