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Sep 13
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Wikipedia at this moment claims that false flag is the "hypothesis favored by experts". Of course, that Wikipedia is ideologically captured isn't really news, but I was surprised by the recent report of how much influence one malicious actor could wield in his area of interest. (Reliable Sources by TracingWoodgrains, for those interested).

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“Short biography” is not a great google term. Could you clarify?

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This is a really great point:

"...suspicious...convenient...we shouldn’t imagine this as just a cynical leadership fabricating prophecies...it’s just natural to interpret an ambiguous location to refer to Syria if you are already fixated on the idea that your group is the one fulfilling the prophecies"

The fact that someone believes something that is (suspiciously) convenient doesn't necessarily mean that it's cynical or fake. Scary, but I guess it's true.

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I’m once again reminded of how ridiculous it was when Oct 7 was interpreted as colonial resistance instead of as Islamist mental illness.

I guess it’s also a reminder that most people simply interpret the actions of others through their own lenses. The secular west often forgets…

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Why not both?

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Sure, motivations are usually mixed.

But from statements Hamas have made, I don't hear them complaining about the quality of life of the Palestinians due to Israeli occupation. I do hear them citing the Hadiths and claiming the lands of Israel as sacred Islamic land that must be purged of Jews in order for the prophecy to be fulfilled.

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Sep 14
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You do know that Sinwar was imprisoned in Ashkelon prison for murdering four Palestinians he believed to be collaborating with Israel right?

And you’re saying we should sympathize with his plight of… using a communal bathroom and waiting in line for food?

“He probably became an Islamic fundamentalist to cope with life. If he had had a decent life I doubt he would’ve been attracted to it.”

I disagree with this point. The reviewed book’s subject came from a middle class Saudi family, and there are many accounts of well-off people leaving everything behind and joining ISIS.

It’s true that religion gives many hope (arguably false) through hard times, but I think what Islamist Jihadism is giving these men is **meaning**. What higher purpose is there than to fulfill the wishes of Allah and bring about His prophecy?

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If my reading of random blogs is correct, Hamas is kind of trying to be everything a state is, with parts running hospitals, parts running schools (giving the kids a "patriotic" education of course), parts running grocery stores (and smuggling food in) so the people have something to eat, and then there's people like senior doctors who are technically members of The Party so they can go on saving lives but they probably keep their views about the party doctrine to themselves. Al-Qassam, the military branch, is the ones doing the abducting and torturing and shooting and bombing.

It's like in the past, being a member of the Nazi or communist party could mean many things, including "ok I'll sign up, now leave me alone".

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I don’t think anti colonialism needs to be concerned with improving quality of life for the locals. Many anti colonial projects resulted in quality of life going down for them.

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Why would Islamists be concerned with colonialism or anti-colonialism when there are 72 virgins waiting for them?

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Before they die, perhaps they want girls and money from the colonizers. Hamas demonstrated the former.

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If I was colonized, I definitely wouldn't give two shits about "quality of life" considerations. Better to live free in hovel then chained up in a luxury mansion. I fully realize expelling a colonial occupier is no guarantee of living free. But that's the base reasoning and I totally get it. (Edit: I have a separate, unrelated ethic that I'd rather live under domestic tyranny than foreign tyranny)

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Perhaps they should rethink their anti-colonialism, then.

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I wonder to what degree this discussion of jihadis wanting to fulfill prophecies applies to Hamas as well as traditional jihadi groups like ISIS or al-Qaeda.

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You’re basically asking, “How extreme is Hamas in their Islamist orthodoxy?”

From what we’ve seen I’d say pretty extreme. But ISIS supposedly considers Hamas blasphemous for engaging in political processes and for not prioritizing the “global jihad”.

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I don't think that's quite what I'm asking. Both the Catholics and the Protestants can be extreme Christians, but the Protestants tend to take Biblical end-time prophecy much more seriously, and there are many 100% extreme Christians who wouldn't dream of making decisions based on it.

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True, though I’m not sure the comparison between Islam and Christianity is very clear.

For one, the Quran is often taken literally as God’s infallible word, whereas Christianity is taken as a collection of accounts (and often as morality tales). Another is that the prophecies are often describing the actual places where these people live, and the conditions that must be met for its fulfillment.

