More Muslim Marvelousness? Or More Radical Muslim Marvelousness?

[villa]

@Cort

July 2008 what, villa? Got a link?

On May 8, 2008, the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 abolished the common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales, with effect from 8 July 2008.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Oh god, what a shock! *Meven more ***magellan01 **mracism.

[Marley23]

@Starving_Artist

What on earth made you think I was talking only about things said in this thread?

Because I though you might be interested in addressing the subject of the thread instead of using it as an excuse to post your trademark harangue against liberals. Guess not.

We’re certainly in a position to judge. And while we may not be in a position to impose our views upon these countries, we can certainly stop making excuses for what goes on within them.

No one is making excuses. We’re trying to address what happened in Pakistan, and you’re making that more difficult by holding Muslims responsible for terrorist acts that were designed to intimidate them. The idea that Pakistani society is tolerating this is ridiculous; if they tolerated it, AQ and the Taliban wouldn’t be sending messages by murdering people who want to change the law.

The ruling Pakistan Peoples Party, which was founded on secular principles but is now under pressure from religious conservatives, announced recently that it opposed efforts to amend the blasphemy law. But the dismay of Mr. Bhatti’s family, and the angry atmosphere at the funeral in Khush Pur in Punjab, indicated that the small Christian community of about 5 million in Pakistan’s population of 180 million was unlikely to let the matter die.

“We feel that Pakistan is our country, but it seems there is no government in the country, ever, which gave us shade and protected us and fully respected our rights,” said Father Andrew Nisari, one of the Catholic clergy at the burial. “Will we be living in this hostile, harassed and fearful environment forever?”

About 10,000 mostly poor people at the funeral hailed Mr. Bhatti as a local hero and now a martyr.

Granted, this does not come out of a vacuum; AQ and the Taliban are not the only people in Pakistan who support the blasphemy laws. That’s medieval and wrong. But Bhatti wasn’t murdered because Pakistan supports blasphemy laws and that indicates something is wrong with Islam. He was murdered because Muslim fanatics think anyone who favors religious tolerance should be killed.

@Starving_Artist

]So far, so good. Now, to what do you attribute the fact that those things exist almost exclusively within Muslim countries?

I enjoy your use of the word “almost,” which undermines your argument rather than supporting it. And it’s not true that they exist in all Muslim countries, which doesn’t help your theory either.

If it was of a mind to, America could agitate economically and politically for societal change and respect for human rights in these countries.

I look forward to seeing photos from the next demonstration you attend. As far as agitating economically, I thought alternative energy was one of the issues many liberals and conservatives agreed about: develop other sources of energy so the country doesn’t have to buy so much Middle Eastern oil. According to you, I’m wrong - and I think that’s bad news for you, because conservatives have not generally been at the forefront on that issue. Liberals have.

Damn, you’re going to trot that out too, huh? My answer is, “So what?” Christian countries stopped acting like that centuries ago and Islamic countries haven’t. So they’re certainly unique in that regard.

Having established that it’s not unique to Islam and that not all Islamic countries have these kinds of laws, it’s obvious that there are other factors involved. Lumping Turkey and Jordan and Indonesia with Saudi Arabia and Iran, for example, would be ridiculous. One reason is that these countries have been economically stagnant for a long time (relying on oil money, if that), and ruled by corrupt dictatorships. Religion and religious issues

Fair enough. But the point remains that the killing was carried out by a Muslim extremist.

Nobody’s disputed that.

By either of these definitions, life in Islamic countries is a culture.

If you’re implying all Islamic countries have the same culture, you’re simply uninformed.

But every day it seems we get a new version of this radical incident or that radical incident or some other radical incident, and the thing they have in common is that they are all motivated by something within the teachings of Islam.

“It seems” is code for ‘I notice this because it reinforces my preconceived notions about this issue.’ There have been plenty of horrific incidents like this. Misplacing the blame does not help.

Of course they don’t want it. We didn’t want 9/11 either.

Non sequitur.

[elucidator]

Starving, those people are your soul-mates! They hate liberals more than you, they act upon it, they kill liberals, while you just bloviate and pontificate. They don’t waste their time sneering at liberal permissiveness, they* kill *liberal permissiveness. They share your essential character flaw, the unyielding and unbending certainty of being right.

