quite frankly, the apologism for Islam (as in the constant deflection to the Crusades or trying to liken the modern day situation of Islam to Christianity in the past, the excuse “Islam is younger,” or leaving out critical context like how even for the Bible’s shortcomings, there aren’t dozens of terror groups fighting expressly for the bible, nor do as hi a portion of Christian majority countries execute gays (or well, any) etc.) smells more like a way to try to “avoid war;” by making Islam “just like Christianity” and Islamic terrorists like the rare and usually imaginary “Christian terrorists,” these types hope to guilt Westerners and Western nations into not fighting terrorism(supposedly peace) by hoping they think that the West would start to see itself as hypocritical. Same with the concept “there is no such thing as a ‘savage.’”
Peace at any price, that is. Except both the apologism and the idea that war should be avoided to much that we let terror hit us fail, miserably.
Nonsense. Of course every sane person wants to avoid actual war whenever possible, but nobody is saying that we shouldn’t fight terrorism. All functioning nations, not just western ones, are taking terrorism-fighting very seriously these days; after all, it’s their people that the terrorists are killing.
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Peace at any price, that is. […] the idea that war should be avoided to much that we let terror hit us fail, miserably.
[/QUOTE]
You’re sounding rather circumlocutious here. What exactly are you advocating with regard to war under the present circumstances? Are you saying you think we should declare war on somebody to facilitate the fighting of terrorism, and if so, on whom? (And do you happen to remember how well that strategy worked last time?)
Eric Rudolfs, Bruce Pierce, the White Aryan Resistance, etc.
Not in this thread.
You’ve got some serious issues with reality, buster. How about you stop telling us what we believe, and actually, y’know, listen to what we believe? You’re doing a dogshit rotten job of re-interpreting our views.
Of course, it’s so much easier to conduct a debate as a sock-puppeteer. Clint Eastwood and the chair. But, y’know, that’s immature, and completely dishonest.
I clearly meant ones that actually threaten national security, not small gadflies, and are either global in reach or have shared goals and ideology with other similar groups in a widespread scope.
Every ‘terrorist’ threatens national security, regardless of the source of their anger.
As has been demonstrated today, the Turkish bombing is probably neither global in reach, nor did the perps necessarily share goals or ideology with similar groups in a widespread scope.
And the ‘small gadflies’ are the ones who inflict the most damage. Both in the US, Europe, and here in Australia. It’s the ‘lone wolf’ terrorist who is the most to be feared.
Surely the key difference here is that comparitively very few people of the bible and torah believe that those texts are the inerrant and unchangeable word of God.
Whereas, I’m led to believe that a far greater proportion of muslims think their holy texts are the literal words of god or Mohammed. That the words are an unchanged record of what was said by a supernatural being. I may be wrong about that and google is not a perfect source, so if I am wrong can anyone point me to respected Islamic sources that could tell me what the consensus is on the inerrancy of koran?
Assuming the above is true, is it not reasonable to believe that a directive in an Abrahamic faith therefore carries less weight and be considered valid by a smaller group of people than a similar directive in the koran?
I make no claim that any of texts are inherently worse in terms of the words written. To me they are all fantasy and contain barbarism and murder aplenty. There is much in each to provoke misery and genocide to those willing to take the text at face value.
So this is the way I frame the problem in my own mind.
No text is inherently “bad”. Not the koran, not the bible, not dianetics, not the communist manifesto, not Mein Kampf, not “American Pyscho”. They are merely words and each of them read without any further context would lead to a mixture of good and bad outcomes thanks to the filter of human social instincts (i.e. most people would keep the good and the credible and reject the fantastic and the harmful)
The true harm arises when any of the above are given special status, even more so when that special status takes the form of backing from an omnipotent being, and even more again when that text effect 1.6 billion people.
And let’s get rid of the bullshit term “islamaphopia” please. It is a childish attempt to give special status to religious beliefs and to shut down criticism.
Ideologies are not sacred. All worldviews, political, religious and secular should be open to criticism.
So do the peaceful Muslims. They’re both interpreting their scripture, and they both point to text which they say expressly bans the behavior of the other.
So what explains the times in history in which Islamic societies, in general, were far more open and tolerant than Christian societies?
Peaceful Muslims cite directives and texts that they say expressly bans such behavior. Why would I accept your interpretation over theirs?
No Muslim terrorist groups present any significant threat to American national security. They’re all gnats. That doesn’t mean that they can’t kill people, and that we shouldn’t try to prevent this, but killing small numbers of people is no threat to our national security.
Not all criticism of Muslims or Islam is islamaphobic. But some of it is. Wanting to ban everyone in that religion from entering the country is islamaphobic. So is wanting to ban the construction of mosques in certain locations.