If the Bible was the literal word of infallible God and he proclaimed that the conditions for the end times were that an army in Philly would rise up to destroy the non-believers, maybe we’d have more radical Christians?

But this is a complex question that I don’t think I’m qualified to fully answer: Why do more muslims than christians interpret their religious dogma literally?

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It's a weird interpretation to me that God is going to leave the fulfillment of prophecy to people doing it solely because it's a prophecy. It defeats the purpose.

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That's being logical in a way that runs rather counter to psychology involved.

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Fortunately for humanity, there is a powerful (dominant?) strain of thought in Christianity that you are just supposed to live your life normally and let God take care of the end times prophecies himself. And that, in fact, it's sacrilegious to actively try to fulfill end times prophecies, thus essentially forcing God's hand. And tipping my own hand, I agree that it's kind of mocking God's power to think we can speed up or slow down the fulfillment of ET prophecies. (Assuming God was real and Christianity were true)

I believe this is the reason why Orthodox Jews were the last Jews to embrace Israel. At the very least, the Orthodox Israel skeptics used similar reasonings.

(Though I honestly wonder how committed Israel's Orthodox community really is. They say the right words, but they generally refuse to fight in the IDF, and actions speak louder than words)

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I’m not sure more Muslims do. I’ve been to a lot of different churches, and there are a lot of Biblical Literalists. It’s hard to get a precise measure of this, but the best test is probably Young Earth Creationism. It only really exists because of a literal reading of Numbers and an estimate by a priest on approximately how long ago Adam and Eve would have lived if those are literally true. No Christian I know that does not take the Bible literally believes in YEC, because it’s well contradicted by scientific evidence.

So what percentage of Christians are YEC? About 40%. That’s a huge amount more than Muslims that become jihadists, though obviously not every Quran literalists becomes a jihadist. The big difference is that being a Christian Literalists makes people argue against religion, not wage a holy war.

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> So what percentage of Christians are YEC? About 40%.

That doesn't sound right. YECs are almost exclusively Protestant, and only 40% of Christians are Protestant, and I don't think the vast majority of Protestants are YECs. Maybe that number is for the US?

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But even the most hardcore Biblical Literalist do not believe that God wrote, say, the 13 books of the Bible who claim to be written by someone named "Paul" (some of which-eg 1 Cor 7-have notes distinguishing between "Paul's" view and what "Paul" proclaims to be God's view" were in fact written by God dictating to Paul; Muslims would actually believe this. This is a key difference (divine inspiration is a lower standard of interpretation; that's one reason Christians don't think you have to learn Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek to read the Bible).

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I have heard that the Christian equivalent to Quran is not the Bible but Jesus himself. For Muslims, Quran is the intermederiary between Allah and Man like Christ is between God and Man for Christians. Quran was also uncreated, existing alongside Allah forver. I think this is why Muslims take Quran more seriously than Christians take the Bible.

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I don't think this explanation is adaquete. There are lots of Christians who take the Bible to be the literal word of infallibale God, but they don't seem to have a military wing taking a similar approach to the jihadits.

(Also 'morality tales' is a perfectly plausible account of Job and Jonah, and of course the parables are explicitly morality tales, but I don't understand how someone could read the monarchy period history books, let alone the gospels and Acts as morality tales. What moral could require this complex mess of historical details? Why would it overlap with a bunch of details we know from other historical sources, and what kind of a monster puts genealogies in a morality tale? I completely accept that lots of people who haven't read the Bible think it's all morality tales, but I don't think that can be relevant to how our hardcorers are reacting.)

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Do you get that actually islam has a long long history of interpretation, as opposed to literal reading of the Quran?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Islamic_jurisprudence

The 'reformist' fundamentalist view of Islam is actually from the modern, industrial era of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi_movement

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The thing with Protestantism (and Islam) is that if you don't think the local priest is going far enough, in the end you split off to your own denomination.

Catholics that are "too extreme" eventually end up as not Catholics - they get anathematized.

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Hamas cooperates with Iran while ISIS attacks Iran. Hamas is unusual in being a Sunni group that cooperates with Iran, but still, sounds pretty heretical.