But still, its kinda rude of you to intrude your slant on Mag’s jeremiad. I swear, if the Insect Overlords landed tomorrow and started in wiping out the human species, the last message on this board before the interwebs winked out forever would be you blaming it all on liberal hypocrisy!

"We could have fought back with DDT! But nooooooo…"

[villa]

Oh, and so Magellan can stop soiling himself, I sincerely hope the people responsible for this crime are caught and brought to justice. And, once duly convicted, I hope they receive the penalty due under the law of Pakistan (hoping that isn’t the death penalty, but presuming it is).

[Shot_From_Guns]

Uh-oh! The tea partier ran into the Taliban terrorist and they both dropped some of their most prized possessions! Draw a line from each object back to its rightful owner.

[Starving_Artist]

@elucidator

Starving, those people are your soul-mates! They hate liberals more than you, they act upon it, they kill liberals, while you just bloviate and pontificate. They don’t waste their time sneering at liberal permissiveness, they* kill *liberal permissiveness.

It’s probably true that Muslim extremists are also conservative extremists, but they things they are trying to conserve and things that people like me are trying to conserve are worlds apart. Which, funnily enough, leads to your next comment and my answer…

@elucidator

They share your essential character flaw, the unyielding and unbending certainty of being right.

The difference being: they are wrong and I am right.

@elucidator

But still, its kinda rude of you to intrude your slant on Mag’s jeremiad.

Nah, he’s probably thankful for the respite.

@elucidator

I swear, if the Insect Overlords landed tomorrow and started in wiping out the human species, the last message on this board before the interwebs winked out forever would be you blaming it all on liberal hypocrisy!

"We could have fought back with DDT! But nooooooo…"

And then my liberal brethren, as is their wont, will utterly ignore the fact that everybody on the planet is dying for lack of DDT and brag that they made apples safe.

[tomndebb]

@Starving_Artist

And then my liberal brethren, as is their wont, will utterly ignore the fact that everybody on the planet is dying for lack of DDT and brag that they made apples safe.

And as is your wont, you will make silly claims based on Right wing paranoid fantasies that have already been debunked:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10018292#post10018292

[Starving_Artist]

Sheesh, a person can’t even joke around when you’re in the neighborhood, huh?

I was just playing off of what elucidator said. I don’t think you’ve ever seen me post anything about DDT one way or the other.

[tomndebb]

Sure, you can joke. Of course, if your humor relies on accepting the false claims about Racael Carson and DDT, it may look like an application of Poe’s Law.

[Monty]

Any chance of this thread being moved to The Pit either as a stand-alone thread or joined to the OP’s latest Pit diatribe about Islam thread?

[Starving_Artist]

@tomndebb

Sure, you can joke. Of course, if your humor relies on accepting the false claims about Racael Carson and DDT, it may look like an application of Poe’s Law.

My humor lay in responding to elucidator’s joke. He’s the one who mentioned DDT. I’ve not previously heard of Rachael Carson and I have no idea what her claims are.

You must have built a pretty strong set of legs by now, what with all that conclusion-jumping you’re so prone to.

[tomndebb]

@Starving_Artist

My humor lay in responding to elucidator’s joke. He’s the one who mentioned DDT.

And you repeated the loony claim that a lack of DDT was causing deaths. There is quite a cottage industry of Right wing loons who spend enormous amounts of time making that false claim.

@Starving_Artist

I’ve not previously heard of Rachael Carson and I have no idea what her claims are.

You must have built a pretty strong set of legs by now, what with all that conclusion-jumping you’re so prone to.

The only conclusion to which I jumped was that you were actually sufficiently informed to recognize Rachael Carson in conjunction with the “lack of DDT is killing people” nonsense that you employed in your attempt at humor. (I can pretty well guarantee that Elucidator is familiar with Rachael Carson, Silent Spring, the ecology movement, and the loony claims that “liberals” killed DDT and that millions have died as a result and that his joke was based on that collection of information.)

That you really do not recognize Rachael Carson raises the general perception regarding your ignorance of the 1960s, (or American history), to an entirely new level. ::: shrug :::

[Starving_Artist]

Oh, come off it. Nobody knows everything about the every going on in every era, and all your bluster is nothing more than an excuse for the fact that you were talking out of your ass.

