Do they ? I certainly recall Muslim groups chastizing, mocking, ignoring or trying to calm down the frothing masses back then. Hell, many of them were extremely pissed off because the more rabid protests made Islam look like a bunch of backwards savages.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. I’ve been advocating for gay marriage for years, here and elsewhere. I’m a strong supporter of the separation of Church and State. I’m targeting Islam in this thread because it was mentioned in the OP. Gay marriage is not.
Irrelevant, unless your name is “Christians”. I wasn’t talking about you at all.
So Islam is intolerant because some Muslims are intolerant, but Christianity is not intolerant because you are not intolerant? That seems like a fair comparison…
I think that integration of minorities, esp. muslims, will continue to be an issue well into the next decade but I believe the predictions are exaggerated. For one thing, there is no ‘persecution of minorities’ (as **dhkendall **put it in post #2) going on at the moment; certainly, a huge political fuss is made at the moment and this may result in some changed laws, but the Swiss minaret ban is thus far (and in my view will continue to be) both a fairly extreme and unique example, and not one that merits a characterization of what is going on across Europe as persecution. However, on a social rather than a political level things are changing as more and more people on the street voice anti-islamic sentiments. This, rather than state-lead policies, will lead to problems, though most presumably not to any more extreme rioting than we have already seen, with the French riots of 2007 being both the most extreme but also a fairly unique example of large scale violence (and arguably, this concerns riots that are hardly indicative of trans-European problems of integration and discrimination and what have you, but rather to some very specific issues related to the French situation). In response to YogSosoth (post #17): no, they don’t do riots every year. Riots and even peaceful protests are rare and untypical.
It is my view that the Muslims in Europe in very large part are ignoring the political games that are being played in their countries by leaders seeking to gain support by embracing a anti-islamic platform. In fact, while some new policies are deplored by multi-culturalists, many Muslims argue that they completely understand that (in their view) Christians seek to protect their own culture. flicksters insistence that
is wildly exaggerated and has no relation to what’s actually going on anywhere in Europe. (note that most of the Muslims in Europe are not immigrants - they were born and raised in the European countries they now live in, as were some of their parents). As an example of this more moderated and frankly unpoliticized approach that can be identified among Muslims, when Dutch right-wing MP Geert Wilders published his anti-Islam film Fitna in 2007, there was no rioting or even protests of any kind in the Netherlands. Muslims across the board denounced the film because it was stupid, discriminatory and not accurate, but then they shrugged and carried on with their lives. So while many in Western-Europe are completely stressed out about either increasing islamization (such as LonesomePolecat, post #33, and Oakminster, post #39) or about the rise of the Right, the actual protagonists in this drama - the Muslims - play a diminished and passive role in it. It is my prediction that this will continue to be the case in 2010 and beyond.
Castro will never die.
Specifically, you are calling Europeans racist because they object to European muslims being as intolerant as American christians. How does that work again? Or, on reflection, are you hijacking the discussion about ‘European racism’?
No, I am ( obviously ) making the point that Islam isn’t any more intolerant than Christianity, and pretending that it is is xenophobia not reality. Give the Christian True Believers the power, and they’d set up a theocracy that would make the Taliban proud.
Franco is still dead though, right?
I’m not talking about or defending Christianity.
You are saying that Islam is worse, which amounts to the same thing.
Well, communist didactic says that “the communist party is immortal”, and Fidel has said that he IS Cuba the Communist Party, so maybe you have something there.
That’s ridiculous. Outside of the RJ Rushdooey theocrat types most Evangelical Christians want at best (or worst from your POV) ban abortion, and tighten up censorship for movies and TV. They aren’t gonna ban all other religions or anything; think more of a revival of 1950s USA (minus the racism) rather than neo-Puritan theocracy or Taliban Afghanistan.
If I say Hitler’s worse than Stalin does that mean I’m defending Stalin?
Ban other religions? Try “brutally repress” or “exterminate”. I’ve been listening to the far right Christian loons for longer than you’ve been alive, and I’ve heard quite a bit of rhetoric about everything from bringing back stoning, to the virtues of hatred, to how they are going to kill “all of you people”, to how great a nuclear war would be. The important difference between them and the Taliban is that they’ve never had the power to do what they want; not that they are nicer.
If you act like Stalin has never done anything wrong, yes.
What part of “I am not saying anything about Christianity, whether positive or negative” are you not understanding? You’re attempting to put words in my mouth, and I’ve already asked you politely to stop.
What I understand is that you ARE saying that the Christians are better, every time you say that the Islamic people are a special problem. Whether you say it out loud or not.
By that logic, every time you say ice cream, you are also saying baseball.
:smack:
No, he’s right. The exception confirms the rule. Whether you mean it or not, by saying
you also implicitly say that all other religions do not believe they are the one true faith, and are religions of tolerance. Which is amusing, once applied to the case of Christianity (which is part of the subset “all other religions”)
Bull shit. Saying “A” is bad does not mean “B”, “C” “D”, etc is good. It means “A” is bad. Period. Full stop. Nothing else follows.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. A hung parliament would be an unusual and possibly turbulent situation in British politics, but I don’t see what it would have to do with the Long/Rump parliaments of 400 years ago.
I wonder if you are thinking of words such as “liberal” and “conservative” in their polarised American senses? Those terms are not as charged here. The LibDems stand somewhere between Labour and the Conservatives. There are plenty of Conservatives who would be considered “liberals” by US standards. As others have suggested, the LibDems have been out of power so long that getting back into government by any route has almost become their raison d’etre.