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As far as I understand, Hamas is the Palestinan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose aim is a Caliphate under Sharia law. Much more about changing the world as it is, than bring about the end of times. Sure, they're extreme in many ways and anyone who's not a straight man would probably be much worse off if they ever properly took over (which some of the elite-woke college students seem to have missed). But they're not "accelerationist".

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Interesting article from an Israeli journalist who snuck into Gaza right before the 2008 war. Interviews a lot of Palestinians re Hamas motivations https://archive.md/VF10W

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That is an awfully long reading and small print in my phone. Could you perhaps summarize what the main motivations were ?

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The religious West is generally fine with Israel's claim on the "promised land" though. It's interesting that the two most prominent wars currently are Russian 19th century imperialism reenactment and the literal Holy War for the Holy Land.

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Everybody who was in it for the money quit the state-on-state conquest business when they realized how badly it had turned out for everyone who tried within living memory. In an industrialized context, simply buying real estate and charging rent is far more cost-effective than trying to bomb the residents into submission. What's the most recent war you can think of where the side who shot first, actually won anything they wanted?

Naturally, when some profession stops being a competitive career, diligent-professional types mostly look for their prospects elsewhere, leaving the ranks to be filled by residual fanatics (obsessed with the higher goals to the point they don't care about the money) and/or perverts (in it for the side benefits - violent cruelty in the case of terrorism, mostly sex stuff in the case of Catholic priesthood, etc.)

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> What's the most recent war you can think of where the side who shot first, actually won anything they wanted?

This is a much lower bar than "enough to be remotely worth it," so the Iraq war probably meets it. America got an Iraqi government that's (modestly) more friendly and more democratic than Saddam Hussein was, and it hasn't collapsed yet.

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The second and third Karabakh wars.

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>I guess it’s also a reminder that most people simply interpret the actions of others through their own lenses.

Part of the problem is certainly this, but I think if at the root of modern jihad is a genuine belief in the divine righteousness of holy violence, it means the nonIslamic world needs to respond with an ultimatum that nearly 2 billion people across the globe either edit their mortally intolerant religion or abandon it, and that is so utterly impractical and would appear so religiously intolerant that the secular west pretends the problem actually isn’t about Islam, which jihadists assure us it is.

I think the secular west’s most realistic hope is that the notion of jihad as internal spiritual metaphor gains so much traction with Islamic scholars that violent jihadists become universally shunned by their own religious leaders as heretics.

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My notion is that if a better Islam happens, it will be because a Muslim and native speaker of Arabic creates a positive vision which includes treating people better. It won't just be reinterpreting jihad.

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This is the "Islam needs a Reformation" view. I believe it is mistaken because the ones you're worried about are the ones actually reading their scripture instead of trusting to the "living document"-style interpretations of modern Islamic scholarship.

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That's the "jihadism *is* the Islamic Reformation" view!

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Pretty much, yeah, though I might say Wahhabism instead.

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I thought about that, but I don't think all jihadists are Wahhabis.

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They're different levels of causality. The "mental illness" (ie "beliefs") may have been the proximate cause, by why those beliefs? Because of emotions arising from decades of oppression. Emotions are real, but they're hard to convey, so when asked, what's given instead is a justification FOR the emotions, in terms of colonial resistance.

Anyway, if one person's justification from religious beliefs are just another's mental illness, well, Israel's existence justified on the same grounds.

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You've got the causality backwards. Why these beliefs? Because these are core doctrines of the religion that has been taught to almost everyone in the region for more than 1000 years. It's the oppression that is the consequence of the beliefs - either the djihadists are in power and oppress the opposition, or they aren't and the ruling power sees a strong need to oppress them. You saw on Oct 7 what happens when you're not thorough enough with that.

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Sep 15Edited

No, I think, you do. Every pantheon of beliefs has peaceful and noble ideals it reaches for in times of safety, and vengeful violent ones it can reach for in times of oppression. Christians, liberals, communists, Buddhists, whoever. The emotion comes first, the ideology second, and a population will come up with an ideology to justify their emotional needs if their existing body of beliefs doesn't provide one. This can be seen as a fitness criteria for beliefs themselves: true pacifism fails to reproduce. To essentialize this kind of violence is a grave error, usually committed to confirm a bias: it's far easier to imagine one's enemies are evil than to see them as pushed beyond a breaking point.