I thought we had called a truce and I’ve tried since to treat you with respect, and yet here you are insulting me for no reason other than that you jumped to an erroneous conclusion about what I was thinking.

Can you say “True colors”?

Yeah, I thought that you could.

[tomndebb]

First personal insult was yours, of course. . .

Ah, well. I’m out of here.

[Starving_Artist]

Leave if you want but I can’t let this stand. At the end of your first post to me in this thread you ended your remarks by saying:

Of course, since you are also willing, even eager, to make those sort of ludicrous claims against “Liberals,” I suppose we should simply consider the source and move on.

You claimed later that you said this “in the context of evaluating the accuracy of an unsupported claim” but it’s an insult nonetheless and I doubt that I’d have been able to get away with making that same remark to another poster in GD whether I considered his comments supported or not.
But I asked you about it and then let it drop.

Then you’re next comment to me, totally unsolicited and in response to a wisecrack I had aimed at elucidator was:

And as is your wont, you will make silly claims based on Right wing paranoid fantasies that have already been debunked:

Now this is an insult too. And worse, it was wrong in the first place because you misunderstood the motivation behind the jibe I made to elucidator which caused you to post it.

And then when I pointed out that you were in error and jumping to conclusions because I’d never heard of the episode you thought I was driving at, you insulted me yet again by calling into question my proficiency in 1960’s history - a proficiency I’ve never claimed, and which has been made up by you and other posters on this board out of whole cloth. To wit:

That you really do not recognize Rachael Carson raises the general perception regarding your ignorance of the 1960s, (or American history), to an entirely new level.

So that’s three unprovoked personal insults in a row from you, all of which I let pass without retort. And yet now you try to play the victim card by accusing me of insulting you first “of course”…which is yet another insult because it implies that I’m usually the first one to hurl personal insults in the first place, which is also untrue.

So we’ve got multiple unprovoked personal insults plus a couple of what might generously be called “fibs” coming from you, and yet you’re the victim and I’m the bad guy. Somehow this does not compute.

[magellan01]

@villa

Even if it is the case, the indication appears strongly this person was killed for supporting the repeal of these laws. These private groups have no power to punish an individual for breaching the law, even if supporting their repeal is considered a breach.

Yes, but it’s not as if some crazed fringe group acted on the basis of some private gripe. Blasphemy laws are part of Pakistani law. These assassins took the law into their own hands. Now, if this happen in England five years ago, one could logically write of the assassination as the act of some crazed militants. But not only does Pakistan have blasphemy laws on the books, they enforce them. And while the courts do sometimes reverse rulings and free people, the important aspect of all this is that these blasphemy laws aren’t just something some radical fringe cares about, most of the country does—radicals, electged officials, police, and the populace. They are all guilty of the despicable, barbaric behavior. A quick chronicle of some lowlights from Wikipedia: (edited to make somewhat shorter)

In November 2010, Asia Bibi was sentenced to death by hanging on a charge of blasphemy

On December 12, 2010, during a press conference major Islamic parties in Pakistan launched a campaign for upholding the sanctity of Muhammad against the proposed amendment in the blasphemy laws.

In July 2010, the Lahore High Court ordered the release of Zaibun Nisa, a woman who was jailed in 1996 on a charge of blasphemy when police were investigating a complaint that a Quran had been defiled.

In July 2010, a trader in Faisalabad complained that one of his employees had been handed a pamphlet which contained disrespectful remarks about Muhammad…While the police were escorting the brothers from a district court, gunmen shot and killed both…According to Mr Hammadi’s statement, published in Daily Jasarat, a Pakistani Urdu daily newspaper, the Muslim cleric said that Muslims cannot tolerate blasphemy against Muhammad…“It is not a cruelty to kill blasphemers, rather blasphemy itself is such an enormous brutality that the one who commits it neither has got a right to live in this world nor is there any pardon for the blasphemer,” Daily Jasarat quoted Mr Hammadi as saying…“Muslims won’t tolerate even a slightest blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. If Shahbaz Bhatti committed blasphemy he would be beheaded.”

On 4 August 2009, a Muslim mob attacked a factory-owner by the name of Najeebullah and others at Sheikhupura in the Punjab. The mob killed Najeebullah and two others, and set fire to the factory. The mob complained that Najeebullah had placed an outdated calendar, which contained verses from the Quran, on a table. For that offense, a worker accused Najeebullah of blasphemy.

