As long as you’re aware that your posts are irrelevant, I’m okay with that.
Hasn’t stopped you yet.
Disingenuous twaddle. You said
“I guess”? “Might come out on the side of”? “May be”? There are times to express things in a cautious fashion but apart from adding a few iterations of “like” and “kind of” that is the most tentatively expressed position ever. You didn’t set out an opinion there; you dropped it hurriedly and ran away from it. If you’re afraid of your own words, it’s no wonder people with funny foreign beliefs frighten you.
Because you suggested that the families of the 9/11 victims should specifically have some sort of veto power in the matter. Silly me, I assumed you had said that because the issue had some particular relevance to them. But who knows how your mind works.
Wow. it’s so rare that I get what I want in life.
Don’t have to. It’s all there, under the weasel words.
So now you’re saying what you supposedly didn’t say before and told me was “nonsense”? Or is your next argument going to be that technically you didn’t say that the people involved condoned the attacks and that the mosque was built on Ground Zero therefore TECHNICALLY you’re correct, and that by “connected” you of course mean as some sort of healing gesture and what was I thinking in assuming that you meant it in a negative way? And that’s why I’m the dishonest debater here.
“Welcome to the Glenn Beck School of Equivocation. Mr Magellan, would you care to read your sentence to the class?”
“Yes sir. ‘I’m not saying that all Muslims are terrorists or that they should all be treated as though they might be potential terrorists in all situations until they demonstrate otherwise or that they should be discriminated against in any way; I’m just saying that we need to be wary of all of them.’”
On a board devoted to fighting ignorance, just how many times need it be pointed out that Muslim isn’t a race. Unbelievable.
But that aside, just because race may be used doesn’t mean it’s “RACISM!!!”.
Let’s say there was an assault on the North side of the Golden Gate Bridge. A man is robbed and stabbed. witnesses describe the assailant as being black, and that he took off on the bridge heading to SF on a bike. should the cops stop and question every single person? Or should they use the assailants blackness and an important piece of information to make their law enforcement efforts more effective?
How about of the guy was described as being white? should blacks and hispanics get stopped? How about if he was described as being a white guy with red hair? Is that “RACISM!!!”, too?
So tell me, in clear and simple terms how you would determine who the hell is Muslim and who isn’t, just by looking at them. Asking them won’t work – people lie. Going on names won’t work – too much ambiguity. So go on. Tell me how you propose to do this.
No, but neither should they stop and question every black person in California. They should stop and question black men on bikes, within, say, 3 or 4 miles of the SF side of the GGB. What you’re suggesting, this “wariness” of ALL Muslims is equivalent to the SFPD putting out an APB on black men west of the Sierras.
No. I’m saying that before you have the opportunity to look at the particulars of an individual, you can look to common denominators and assess a level of threat. It’s not nearly as effective, but, it can be valuable. Would you agree that, generally, members of a gang pose a greater threat of violence than those not in a gang? In one’s home, one has data allowing one to assess what threat might be posed by a brother or father. The claim mentioned earlier is saying that a person is a greater risk from his particular brother or father, not brothers and fathers in general.
Yes, wary of all Muslims. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t assess individual Muslims on their own particulars as you have the benefit of that added, specific information.
Specific information on individuals is superior. But if you do not have it, you’re not simply rendered unable to assess a general risk. Here are two groups: Group A is 50 people who belong to a Bridge Club. Group B is a Group os skinheads. You know no one from either group. Are you telling me that you are unable to make a reasonable assessment as to which group poses the greater threat of violence? I hope not.
What about when it’s revealed that the Bridge Club members are all KKK members and the “skinheads” are a cancer-treatment support group? Those “reasonable assessments” aren’t very reasonable sometimes and can be dead wrong.
Not all Arabs are Muslims. Not all Muslims are Arabs. What are your criteria for identifying Muslims to be wary of?
This is good. So you do agree that race, or some other profile characteristic, not only can be used in some instances, but should. I agree. And I agree that putting an APB on black men west of the Sierras, or even in SF generally, would not be helpful. The question is: is it wrong to do so because it is not helpful? Or is it wrong because it’s racial profiling? If the latter, what makes the profiling okay within five miles of the bridge, but not fifty, twenty miles? My reasoning would be that the interest of public safety overrides our desire to not look to race—assuming—that the law enforcement efforts have a reasonable expectation of being fruitful.
Another good exchange. All additional information should be taken into account. This new, more specific information is usually of better quality (partially just because it’s more specific), so it will likely cause one to rethink his previous conclusions. More information, as in your example, is always better. My point is only that you may, even based on very little information, make reasonable assumptions. So barring any additional information about the Bridge club and the skin heads, is it not reasonable to assume that the skinheads are more apt to commit violence. If not, why not?
Them being Muslim. Being Arab is a good indicator of being Muslim, but it is not certain. But to give you an idea of my thinking, I would be more wary of a 23-year-old American (white or black) who converted to Islam in the past year than I would be of a 23-year-old Arab Muslim whose been living in the U.S. for ten year or more.
It’s not profiling if it’s an actual descriptive. “African-American male” all by itself is overly broad. “African-American male, 5’10”, wearing blahblah, with a bicycle" is acceptable.
My question on this is, “What characteristics are you looking out for to be wary of in this ‘be wary of Muslims’ thing?” “African-American male”, while a broad category, isn’t impossibly broad. It’s a visible characteristic (or else the witness wouldn’t have used it…you can’t describe someone as something if you don’t know about it). What characteristic do you use for “Muslim”? There are Arab Muslims, European Muslims, Asian Muslims, Indian Muslims, Persian Muslims, African Muslims, Muslims who wear beards, Muslims who don’t wear beards, Muslims who wear keffiyeh, Muslims who don’t cover their heads, Muslims who wear niqabs, burqas, hijabs, or veils, and Muslims who don’t. There are Muslims who make elaborate gestures of praying to Mecca and Muslims who simply bow their heads toward the city when necessary. There are Muslims with Arabic accents, Muslims with Indonesian accents, Muslims with English accents, Muslims with American accents.
How are we figuring out who the Muslim is, here? If we concentrate on Arabs, we miss Indonesians. If we concentrate on beards, we miss the clean-shaven. If we concentrate on burqas and hijabs, we miss the Muslim women who don’t wear those things. So what’s your criterion for “wariness”?
9/11 was certainly more religiously motivated than Oklahoma City. The 9/11 terrorists were motivated by a religiously based political ideology. Their actions were in furtherance of their religious ideology, and Al-Qaeda’s views are explicitly based on the Islamicism of Qutb.
McVeigh and Nichols’s were in furtherance of a secular ideology; fear that the federal government had become tyrannical and was taking away the rights of the American people.
And he appears to have been involved with the Christian Identity movement, and his “Bible” The Turner Diaries is among other things antisemitic; a religious position.