You are committing to the primitive practice of scapegoating.

Scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism of denial through projecting responsibility and blame on others.[2] It allows the perpetrator to eliminate negative feelings about him or herself and provides a sense of gratification. Furthermore, it justifies the self-righteous discharge of aggression. For the perpetrator, it can provide a firm separation between good and bad.[3] Others describe scapegoaters as insecure, motivated to raise their own status, particularly relative to the target.[4] Having firmly convinced oneself that the other is responsible, it seems only logical to displace punishment as well.

[beyondintractability.org]

@Mvtt Good definition and explanation. But how is this scapegoating? You're committing EVASION! You asked for evidence of Western culpability for the rise of Islamic extremism and I provided it.

@Krish55 you have not provided any compelling evidence at all.

@Krish55 the US gov may be responsible for some things, but not islamism. You’ve conjured that connection. Adults should take responsibility for their own actions. Talk about evading...

@Krish55 and to answer your question: you’re putting the responsibility of the existence of islamists onto the US.

@Mvtt No, I'm not. You are partially correct in that they would always exist. However, they were powerless under the secular socialist governments in the Muslim World. As I've pointed out, it was active Western and Saudi support that gave Islamists the power they have now. While the West isn't responsible for their existence, it is responsible for their power. You are merely being reactive and defensive in discovering that White Western secularism isn't as innocent as you had thought. Even the CIA admits this and calls it Blowback. [amazon.com]

@Krish55 I can’t defend the US. I’m not even a citizen of it.
What I am doing is rejecting your claim as it’s shifting blame.
Here is a video explaining this failure in critical thinking. I hope it helps.

@Mvtt I have taught debate.
You are avoiding debate by not answering my responses to you. You yourself need to explain yourself how pointing out the longstanding Western role in promoting radical Islam is "shifting blame." I've answered your claim to this but you have not responded.
No one in a debate gets points for reciting a general list of logical fallacies. You are again engaging in EVASION by doing this and with the cop-out that you are not a US citizen and can't comment. One doesn't need to be German to comment about the Nazis and the Holocaust. You are merely defending the equivalent of that today with your evasions avoiding how the West commits atrocities around the world, atrocities that include the empowerment of Islamic fanatics.

@Krish55 ok I will bite and take a stand, rather than merely point out your logical failings.
While the term Islamism is relatively new, it rose from Islamic teaching. Take the desire for sharia, and the scriptural accusation of being a “non-believer” for not adhering it, for example.
Consider also, there is institutional Islamism (non violent) and religious Islamism (violent, like Jihadism).
The idea that Islam is not just a faith but the basis of a state, has been the norm in Islamic countries for centuries. It’s understandable that there is a current schism happening and an increase in the visibility of Islamism due to exposure to western modernisation. However, it would be absurdly reductionist, and historically and theologically ignorant, to solely point the finger at the US.

@Mvtt
(1) I have not denied this. I agree with you that the nature of Islam inherently lends itself to some adopting radical Islamic jihadism.
(2) My point, which you keep ignoring, is that this fanaticism was under control by the secular, socialist governments in the Muslim world. These were countries that allowed women an education without head covering. Islamists who tried to prevent this liberation of women were suppressed by Arab and other socialists.
(3) The West saw this Islamic dissatisfaction as an entry point into destroying the socialist governments that were trying to control their own resources like oil. So the West trained and armed the Islamists to destroy secular socialism in the Muslim world.
(4) This manipulation by the the West is what created the extent of the jihadist problem we have now.

Therefore if, like me, you don't like radical Islam, you have to also oppose Western imperialism. Criticizing Islam without criticizing the Western imperialism that nurtures it is merely engaging in the racist illusion of White Western cultural superiority. I know it's hard to give up your White Privilege illusion of superiority but look at the facts that you've previously ignored.

@Krish55 I’m not ignoring your point I’m saying it’s wrong to solely blame the US, why are you ignoring that? Admit your faulty logic and grow as a debater.
Your post was highly propagandist, inflammatory and fallacious.
I haven’t even addressed your other egregious comments.

