U.S. Ambassador and three others killed in Libya.

[Fragony]

What happened? A mob attacked the consulate. I'll let you in on a secret: public opinion tends to diverge on most matters.

If mobs and protesters suddenly and magically started to represent the majority of a population, the majority of the population in Western countries would be quite schizophrenic.

Sure I can make meatballs with cranberrysauce, why do you ask

[Major Robert Dump]

I find it hard to believe that people, be them chrisitian, muslim or anything, were more refined and less brutal 1500 years ago than they are now. I simply do not buy it, and I never will. I am also digging all the people making claims based on fragmentary historical remnants that require huge leaps of faith to connect point A to point B, kind of like this new thing the American muslims are doing where they say that muslims discovered America.

Coverup of brutal mob mentality and calling it an organized attack would make sense in order to not make the administration look folly for reaching out to muslims, and in order to make the Libyan endeavor not look so foolish, and would not be the craziest thing a president has done. In fact, presidents excel at things like this. What is scary, is that if this is the case, it works to the mobs advantage to not disupte the administrations claims because it allows them a second chance, a chance to continue getting financial support, a chance to save face internationally, so we can repeat this again in a few years.

[Fisherking]

That is a wise way of looking at it MRD. Of course these people have just been shown that protest can get them their way so they are looking to do it with their religion too.

For the rest of you

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Look people most of you are missing the point.

These people are not stupid. They are a product of their environment just as you are.

Most of the protests have been lead by clerics and sometimes with government backing.

What they want is for people to not insult their religion. It is not as though they actually know or care about the insults or what they are asking other governments to do, in denying rights and liberties to their people.

Most have a different and more limited world view but it doesn’t make them dumb.

Some of the protests have turned violent. It is not like this has never happened anywhere else. Mobs can do that and it is in the interests of some groups to make them violent.

Spurious name calling and charges of inbreeding is just deflection from what is going on.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Until the last century it was common in Europe and America to marry cousins. Usually among the upper classes and ruling class.
The Swedish royal family was replaced with French peasant stock due in part to the problem.
Charles Darwin was married to his first cousin as was his father and grand father IIRC.
FDR was married to his first cousin too.

.

[Ironside]

The Swedish royal family was replaced with French peasant stock due in part to the problem.

Eh, no that's not the reason. Cousin marriages did commonly occur amoung nobles (also isolated peasant groups to keep the land together), but the Swedish line had not done that for some time at that point. The short version: Gustav IV really hated Napoleon, got into a war, Russia (allied with Napoleon at the time) takes Finland, Gustav IV is forced to abdicate, and that line rejected from the throne. Candidate B, Karl August dies falling of his horse, no good candidates around, except that old childless dude (who did have the throne until he died). Ahh, coup is failing, lets do some radical move and get a French Marshal on the throne, so we can retake Finland. What do you mean he's not intested in taking back Finland, but goes for Norway instead?

[Hax]

I am also digging all the people making claims based on fragmentary historical remnants that require huge leaps of faith to connect point A to point B, kind of like this new thing the American muslims are doing where they say that muslims discovered America.

I am no some kind of popular historian trying to say that Islam was the best thing that has ever happened. In fact, close scrutiny of the sources I mentioned has the exact opposite effect. Do you honestly believe that suggesting that the language of the Qur'an was not the language spoken on the Arabian peninsula, or that the Syrian dialects of Arabic existed for more than five hundred years before Muhammad's time are somehow good?

All I'm trying to say is that the assumption that (most) Arabs in the time were nomads and then immediately connecting it to violent desert ideologies to make a wide claim about the tenets of Islam is historically incorrect. @Moros can tell you much more about pre-Islamic Arabian civilisation. And as a sidenote, most Arab nomads were not raiders. They were shepherds.

[quadalpha]

Can't we all agree that mobs are generally not highly blessed in the intellectual department without painting an entire culture (really, cultures) with the same brush? And that the radicalisation of large demographics in the Islamic world against the West is due to a mixture of legitimate historical resentment, opportunistic demagoguery, and long dominant histories of fundamentalist religious interpretation? None of this justifies mob violence, but surely go a long way toward explaining it.

On another note, to be angry that governments conceal certain information for the purposes of national security is naive even if justified.

[Fragony]

Can't we all agree that mobs are generally not highly blessed in the intellectual department without painting an entire culture (really, cultures) with the same brush? And that the radicalisation of large demographics in the Islamic world against the West is due to a mixture of legitimate historical resentment, opportunistic demagoguery, and long dominant histories of fundamentalist religious interpretation.

Nope.

It has nothing to do with the west being the west, west is just there. Better at just being there I might add.

[Fisherking]

On another note, to be angry that governments conceal certain information for the purposes of national security is naive even if justified.

What you are saying here is a little unclear.

To think that governments don’t withhold information for national security reasons is naïve.

To think that elected politicians will not use national security as an excuse to hide damaging information is also naïve.

But for citizens to meekly stand by complacent when they see political abuses is not naïve. It is stupid.