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Maybe true pacificsm doesn't reproduce, but religiously mandated authoritarianism and belligerence apparently does.

Just a couple of thoughts:

- broadly speaking, the Muslim world in the Middle East and North Africa was the hammer rather than the nail for 1000 years or so. Did that cause them to mellow out?

- if suffering and oppression are the root causes, why don't we hear of Native American suidice bombers, or Australian Aboriginal ones? When African refugees go on killing sprees in European cities, why do they yell "Allahu akbar" and not "In the name of Jesus Christ!"?

- who were the people who signed up to do the 9/11 attacks? Were they the poor, downtrodden, oppressed, or (by the standards of the region) rather well-off, educated, privileged individuals?

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I think Palestinian supporters in the West are just using whatever argument they think might work. "Israel needs to be managed by muslims" doesnt speak to a lot of Americans. "Palestinians are browns fighting against racist whites" gets some traction.

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The most parsimonious explanation for October 7th (taking into account timing) is probably Hamas trying to freeze (successfully, so far) the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

In that one-step-removed sense, it was part of colonial resistance, refusing to let the question of Palestine fade away. Even if it's too charitable to Hamas to call it an atrocity directly borne of the surfeit of grief over Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people.

It was most certainly not mental illness. Leaving aside the hideous immorality of what was done, matched only by the immorality of Israel's response, it was fairly rational.

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The least rational part is the ideological blind spot that thinks they can win decisively. That it is just a matter time before the jews are defeated and driven from the land one way or another. This prevents many types of compromise.

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It is really strange to see a religion being so alive somewhere else, when religion all around me is dying. But I have to remind myself: Christianity is also only dying in the West, it is doing great in Africa or Asia.

It is highly interesting why. I think people everywhere in the world have similar education, similar social media access and so on. And religion started to die in Europe in the 19th century when the poor did not really have much education. It was clearly not caused by the spread of a scientific worldview or anything like that.

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Asia is a big place, I can't rule out the possibility you're right, but for Africa, you're just wrong about Christianity doing great.

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How so? My impression is Nigeria has some utterly absurd megachurches.

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Yeah, that's new money and signaling. But Africa used to have many state churches before the Islamic Conquest, and right now it has zero (even the venerable Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church isn't a state religion) although there were a few in colonial times. There are a lot of Christians in Africa, but that's a doubtful and syncretistic percentage of even more Africans. Of the parts of Christianity that actually demonstrate commitment to unadulterated Christiantity, like monasteries, Africa has very little.

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before the Islamic Conquest Christianity was present in the North African roman provinces, Sudan and Ethiopia. Not that many places compared with today.

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I don't think we know enough about the history of Subsaharan Africa to say that.

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Isn't this just a complaint that Catholicism and Orthodoxy aren't doing well in Africa vis a vis Protestants who are?

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I absolutely disagree that monasteries represent unadulterated Christianity, or that nations are Supposed To have a state religion. I agree with The_Archduke that this sounds like thinly veiled "Protestantism isn't true Christianity" polemics.

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Pointing out lack of state churches and monasteries as reasons that actually African Christians are not Christians is pretty specious reasoning; neither of these things featured in early Christianity nor do they feature in the dominant strains of Christianity in many non-African countries—the same strains that are responsible for most of the evangelism and missions work that has resulted in burgeoning African Christianity. What gives?

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Aren't there a lot more Christians than there were in the period of state churches?

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Yes. And more non-Christians too.

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Christianity is a state religion in Zambia. And as someone who's lived in (broadly speaking) Africa, I think the degree of syncretism is greatly exaggerated.

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According to Pew, Christianity is the largest religion in Africa by a significant margin. Islam is growing faster than Christianity, but Pew estimates that by 2050 Africa will be 58% Christian and 35% Muslim. That's pretty Christian!

