# Media too pro-muslim? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 27, 2016, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303 "2016-02-27T16:07:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/101 "2016-03-01T16:13:17Z")
What sharia courts outside the law of the country are you referring to? Because that’s not actually a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Latro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a87d85/32.png) [@Latro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Latro)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/102 "2016-03-01T16:30:19Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What sharia courts outside the law of the country are you referring to? Because that’s not actually a thing. Because they are not ‘officially’ called courts but ehrm… councils! Yes that is it they are just councils. Go away, nothing to see here… ---
**Author:** ![Civilrighte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/fbc32d/32.png) [@Civilrighte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civilrighte)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/103 "2016-03-01T16:31:40Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > _Hindu_ or _Hindi_? Hindu as in Indian (North Indian + South Indian). I usually use the two terms interchangeably. Indians are more anthropologically close to each other, while Pakistanis are closer to Middle Easterners. Hindi is only spoken by a segment of North Indians in the Hindi belt. No-one ever refers to North Indians as “Hindi”. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/104 "2016-03-01T16:31:57Z")
Okay, so what are these sharia councils? > [@](#): > > Indians are more anthropologically close to each other, while Pakistanis are closer to Middle Easterners. Where do you get this nonsense? ---
**Author:** ![Civilrighte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/fbc32d/32.png) [@Civilrighte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civilrighte)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/105 "2016-03-01T16:39:05Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > What on earth are you talking about? I’m Indian. You are overlooking people of your own race. > [@Monty](#): > > There are even Pakistani Latter-day Saints in Pakistan. I met two such in Singapore. They were two young ladies serving missions on the island and they returned to Pakistan when they finished their missions. > > Am I the only one seeing the irony in the OP’s user name and his posts in this thread? Pakistanis and Indians are racially different. It’s like Ugryurs and Han Chinese, North Africans and Blacks, or Turks and Europeans. Anyway, the term “muslim” is slang/colloquium for Pakistanis in the UK, and Africans in mainland Europe. ---
**Author:** ![Civilrighte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/fbc32d/32.png) [@Civilrighte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civilrighte)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/106 "2016-03-01T16:42:35Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Okay, so what are these sharia councils? > > Where do you get this nonsense? Do you not even look at people of your own race? I know people from the MidEast and whenever I see Pakistanis I confuse them for Middle Easterners. Read up on the anthropology of Pakistanis. Most Pakistanis belong to an ethnic group close to Middle Easterners, while a little few belong to the North Indian category. ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/107 "2016-03-01T16:43:41Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Yeppers. That’s why I posted my query to the individual who keeps asserting he’s “atheist Hindu”. OK- I did not think of that angle, although I think it was reasonable to interpret the post as I did. I agree it would be best to express the thought as “atheist **ex** -Hindu”. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/108 "2016-03-01T16:43:53Z")
> [@Civilrighte](#): > > You are overlooking people of your own race. You seem to be confused about who you are responding to. I haven’t specified any people of any race so I could not have “overlooked” any. You might try quoting the post in question. > [@Civilrighte](#): > > Do you not even look at people of your own race? My best friend was from the Middle East, and whenever I see Pakistanis I confuse them for Middle Easterners. > > Read up on the anthropology of Pakistanis. Most Pakistanis belong to an ethnic group close to Middle Easterners, while a little few belong to the North Indian category. Of course I look at them. Pakistanis generally look indistinguishable from other South Asians. If I showed any Indian a picture of Pervez Musharraf they’d have no fucking clue where he was from in the subcontinent (were he not famous). You realize that a sizeable proportion of the Pakistani population relocated there relatively recently, yes? And that “Middle Easterners” are not a monolithic ethnic group? And that Indians aren’t either, for that matter? If you want me to “read up” on Pakistani anthropology, try citing something. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/109 "2016-03-01T16:51:49Z")
