Islamic Hybridism

This was originally meant to be a Community Post for my YouTube channel, but it ran long. It’s a good deal shorter than the usual essay-length post reserved for Extensive Arguments, and though I have two unfinished Sequence Trilogies that have been pending for eons, and embarrassingly so, I’ll publish this too-long-for-the-community piece over here anyway.

The post being moved here started out as a Poll soliciting answers to a deceivingly simple question. As with my other polls, I added a few short lines to explain the broader context of the query, only to then catch myself snowballing the explanations in order to make doubly sure that no one downplays the gravity of what's being queried. So much for that.

Motivation for the Poll: The string of murders in France and elsewhere in Europe over the last two months, particularly the aftermath-spurred debates over how to solve or mitigate the problem of Islam-inspired violence legally or socially, while avoiding overkill (i.e. human rights violations). To those who have decided that there’s no overkill, or that there’s no point in worrying about overkill, you're probably not the target audience, and I imagine you’re in for a disappointing read.

The intended poll:

 

Non-muslims familiar with the Qur’an are correct to rank-order Muslims in the following way, morally speaking:

 

Cultural Muslims > Moderate Muslims > Devout Muslims > Islamists > Jihadists

 

A: Agree

B: Disagree

C: Agree in theory, but this specific ranking is wrong

D: Ambivalent (on non-empirical grounds / i.e. the value of non-judgmentalism)

E: Indecisive (because we lack some pertinent facts / still pro-judgmentalism)

To answer contextually, you will need to keep reading. (Sorry)

Unrelenting Political Catastrophism

Cyber-induced conflict faddishness seems to have reached an all-time high, especially if you measure things by factionalized self-unawareness. I confess to having absorbed more of this sugary topicality compared to what my ideal disciplined self would have tolerated in a fraction of the timespan. And certainly far more than my silence on the boring and predictable American Presidential Election cycle might've led regular readers to believe.

I hate-watch this stuff, and I probably always will, from the same familiarly detached distance the average reader of this blog probably does. The insipidness that jumps out at me? Everything from "Terrorism is a serious threat to our way of life" (roughly 2001-2006) morphing into "Counterterrorism is a front for gov't expansion & liberty encroachment, read Orwell" (roughly 2006-2014) then imperceptibly back to "Terrorism is a serious threat to our way of life, but doubly-seriously this time!" (2014-2016).