Brussels attacks March 22

Dozens are dead, but the current estimates vary. Supposedly, someone were shooting and shouting in Arabic as the airport bombs went off. It seems these large scale terrorist attacks are getting much more common in Europe, and now they have struck at the heart of the European Union. I thought we should have a thread about this. Post your thoughts or feelings here.

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My heart goes out to the innocent.

Yes, it is awful… I feel angry and sad, but I try to remember that Europe is still generally a very safe place. I hope this will not fuel Islamophobia.

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I hate war. It’s just horrible.

Terrible news. My heart goes out to all the innocent involved. Such ignorance and senseless bloodshed. For what? There is no message to draw our attention to. No cause that is being fought for by desperate people brought to the brink by their own suffering. This is just mass murder by the dull-minded followers of violence. I hope the true followers of Islam will speak out loudly against these further attacks.

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I have been watching the news coverage on tv. I will never understand why anyone would do something like this. Very sad. My condolences to the families.

I am happy to live in a peaceful nation far from European large cities where they have had these problems many decades. Maybe it is the time to build new borders in the Schengen area again. I remember my 1-week stay in Paris in 1988 and they had similar issues caused by other people. I view that this has been a major intelligence failure.

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I hope this will not fuel Islamophobia.

Yes. It would be nuts to infer anything from the fact that the terrorists are invariably adherents of the same religion.

What they are doing doesn’t make sense

I think that the majority of Islamic people are peaceful. After I had lived in America over 10 years I flew to Brussels and stayed one week near the area where they had many Islamic people and I thought they were peaceful people, but I think that those extremist Jihadists are a problem. In my nation we do not have many Islamic people and I think that they are peaceful.

Terrorism is so self defeating for the Arabs. It keeps public opinion turned against them in the western democracies.

You know that’s not what I meant. Most muslims are not violent people, and they don’t deserve to get treated badly because other muslims are violent criminals. That’s like bashing every Christian because some of them are bigoted ■■■■■■■■.

I’m not saying every Muslim is a terrorist, but the problem we’re having right now is that nearly every terrorist is a Muslim. We need to be able to have candid conversations about why this is the case without people shouting those who ask questions down as ‘Islamophobes’. Frankly, phobia is an irrational fear and fear of Islamic terrorists is quite real and rational.

I don’t disagree with that (at least not when it comes to terrorism in Europe). We need to be able to talk honestly about the issues we face as a society, even if some people don’t like that honesty. But Islamophobia has become a real issue too. If you think it should be called something else, I am open to suggestions, but Wikipedia defines Islamophobia as “the prejudice against, hatred or bigotry towards, or fear of the religion of Islam or Muslims”. It’s like the word homophobia. Perhaps a misnomer, but people know what it means.

Racist people will always be racist people

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I view that the peaceful jihad is not a problem because people try to improve themselves, but the real problem is that extremist jihadism. I would guess that those people who did this today’s Brussels attack were sent by some extremist jihadists in the Middle-East. I do not think that they were local Islamic people in Brussels. I am not really watching news or reading papers.

They’ve been recruiting all over the world.

They are like a plague
They could wipe us all out
Sounds scary

I doubt it. They’re not that big.

No I reckon the majority of us are stronger as they are few