Of course I agree with those three points. But the second part of the third point creates a slippery slope towards the argument that “history” and those eveil imperialists (boo-hoo) are to blame for Islamic savagery. But yes, I agree with you.
Well, don’t get too excited, 'cause now I’m really gonna flip your bonnet. Those things are all probably true, and so are these:
[ul]
[li]Lots and lots of Muslims don’t believe in using any coercion, much less vigilante violence, to enforce religious beliefs.[/li][li]Lots and lots of Muslims–especially ones in America and Canada–do not believe that homosexuality makes you a bad Muslim, much less a bad non-Muslim.[/li][li]Claims that such Muslims aren’t “real” Muslims are completely nonsensical coming out of the mouths of non-believers.[/li][li]You make the problem worse when you assert that the real Muslims are the violent bigoted assholes, in the way that men make rape culture worse then they assert that real men are the ones who fuck semi-unconscious drunk chicks.[/li][/ul]
No, I’m not assuming that at all. I’m assuming the opposite-- you could slice and dice the Muslim community to find certain groups that equal or surpass Evangelicals in their opposition to SSM.
I ran the numbers for you. If you combined the Christian groups disaggregated in that poll, they would be 49% compared to 42% for Muslims. Would that have made you happier? Because it would have made my point just fine.
Compare: Dylann Roof.
Can’t we just do here as the media did with him, he’s nuts, end of story?
Unless you have something more specific than “lots and lots” you are just rehashing the argument that since some Muslims aren’t homophobic. . . . . .
I suppose that depends on what you’ve omitted with your ellipses. By all means, elaborate. What argument am I rehashing?
And does that mean you agree with the last two points not preceded by “Lots and lots”?
That sounds all well and good, but when you have a Saudi regime that has been exporting hatred to madrassas all over the world over the past century, I think we have to step away from platitudes and acknowledge the truth. Of course not all Muslims hate gays to the point of killing them, but I’m going to tell you an inconvenient truth as someone who has dealt extensively with Islamic cultures: most Muslims have extremely negative views of people who are gay. Most Muslims place a higher value over the right to not have their religious sensitivities offended than on the idea that people should be tolerant of alternative lifestyles. I know the progressive in us all wants to believe that tragedies like this are not representative of Islam. But to some extent, they really and truly are - at least in terms of how Islam is practiced throughout much of the world now.
If that is a reference to me, I have always claimed to be crazy as a loon. So now I gotta get up early tomorrow, and so to bed.
No, because Islam is an influence here. I don’t think it accounts for the crime entirely, but it’s an influence, and I’m sick of trying to pretend that it isn’t. I don’t want to see imams rushing to the microphone to condemn mass murders in the name of Islam. I’d much rather see imams trying to promote ideology that accepts opposing worldviews and lifestyles. Yes, other religions do it too, but I’m sorry, I don’t see the kind of obsession with violence among Christians that I see in Islam, and nobody who’s being honest does either.
And…how exactly do you expect to see this? Have you ever been inside a mosque?
Okay, fine, so I ask again what I’ve asked on this board before: if so, what do we do about it? Or specifically, what should our government do about it? There are plenty of voters out there, unfortunately, for whom the answer is “ban Islam in the U.S., expel Muslims, and bomb Mecca,” which, while insane and evil, would actually practically address the issue at hand. If you don’t believe we should do that, what should we do? Tell Middle Eastern leaders not to practice their religion that way anymore?
I looked at the list of the 51 predominately Muslim countries around the world. It strikes me that none are, what we would consider to be, democratic, with a government elected regularly by the people.
I suspect, as is the case with Iran, the predominate leader is a conservative religious leader and these decisions to not allow these LGBT groups to attend are decisions made from the religious perspective of that one person, and his/her advisors (who would, of course, also be very conservative religious persons).
I would also like to see a better break down of the Guardian poll of the Muslim people who were polled and see how the breakdown would be if things like citizenship and whether they are newly immigrated or were born in the UK of Muslim parents, and what generation they are since the ancestors immigrated.
While the poll results sound harsh, I don’t doubt that the same results could be obtained here in the US with proper conditions.
Bob
You know, sometimes a moderator comes across a thread that’s pure off-the-rails from the get-go. There’s no salvaging it from the moment it leaves the station.
Valteron, twice in this thread you could have been warned. First by assuming a bad thing about another poster and indicating your fearfulness that s/he could harm you just because s/he was muslim. Turns out not to be the case, but still the principle applies.
Secondly, in your apologist accusation of Richard Parker. That’s always a sensitive thing to rule on but it still strikes me as a bad thing.
In any event, this thread is closed. Do better next time.
After discussion, I’m going to reopen this as outlined in the ATMB thread. Let’s keep it on an even keel, please.
Thank you.
But nobody is denying that this sort of oppressive violence is representative of how some forms of Islam are practiced throughout much of the world now.
The problem is when you try to elide that distinction by using the concept of “Islam”, in general and undifferentiated, to represent the practice of some forms of Islam characterized by oppressive violence.
That’s how you get ugly and bigoted overgeneralizations like the OP saying he “would genuinely be scared if Muslims knew my real address”. Not “violent extremist Muslims”, not “homophobic fanatical Muslims”, just any “Muslims” at all.
Then you should stop using the general and unqualified terms “Islam” and “Muslims” as though they mean exactly the same thing as “Islamic homophobe bigotry”.
Why on earth is that such a difficult distinction for you to make, anyway? Is it just because “Islamic homophobe bigotry” takes longer to type? How about if we agreed on a convenient acronym for it, like “IHB”?
You could fill up page after page of threads with posts about how IHB puts your life at risk, and IHB is barbaric and repressive, and you wouldn’t want any IHB’s knowing your address, and IHB is a threat to tolerance and freedom worldwide, and nobody would disagree with you at all.
Because you would be aiming your criticisms accurately at the real source of the problem, instead of flinging them scattershot at the beliefs and characters of 1.6 billion people who happen to be located somewhere in the most broadly defined vicinity of the real source of the problem.
As I said, though, it seems more and more likely that being accurate and specific enough in your condemnations that reasonable people don’t disagree with them is not what you’re after here. The failure to distinguish between IHB and “Islam” undifferentiated is determined and deliberate, so that when reasonable people point out your inaccuracy you can denounce them for being “soft” on IHB.
Homophobic violence predates Islam.
I’m not sure what list of 51 you are referring to, but here is a list of 56 countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Many of them are terrible, repressive places. However, many of them are democratic countries, even though they aren’t exactly Sweden. To broaden the discussion, quite a few of them are in Freedom House’s middle-tiers of ranking for the openness of the country, such as Indonesia, Albana, Turkey, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Burkina-Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Morocco, Malaysia, and Niger, plus several others. A few of the countries actually rate as “free” in Freedom House’s rankings, including Benin, Tunisia, and Senegal.
The lesson is that if you come to a conclusion that clearly isn’t supported by facts, be prepared for someone to share facts to dispel your bias.
Well, violence against “the Other” is built into the human model. The problem comes when it codifies itself within religion, which then allows people who move beyond “I’m beating you up because you’re different” to “I’m beating you up because God told me to beat you up because you’re different”. This gets worse when you’re a man gripped with the irrational fear that the Other is looking to treat you in the way you like to treat women, because that there is amygdala-level terror.
IME when it comes to homophobia religion is the excuse rather than the driver. I’ve never met anyone spouting anti-gay religious dogma who seemed like the sort of person who would have been just fine with homosexuals had God not “instructed” them to be hateful.