DerekMichaels00, I fear you may have missed a question I addressed to you earlier. It’s a page back, so that’s entirely understandable, but I’m still very interested in your response. Thanks!
true, I can’t think of a situation where such a policy would be anything other than bigotry. Don’t think anyone in this thread is asking for that though.
Not necessarily. That would depend very much on the individual circumstances so I’d be loathed to automatically assume prejudice and bigotry unless I knew more.
My point was to challenge that the term “islamophobia” is a “bullshit term” and “childish attempt to give special status to religious beliefs and to shut down criticism”. Perhaps it can be sometimes, but there are indeed people who are bigoted against Muslims and irrationally afraid of Muslims and Islam as a whole, and that term is useful and descriptive in such circumstances.
I had not realized that you were a farmer. Or do you have to go out and buy the truckloads of straw that you needed to build all those giant straw men arguments?
Few posters in this thread have laid out arguments that even vaguely sound like the ones you “defeated” here. For example you are the only poster who has even mentioned the Crusades, yet you include it in a list of complaints you have against the opponents of Islamophobia.
Most posters have pointed out significantly different issues to counter your blatant broad brushed condemnation of people about whom you display no knowledge.
Beyond your fact free assertions regarding the arguments against which you complain, you are demonstrating a massive amount of ignorance regarding the demographics of the situation. You point to Islam, (while ignoring or dismissing current terrorism that has non-Islamic origins), while you appear to go out of your way to ignore the fact that every source of Islamic violence has sprung up in Muslim lands that have suffered colonialism or similar insults over the last two centuries. When you can address those issues in a coherent fashion, rather than pretending that they do not exist, then you might have something to contribute to this discussion. Until then, you are simply one more spokesperson for such Islamophobic demagogues as Wilders, Graham, or Trump.
And your accusation that anyone here has proposed “peace at any price” or any similar nonsense needs to be demonstrated with a citation to that claim. Otherwise, you appear to be simply posting random nonsense that has nothing to do with the discussion.
No. Such construction bans are always stupidly based on Islamophobic hatred. (I suppose that a proposal to tear down the Vatican or Westminster Cathedral in order to replace them with mosques might be met with opposition that was not homophobic, but any realistic opposition to building a mosque is nothing but Islamophobic hatred.)
Where has such opposition occurred? In Tennessee, for no reason at all. In New York City where the opposition could only be manufactured by lying that it was to be built on the site of the World Trade Center with an opening scheduled for September 11, 2012.
Unlike the occasional Christian or Buddhist chapel, mosques, like synagogues are built to serve a specific community of believers. The only reason to deny the building of a mosque is to prevent people from coming together to worship.
That’s quite true. But it isn’t all Muslims, and they don’t all make war against the unbelievers. The principal energy of this thread, right now, is to try to persuade one or two hard-liners (and anyone else reading) that there is nothing intrinsic in Islam that drives homophobic violence.
No one here is denying the proportion of baddies in Islam is (at this point in history) higher than the proportion of baddies in Christianity. But ISIS is not Islam, even if it is Islamic.
re building mosques, one of the simplest ways to judge whether it’s bigotry is to compare the process they’re forced to go through with the process a similar Christian church must go through.
The city of Escondido, California, went through this, about a decade ago. They made the builders of a proposed mosque comply with regulations that had been waived for comparable Christian churches. In due course, the courts told the city planning commission to knock it off.
yes, because our government spends billions of dollars and thousands of man/hours, with dedicated agencies, to fighting “gnats.” Or have you forgotten how it felt that day (September 11)? And the countless copycats energy/money/time has been expended to prevent?
That progressives are often painted as having such naive views of terror is how Trump is even close in a decent amount of polls.
As far as the use of the term “islamphobia” as pertains to this thread specifically, I’ve seen it used far more by people decrying accusations of it than I have actual accusations of it. In this one case, at least, it seems more like the primary use is to shut down criticism of criticism.
Funny and true story: while still an articling student, I once helped represent a community running into considerable difficulty erecting a Hindu temple and community centre. This was a recent community in the city, and they were surprised to be met with such anger: they had heard good things about Toronto. Our clients were certain that the hostile opposition they had received to their correspondence on the topic from the local planning regulators was due to racism pure and simple.
However, one glance at their letterhead told us otherwise: it was due to a massive misunderstanding and ignorance on the part of the regulators. On their letterhead, their community was identified using the word “Aryans”, and the masthead was decorated - with a border of swastikas.
The regulator was educated in a letter from us as to the difference between Hindus and Nazis, and the hostile opposition vanished. We did suggest to our clients that a different decorative motif be chosen to avoid similar problems in the future …
You’re sounding rather circumlocutious here. What exactly are you advocating with regard to war under the present circumstances? Are you saying you think we should declare war on somebody to facilitate the fighting of terrorism, and if so, on whom? (And do you happen to remember how well that strategy worked last time?)