Very well, I certainly won’t, though I’ll note I was responding to Macgiver.
Beyond that, I think you’re ignoring the fact that this thread has been rather thoroughly hijacked almost beyond recognition.
The OP related a story involving a British Mosque being harassed by a racist group of thugs who responded by giving them tea and biscuits and whether this was the best response of the Mosque.
Since then, this thread has become about the millioneth on the SDMB about supposed Muslim rape gangs terrorizing the UK, whether such crimes are due to ethnicity or religion, and whether Islam in general is evil.
I’d like to believe that a thread on an Black church offering milk and cookies to some white supremacists wouldn’t suddenly turn into a debate about black gangs terrorizing the country attacking unsuspecting white women.
This isn’t meant as an attack since I recognize mods often have to make judgement calls rather quickly, but it seems to me that going from a debate over whether or not a British Mosque made the right call in giving tea and biscuits to racist protesters to a debate about the prevalence of Muslim rape gangs and whether or not Islam is evil is vastly more of a hijack than talking about “white privilege” in a debate on what “white culture” consists of.
I’d suggest that perhaps those who wish to debate the evilness of Islam or Muslim rape gangs be told to start a new thread since their hijack seems pretty far removed and almost as off-topic as discussing why the US was soundly defeated in the Vietnam War.
How was the tragic fighting in that region more about theology than the fighting in Northern Ireland, the fighting between Serbs and Croats, or the fighting between Germans and Russians in WWII?
Finally, how is that remotely related to the question of a Mosque in York responding to racist thugs by offering them tea and biscuits?
Because it’s about Muslims killing Muslims over their religions.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. That’s beside the point. Why is “he started it” or “he’s doing it too” suddenly an argument that adults find acceptable when it comes to these matters? What if we said “Why are we eradicating smallpox when malaria kills people too? How are the tragic deaths caused by smallpox worse than those caused by malaria? Best to just ignore the whole thing, really.”
It’s not.
I suspect you could have answered all three of these questions for yourself.
What makes you think it’s “about Muslims killing Muslims over their religions” as opposed to Muslims killing Muslims over other factors?
The Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Black September Revolt, and the current conflict between the Kurds and the Turks all involve Muslims killing Muslims yet aren’t generally described as Muslims killing Muslims over religion.
I’m sorry, but this strikes me as having nothing to do with the post you responded to. It might as well be gibberish. Perhaps you could translate.
So then why did you make such an argument which by your own admission had nothing to do with the topic of the thread.
It is the difference between organic hijacks, (in which a salient point leads to a discussion that leads to a separate discussion and on down the path) and a less organic hijack (in which a single comment (usually an aside) leads to a separate and rather different discussion).
I tend to permit organic hijacks and tend to suggest that others be taken to new threads.
Political Correctness is nothing more than a slur directed by people who want to use nasty words toward anyone would ask them to refrain. It has no real meaning.
I say that you really should track down and intervene against the gangs that are involved in these practices. Of course, in your haste to attack the “Muslims” who are committing these acts, you are pretty sure to ignore the Christian Brits in Devon, the Christian (or Rastafarian) Afro-Caribbeans in Bristol and Bath, and the motley collection of guys in London, and you will probably wind up attacking a few innocent Muslims just for being the “wrong” religion, but at least you will be able to take solace in knowing that you are not letting “Political Correctness” get in the way.
If the religion was the problem, you would have a lot more troubles than you actually have with a population of Muslims as large as yours.
It’s a well-accepted fact that at the least a significant portion of the violence is between Shiites and Sunnis. You could probably call this political if you like, but part of the problem is that for many Muslims (not without some justification from Islamic scripture and parts of Islamic history) there is no distinction between religion and politics. One could argue that, if you truly, deep down believe in a religion there should be no distinction between religion and politics. If there really is a God, and he really did create the universe, and really does care deeply about what we’re all up to (with potentially infernal results), you’d be stupid not to do what he says.
You asked me how the violence in Iraq is more related to theology than other examples of people being violent. I assumed (and please correct me if I’m wrong) that you were not genuinely looking for me to educate you, but were using the question as a rhetorical device to imply that you consider it wrong to call attention to the bombings etc. as “religious violence”. My response was, essentially, that whether it’s more or less about theology than the other examples you gave, it is about religion at least in part, and to say (or at least appear to imply) we should ignore the problem simply because it’s not the only example of violence between groups is comparable to saying we shouldn’t eradicate smallpox because malaria also kills people, and “what makes smallpox so much worse than malaria?”
Allow me a moment’s “organic highjack” to disagree slightly. There definitely was a practice, much made fun of, to de-louse the language. The process that led garbagemen to become known as “sanitation engineers,” and so on. It was never anywhere near as widespread as opponents say, but it did happen. It certainly never rose even to the level of McCarthyism…thank goodness.
No, I’d call it that, because that’s what it’s about.
I notice you’ve repeatedly refused to answer questions as to whether the violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland or Serbs and Croats is over religion and you’ve repeatedly refused to do so because doing so would destroy your argument.
Now, people familiar with the Iraq War will note that there’s been quite bit of fighting between the Kurds, who are virtually all Sunnis, and Sunni Arab gangs while the Sunni Kurds and the Shia Arabs either allied with one another or ignored one another rather than shooting each other.
People who are open-minded and reality-based thinkers would probably conclude that this would suggest that the fighting with the Sunni Arabs on one side and the Shia Arabs on the other has to do with factors other than religion, most notably who was favored by Saddam and who wasn’t, but people with little understanding of the region or the religion with a very superficial understanding probably just blame it all on religion because they don’t know any better.