> [@Civilrighte](#): > > Do you not even look at people of your own race? I know people from the MidEast and whenever I see Pakistanis I confuse them for Middle Easterners. > > Read up on the anthropology of Pakistanis. Most Pakistanis belong to an ethnic group close to Middle Easterners, while a little few belong to the North Indian category. There are tons of different ethnic groups in both India and Pakistan. The borders are not drawn sharply between two monolithic groups. Some ethnic groups are India are more closely related to certain groups in Pakistan then they are to certain other far-flung Indian groups, and vice versa. An Indian whose ancestry comes from near the Pakistani border is probably more closely related to nearby Pakistanis then to an Indian who lives near the Bangladeshi border, and vice versa for a Pakistani from near the Indian border vice near the Iranian border. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/110 "2016-03-01T16:58:31Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > Forming criminal youth gangs, rape and\*\* holding sharia courts outside the law of the country\*\* are optional norms in the US? Cite? Forming gangs and criminal activity is not exactly confined to a single ethnic/religious demographic. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/111 "2016-03-01T17:25:08Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > Cite? {…} They’re in all those “cities with no-go areas” silly. CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/112 "2016-03-01T17:33:11Z")
> [@Gary\_Kumquat](#): > > Watched the first link, and it does nothing to backup your claim that “his paper had previously downplayed sex attacks by Muslims gangs”. I’ll pass on watching an hour long link to find a cite for you. The second link at about 3mins to 7 mins. Norfolk admits to not running with further pieces because of the fear of giving ammunition to the far right. He doesn’t give any evidence of this only his opinion. Confirmation of bias of omission is invariably not found in emails or circulars. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbUIfvYbjRc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbUIfvYbjRc) ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/113 "2016-03-01T17:45:02Z")
> [@T.M](#): > > I personally would have marched with them and I know others who would have joined me That’s good of you. Now kindly refrain from repeating the slander that Muslims don’t condemn the immoral acts of other Muslims. > [@T.M.](#): > > Pakistan is a country of many religions and a great deal of discord among them much of this caused by partition and the creation of Pakistan out of India. One of the main problems with some Pakistani’s is that they try to import customs into their new country that are illegal and completely unacceptable, While in some countries it is acceptable to marry a 9 year old girl and have sex with her, it cannot be expected to carry on that custom in the U.K. This is one of the problems that the Pakistani community must sort out Yeah, ol’ Britain sure screwed up that part of the world, among many others. Marrying underage girls isn’t just an immigrant thing, here in the U.S. there’s the homegrown FLDS church that does the same thing. In both cases, the answer is proper enforcement of the law, coupled with community outreach. It’s the same way various domestic practices have been stamped out (marital rape, lynching, child abuse), or at least curtailed. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/114 "2016-03-01T17:47:13Z")
I’d like to see more headlines and news about the rocket attacks from Gaza than about the damage caused by Israeli retaliatory strikes. And more about the Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis than about how the Israeli security forces killed the attackers. But I may be biased. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2016, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/115 "2016-03-01T21:50:11Z")
This news media thing is tangential to the topic here but since a question was asked I’ll answer it. > [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > What is the US public missing, now, that if it was well-informed about would make a difference in public policy? And by what exact mechanism could it make a difference? Are you seriously suggesting that American voters have absolutely nothing to do with American foreign policy? Have you given up even pretending that the US is a democracy? Maybe if the voters knew something about the world and the other countries in it, they wouldn’t be electing dumbass politicians, maybe there might not have been a pointless war in Vietnam, maybe Iraq wouldn’t have been invaded in 2003 leading to so much loss of life and the rampant growth of terrorism in the region. Maybe if the voters knew something about the world there would not have been some dozen or so pointless and unsuccessful wars, invasions, and interventions in the past century. Maybe there wouldn’t be so much hatred and suspicion of foreigners in general and Muslims in particular, such rampant xenophobia and Islamophobia that it’s practically the central pillar of a major political party. Here’s a good article on the subject. I highlighted the first sentence so you don’t miss it: **Public ignorance has potentially very grave consequences for American foreign policy.