So even though there was a mixed section, people where free to sit anywhere they liked, and the protesters were offered seats in the female section, with the sole proviso that they were not sitting next to women who did not want to sit next to men, you feel this is segregation.
I think we’re going to have to accept our stances differ on that.
Can you point out for me the hatred in Hank Beecher’s post? Criticism of a set of ideas and the potential negative repercussions those ideas often entail is not hatred.
The usual game from this person. Of course a smokescreen of the half denials and the obfuscations follows. It is a typical game for those promoting prejudice, imply and imply repeating as general some marginal thing as a smearing.
And I will state directly that the claim on widespread is of the same nature (of course he will make the weaseling words on even this).
If you think that his game of distortions and fabrications - his deliberate misuse of words - and his pattern in literally every thread on the Islam (or even on Obama where he find ways to import the religious prejudice into even conversations there, with the Obama ‘muslim’ connection) is about"ideas" or criticisms, then I have no help for you.
The disgusting accusation of takfir that what you quote from me replied to - not only 100% inaccurate in the meaning of the word and in any description of my comments - is typical of his sly distorting word games all built around the delegitimization and the promotion of the bigotted views.
As the falsehoods and half-truths, like this idoitic claim about the muslim women being globally trained to cast down their eyes… this is complete and utter nonsense as a generalization - but it is easy to know that he has picked this up from reading the various hate-mongering websites out there. A nonsensical and falsehood spreading reply to my comment on how false idea of the redneck that young men and women in the muslim countries widely do not interact at all, based on the Saudi and the tribal Afghan images the americans have. Of course it is clear the game.
With respect how is the attitude of the West going to change unless these denunciations are translated and publicized? You can hardly condemn Westerners for not understanding Arabic.
With respect, such things - even in English… have been posted here on this very board again and again and again and again… And ignored, so with respect, such objections deserve no respect.
It is not a matter of the translation it is a matter of what discourse your media and wider culture is promoting.
Do not accuse other posters of lying. If you need to point out errors, use words that indicate errors, but do not state that the error was deliberate.
In fact, you would do well to rein in your anger and refrain from any personal comments about other posters. Personal comments do nothing to move the discussion forward and at some point they become rules violations.
[ /Moderating ]
I add that as I have said many times in this thread already, my criticism was to the statement that “only” some muslim religious leaders in the US and UK denounce. (But when Islamic terrorists blow stuff up, there’s no large Islamic organization denouncing it- just usually a handful of Western imams in the US and UK.)
My criticism was that on a board with its overly large pretensions to fighting ignorance, one should know better to make such a claim, period.
The idea that somehow the majority of the muslims or even the religious leaders are in fact even thinking about the Anglophones image of the Islam and will then translate (and do what, get ignored as already happens anyway) our internal discourses… it is an amazing act of navel-gazing on your part (never mind the ridiculous analytical errors of the posters speaking to what 'the Islam’needs to do as if as an abstaction ‘the Islam’ can take actions… )
I have read many of his posts, though I cannot claim to have read them all, and see no hatred, which is why I ask you to point it out. I’ll call out my personal bias here and admit that I am myself critical of Islam (and other religions, but I think Islam is worse, especially at this point in time), but perhaps because of that I can see why a person can hold views critical of ideas, institutions and cultures in and around Islam without hatred, particularly without hatred towards Muslims.
I don’t agree with you that that his claim is 100% inaccurate. Within the strict definition of the word maybe it is inaccurate, but to be Takfiri and to brand Takfiris as following an evil distortion of Islam are not at all far removed from each other, and his larger point, that you are doing something very similar to what Takfiris do, holds.
It is easy to argue against absolute statements. You do yourself a disservice by ignoring his larger points. And while I agree that Saudi Arabian culture is not equivalent to Islam, there is also no getting away from the fact that Arabic culture is hugely influential within Islam. There is the fact that Islam sprung up within that culture, which obviously influences its contents, that the Quran is in Arabic, the holiest place in all Islam is in Saudi Arabia, that Islamic scholars need to be proficient in Arabic, that Saudi Arabia’s financial muscle allows it to spread extremist interpretations of Islam, these are all problems that inextricably link Islam and Arabic culture. Is the link a 100%? No, but Islam carries with it the baggage of Arabic culture (which, itself, is shaped by and has shaped Islam. Religion is part of culture after all). You cannot shield Islam by saying "Oh the bad things are Saudi Arabian culture, everything else is Islam.
There are three sections : Black only, White only, and one where people willing to sit with the other race are allowed to mix freely. You don’t feel there’s anything wrong with this scenario?
But it isn’t the board that needs convincing. The great majority of posters here know full well that terrorists do not speak for Islam.