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/sub-saharan-africa/

On the other hand, the United States (where Christianity is "dying") is still currently 63%% Christian, and Pew estimates in 2050 there it will be 51% Christian still. So at this exact moment, the USA is a bit more Christian than Africa.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/projecting-u-s-religious-groups-population-shares-by-2070/

Meanwhile over in East Asia most people aren't particularly religious at all compared to the USA or Africa. However, of the religions there Christianity and Buddhism predominate. It's spread unevenly, Japan is only 2% Christian, while nearby South Korea is the most Christian at 32% of the population.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2024/06/17/religious-landscape-and-change-in-east-asia/

But most of the Christian focus on Asia is about China these days. Not because China is particularly Christian, as they probably take up about 7.4% of the population, but because of the rapid growth in Christianity over time. When the whole communist revolution thing happened all the missionaries got kicked out, and through the 70s it was generally understood that China was not a viable missions field: the few missionaries that managed to get in found people who were not interested in Christ (who needs him when you have the Party!). However over the last few decades a large underground Christian movement has been taking off. 7.4% doesn't seem like much, but it's over 100 million Chinese Christians, and 40 years ago there was maybe 1 million of them. It's probably the fastest growing region in the world when it comes to Christianity.

https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/china/

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In East Germany, the opposition mostly met in church buildings, because the church had the only large rooms in the country that were not, directly or indirectly, controlled by the state. My parents participated in the opposition (evidence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_B%C3%B6ttger ) and these meetings had good childcare, so I was there many times. Everyone was nominally Christian (because the church would get in trouble if not) and there were indeed some half-hearted prayers, but people were there because it was the only kind of place to plan how to reform, escape or overthrow the Socialist Party. Maybe Christianity in China is similar. Like Falun Gong.

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My understanding of the situation in China (and I am not an expert, though I've looked into it more than the average man off the street) is that there are several "official" Christian churches that are legal to be a part of. Those churches need to register with the state, and have to comply with the state policy of "sinicization" which means they have to align their teachings and practices with Chinese culture, as defined by the state. What that means varies depending on the province or even the city, as local governments have a broad mandate on interpreting the policy. So that means in some places the official churches are a lot like regular churches (though you'll never hear any sermons criticizing the CCP, that's for sure), while in other places churches aren't allowed to have crosses, or steeples, service times are strictly regulated, and every sermon needs to be approved in advance by the local Party official. The state also regulates the printing of Bibles: there is only one Chinese version that can be legally printed or sold in China, the Chinese Union Version, and bibles can only be sold in official churches or bookstores that are registered with the state to do so. The state regulates how many bibles can be printed each year, and Chinese Christians often report it being difficult to find bibles because not enough are printed to meet demand. The Great Firewall also blocks off access to bible websites online. If you are found with an unregistered bible, you will get in trouble. How much trouble that is depends on the province you're in and how hard the local Party officials are cracking down on Christians; in some places you'll just pay a fine or need to bribe your way out, in others you get thrown in jail.

It's also the case that in China it is illegal (constitutionally prohibited!) for children to have any formal religious affiliation. That means that if you bring your kid to church, you could get in trouble. Whether you do, again, depends on how strict the local Party officials are.

Because of all these restrictions the official Christian churches are not very popular among Chinese Christians. This has lead to a very large "house church" or "underground church" movement. These churches are not registered with the government and usually meet secretly in people's homes or other private places. They are illegal, though if they're small enough (a couple dozen people or so) the state rarely cracks down on them. Though in 2018 the CCP added a bunch of new religious regulations, and that same year a house church paster was sentenced to 9 years in prison, so it seems like we might currently be in a stricter period of time when it comes to religion in China.

It's hard to get good data on how many Chinese are in unregistered churches vs registered ones (for obvious reasons), but estimates range from 30-70% of all Chinese Christians being part of underground churches.

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Oh, interesting. Thanks. That sounds very different from East Germany. But "house churches" were common in some areas and eras of Europe's history too. Including East Germany, especially but by definition they didn't have large rooms, so we didn't go there. The "Hauskreise" (literally "house circles") I heard of were usually Pietist.

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Wow, your father seems to be an impressive person ! Even a classical music composer on the top of it all !

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A cursory Google search doesn't give me derivative-with-respect-to-time information, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Africa says 49% of Africa's population is Christian, which sounds very substantial to me.

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I'm a Quaker, which is a sect of Christianity that was very significant in early American history but so obscure in the US today that people are often surprised we still exist.