On 28 January 2009, the police in Punjab arrested a labourer and four students for blasphemy. All those arrested were Ahmadi. The accusation against them was that they wrote “Prophet Muhammad” on the wall of a toilet in a Sunni mosque. The senior superintendent of police investigated and reported to the Ministry of the Interior at the end of March 2009 that the accusation was baseless.

In May 2008, Punjabi police jailed Robin Sardar, a Christian physician, upon an accusation of blasphemy from a Muslim street-vendor who wanted to install himself in front of Sardar’s clinic.

On 28 October 2007, the police arrested Muhammad Imran of Faisalabad under § 295-B for allegedly setting fire to a Quran. For three days, the police kept Imran in a torture-cell where they tortured him. Then the police sent him to a jail where other inmates attacked him. His jailers put Imran into solitary confinement without attending to his injuries. On 14 April 2009, an Additional Sessions judge released Imran.[30]
On 9 May 2007, Raja Riaz, a servant, accused his master, Walter Fazal Khan Khan, 84, a Christian, of burning a Quran at his house. The police arrested Khan under § 295-B. Kahn’s family and others said Riaz’s accusation was part of a plot to take Khan’s valuable house and land from him.

In April 2007, upon a charge of blasphemy, the police in Toba Tek Singh jailed five Christians: Salamat Masih, his son Rashid, and their relatives Ishfaq, Saba, and Dao Masih. The allegation against the Christians was that they desecrated pieces of paper that bore Muhammad’s name.

Christians and Muslims in Pakistan condemned Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code as blasphemous. On 3 June 2006, Pakistan banned the film. Culture Minister Ghulam Jamal said: “Islam teaches us to respect all the prophets of God Almighty and degradation of any prophet is tantamount to defamation of the rest.”

Two Christians, both elderly men from Faisalabad, Punjab, were acquitted by the Lahore High Court in April 2009. In November 2006, the two had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for allegedly burning pages from the Quran. The allegation arose apparently out of a dispute over land.

In March 2006, the police arrested Shafeeq Lateef for making derogatory remarks about Muhammad and for desecrating a Quran. On 18 June 2008, a District and Sessions court sentenced Lateef to death for his alleged remarks and demanded that he pay a fine of 500,000 rupees for desecrating a Quran.[35] Arshed Masih, 38, is still fighting for his life in Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi, a city not far from Pakistan’s capital. With the help of police, Muslim extremists last Friday set him on fire for refusing to convert to Islam and raped his wife, local sources told AsiaNews.it. The incident occurred in front of a local police station…In 2005, Masih and his wife began working for a wealthy Muslim businessman, he as driver and she as his wife’s maid. Recently, the two fell out of favour with their employer and his family because they insisted on remaining Christian…During the incident, Masih’s wife, Martha, “was raped by police agents,” local sources said. The couple’s three children, ranging in age from 7 and 12, were forced to watch their parents being brutalised. No action taken by the Government.

On 11 August 2005, Judge Arshad Noor Khan of the Anti-Terrorist Court found Younus Shaikh guilty of defiling a copy of the Quran, outraging religious feelings, and propagating religious hatred among society.[36] Shaikh’s conviction occurred because he wrote a book: Shaitan Maulvi (Satanic Cleric). The book said stoning to death (Rajam) as a punishment for adultery was not mentioned in the Quran. The book said also that four historical imams (religious leaders) were Jews.[37] The judge imposed upon Shaikh a fine of 100,000 rupees, and sentenced him to spend his life in jail.[38]

On 20 November 2003, the police arrested Anwar Masih, a day labourer, a Christian, a married father of four (at that time), a resident of Shahdara, a town next to Lahore. The police charged Masih under § 295-B. The charge arose out of an encounter that Masih had with a neighbour who had grown a beard. The neighbor disclosed that he had converted from Christianity to Islam. Masih and the neighbour exchanged harsh words. The neighbour reported to the police that Masih had insulted Muhammad. The Lahore High Court acquitted Masih on 24 December 2004…In August 2005, Masih took a job in a factory. In November 2007, he lost the job when his employer was threatened for employing a “blasphemer.” Masih went into hiding.

