Nah. This board is all about tapdancing nonsense.
to quote the wit of west waziristan, that 6’6 standup among stand up mullahs, that guy, who when he gets offstage, and he says I killed’em, ya gotta wonder, :
“If we hated freedom, we would have attacked Sweden…”
I think you have nailed it: life sucks for most people in the ME islamic countries. The reasons are many, but chief is the fact that these countries are run by corrupt little oligarchies that don’t give a sh#t about the people. Take Egypt-you might actually attend university and get a degree, but unless you are connected, you don’t get a job. So you live in poverty, with no political feedoms, and in economic squalor. You see western movies and TV shows, and you realize how bankrupt muslim society is. Eventually you listen to some crazy Imam, and decide the west is to blame…
tagos, I understand that you feel the core of the matter is that, as a matter of principle, we shouldn’t apologize, period. And I agree.
But I imagine that ancient Saoedic feuds weren’t solved by apologies either. Much too crude, too Dr. Phil. I imagine apologizing, to hardened patriarchs, amounted to admitting extreme weakness, and would result in the your enemy looting your camp rather then a hug-fest.
No, these people must have had a way of apologizing without apologizing. I think we should learn how, and apply that knowledge.
Wow, I have never in my life heard something so patently wrong and so patently racist. People in the Middle East live shitty lives? I come from there. I don’t live a shitty life at all. I come from a middle class family, I went to university, got several decent jobs without relying on connections, and had I not been in London getting my master’s, I’d have been back home helping liberate my country.
My mother and father both earned high school degrees, and started university but never finished it. My mother is a home-maker and my father runs the logistics of one of the biggest companies in Lebanon. The people Shodan mentions, and you agree with, people jealous of the west, wishing the wealth was theirs, etc…, are not ones I can identify with. I’ve grown up in a different, more conservative, more Islamic country than Lebanon, and been to Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and the UAE. I’ve met Saudis, Egyptians, Moroccans, Algerians, Yemenis, Iranis Israelis and Turks, and I’ve never met the people you and Shodan talk about. So please explain to me what the hell are you two talking about?
Oh, and my father never raised a finger at my mother. My sister will be in university in a couple of years.
I assume you are not out rioting or burning embassies, either, so maybe that’s why you haven’t met them.
Regards,
Shodan
The lower class leads less pleasant lives then middleclass everywhere, but I daresay they might lead a slighty more shitty life in a country you had to move out of to to get the education you needed, a country that, by your own admittance, needs liberating from something or someone.
But welcome to the SDMB nonetheless, FWorld.
We had a vocal Arab here before, but it didn’t work out too well. 
Regards,
Shodan
I think it’s a mistake to believe that Muslims hate us because of jealousy. Even people in poor countries love their countries, and it may surprise you to learn that most of them don’t want to leave, and don’t want to become the U.S. They have their own culture, the land is their home, and they have strong tribal and familial ties in the region. They don’t want to lead the kind of lives we lead, by and large.
And besides, there are plenty of poor people on the planet, but very, very few of them want to kill us because of it.
You have to look deeper than a simplistic, “They hate us for our wealth”, or “They hate us for our freedom.” Part of it has roots in Arab culture and tribalism. Part of it is the Muslim faith itself. Part of it is the sense that their world is slowly being taken over by powerful forces beyond their control. Part of it is an engineered hatred, conducted by despots to deflect blame away from their own failures. Part of it might be an inferiority complex because the region is under-achieving. When you under-achieve, there is a great temptation to blame pernicious forces beyond your control, rather than to do hard soul-searching about failures in your own culture or your own life.
And part of it is the corrupting influence of oil money. The Middle East is kind of a big welfare state, with dictators holding immense wealth and power, while the unemployed youth are given table scraps and radicalized to give them something to care about.
In short, the problem is complex, and there are no easy fixes.
Welcome aboard and stick around even when it gets awfully difficult. We need a lot of education about your part of the world. Most of us know that you are just one person and don’t speak for everyone but every little bit helps.
Well…yes. Please hold off on the roll-eyes; I’m just politely asking you to not drop a debate dingleberry – that is, leave a nugget that just hangs there in an irritating manner. When I began to think about it, the phrase started bothering me; I’m honestly not sure what you mean when you use it.
Look – the phrase “freedom entails responsibility” contains three terms with fairly strong meanings. For instance, if you’re using “entails” in a strict logical sense, you bring the notion of unqualified necessity into the picture (“unqualified” as in “with no qualifier”, not as in “not meeting some standard”). That makes as little sense to me as the Golden Rule is not just a saying but necessary. Can you be clear?
Why are you having a go at me? Read the context of the reply for crying out loud. Namely the carping that he was ‘appointed’ and therefore fair game. Patronise much? Sheesh.