@Mvtt
Did you read that I never denied that Islam itself had a problem? Did you read that I just explicitly acknowledged that problem? So where on earth do you get "solely" from?
You throw out a lot of fancy debate terms but don't actually engage in the specific back and forth of debate which involves responding to specific points.
The first rule of debate is to actually listen to what you opponent says and respond with specific rebuttals instead of throwing out preconceived arguments or triggered responses.
You need to outgrow your White Western Racism unless you want to continue to wallow in the illusion, like Dawkins, of White Western Cultural Superiority.

@Krish55 I’m happy to address any points you feel I’ve not addressed. Let’s agree to avoid ad hominem attacks like assuming racism as you’ve done. Poor form on your behalf.

Accepting Islam is a choice. Accept dictatorships is a choice. The people of the middleeast made their choices. Dawkins didnt make their choice for them. Neither did the US. Middle east people arent dumb. They arent fools. They know when something is wrong. These days it hard to change thing. But one thing you can control is your own choice to follow or not.

@MakeItGood Choice? What a smug exhibition of haughty White Privilege! Your white governments arm the jihadists who slaughter and take over while the Western powers bomb the secular forces into pieces and you call the result a choice? Your racist White Privilege manifests itself in cluelessness. Do you realize how ridiculous you sound given the history of Western bombing of Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc and the arming of the murderous jihadists to destroy secularism there.?

@Krish55 I'm not white. I was born in the middle east. I grew up there. I think I know more about this than you do.

@MakeItGood Yeah. Just like the white MAGAs who post behind black photos to support Trump.
Or perhaps you are an Israeli supremacist following the chosen race theory. In that case you know the Mideast the same way the Germans knew Poland after they invaded. Or the same way white apartheid South Africa knew the black Soweto ghetto.
In that case it's quite obvious why you would want to blame people of the Mideast for being subject to Israeli and American aggression and racism. Just like the Nazis blamed the Jews for the genocide the Nazis perpetrated.

@Krish55 lol seriously, I'm not white. And you don't know what youre talking about.

@MakeItGood Point out what is supposedly inaccurate.

What is “the west”?

@Mvtt Western Europe and North America. You didn't know that?

@Krish55 ok... so what evidence do you have that these countries nurture and arm Islamism, as you claim?

@Mvtt See post above ^^^

@Krish55 Arrgh!...you are using the wrong term. Western imperialism is the west attempting to colonize other countries or lands. That is not what you are talking about because arming a group is not imperialism, its the opposite: its recognizing and legitimizing their sovereignty enough to give them arms to defend themselves.

So giving arms to a group is not imperialism. At best its making allies or influencing behavior through money and supplies. The idea being that if you misbehave they won't give you money. So its a form of soft power. At worst it proxy wars with countries like Russia and China. The West has done both. Japan, South Korea, are examples of the best. Vietnam, South Korea, Pakistan and Afghanistan (due to its proximity to Russia), and various countries in South America and Middle East are examples the worst that happened.

You'll notice South Korea being both in the best and the worst. That's because South Korea originally was used in a proxy war against China and suffered greatly. After the Korean war, the US gave arms money and technology to South Korea to protect itself but also to prevent communism from spreading. It could easily have been used to create a religious monarchy dictatorship...like North Korea or Saudi Arabia. Instead, a Harvard grad Korean decided to go back, became the president of Korea, and turned his focus to modernize Korean economy making South Korea more successful than the US. Yes much like Japan, it has performed better than the US considering it's population, size, and resources. Korea was brutally colonized by Japan. After WW2, Japan issued an apology ans Korea accepted. Since then they have exchanged business, education, and other aid to support each other. The US didnt interfere with this.

So tell me, why hasn't this happened in the Islamic countries? Could it be that maybe the west is not responsible for how the leaders of Islamic countries choose to use their arms and money? We all know how much the west need oil for its economy to function. So if anything, it is the West is begrudgingly under the influence of the islamic world! Not the other way around. Only recently through the Iraq war, is the US using the same tactic of establishing a supportive friendly government that will trade with them.