In August 2003, the police arrested a Christian, Samuel Masih, for allegedly defiling a mosque by spitting on its wall. While in prison, Masih contracted tuberculosis. The authorities transported him to a hospital. There, on 24 May 2004, a police constable used a hammer to kill Masih. The constable said it was his duty as a Muslim to kill Masih.

In October 2000, Pakistani authorities charged Younus Shaikh, a physician, with blasphemy on account of remarks that students claimed he made during a lecture. The students alleged that, inter alia, Shaikh had said Muhammad’s parents were non-Muslims because they died before Islam existed. A judge ordered that Shaikh pay a fine of 100,000 rupees, and that he be hanged.[42] On 20 November 2003, a court retried the matter and acquitted Shaikh, who fled Pakistan for Europe soon thereafter.

In 2000, a court sentenced Naseem Ghani and Mohammed Shafiq to seven years imprisonment upon allegations that they had burned a Quran.

The police arrested Ayub Masih, a Pakistani Christian bricklayer for blasphemy on 14 October 1996 and jailed him for violation of § 295-C. Muhammad Akram, a Muslim neighbor to Masih, complained to the police that Masih had said Christianity was right, and Masih had recommended that Akram read Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.[8][44]
The same day that Masih was arrested, Muslim villagers forced the entire Christian population of Masih’s village (fourteen families) to leave the village. Masih’s family had applied under a government program that gave housing plots to landless people. Local landlords resented Masih’s application because the landlords had been able to oblige landless Christians to work in the fields in exchange for a place to live. Masih’s application gave him a way out of his subservience to the landlords.[9] Upon Masih’s arrest, the authorities gave Masih’s plot to Akram.[8]…Akram shot and injured Masih in the halls of the Session Court at Sahiwal on 6 November 1997. Four assailants attacked Masih in jail. The authorities took no action against Akram or against the other assailants.[8]

On 20 April 1998, Judge Abdul Khan sentenced Masih to death and levied a fine of 100,000 rupees.

Judge Arif Iqbal Hussain Bhatti was assassinated on 19 October 1997 in his Lahore office after acquitting two people who were accused of blasphemy.[8]
Riaz Ahmad, his son, and two nephews (Basharat Ahmad, Qamar Ahmad and Mushtaq Ahmad), all Ahmadis, were arrested and jailed on 21 November 1993. They were detained for having “said something derogatory.” Local people in Piplan, Mianwali District, said that rivalry over Ahmad’s position as village headman was the real motivation for the complaint against him. The Sessions Court rejected the bail applications of the accused. The Supreme Court granted bail in December 1997.

In February 1993, Anwar Masih, a Christian from Samundri in Punjab, went to jail upon a Muslim shopkeeper’s allegation that, during an argument over money, Masih had insulted Muhammad.

In November 1992, Gul Masih, a Christian, was sentenced to death after having remarked to his neighbor Mohammad Sajjad, a Muslim, he had read “that Mohammed had 11 wives, including a minor.” [47]

So, the insanity of this, including the deaths of blasphemers, can be seen at the hands of the court, the police, and the people themselves. To try to write such barbarism off as the province of some radical fringe does not sync with reality.

[magellan01]

@Marley23

You implied (and I’m guessing it’s by accident, since you seem to understand the article) that he was killed because he violated those laws:

I think the accident resides in your reading of the OP. Which I find puzzling, given the very first sentence: (emphasis added)

It seems that that the sole Christian member of the Pakistan government (Minister for Religious Minorities) was killed by gunmen in Islamibad.

[magellan01]

@Monty

A reminder for magellan01.

This is perfect. You read the thread title, and are aware of the thread title that resides in the Pit, which talks about another barbaric act brought to us by the Muslim world. Yet, you assume that I, the OP of both am unaware of the other thread. Or that they are related.

Hmmm. Only if I had, maybe, made the thread titles so similar as to intentionally flag their being related.

Oh wait, I did just that. But thanks for offering what you could. I can’t tell you how valuable a contribution it is.

[magellan01]

@xtisme

No…he didn’t. He ran afoul of members of AQ and the Taliban. He wasn’t killed due to the laws, he was killed due to some terrorists who decided to do what terrorists do best…kill people who disagree with them in the vain hope of changing their minds by turning them off.

The entire basis for your OP is in error.

The sampling of incidents I cited from Wikipedia suggest not. This barbarism is not relegated to some extreme fringe.