The country with the largest number of Quakers today is Kenya.

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Wikipedia says there are 146,300 Quakers in Kenya, or 2,79% of the population.

That that's your largest number says more about Quakers than it says about Kenya.

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A lot of our ideas - maybe don't haggle over the price of groceries? - have become so mainstream that we aren't particularly relevant as a district religious group. Our decline after that is to be expected.

But we're growing, globally. We're fading into irrelevancy in the west, but growing faster in Africa than our decline.

Christians are a minority in most African countries, but Africa is becoming Christian faster than the West is becoming secular. Quakers are just an example.

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I am not sure Islam is that successful outside some peripheral areas like the Sahel and Afghanistan. In places like Egypt,Iran, Bosnia etc things like mosque attendance are falling rapidly.

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Excuse me, Christianity is dying in *Europe*.

—Sent from Indiana

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Also a little confused about why you would think education in, say, Saudi Arabia is similar to education in France (a state that has been formally committed to secularism for 150 years)

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No! Wrong! Jesus will not rule beside the Mahdi, because the Mahdi will die shortly after Jesus' return. It is believed that the Mahdi will fight but only manage to stalemate the evil Dajjal; Iesa (Jesus), on the other hand, will actually be able to defeat the Dajjal once he arrives.

(...IIRC hopefully I didn't misremember something while correcting someone—)

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Question about the claim that the Day of Judgment will take place after Jesus rules benevolently for a long time - wouldn't you figure out which way the wind is blowing after Jesus returns to Earth and starts ruling benevolently, and convert to Islam (or act virtuously) then, regardless of what you'd done before? What stops people from trying this hack?

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Why is it a hack and what's wrong with most people being saved? 🤷

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My understanding is that this is, in fact, exactly what IS expected to occur—though you might not want to take the chance of holding off till then, because there will be lots of fighting before Jesus actually shows up... so if you don't make it quite the whole way, you could well perish in a state of kufr! Astaghfirallah!

-------------

I. State of Play

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The fighting will be due to the Dajjal (an antichrist-like figure) misleading many—probably mainly all the degenerate filthy post-modernists & atheists & the like, is the feeling—and gathering together armies of the people he has thus tricked. This will be done, in part, by his performing deeds such as "causing the earth to bring forth its bounty" (unclear if done by the power of sihr & djinni, or technological).

There will be despair in the Ummah, until the Mahdi is identified & begins to gather together armies of the righteous; these will fight the armies of the Dajjal¹—but, though the Mahdi will be a just ruler & righteous man, and so forth, he's not supernatural & will, at best, reach a stalemate; or—more likely—will be slowly but consistently losing the war.

...until Iesa-Jesus descends (in... Damascus? don't quote me on that one)! He will "break the cross" (+ "kill the pigs"²), symbolically showing that He³ doesn't approve of what His followers have been doing, and then easily overpower & destroy the Dajjal—though, unfortunately, our amigo the Mahdi will die shortly thereafter.

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II. Scott's Hack

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...will, seemingly, actually work! That is, the Christians & Jews will—naturally, what with the cross-breaking & descending from Jannah in saffron robes & whatnot—immediately see that Jesus is endorsing the Truth Faith, and convert en masse.

Thereupon, Jesus-Iesa shall rule over a world of peace & justice, and entirely Muslim, for forty years (IIRC). I don't think it's explicitly mentioned that anyone except Christians & Jews will convert upon His return; but—since the fighting will end (& since Iesa will obviously be a highly miraculous sort of ruler)—it seems the *implication* is that even the disbelievers & polytheists & other lovers-of-evil will finally recognize that Islam is The Truth.™

(Interestingly, there is some debate over whether this is because Jesus will give them a "convert or die" ultimatum, or merely because it will be so obvious that He's, well, Jesus.)

.

-------------------------

III. (Footnotes, for some reason)

-------------------------

·············

¹: (although there's a hadith about how actually "the Romans"—i.e., Euro-Westerners—as a whole will join with the armies of the Mahdi to fight "an army of the East"—sometimes interpreted as an army of Chinamen, determined to stamp out all religion in their godless commie fervor–)

·············

²: (???)