Maastricht, the country that needs liberating is Lebanon, and I did mention that in my post. It needs liberating from an outside influence, namely Syria, after Israel decided it was unwise to continue its occupation. This sort of thing was all over the news.
You know, average, hard-working, honest, not-so-well-off Muslims do exist outside burnt embassies and crashed planes. But I’m sure you already knew that. In any case, there was a nasty riot in Lebanon, and the Danish embassy was attacked. But the official line was that this was led by Syrian saboteurs. See, Syria is trying to regain its control of Lebanon, after it was tossed out last year. It is in their interest to destabilise the country. So the claim is that they orchestrated riots by Muslims in the Christian part of Beirut, hoping that the mix would be too volatile and that clashes between Christians and Muslims would return. Most of the demonstrators left when the riots began, and a few got carried away by the mob mentality and joined in. All in all there were a couple of hundred arrests made, less than half of which were Syrian and Palestinians. Some of the Palestinians belonged to organisations supported by Syria.
But there’s an important point to be made here. Mainstream Islamic political organisations were definitely damaged by the violence, and apologised for it. The violence, they claimed, had nothing to do with Islam, but with political forces still willing to use violence as a tool. So it was a political issue, not a religious one.
If you look closely at the violence in other regions, I’m sure you’ll find explanations other than religion.
And Shodan & Co, try to keep this on a GD level, so please lay off the snide remarks.
Oh, and I could’ve gotten an MSc in Economics in Beirut. In the American University of Beirut to be precise. But I picked a different topic and went to London.
In other news:
Yahoo! is banning the use of allah in email names - even if the letters are included within another name.
This was uncovered by Reg reader Ed Callahan whose mother Linda Callahan was trying to sign up for a Verizon email address. She could not get it to accept her surname.
Enquiries to Verizon revealed that a partnership with Yahoo! was to blame. Yahoo! will not accept any identies which include the letters “allah”.
Nor will Yahoo! accept yahoo, osama or binladen. But it will accept god, messiah, jesus, jehova, buddah, satan and both priest and pedophile.
…
a second set of apologies–laricthegoth
Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 1,747
Location: The Barbary Coast
needless to say directed not to tagos but the originator of the issue, whose identity evidently has already escaped me.
I was searching for the original post and got your quote of it, and when I tried to respond to him itpicked up your post instead, and the rest is history–anyway, I tried to warn you, but by the time you finished the snide remarks about the glorious revolutriohn, you probably were in no mood to read a second.
and we continue to respond to the wrong post–not sure why, but anyway, sorrry tagos and sorry gum.
I was not aiming at you—see above garble,
None of the cartoons weren’t especially good, some were downright embarrassing, none of them deserves the colossal exposure they have attained. Probably they’re now the most viewed cartoons in the history of mankind, and Muhammed viying with Bush to be the most ridiculed character ever - thanks to the lying Imams and the so-called “Arab Street”. But one of the point in using cartoons is really not to ridicule, but to bring up controversial subjects - but with a wink to soften the hard edge. Like saying, here’s a subject that we disagree with, but there’s no need to get all unfriendly just over that, we’re all here together. Another element is like friends swapping insults. I might tell my wife she has an ass the size of barn gate, I would never tell that to my daughter’s school teacher (even though it’s true). You make fun and (loving) insult of those in the group. You might even say the cartoons in that was inviting, an attempt to bring the Muslim community into the mainstream Danish. I know that’s also how it works in other countries, while such humor is totally incomprehensible some other places - apparently in the Middle East too (there was actually a Danish integration consultant last year, that seriously tried to ban irony in the Danish workplaces, because the immigrants didn’t get it). But the point is, the cartoons were never meant for the Middle East, they were meant for a Danish audience where such is understood. Within a Danish cultural context, there’s absolutely nothing extraordinary or extreme in those cartoons, actually they’re fairly tame and uninteresting if you ask me. But in any case, it doesn’t really matter. There’s a space in public debate for raw unapologetic insults and ridicule too as well as atheist material and homosexual, explicit sexual, completely wacky, false, ultra violent and all the other stuff that’s regularly tried to be forcibly removed. Indeed some times head on insult and ridicule is the only way to approach taboos. In the 70’s women were burning their bra’s in central Copenhagen, and running around naked shaking their tits - and a pretty sight that was - and artist were smoking pot on the steps to the Parliament, and oh boy did it all piss off and insult some people to no end, yet it might have been just what was needed at the time. Threatning to kill women that burn their bras or make fun of Muhammed is just upping the ante, doesn’t alter that it might be the correct thing to do. That was also the time an artist made pictures of Jesus featuring a hard-on. One may feel a need to picture Muhammed being fucked by a dog (as one of the lying Imams had in his own creation), and that’s an entirely legitimate picture to insert into the public debate (as long as one is honest about it, and don’t try to pretend it’s someone’s else creation). You can call them racist, Nazi, fascist, Islamphobic, blasphemy, misogynic, homophobic, sexists, anti-semitic, socialist (worst of all!!) and what not. Makes no difference. People that don’t like them are quite free to look elsewhere or not buy the newspaper - which is generally what I do (come to think of, I never bought that particular newspaper - as it’s for stupid peasants in Jutland). As long as I’m not forced to fund it through taxes and the like. All those having their panties in a twist over these cartoons, they all really need to get over themselves. They’re making a damn fool of themselves, and for each day that passes the more of a laughing stock they become if in a feet cringing sort of way.
