One leader’s suppression of rights is another leader’s misogyny. Women are now forced to wear body coverings.
If anything, her experiences in Syria in the 70’s are played out today the world over in places like India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Europe. The mindless violence that explodes over comments made, cartoons drawn or books written is precisely what she experienced in Syria. There is not enough space on this site to list all the attacks made and people killed.
The politically correct thing to say is that most Muslims are not terrorists and end the conversation with a visual inspection of sand. The reality of the world is that there are people who want you dead and they base this on religious doctrine. The violence has a common theme and it’s not Wahabism.
I stopped by the site today and all of the protestors were GONE! All that was left was a cop and two anti-protestors, who told me that they’ve given up and gone back to their gay bashing. Either that, or Bloomberg is having them all rounded up.
I’m going to chime in here - America is FUCKING STUPID (which explains why there’s so much religious crap happening here that doesn’t seem to happen in any other civilized countries). This site, despite being physically less than a mile from the WTC (it’s actually closer to City Hall) has no relation to the site. You would never know that the WTC was 2 blocks away if you walked out the building - even when the towers were standing, the alleyway would block the view of them. Building this site does no harm to anyone except for the retards who think “Muslim = terrorist”, and they shouldn’t even deserve to have a say in the decision.
I also say that as long as one of the streets of the WTC is called Church St, and as long as St John’s and Trinity church are still standing, both within view of the WTC and the same distance as this new prayer center, then nobody should have any right to bitch about any OTHER religions being within proximity. So the terrorists were Muslim, big deal. The acts of 20 people does not deserve to punish the other 2 billion Muslims in the world. The guy who bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building was a card carrying Christian, and I seriously doubt anybody campaigned to stop any new churches being built in Oklahoma.
Newsweek declared Finland the world’s greatest country. The USA was 11. We should probably be lower, for all this stupidity alone.
If by ‘misogyny’ you mean ‘all other political parties,’ sure, but that’s not actually what the word means.
The zealots currently tormenting Iranians are communists? I guess they must be, SAVAK was
The Tudeh being the Tudeh Party of Iran who were communists. You’d do well to read up on the brutality and political repression committed by the Shah and SAVAK before writing further nonsense about them. The Shah never had any problems with screening potential political candidates for religious purity before their names were put on the ballot because there was no ballot for names to be put on.
Well said. And just WHO is it that really wants to keep eroding the constitution and bill of rights??? It’s those who would trash it, piece by piece in order to protect themselves from some bogey man. There’s the real erosion.
I get it, “freedom for me but not for anyone else”. Sell off freedoms a little at a time for the illusion of security. Be a good American by throwing out what it stood for once (or at least used to pay some nice lip service to). I think Franklin said something about that, but I’m too lazy to look it up.
This is still the United States. There is (I HOPE) still freedom of religion, even if it is the religion of the Bogey Man.
The theocrats only came to power because the Shah suppressed Islam, giving the Islamists a lever to get into power. The Czar did not become a good guy because the Bolsheviks turned out to be worse. The Reign of Terror did not magically make Louis XVI into a wonderful king.
If the U.S. had not installed the Shah and supported him as he suppressed Islam, there is no reason to believe that the actual elected government of Iran would have created the same problem.
Of course, the violence is what happens when people opposing Islam create support for the terrorists by portraying all of Islam as evil, thus forcing Muslims to choose between rejecting their religion and embracing the fundamentalists–much as the opponents of the community center are currently doing.
It is also not Islam. It very much is Wahabbism and a few like minded sects. If it had actually been Islam, then we would have been subjected to similar attacks throughout the entire Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The fact that the violence did not erupt until the end of the Twentieth Century, and then only among regions where there was other political violence, is a pretty strong indication that it is the result of political situations that have encouraged the Islamists, not any inherent aspectof Islam. The subsequent spread of the violence is an indication that the post Cold War world has unresolved issues remaining from the breakup of colonial powers, not an indication that Islam is inherently violent. Every location where “Islam” is perceived to be violent is a location where there has been post-colonial upheavals, (and all the places where there is post-colonial violence without Muslim participation are conveniently hand-waved away as being “different”).
Do you really think the people that planned and executed 9/11 are pissed because of cartoons? Or do you think they might be the Muslims that are pissed because of our meddling in their countries?
I really doubt these guys give two shits about cartoons. The people that fucked up my country and blew up parts of Spain, England, Iraq and Turkey for 10+ years are extremely selective about what pisses them off and that is what the Imam was speaking to.
Putting the cartoon freaks and Al Qaeda in the same basket is as stupid as confusing the Western freedom loving Muslims who want to build this Mosque with the kind of scum that performed the Fort Hood shootings.
The Imam makes a valid point. Although I don’t agree with him it doesn’t make him a member of Al Qaedahamashezbollah.
IIRC the UK supported the Shah as well, and together with the US kicked out the elder Shah, an installed the younger. There were previous father-son transitions characterized as coup, and back and forth control between political and religious groups, including foreign rule. I think Iranians would see the changes in rulers through history to be as regular as the US presidential elections. The Iranians I’ve known seem to have an independent concept of Iranian culture that isn’t tied to the roi du jour. So I think you’ve made an appropriate simplification in that context. The people tied to factions desiring power tend to characterize it differently.
Yes, it does. You keep talking as if Islam was a monolithic religion, instead of the fragmented one it is. You might as well well be panicking over the Quakers next door blowing you up like an IRA terrorist. Or Gandhi strangling you in the name of Kali.
Which has nothing to do with anything posted. The Bolsheviks were not elected. Robespierre and his buddies were not elected. Sometimes the bad guys win, but that hardly changes the fact that a revolution was sparked by the actions of an evil power–in the case of Iran, a repressive monarch/despot who, among his other actions, oppressed Muslims while being openly supported by the U.S.
And another meaningless non sequitur.
As a matter of fact, it does, regardless of the views of those who want to pretend that Islam is wholly, universally, uniquely violent, despite several centuries of contrary evidence that it is not inherently violent.
Well, if not them, there are plenty who were. My point is that it doesn’t matter - whatever valid grievances there might be are mingled freely with a great many stupid grievances.
I’m looking forward to controlled fusion, frankly, because then the Americans can afford to ignore the region entirely (apparently what the Al-Qaidans wanted) and Saudi Arabia can be crushed by whatever ambitious Muslim neighbor feels likes it, and nobody will give a damn.
Well, I guess until all their self-inflicted internal strife proves embarrassing and they need to blame somebody, anybody, for their problems. They’ll attack Israel, who will destroy them and set up puppet governments throughout the middle east, with mandatory education for women…
…well, one can dream.
That looks pretty much like hand-waving away non-Muslim violence as “different.” The violence in both (Buddhist) Burma and (Buddhist and Hindu) Sri Lanka can be traced back to colonial and post-colonial disruption of society.
