Maher is a clown who I ignore on general principles. And I cut Harris the same slack for his TV appearances as I cut Aslan for his TV appearances. Harris has made plenty of stupid and just plain wrong statements in writing on his website and in his books, which are what I focus on when it comes to him.
That would be part of why Maher is a clown who I ignore on general principles.
Get back with me when you figure out how language and especially colloqualisms work.
Number they claim -> source for that number -> conclusion they draw from that number.
No it does not, the police failed to intervene and protect the constitutional rights of the protesters, as the decision of the court noted.
Again there message is of no relevance to the question of whether they should have been attacked for it, or to the duty of the police to protect them.
Standing and speaking is a mild way of expressing an opinion. Again, Clarion appears to to have asserted that their expression was mild, not that the views they were expressing were. People stand in public and say all kinds of things all the time without getting attacked. Most people can ignore messages that offend them. You appear to share the opinion of ISIS that blasphemy against Islam is a special case that excuses violent behavior.
Again, on that day the police assisted the crowd in enforcing the prohibition against blaspheming Islam.
You sure are spending a lot of effort on that one thing that the group said that one time, in order to avoid discussing the role of Islam in jihadist violence.
On that day the constitution was not enforced.
Again the video you refuse to watch or comment on has nothing to do with no go zones. You are just using the issue to divert the conversation and prevent discussion critical of Islam, similar to the Muslims in Dearborn who threw things at the protesters to prevent expression of opinions critical to Islam.
Again, his mention of the Muslim Brotherhood’s endorsement of FGM was to counter Alsan’s false narrative that FGM was entirely due to African tribal culture. He did not claim that Islamic justifications were the only reason it is practiced, merely that they were one of the reasons.
I see you still have no comment on Raheel Raza’s video, or Reza Aslan’s lies. You only seem interested in detailed examinations of everything ever said and done by critics of Islam, in order to dismiss them entirely and avoid discussing or even considering their message.
It strikes me as a purely academic matter, akin to wondering how many white people are racist. Whether the number is 5%, 10%, 20%, or just 1%, the fact is, most minorities can report that they’ve been victims of white racism at least once in their lives(and in most cases, many, many times). So how do we deal with white racism? Do we start with, “The vast majority of white people are not racist?” No, we start from the perspective that the victims of racism are more important to help than the innocent white people.
It seems to me that the problem of victims of Islamic extremism are a more pressing problem than whether or not mainstream Muslims experience suspicion and discomfort. Jews can’t wear their Stars of David in Sweden because authorities think that it’s less important to protect minorities from violent persecution by other minorities than to avoid hurting feelings.
What has this to do with my position that the tenets of Islam are the enemies of the principles which drive a western enlightened democracy for its public law?
We have two opposing principles here.
Islam (and any other religious text, including the Bible):
Public law should reflect as closely as possible what the Almighty has revealed to men in holy texts.
2.Secular governance:
Public law can draw on lessons from all past thinking, including religious texts, but where those texts are antithetical to collectively-derived secular principles, they should be ignored.
Islam, as a collection of tenets laid down in the Qur’an and Hadith writings, is an enemy of our collectively-derived secular principles with respect to some of our most basic principles in the western world.
It is at absolute odds with specific principles such as the freedom to publicly ridicule religious tenets and icons, and at absolute odds with practical considerations such as how to avoid oppressing women. Witness what has happened in the Muslim majority world where it is easier to make Islam the law of the land.
Wherever and however the faithful of any religion try to advance their religious law in any manner that steps on the toes of the next person over, and those religious laws are at odds with secular public law, they are advancing a paradigm which is an enemy of democratically-derived secular law.
I have no idea what you are talking about with this strawman about Alabama or SCOTUS.
But for anyone arguing that texts like the Qur’an, the Hadith or the Old Testament do not represent an enemy of western democracy, I suggest reviewing a summary of the basic tenets laid down in them.
Dun’t be riddikilus defending Indonesia as some kind of live and let live bastion…
In which part of any Muslim majority nation–including Indonesia–can I get by with publishing and freely distributing a newspaper which front-pages a daily cartooon mocking Mohammed, his deluded messages, and the principles for which the Qur’an stands?
We have candidates for President right now who believe that god’s law supersedes public law, and that the Constitution should be changed to respect god’s law.
“Candidate for President” is not a position that grants a person any kind of legal authority. It means they want legal authority, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get it.
Which does nothing to contradict my point, that Muslims are not the only ones who think their religious law supersedes public law. In case you haven’t been reading the news, there are many public officials who defy public law to impose their Christian religious beliefs under the authority of their public office.
And the number of Christian theocracies in the world vs. the number of Muslim theocracies? Are there any Christian armies with 100,000 men under arms fighting to reestablish the Holy Roman Empire? Because there’s an army like that trying to reestablish the caliphate.
Again, I was responding to the point that sought to describe Islam as a system that subverted public law with religious law. We are threatened with that here in America, through civil disobedience rather than military force. But the point remains; some Christians in and out of government, believe that god’s law supersedes public law. If you want to move the goalposts to discuss the military goals of ISIS, go right ahead, but I feel no burden to go there with you.
And…what is your point? That the religiously devout are constantly in favor of imposing their make-believe shit on the masses?
Agreed.
Not only that, but many of the devout masses support them!
That’s WHY Islam (and Old Testament tenets) and any number of equally idiotic belief structures are the enemy of western democracy. There are people who think these texts should be law.
“Neener neener there are Christians/Jews/whatever who also want their religion to be Boss of You” is not a reason that Islam is not the enemy. All such make believe structures are the enemy. I keep saying that. Are you listening?
Generally, people are people, trapped within whatever paradigm they were born into, or got sucked into.
Muslims are not the enemy of western democracy.
Christians are not the enemy of western democracy.
Their religious tenets are the enemy.
Where such a tenet in Islam is at odds with freedom of expression, that tenet–and the Islam that promotes it–is the enemy.
Where such a tenet in the Old Testament is misogynous toward women, that tenet–and the religion which promotes it–is the enemy.
We have got to stop demonizing people and start understanding that it is the religions themselves which are the enemy, and which provide the fodder for bad behavior.
If we could get rid of Islam as a religion, there wouldn’t be any Islamic terrorists. There might be terrorists fighting for some other social or political cause, but without Islam, the motivation for the vast majority would be seriously gutted, since what most of them have been sucked into believing is that they are defending Islam against an aggressive effort by the west to stamp it out.