And now in Denmark one of the positive things to come out of all this cartoon noise, is the very successful creation of a group calling themselves “Democratic Muslims”. (I just read that one of the founders of Democratic Muslims has had “Democracy” tattooed on his arm, in case, as he says, he’ll meet Abu I’m-a-fucking-liar Laban in the public pool.) They’re demanding an apology from the Lying Traveling Imam Circus, of which the head clown: the liar Abu Jews are spreading AIDS in Egypt Laban in his friday sermon replied by calling them “rats and garbage” and compared them to that other figure they hate so much, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. So we might finally begin to see the mythical Islamic moderate majority stand up and stand by a peaceful and tolerant Islam and drive out the extremists from their midst. If so the cartoons were very helpful as a catalyst. At least I’m coming to the belief that the Islamist and fundamentalists have seriously overplayed their hand in this silly cartoon case, and it’s blowing up in their face something awful.
Here’s an explanation by Flemming Rose, who published the cartoons
While I don’t accept pushing all blame to Syria. I think everyone knows that the Lebanese authorities tried their best to stop the violence and vandalism following the demonstration in Beirut but were just taken by surprise, and nobody, least of all Danes, is blaming Lebanon for anything. Unlike Syria, where there is wide acceptance that the government had more than a little hand in organising the demonstration and enraging the mob and only did a half hearted attempt to protect the embassies. Norway, and I think Denmark too, is demanding compensations from Syria. As far as I know, no such demand has been made to Lebanon. In any case, how could you hold a grudge against a country that just threw off the joke of tyranny with such joyful demonstrations. This is my favourite Yeah right. Who am I kidding. This is my favourite
Thanks for the reply, Rune. Rose’s explanation does, however, sound pretty strained to me - essentially that he’s supporting the right to be as offensive and mocking and pointless as he likes, since after all he’s offensive and pointless and mocking to Christians and Jews too. I know we part ways there - the right to free speech entails responsibilities as well, and doing those things are irresponsible no matter the legality.
Example:
What is the point of urinating on a Bible, either? I do not see where that is “questioning” Christianity, or that anyone would learn anything from the experience. What is going on in that culture that makes the bashing of religion not only acceptable but laudable, requiring a defense? Again, the question isn’t about censorship, self- or otherwise, but only about simple, basic human decency. They’re not the same thing and it’s craven to claim it.
One might have hoped that such “inclusion” could be on more than the lowest possible level, that it is only possible to have your countrymen feel you’re part of it if you share their broad-based disdain for (apparently) any and all institutions that anyone might wish to respect. What’s being defended, then, isn’t really just the right to free speech but a childish, bratty nihilism. I do hope that isn’t a fair assessment of Danish society, or anyone else’s for that matter, but that’s how it reads.
Is it that, or are those moderate Muslims calling violent protests far worse than the original insult? If so, few would disagree.
Yes, I knew that already. Which is why I never stated or implied that all Muslims are rioters, are poor, or whatever else you are reacting to.
Well, no offense, but your figures seem to suggest that most of those arrested for the riots were not outside agitators. Unless you mis-typed.
Well, certainly. And politicians using religion for their own benefit is hardly confined exclusively to the Middle East.
But the problem, or part of it, is that fundamentalist Islam does not have much of a tradition of secular government. Thus the distinction between the political and the religious is much more blurred than it might be in, say, Northern Ireland.
So while it might be entirely true that mainstream Islam had nothing to do with the riots, it is not mainstream Islam that is the issue. It is the kind of fundamentalist Islam who can be whipped into rioting based on cartoons, at least one of which is a fake. (IIRC.) And I expect that one of the factors behind this kind of fundamentalist Islam is the kind of jealously resentful poverty I described earlier. (As well as the other factors that Sam Stone mentions.)
Well, I wasn’t intending to be snide, and I apologize if I came across that way. I am sure my fellow Dopers will agree that when I choose to be snide, there is never any doubt at all. 
You can always use the “Report this post” button to the upper right if you feel you are being flamed, and the moderators are good about chiming in when they feel it to be necessary.
Well, that’s fine, but unless you are suggesting that the typical rioter has a family that can afford to send its children abroad for a masters degree, your experience may not be applicable.
Regards,
Shodan