I’ve never started a pit thread before, I don’t have a lot of time to write this one, and I don’t feel like constructing a lot of poetic profanity for your pleasure (my apologies), but I found this message board which I think is ignorant enough to be worthy of attention:
The board is ostensibly for teenage muslim youths, when in fact it is a violently spewing volcano of hatred. I first ran across it a couple of months ago, and have since regularly read threads there, more out of morbid curiosity than anything else (plus, I’ll admit to getting a certain sort of amusement from watching stupidity in action).
I’ve debated for a while whether I should bother posting about this board, but today there has been one thread in particular that seems a little more over the top in its irresponsibility than most other threads there (well, just a very little bit, anyway; it’s not a very tolerant board, as you might imagine).
The thread basically suggests that peaceful protest and demonstration are wastes of time, and a not so subtle suggestion that Palestinian violence is the only solution to the Palestinian struggle (now there’s an original thought).
Anyway, I thought some here might care to visit this enclave of ignorance; in addition to the particular thread I mentioned above, there are plenty more to look through in the “Current Affairs” forum.
Oh yes. When I saw the thread title, I knew what this was going to be about. I’ve seen that board - there was a link posted to another board I frequent. Quite insane, it is. Occasionally reads like a parody. There was one particular thread - a thread discussing when people were planning to get married (16-18 seemed to be the age of choice, if I remember right) and it read like a twisted, contorted version of a Western teen “Dude, I gotta get laid” thread.
Incidentally, it might have happened already when I post this, it might not happen at all, but I believe certain people need to remember that even though the OP is about a cultural/religious group and would seem to portray these particular members of that cultural/religious group in a negative light, it doesn’t necessarily mean the OP believes that that cultural/religious group is inferior to his cultural/religious group, not does he necessarily believe that all members of a cultural/religious group are similar. A friendly reminder to those planning one of those obligatory “Oh yeah, think West/Christians are better? What about the Crusades/leftbehind.com message board?” posts.
I’m not trying to be a mod here (well, shit, I can’t lie. I guess I kind of am), but do NOT post about us on that board. We don’t need another board war. I just fear that somebody will wander over there, post a link to the SDMB, piss somebody off, and the members of that board will invade us en mass.
Also, to play devil’s advocate a bit, very few revolutions and societal shifts have been accomplished through non-violence. There was India breaking from the British, blacks achieving equal rights in the US, and, well, that’s about it. The US didn’t break away from the British by staging sit-ins.
I do advocate non-violence as a solution to the problems of the Palestinians, but I also understand the “by any means necessary” viewpoint. It seems to me they need a few MLKs to balance all the Malcolm Xs.
Parody, indeed. This forum description alone, was worth the price of admission.
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I agree with Beeblebrox, let’s not try and twist these people’s tails. I have to admit, though, that it would be nice to have a couple of open-minded Muslims in GD.
Fight the good fight, reprise. Such actions might spark the battle of Armageddon. Don’t do it! Or at least wait until we all have some free time to watch the fight.
I fell for this for around 18 years because of the Indian education system. whats your excuse?
Sri Lanka - date of independence - February 4, 1948
Burma - 1948
Palestine - 1948
Jordan - 1948
India, Pakistan, - 1947
Coincidence? Nope, the British govenment just made a economic decision that it couldnt support these colonies anymore. (None of the other colonies practiced non-violence). Non-violence did not help one bit to break away from Britain. It helped give Gandhi a mystical image and probably binded Indians loosely.
sorry, I just had let off some steam; it sucked when I figured it out and it just bothers me that so many people out there still fall for the hype.
Thanks for the disclaimer, Kantalooppi; had I been a little wiser and thought of it earlier, I would’ve included a disclaimer in the OP, myself. I only meant to draw attention to the violence and ignorance represented here, not anyone’s religious beliefs; I’ve lived enough to know there’ll be good and bad people among any large group (ain’t nothing but the law of averages), and in my life I’ve had the opportunity to know many muslims personally, and I have found them all to be fine people. In other words, it ain’t a muslim thing, just a human stupidity thing.
I also hope I didn’t give an impression of encouraging people to “infiltrate” this board–I only meant to bring it up for discussion here. For that matter, I doubt anyone could have any hope for a successful debate there, anyway; they have a pretty tight policy of banning any non-muslims (and deleting their posts) posting in any forum other than “Non Muslims Learning About Islam”.
About the “Demonstration” thread I posted in the OP: in retrospect, that’s most likely not the most disgusting thing I’ve read over there; I suppose it affected me the way it did because it’s quite clear to me that, with attitudes such as those, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict will only continue to be the never ending cycle of violence that it already has been to this point. I find it extremely irresponsible to teach a new generation of muslim teenagers that violence will lead to a solution there, particularly to even go so far as to discourage other forms of protest, since such demonstrations are clearly “worthless”.
One of the most overtly disgusting threads I’ve read there, however, would have to be this one. It’s a discussion of Daniel Pearl’s execution, and the sentencing of his killer. The exchange on page 3 is particularly gruesome.
Out of curiosity, how do you suppose they know that someone is a non-Muslim, rather than simply a Muslim ignorant of his heritage or religious practice? Or that someone is a woman, for that matter?
I would like to know if the sentiments on that board are out of the mainstream of Islamic thought, of is this really what many Muslims think when the West isn’t looking?