·············

³: (felt disrespectful not to capitalize the pronoun, though I think this is, Islamically-speaking, Not Cool.)

·············

-------------------------

.

(...And Allah knows best.)

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Re: "kill the pigs", maybe He'll make everyone stop eating pork by wiping out the supply chain?

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Depends on what actually happens. There will be people who will doubt this, no matter the evidence. Thomas believed after putting his hands in the holes; there are people even more skeptical today.

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I’m Christian, but if Jesus descends from sky and says the Muslims were right about everything, I’m going to my nearest Mosque to convert ASAP. I’m sure there are a lot of Muslims that would do it in reverse if he says he’s Christian. Christian Jesus would likely be hoping this would happen.

Of course the real problem is the end times are unlikely to happen in any individual person’s lifetime, so that hack won’t be available to most people.

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I agree but...

How would we know it's Jesus and not the Antichrist? I doubt we'd recognize him from his long hair, light brown beard, and Caucasian facial features.

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This is fabulous. Only review so far that makes me want to read the book.

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Of all the reviews so far, I think this is both the best and the one that sounds most like Scott's voice. I don't know how closely those two things are related. Either way, an extremely enjoyable and interesting read, bravo.

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Oh that's interesting. I had not drawn the parallel, it does sound a bit like Scott's style. And of the ones presented so far, it is clearly superior. I guess we really are all here for a reason.

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Scott wouldn't tease a "More than you wanted to know" piece like that. The author is baiting us all to write that, of course, but if this was Scott it'd be an announcement.

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Imitating Scott's style seems likely to have a tradeoff with review quality. In combination with Scott's writing already being popular with most voters, and thus disproportionately likely to make the finals, I think it's more likely than not that the most Scott-like finalist was written by Scott.

I don't think Scott would go to serious effort to disguise his style. Mainly because I don't think he'd think it's a good use of his time. Secondly, he might have reasoned that his readers will pay more attention to these reviews (in future years) if they think they have a decent chance of discovering Scott's.

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Scott didn’t really try to disguise himself in his Njal’s Saga’s review, which I successfully guessed was his. This one I don’t have the same feel, likely since it’s missing his micro humor. Regardless, it’s my favorite review so far.

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I agree with most of this thread (great review, alluding to Scott) but I can not imagine Scott wishing to do a long piece about the qualities ot diverse Hadiths, Fatwas, Prophesies and what not. There is a mountain, nay, mountains of literature about that, by ppl who are fluent in Quran Arabic. And from all sides. A former colleague of mine teaches at a German university and she wrote e.g. how the hadith about "more women in hell than men" is a) likely a 'strong' hadith, but also b) possibly meant as a joke: - With regard to the reason why women form the majority of Hell, the Prophet was asked about it and he explained the reason in these words: “Because of their ingratitude.” It was said, “Are they ungrateful to Allah?” He said, “They are ungrateful to their husbands and ungrateful about good treatment. If you are kind to one of them for a lifetime then she sees one (undesirable) thing in you, she will say, `I have never had anything good from you.’” - quote from a humorless website.

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The orthodox understanding is that Muhammad (ﷺ)—although he did have a sense of humor, which is of course the best of all senses of humor—was *incapable* of making a joke that involved an untruth.

..............

Wry observation? Absolutely!

Just kidding? Astaghfirallah! Quickly, ‘akhi, make du'a of Salat at-Tawbah for listening to that witch, for—Wallahi, I tell you this!—she is upon the waswasa of shayatin to dare say (astaghfirallah, even to *write*) that the Rasul-Allah (ﷺ)—al-Haq, as-Sadiq, al-Amin, al-Insan al-Kamil!—would misguide his Ummah to tell a filthy /joke/!

.

*ahem* or it's like whatever who knows I mean—

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I'd call it a toned down version of Scott's voice. The humor is there, but with less hyperbole.

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"According to a Pew Research poll, more than half of Muslims believe that the Mahdi will arrive within their lifetime, and this belief is universally accepted among jihadists"

Curiously, haredim also believe we live in the end of times and the coming of the moshiah is imminent

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I suspect the proportion of people who believe we live in their ideology's version of the end times is quite high, or at least is well above lizardman's constant. Consider the singularity, people who say late-stage capitalism as if to imply it will end soon, or the rapture.