Again, Islam’s global image is not being damaged by just terrorism. The treatment of women, gays, apostates, and heretics/blasphemers that large swaths of Muslims believe is in conflict with western values. Islam’s image is made far worse by the fact that anyone drawing a cartoon of Mohammed is risking his or her life. Significant percentages of Muslims support the death penalty for apostasy. Sharia law is incompatible with western notions of justice, yet desired by significant percentages of Muslims.
These are serious problems, not to be hand-waved away with some vague platitudes and pleas for ‘tolerance’. Personally, I’m pretty intolerant about the notion of stoning adulterers and homosexuals. And I take free speech seriously, including the freedom to be offensive without having to fear being murdered by some religious zealot.
When 27% of British Muslims express sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo murderers, and 11% actually agree with the killings, that’s a problem for Islam’s image.
Some one once said that Muslims are permanently offended, the world used to tread carefully so as not to offend them BUT things have moved on and it is time for Muslims to realise they are not a special case and the average person does not give a dam and the world has had enough. No one sets out to offend Muslims but I am personally tired of walking on egg shells with the majority of them.
I fully agree with your Moderation but having “errors” thrown at you personally & repeatedly could make anyone angry.
You mean like the hysteria prevalent in your posts isn’t ridiculous garbage?
I am kind of baffled how the people who think that global Islam as a whole is seriously tarnished by some conservative Muslims’ practice of gender segregation in public places reconcile that with the prevalence of similar practices in Judaism.
AFAICT, about 25% of Israel’s approximately 6 million Jews identify as Orthodox, while about 10% of the 6-7 million US Jews do. We’re looking at about 15% of the total world Jewish population that adheres to various gender-segregation cultural practices as part of their religious identity.
By comparison, the entire population of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined constitutes less than 7% of the world’s Muslims. Of course, there are many other Muslims worldwide who also segregate genders in public, but we’re not talking wildly different orders of magnitude here.
How come the widespread prevalence of gender segregation in Islam is seen as a symptom that Islam as a whole is ruining its “global image”, but the high incidence of gender segregation in Judaism isn’t perceived as an image-tarnisher for Judaism as a whole?
As for the OP’s question of whether “Islam’s global image” is “beyond repair”: nah. That perception IMO is a dwindling artifact of the persistent tendency of white westerners, particularly English-speakers, to see ourselves as the “default” or “primary” human beings in the world, the only ones whose opinions fundamentally determine the “global image” of anything. (AFAICT, although the OP is talking about Chinese Muslims, the “global image” of them that he’s referring to consists of the opinions of English-speaking YouTube commenters, although it’s hard to be sure because I don’t recall the OP linking to any of them.)
As Islamic and Islam-adjacent cultures grow in global visibility due to changing demographic and economic realities, the “global image” of Islam as a whole is going to become more balanced, rather than just being dominated by western media images of Salafist fundamentalists and terrorist groups.
(Standard disclaimer which I’ve come to realize is necessary in all SDMB discussions of Islam: Of course, I quite agree that Salafist fundamentalism and radical-Islamist terrorism and other violence is a major and crucial problem in itself, for Muslims and for the rest of the world. My point is simply that it doesn’t constitute a realistic basis for a “global image” of Islam as a whole. The only reason some people currently think it does is because all the rest of global Islam is pretty much invisible in western media.)
I’m trying to work out just where I should rank “some once once said” on the laughable scale, compared to wholesale daily mail posting or claiming that you don’t need evidence to support your beliefs.
Seriously. “Some one once said”? Get a grip.
The Worlds Jewish population is around 15 million, Islams is around 1 billion. That’s why it’s more of a big deal.
As for it being a Western slant, I’m inclined to disagree.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think anyone conflates your position with Hanks. I mean sure I disagree with you, but Hank’s so far out there NASA couldn’t tell you which star he’s orbiting.
But you’re arguing that the religion as a whole has an image problem. To look at that we need to consider just what sort of percentage of adherents are the problem.
As Gary noted, though, the question here is not “is gender segregation a big deal in terms of absolute numbers of practitioners?”, but rather “is gender segregation a big deal for the image of the adherents of this particular religion?”
Surely it would be unjust to say that similar practices followed by similar proportions of adherents are more “image-tarnishing” for Islam than for Judaism, merely because there are lots more Muslims than Jews.
[QUOTE=Ryan_Liam]
As for it being a Western slant, I’m inclined to disagree.
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What’s the point your link is supposed to be making? It’s a long wikipedia page that starts out:
Can you identify the specific aspect of this that you’re claiming is relevant to the global image of Islam?