My guess is extremely voluntary. All the government can do is say, “day off today!” What thousands of Muslims decide to do with their day off is up to them. Burning flags & demanding death seems popular.
What I remember is that a particular Muslim Cleric from some European Country went around to Muslim countries purposely stirring shit up about the cartoons. They were several months old and no one outside Denmark had taken particular note of them until he made a point to generate some outrage.
That’s right. Not only that, but along with the original cartoons he inserted some fake ones that were far more inflammatory. No one questioned that.
Maybe a better question is, “Why are Muslims so gullible?” It seems like it’s trivially easy to spread lies, misinformation, and conspiracy theories in the Muslim world. Any idiot claiming to be an Imam can issue a Fatwa and get hundreds of thousands of people to accept it. When that idiot cleric ran around with those fake cartoons, no one seemed to question his motives or check to see the original sources. There were no Muslim journalists investigating the story and reporting on the fakes.
It seems that the tradition of skeptical enquiry is missing in large part in the Muslim world. When we get information, we can count on someone always calling bullshit and investigating it. And we give a lot of air time and kudos to whistle blowers and debunkers. That just doesn’t seem to happen in the Muslim world. Or not as much, anyway.
When the proportion of Americans who believe that there was a direct link between Iraq and al Qaeda/September 11 drops below 20%, i’ll accept that Muslims might have a greater propensity for believing lies and misinformation.
Until then, not so much.
When the man is in fact holding you down and opressing you, when Western nations in fact are invading nearby nations inhabited by your co-religionists for no good reason, and when said nations are using the developing world as their personal sweatshops and strip mines, it’s easy to get the real crimes mixed up with the fake stuff.
You can see the same thing sometimes in African-American communities in the United States. Were crack and AIDS developed as racist plots by the CIA? Were the levees in New Orleans intentionally destroyed, flooding poor Black areas to save rich white ones? Almost certainly not. But African-Americans are the victims of racist and apathetic government policies dating back to before independence, and at one point in the 20th century NO’s levees were demolished flooding poor areas to save the city proper, and NO was the victim of a horribly botched evacuation plan.
It’s damn easy to develop paranoia when they are out to get you. Even if they aren’t doing it in the ways you think they are.
Another example: Nazis making soap out of Jews. Didn’t happen, at least not in the numbers the tale suggests it did. But it’s easy to believe given the crimes the Nazis actually did perpetrate.
Didn’t happen in the USSR and eastern Europe. Doesn’t always happen in China. Or in plenty of other non-Muslim countries.
Why on earth should they, when they (or, more precisely, the leadership who orchestrates the Teeming Muslim Millions into these demonstrations) have noticed that playing the victim has a pretty good track record at influencing Western nations?
That said, I think they’re overplaying this card to the point of ineffectiveness, or even counter-effectiveness (as illustrated for example by the OP’s opinion).
Agreed, with the caveat that they make up a much greater percentage of the Muslim population than they do of the Western Christian world. I think the Master’s take on the root cause of this is a reasonably good explanation.
Where was the Islamic global outrage on Sept 11, 2001 ? Wouldn’t something like that offend their delicate non-violent sensibilities? I guess not.
I wonder if part of the reason is more cultural than it is religious. It seems like insults and offense are taken much more seriously by some of these cultures. We’re relaxed about it and able to poke fun at ourselves so it doesn’t occur to us that such things can be humiliating to others who don’t share our sense of humor.
I could enjoy watching a show which made fun of my culture and my beliefs-- hell, I’d probably laugh at personal insults if they were delivered in a joking manner, but I don’t have a lot of notions about honor and digity that some other people might.
:wq
Guess again. Here’s a small sampling of statements by prominent Islamic scholars condemning the attacks, and a list of rallies held throughout the Islamic world in support of the US in the days and weeks after 9/11.
My favorite bit from that cite:
Even fucking Hamas decried the WTC attacks.
On the other hand, accounts of Muslims celebrating in the streets after 9/11 are hugely exagerated, if not deliberatly manufactured.
As long as it’s an American (an insider) making fun of your culture, and not an outsider, like an European, criticizing what’s wrong, right? Then the hate and indignation pours out.
The problem with what the Pope said is that he handed the fanatics an offense on the silver platter, by not qualifiying the quote with adequate context - no mention of the crusade; no mention of how Christians govt. at that time period weren’t secular or tolerant; no mention that the Muslim countries, when conquering, didn’t demand conversion automatically (unlike Christian countries), etc. So it comes across, despite the scholarly setting, as Muslim bashing.
Besides the problems already mentioned - many young people in these countries out of job; easy trolling by TV crews of those guys who want to be on TV; the state may be helping the protests along; manipulation by religious leaders of uneducated people; real grievances in these countries against the Western World; very macho culture that can’t easily accept ridicule or insult - many of these uneducated protesters have a poor understanding of how a secular democracy works because they don’t have one. So they demand of a state like Denmark to apologise for what a newspaper prints, because in their experience, a state controls the newspaper.
And they have already heard that a Christian Country is on a Crusade against them, so when the Pope, who is an important figure, paints the Muslim religion as bad, they get upset. They don’t know how much influence religious leaders like the Pope or Robertson have on leaders of countries, but they assume from own experience, a lot of influence.
Here’s my take:
The Arab/Muslim world has blithely stood by, saying nothing, while for decades a particularly vocal minority has committed acts of, let’s say, unfriendliness, claiming to represent the Arab/Muslim world as a whole. The fact that the Arab/Muslim world as a whole as done very little, over these decades, to disavow such representation, gives them very little leg to stand on now. They may not have dug this hole, but they stood by with their hands in their pockets, whistling Dixie, and let it be dug in their name.
I say ti’s more their responsibility than the West’s to fill it in.
Hamas condemned the attacks? Really? Wow. Can you point me in the direction of where I can read their statement?
As for the footage of women and children dancing in the streets, I think I read somewhere that it was old footage from an unrelated event. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but that’s what I heard.
Most people do tend to get upset when other people criticize their religions. Everyone needs to leave each other alone. If they can’t do that, then I suggest taking a deep breath, counting to ten, and trying to cool down.
If they can’t do *that,[/] well, then I’d just like to be in a remote area before the bombs start flying.
Well then it’s a good thing that that’s rarely the case. Arabs/Jews just like to protest that it’s their religion being criticized, when usually it’s their actions. And anyone who is, actually, criticizing the religion, rather than actions, merely by doing so labels himself irrelevant to the discussion.
…That was my point.
Well OK then.
Really? Based on what? According to this article in the Washington Post :
"The pope began his lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting from a 14th-century dialogue between the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologos, and a Persian scholar. In a passage on the concept of holy war, Benedict recited a passage of what he called ‘startling brusqueness,’ in which Manuel questioned the teachings of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad.
‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,’ Benedict quoted the emperor as saying.
The pope neither explicitly endorsed nor denounced the emperor’s words, but rather used them as a preface to a discussion of faith and reason."
It sure seems like the Pope’s Muslim critics are deliberately taking his remarks out of context to me.