** Should we be invading places that many Americans cannot even pinpoint on a map? Should we be allowing our presidents to wage foreign wars without our knowledge? In 1964, the issue of Vietnam was hardly mentioned during the presidential election campaign, except that Lyndon Johnson claimed he would never send “American boys” over to Vietnam. But the following year – and largely in secrecy – the Johnson administration began a slow-motion escalation of the war. It would ultimately cost 58,000 Americans, and probably millions of Vietnamese, their lives. In the 1980s the Reagan administration waged a secret war against the government of Nicaragua, hidden from Congress and the American people. And we may need only look at recent drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan to surmise that the same thing is happening again now. In one unexplained attack in 2011, which has never been completely explained, a U.S. drone in Yemen attacked and killed a U.S.-born teenager, Abdulrahman Anwar Al-Aulaqi, who had not been accused of anything but his father was the inciter of hatred against Americans via the internet. … Hardly anybody was clamoring for war with Iraq until President George W. Bush made weapons of mass destruction a justification for it. In the subsequent war, 4,000 Americans and probably well over 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives. … Hess says that **virtually no country is explained or presented coherently** ; education, science, the arts are rarely discussed, and half the countries of the world are never mentioned, unless some crisis develops there. As a result, **television coverage makes the world look far more dangerous than it is** because half of all TV foreign stories involve some kind of violence or disaster. The other half of network TV coverage is about US citizens abroad or about US government foreign policy. > **[U.S. Foreign Policy Can be Only as Good as Public's Understanding of World...](https://www.ucf.edu/news/u-s-foreign-policy-can-be-only-as-good-as-publics-understanding-of-world-affairs/)** > > Poll after poll shows that most Americans are woefully ignorant about foreign policy and the rest of the world. In a 2006 Roper poll, only 37 percent of > [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > I never watch TV news or read a newspaper, and I know all i nned to know … As Jim Carrey would say, alllllrighty then! ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/116 "2016-03-02T00:12:25Z")
Well, TV news is pretty much useless glurge and American newspapers have more sports than real news. ---
**Author:** ![Civilrighte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/fbc32d/32.png) [@Civilrighte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civilrighte)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/117 "2016-03-02T07:19:53Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > There are tons of different ethnic groups in both India and Pakistan. The borders are not drawn sharply between two monolithic groups. Some ethnic groups are India are more closely related to certain groups in Pakistan then they are to certain other far-flung Indian groups, and vice versa. > > An Indian whose ancestry comes from near the Pakistani border is probably more closely related to nearby Pakistanis then to an Indian who lives near the Bangladeshi border, and vice versa for a Pakistani from near the Indian border vice near the Iranian border. As an Indian who grew up around a lot of Middle Easterners, I can say for sure that most Middle Easterners are indistinguishable from Pakistanis, and if you bother to read up on scientific race in that region, you’d find that most Pakistanis are Middle Easterners… ---
**Author:** ![Civilrighte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/fbc32d/32.png) [@Civilrighte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Civilrighte)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/118 "2016-03-02T07:26:35Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > There are even Pakistani Latter-day Saints in Pakistan. I met two such in Singapore. They were two young ladies serving missions on the island and they returned to Pakistan when they finished their missions. > > Am I the only one seeing the irony in the OP’s user name and his posts in this thread? I just reread this. You are proving my point. I was arguing that Pakistanis and people from Muslim countries were playing the Islamaphobia card when it wasn’t relavent. Read my inital post. Race is personal. If I, and the majority of Indians, do not feel racially aligned with Pakistanis, then we should have our way. I fall into the camp that lumps everyone from Turkey to Maldives into one race; Pakistanis, North Indians and South Indians are three different ethnic groups. ---
**Author:** ![TwoCarrotSnowman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twocarrotsnowman/32/15879_2.png) [@TwoCarrotSnowman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TwoCarrotSnowman)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/119 "2016-03-02T07:49:08Z")
> [@Civilrighte](#): > > Anyway, the term “muslim” is slang/colloquium for Pakistanis in the UK, and Africans in mainland Europe. I haven’t been following this closely, but I just wanted to say that this isn’t true for me or anyone I know well enough to have this sort of discussion with. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303/120 "2016-03-02T08:09:48Z")
> [@Civilrighte](#): > > Pakistanis, North Indians and South Indians are three different ethnic groups. “Pakistani” is not an ethic group. Hell, 45% of Pakistanis are Punjabi, many million more are Sindhi. Ethically, they’re no different from the Indian Punjabi or Sindhi [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/media-too-pro-muslim/747303.md?page=7)