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Completely agree. The are a bunch of different flavors of "immanentize the eschaton" at play.

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I also used to think "late-stage capitalism" inherently meant "the end of capitalism is coming soon," too, and I mocked that mercilessly. Turns out that it mainly means "capitalism in its mature or fully developed state," and anti-capitalists are divided on whether this means the end of capitalism is nigh, or if capitalism can sustain itself in this mature state for centuries to come.

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I originally wrote just "late-stage capitalism" then tried to correct it to "people who say late-stage capitalism as if to imply it will end soon" to make it clear which group I was referring to, but that's equally bad. I meant to refer specifically to the people who like to talk about escalating crises of capitalism.

It occurs to me that extreme runaway climate change is another example and might be even more popular with the same crowd.

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The idea that current capitalism is the most fully developed stage seems... surprisingly optimistic from an anti-capitalist?

In the critiques of capitalism I read, it's currently not so bad but getting a whole lot worse as everything approaches a more optimal (from big companies' point of view) state.

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I never said any anti-capitalism ideology makes sense. It doesn't. It just beats Free Market ideology by a mile.

I don't know what a truly great political ideology would look like. That's above my pay grade. It could be a great political tendency doesn't even exist yet. I don't know why we assume it's already been invented.

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<mildSnark>

The whole end times discussion sounds so https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-deboer-on-temporal-copernicanism :-)

</mildSnark>

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Rare indeed are the people who (a) believe a particular set of prophecies is true but also (b) believe that they all refer to something happening way off in the future with no connection to the present.

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<mildSnark>

Does expecting the Sun to become a Red Giant count? :-)

4,000,000,000 , 3,999,999,999 , 3,999,999,998 , only 3.999.999.997 eons to go!

</mildSnark>

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I remember being really amazed when I read about one Christian writer circa 1600 who expected the world to end in 2000. That basically *never* happens.

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What arguments would the haredim give for this?

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The Rambam wrote a bit about it - it's one of the 13 principles core to Judaism that he enunciated. They see the signs he described as everywhere

Chabadniks would refer to comments made by the rebbe also (and they low key believe the rebbe was the mashiah)

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Rambam says the Messiah will come, but he certainly doesn't say "...in the early 21st century". I'm curious what the arguments for it being *now* are.

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Good question - I’m digging into this with a few rabbis to make sure I do their argument justice. Might pull it into a post and share with you.

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Short answer, Haredim don’t really believe that there are any specific signs of imminent messiah right now. Rather there is just a general obligation to be excited about.

The most messiah obsessed sect (Chabad) believed/believes that their leader is the Messiah (but it’s common practice in Chassidic sects to believe that your Rebbe is the messiah so it’s nothing special apart from the particular enthusiasm and his big impact compared to other Rebbes). In fact, probably the most obvious thing to be interpreted as a sign of the imminent Messiah - the return to Israel - is denounced by Chabad as definitely NOT a sign

of anything special, to the extent that when the occasional Chabad cantor gets roped into saying the prayer for the welfare of the state of Israel, they will often subtly omit the words which describe the state as an “early flowering of our redemption/reshit smichat geulataynu” (and they won’t say this prayer at all in pure Chabad synagogues).

Religious Zionists (not Haredim) on the other hand generally believe that the return to Israel is an early sign of redemption and there is some work going on to prepare (surprisingly they managed to find a couple of pure red heifers in Texas

which supposedly haven’t been seen in thousands of years, but the Haredim basically ignore it).

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This quote made me curious about the comparable number in American Christianity, so I looked it up: 14% of American Christians believe that Jesus will come back in their lifetime (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/ft_22-12-08_endtimes_03-png/)

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And then there's the Christians who have signed up for a service where an atheist looks after their pet dog when they get caught up in the Rapture.

Mind you, there have been Christian end-time preachers since before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem (that was also generously supplied with Jewish end-timers at the time). The first generation of such preachers, if you interpret "the world" to mean "all the land of Israel/Judaea", was technically correct.

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Huh that's an interesting idea. Spiritual trade! I wonder if I could give someone 10 bucks now and get back 1 million dollars post-singularity, for people who think singularity is impossible (or definitely doomed).

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