Oh please. That’s utter crap. I guess it makes sense if you ignore the growth of Kemalism, more milder forms of Turkish nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, Ba’athism, Nasserism, Pan-Arabism, and various other movements within the Middle East along with the fact that plenty of Christians and Jews have similar feelings regarding their own religions.
Nope. I would agree that there were moments of Political Correctness in history, but that is not one of them.
Sanitation engineers replacing garbage men, sales associates replacing sales clerks, previously owned automobiles replacing used cars, and similar exchanges are part of a different movement: sales and marketing. It became most notable in the 1970s, contemporaneous with the first claims of PC, but they were not driven by any “liberal agenda” and had nothing to do with political expression or “correct” language.
It won’t even slightly destroy my argument, because it’s completely irrelevant. The argument you seem to have an issue with (and so the one I assume you’re referring to) is that Islam has a significant influence on many people to do violence. Honestly you can argue I’m ignorant of the intricacies of the situation all you want but I can find 10 examples of people who explicitly say they are committing violence - whether it be terrorism, honour killings or executions - because Islam tells them it’s right for every one you have an excuse for. The fact is that, no matter how much other violence there is in the world it does not refute my argument. I suspect you’re also missing my larger argument which is that we should be critical of religions, both their teachings and the results of those teachings. If you understand this broader argument you will also see that giving examples of violence in the name of other religions only adds weight to what I’m saying.
To answer your question, although I don’t quite see what use the answer will be, both examples you give are about religion, but not just religion. I don’t claim to know enough about any of these conflicts to be able to tell you to what extent one is more or less about religion than another (as I already suggested previously) but what I do know is that without religion there would be a lot less of that violence. Of course there are always bad people, and we would be very lucky to be able to say that religion is the only reason people do bad things, but it’s one of the few reasons good people do bad things, and it has proved one of the most effective ways (possibly the most effective way) of convincing people to kill indiscriminately.
Honestly, I never intended to get this deep into the topic - I simply wanted to say religion shouldn’t get a pass from the usual SDMB criticism - but unfortunately I’m too weak to resist your challenges so I will add this:
This report gives some stats that, I hope we can both agree, are somewhat troubling. According to The Guardian’s article on the surveys:
The way many wish to spin this is that Muslims in America are reasonable people. Of course, it seems to suggest that 81% quite possibly are. But if true, the figure of 19% of American Muslims saying suicide bombings in the defence of their religion have even the remotest possibility of being justified is shocking to me.
Even in Russia, when 4% (not even counting those who say “rarely”) of the people in any group express sympathy towards the idea of suicide bombings in the name of that group, there is a problem, and it needs to be discussed, ideally without the word “racism” ever coming up.
Magiver, you said that cites had been asked for and given. You never did give me a cite that the destruction of the pyramids was an issue shortly after 9/11. That would be appreciated.
Lauren-C: Your comparison of the things that Muslims have had in common with Nazis lists things that they also have in common with the Brits and Americans. And you cited for only one of the Muslim-Nazi coroborators. You know the USA also had a lot of people that supported the Nazis, including Charles Lindbergh. That really doesn’t reflect on the religious beliefs of people who shared Lindbergh’s religious (or non-religious) views.
You mentioned that Islam is cult-like. A cult with over two billion members?
You said that the gang rapes were “legion.” That word refers to large groups and doesn’t seem to apply in the examples that you gave from Wiki. Out of the six gangs you mentioned, only 51 people total were convicted and that wasn’t always for rape. That is an average of less than 9 members per group. The second listing says “needs additional citations.” These sources are not particularly reliable.
You add that protecting your people is infinitely more important that political correctness. When you say “your people” are you including Moslems too? Or do they deserve to be villified for what a very small percentage has done?
A couple of times you mentioned “political correctness.” I live in a largely Muslim neighborhood. It was one of the five neighborhoods in the United States where Iraqis got to vote for their President. It was, indeed, a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Who here has used “political correctness” in discussing these issues? I think it’s possible that you may be trying to use that phrase as an excuse for posting vile comments.
My signature, which I’ve had for a long time and is not directed at you personally, but describes my thinking about most who used that “label” inappropriately: “You may take the expression “politically correct,” write it on a piece of paper, set it ablaze and place it far, far inside your sweetly rounded, cherubic bum.”
I didn’t cherry pick anything. You can’t produce a movie or a picture or any other art form that in any way crosses Islam without utter chaos ensuing and you know it.
Actually, I know the exact opposite.
It took weeks for the protests to be against the Danish cartoons to be organized and staged. They were not spontaneous and they tend to be the result of political movements that want to make points against the West. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/15/AR2006021502865.html
When Salman Rushdie first published his Satanic Verses, it was reviewed in Iranian newspapers without much fanfare and pretty much ignored except as another novel throughout the Muslim world. Months later, the Ayatollah needed a way to call attention to a feud he was having with the West and he decided to do it by issuing a fatwa against Rushdie. Only then, after a deliberate campaign to rile up people did that book become a lightning rod for anger and hatred.
It is certainly possible to get some people to riot, but it pretty much requires specific actions by people who want to see a riot to make it happen.
This is truly one of the most bizarre statements I’ve ever seen on SDMB. There have been numerous movies made featuring Muslim evildoers and Muslim terrorists without inspiring world-wide riots or “utter chaos.”
The reaction to “The Muhammad Cartoons” were the exception not the rule.
wow, nice slight of hand there. It took weeks for the protests to organize and therefore they don’t count.
again, nice slight of hand, it doesn’t count if a religious leader stirs the pot.
yes, it’s certainly possible to get some people to riot, blow up airplanes, malls, ships, buildings and whatever mayhem seems appropriate to the cause.