I just googled up “gay muslim group”. Where I am, the first result appears to be a defunct page for an LGBT Muslim support group. Of the top ten results, seven (including that one) are either about LGBT Muslims/Islamic groups or supportive of the same. Two are about anti-gay Muslim activities in the vein of your example. One of them is Stormfront, so I hope you’ll understand that I didn’t click through to see exactly what they were talking about.
“I put this into Google and guess what I found” is rarely a good argument for anything except “I bet I can find this on Google.”
Despising an evil ideology is not the same despising a person.
Do people really not understand the difference between criticizing bad ideas and racism?
Islamophobia is an idiotic term, and the OP is quite correct to mock it. The only moral stand in my opinion is to hate the evil ideology of all mainstream Islam that I’m aware of (i.e. all the ones that incorporate hateful bigotry), along with the ideology of White Supremacy, the ideology of Naziism and whatever other terrible ideas are out there.
I grant that there is some degree to which there is notion of being “culturally Islamic” which can muddy the waters. But the term Islamophobia was created precisely for the purpose of the muddying those waters, in order to try to render Islamic ideology immune from criticism for fear that critics will be tagged as a racist. And many on the Left have fallen for this, hook line and sinker.
Because being gay is a large part intrinsic whereas people can choose to be part of a primitive, superstitious cult? Why people can’t distinguish between biology which one can’t choose and poisonous ideology, protected by the label “religion”, is baffling. TruthSeeker2 got a mod warning for hate speech. That’s as silly as getting a warning for being anti-fascist. Religion is nothing more than ideology with fancy dressings. And the fact that an honest critique can be labeled hate speech is Orwellian. And this is not a specific critique of modding. This is a critique on how poisonous dogma gets a pass because silly men wear silly hats and chant silly prayers. Oh and will bomb you or decapitate you if you offend them.
The vast majority of Muslims, just like the vast majority of humanity, have no interest in harming others, and are chiefly concerned about taking care of themselves and their families. The best way, IMO, to fight radicalism within Islam is to get these hundreds of millions of Muslims on our side 100% in the fight against those advocating hatred and violence. When slurs and negative generalizations are thrown out about Islam as a whole, and Muslims as a massive group, then it just makes it a bit more likely that some of these peaceful Muslims will look at the West in general with fear and be less likely to assist in the fight against the radical violence of certain factions within Islam.
Strategically, maligning Islam as a whole has no value, and actually could harm the effort to fight radical violence, while nuanced statements and reaching out to peaceful Muslims (including the vast majority in the United States) can help this effort.
I have to admit I’m skeptical of a poll where I don’t get to see the questions and methodology. Could I ask you (or Valteron, really) to wade through the many more equally disturbing ones to find a link that shares it?
No, there isn’t. The one reasoning that you give - that you anticipate having to argue against points that you’ve already argued against before - falls completely down since you well-poisoned and yet still received those arguments anyway. And still argued back against them in turn. You can’t claim you’re justified in using a tactic to avoid something when you have to do that selfsame something in the same post, and elsewhere. It’s like saying “But if I didn’t do that thing, someone might have hit me in the face!” while sporting a black eye.
That isn’t to mention arguments against well-poisoning as a tactic.
A support group? Defunct? Why would anyone gather together in a “support group” I can’t help but wonder.
If we could count up all the members of gay muslim support groups, what percent of Islam would that be, do you think?
Ever heard of a gay mosque? Me neither. Apparently there’s a Muslim guy in France who wants to open one. I wonder how long that place would last, and what security they’d have to have.
Meanwhile, there are gay Christian places of worship all over, and an ever-increasing number of mainstream Christian churches accepting gays, and Jewish gay this and gay that all over the place, and even the Pope has said flat out “love gays.”
I told everyone I was going to piss all over the room and then they got mad when I pissed all over the room. Such derision is so predictable. Where’s the understanding?
You can download full data and methodology of this particular poll here.
If you want more, it’s easy enough to Google them. Although some results are sensationalized in the press, we are not talking about a small number of biased polls conducted by right wing groups here. Reputable polls of British Muslims consistently show frightening levels of support for bigotry, extremism and even terrorism.
Sure, but I still say that the west advanced socially first, and then religion followed, while Islam is predominant mostly in poorer, less socially advanced countries.
I agree with most of what you say but for one thing: why does it matter if sexual orientation or gender identity is a choice or not? If all humans were bisexual, and some proportion chose gay relationships, that would not justify hateful bigotry. The difference is between autonomous social choices among consenting adults that harm noone and are nobody else’s business; and an ideology of evil bigotry that chooses to persecute people for *either *their personal nature or their harmless personal choices.
Well, except that the US has a constitution and rule of law that stops those Christians doing what they would like to do. But, yes, I’m certainly under do illusion about what would happen to LGBT in a Christian theocracy. It is happening in some African countries.
I would imagine because there are enough people around requiring support to sustain one.
I do not know. What percentage of Islam are members of anti-gay muslim hate groups? When do we get to pit our hypothetical numbers against each other?
You’ve let yourself down in your Googling again. A very quick check by me reveals that if we’re talking about the same person, the Muslim guy in question did want to open a gay mosque - in 2012. The latest I can find out about this is that it was still open in 2014. In the middle of Googling about him I also came across this piece, which also interviews a gay imam of a mosque in Washington, DC “which welcomes all cultures and sexual orientations”, as well as another leader of a support group. My Googling of just “gay mosques” reveals gay mosques and other Islamic and inclusive groups in a number of places across the world.
If you count up all the members of gay Christian support groups, what percent of Christianity would that be? I actually don’t know, but I have to be concerned that going by what you’ve personally heard of isn’t the greatest metric.
Possibly – but I think that negative generalizations and attacks on Islam as a whole hurt the effort to modernize those groups and aspects within Islam that have not yet joined the modern world.
There’s been sodomy laws in the US for as long as there’s been a Constitution and a rule of law. In fact, there are sodomy laws in 17 U.S. states right this moment. So I can’t say it’s effectivity has been all that immediate.