Again this is not imperialism, they arent colonizing Iraq. The US wants to leave Iraq but with a stable friendly government that will do business with them. This means giving arms and technical support to the Iraqi army to battle radical islamists who clearly want to establish a theocratic state. The US are giving the same oppourtunity to Iraq as they did to Korea. Will an Iraqi leader and the Iraqi people rise to the oppourtunity? It seems not yet.

Do you understand now why Dawkins does not mention Western imperialism? Because that is not what is happening. He is rightfully calling out radical islam as a threat to modernizing a middle eastern country. Islam naturally tends to distatorship. Worse radical Islamists are explicitly imperialist. They seek to colonize and expand territory. How is the US expected to respond to such imperialist goals of an islamic theocratic state? By arming and supporting democratic governments against it ofcourse. However, what the elected official do with the arms is their fault, not the US.

But the US did fail badly in one spectacular instance. In the late 80s the US trained the Taliban in Afghanistan to fight Russian imperialism to prevent communism from spreading. After the Soviet govt fell, the US government tried establishing a friendly government...but not through the Talibann so the Taliban fostered a hatred of the US for abandoning them. When the Afghan govt failed, the Taliban flourished. Eventually 9/11 happened and, well....here we are fighting a battle against a set of very bad ideas...and that may last forever.

The US's big mistake was thinking the muslim world is the same as the Japanese or Korean world. They are not. The former has more tribalism and infighting, the latter has stronger national identity and a sense of working for the greater good.

So this is not the West's fault. This is a flaw muslim leadership and culture. When Mohammad created islam it is clear what he was trying to do: to use religion as a tool to unify a group of poeple and stop the infighting. It worked for a while but then like all religions, it broke up into sects and the infighting started again.

The west was able to come out of its religious wars that lasted hundreds of years through the introduction of Western (ancient Greek) thoughts from the religous Christian crusades and rejecting religion while embracing science in the age of enlightment. It has worked out well for the West so far.

I guess we are waiting for the middle east to have a similar sort of enlightenment. We are waiting for enlightened leaders and innovator to rise up and bring their countries out of religion.

The West and Dawkins can't do anything about that except wait and hope.

@MakeItGood Imperialism is not just colonial control. It can be indirect control through local governments. I have showed how Western imperialism has destroyed reformist secularism in the Muslim world. The West is not innocently "waiting." It is continually engaged in destruction in all parts of the world, including Latin America, for the resources and markets it need for the profits of capitalists. You are correct about all the problems of Islam. Too bad your racism prevents you from seeing the problems of Western imperialism also...

The Faithfools seem to believe it to be so don't they?

@Triphid I've been trying to think of what they have in common besides. - Oh, of course - they don't mind who they offend when they push their bullshit.

Precisely!

@TheMiddleWay I doubt that, somehow. It seems incumbent upon the institution to have done the reading. I read The God Delusion and I was aware of his attitude toward the incidents of his youth.

What seems likely to me is that some of the membership was unfamiliar with Dawkins' comments, and were outraged when they read some of his works; and to save face, the Hist is now pretending they'd never read a word of Dawkins' books before.

@Paul4747 So this is now Ioannopoulos AND Dawkins AND the Hist condoning what was done to several of Dawkins' classmates in three successive schools staffed by vicars not good enough for usual duties. If Dawkins et al are trying to imply because he and Ioann. claim to have enjoyed it, so the others ought to also, I am disgusted, he is a total charlatan. IICSA is on, they should be frogmarched in front of it (together with more of their accomplices I know of).

@HenAgnDon Dawkins never claimed to have enjoyed it that I'm aware. All he ever said, that I've read (and I admit I haven't read all his writing by far, so find me a quote and I'll retract my comment), is that the attentions he suffered were mild by comparison and that not everything automatically rises to the level of sexual abuse. That does not constitute condoning sexual abuse.

An atheist or any non-believer should always speak plainly. Otherwise you are caught in a circle of total nonsense from the beginning. This is why I feel a lot of debates are useless. All hot air. Did a god show up and give either side some new evidence? NO. It has never happened and probably will not happen ever. "What if" is simply wishful thinking.

@DenoPenno "speak the truth quietly and plainly for all who would listen to hear, " a personal motto to which I hold dear.

@DenoPenno yes, and books are a great way of doing that. Plus, only those that want to read them gave to buy them.