Regardless of political leaning or whether it helps your party or not it is also dangerous. What else or what other abuses of power might they be guilty of or capable of?

If you demand honesty from government, particularly of the opposition, you must also demand it from your own people. If you allow it you are playing the fool.

The government that oppresses or deceives one portion of its citizens is more than capable of oppressing or deceiving all of them.

Not to speak out when you see it is to join in and be a part of it.

[Major Robert Dump]

I am no some kind of popular historian trying to say that Islam was the best thing that has ever happened. In fact, close scrutiny of the sources I mentioned has the exact opposite effect. Do you honestly believe that suggesting that the language of the Qur'an was not the language spoken on the Arabian peninsula, or that the Syrian dialects of Arabic existed for more than five hundred years before Muhammad's time are somehow good?

All I'm trying to say is that the assumption that (most) Arabs in the time were nomads and then immediately connecting it to violent desert ideologies to make a wide claim about the tenets of Islam is historically incorrect. @Moros can tell you much more about pre-Islamic Arabian civilisation. And as a sidenote, most Arab nomads were not raiders. They were shepherds.

That comment was not specifically aimed at you. Everyone makes large assumptions in all directions, based on whats available as evidence, and I think we all know that history is written by the victors. We cannot definitively prove that one group was less violent anymore than we can prove it was. In the end we end up arguing things about the past that are largely irrelevant 1000 years later, which is why I brought up the muslims-in-north america thing as well. In a nut shell: who cares? Anything more than a few generations is quite frankly insignificant in the greater scope of things.

As for all this inbreeding stuff, its not an arab thing, its a poor person-tribal thing. In breeding is a problem with the native american tribes who disocurage inter-race/inter-tribal marriage, and anyone who has ever visited the Navajo reservation will see a noticably higher number of birth defects amongst the people. The tribal Choctaws of oklahoma are the same way. When you stick within the tribe, eventually you run out of options.

You will also see this with the old families of Saipan in the Northern Marainna Islands, who are fairly tribal even by modern standards. My interpreters in Afghanistan who were from smaller, secular, pure blood and tight-knit communities, like Mirzaka, were all married to their cousins through arranged marriages, while the guys from large municipalities and of mixed ethnicity were not.

[Moros]

I am no some kind of popular historian trying to say that Islam was the best thing that has ever happened. In fact, close scrutiny of the sources I mentioned has the exact opposite effect. Do you honestly believe that suggesting that the language of the Qur'an was not the language spoken on the Arabian peninsula, or that the Syrian dialects of Arabic existed for more than five hundred years before Muhammad's time are somehow good?

All I'm trying to say is that the assumption that (most) Arabs in the time were nomads and then immediately connecting it to violent desert ideologies to make a wide claim about the tenets of Islam is historically incorrect. @Moros can tell you much more about pre-Islamic Arabian civilisation. And as a sidenote, most Arab nomads were not raiders. They were shepherds.

Okay err... doing a lot of catching up and I think I might be missing some but anyway.

I don't see in what way the Pre-Islamic civilizations were so much more aggressive, but on the other hand it doesn't really matter as the religion changed the culture rather by a lot. Especially when it comes to Islam and Arabia as it was a drastic change of religion, one that really didn't evolve that slowly together. Almost a bit of a shock. Now with Islam the main single most change would be from polytheism to monotheism, together with a lot of adoptions from the jews and christians. If anything the root of militant religion might be here. While Greeks and Romans might have frowned upon cults and sometimes banned them from cities and all the likes, were certainly against the godless (Socrates!), it was only limited and usually to preserve their own traditions for themselves. And during the Hellenistic period to the Imperial period tolerance grew even to those who didn't believe in the traditional state gods or strange gods (epicurism, stoicism,...).

In pre-islamic Arabia, gods were often adopted from others and given an important place to commemorate a bond/alliance with each other. The best example is the adoption of Shams into the Sabaean pantheon as either the wife of Atthar or Almuqah. The Nabataeans connected their gods with Hellenistic counterparts and embraced Hellenism. To give two examples. Or the Minaeans who worshipped at Delphi, might be the best example!

Where and when do we really find the earliest zealous men? The Jewish culture and religion. Though often inwards or by revolt, I think they are likely to be the first to have done forced conversions and quite savagely by the way. (John Hyrcanus) Christians and violence and a need to conform and convert others is of course better known, longer and probably even more bloody. The Islam had it's periods as well. I don't think Hax denies that. But we shouldn't focus on that, if anything it is something their history shares with ours. Now does that make religion violent, or the monotheistic religions, or religious individuals? Not necessarily of course. But religion is in the eye of the beholder. From those who believe they should pray to Mekka, while others think Jerusalem to those who think religion should be spread and the basis for political structure, policy,... to those who think the Qur'an is merely a guide for the individual.

And if one were to call it agressive or violent. The origins will not be found in ancient arabian culture who rather bribe enemies for peace and buy allies than anything.