I literally don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Who is “them”, what are they “yelling”, and how have I approved of it.
Actually FOX News’s primetime ratings in the 25-54 demographic have declined for six consecutive months.
Parroting their claims that they correct the mythical liberal bias doesn’t impress me. More to the point, good ratings don’t prove that they’re correct, and it looks as if you’re using that fact to support their positions.
It’s your damned analogy. If you have a problem with it, don’t use it in the future.
“Them” is Newsweek. What they are “yelling” is that their were people mistreating the Koran. Since you were using the argument that you can’t yell fire in a theater without repercussions unless there is actually a fire, I assumed you’d approve of someone yelling fire when there was indeed one. Hence, you approved of Newsweek’s article, since it has now been shown that there was indeed mistreatment of the Koran. If that’s not correct, where does your analogy fall apart?
That article talks about riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan, “protests” in Indonesia and Gaza.
Were there any violent riots over this reported desecration in Albania, Bosnia-Herzogovina, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Cyprus, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Guinea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, Brunei, India, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Chad, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Djibouti, Mayotte, Commoros, Kenya, Malawi, Maldives, Somalia, Liberia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, Benin, Guinea-Bissau, Togo, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Philipines, or any of the other countries I’m missing with with majorities or substantial minorities of Muslims?
If not, why not, do you think?
And what exactly are you basing this on? A solid knowledge of local press in those countries? Which societies are rioting?
Now in the past I’ve put a little effort into digging up counter-cites that debunk the idea that ‘NOTHING’ is ever said by Muslims to condemn terrorist atrocities. You know, things like:
*Najaf-A spokesman for the revered and influential Iraqi cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the kidnapping of an Australian man working in Iraq.
Speaking in the city of Najaf, 160 kilometres south of Baghdad, Adel al Zirgani, one of the cleric’s spokesmen, called the hostage-taking “criminal.” Iraqis on the streets of Najaf also condemned the kidnapping. *
or
The Muslim Scholars Association issued a religious edict or fatwa on 5 September calling on the militant group to release the hostages, Abu Dhabi television reported on the same day. The fatwa came after the group said it would stop kidnapping individuals thought to be working with U.S. forces in Iraq if the Sunni organization ordered it to do so. Salafi leader Sheikh Mahdi al-Sumaydi’i also condemned the journalists’ kidnapping on 5 September, Al-Arabiyah reported the same day. A representative of radical Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also called for the journalists’ release, telling Al-Diyar television on 2 September: “Kidnapping civilians, particularly beheading them and such similar acts, is forbidden and is not part of Islam at all… We call for the release of the two French hostages.”
But one admits to getting tired of doing so repeatedly.
- Tamerlane
This saw cuts both ways, and it doesn’t help by setting up a strawman that Muslims only care about their own.
Someone might point out that you show considerable outrage at the horrible murder of one Italian aidworker, but why didn’t you take to the streets to protest the brutal treatment and apparent murder of an innocent Afghan taxi driver at the hands of US forces? What’s more, why didn’t you mention anything in that post about the hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children who have been murdered in Sudan? Are you only concerned when the victims are white?
So, why are you “tolerating/condoning” the murder of these people? Why aren’t you starting threads condemning these activities?
These are, of course, stupid and offensive questions. I have no reason to believe that you don’t condemn these atrocities, even if your voice does not speak as loudly on those issues as it does on others. Hell, I can’t even post on the SDMB about all the things I think are wrong in the world, let alone take out to the streets for the unjust killing of good people. Why on earth can’t the same can be said for Muslims around the world?
Hey, Magiver!
I trust that old Bottom Line, how bout you? 
BTW–I voted for Reagan. Twice. I also voted for Bush the Elder, once.
A bit of sarcasm is expected in these debates, but it should normally play off something that actually has occurred in the thread.
I really do not want to start discovering odd and irrelevant posts popping up that seem to have no purpose other than to diminish one’s opponent. (And, for heaven’s sake, if you need to employ sarcasm, make it funny.)
As Tamerlane has noted, many of these attacks are condemned by Muslims. It is just easier for Western news outlets to ignore such responses, since that is not the sort of excitable news that sells papers and air-time.
Similarly, where are the Christians in the street or the pulpit who are decrying (or have decried) the massacres by Christians of Muslims that have occurred in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Malawi (to name a few places)? (Not all of these conflicts are based on religion, but they all use religion as a marker for who is considerd the enemy. Similarly, much of the violence comitted by Muslims has more to do with politics and power than with belief.)
As to how “primitive” (some unidentified number of) Muslims may be: how “primitive” are Christians in the U.S. (or how far have we really come since the time when we were rioting in the streets over religion)? In the middle of the nineteenth century, Protestants rioted in Phildelphia, Baltimore, and Louisville (at least) to protest the fact that Catholics asked to be allowed to bring their own Douai-Rheims translation bibles to school alongside the Protestants’ King James Versions. The riots resulted in quite a few deaths and the destruction of a lot of Catholics’ homes. No one defaced a KJV bible; the Catholics simply asked to be allowed to read their own book. In the 1920s, anti-Catholic violence by the Ku Klu klan was carried out on many occasions–a Klan that was sufficiently popular that they openly marched on major holidays in Washington, D.C. and other major cities in the U.S. Have we really “advanced” that much in a few short years? Then we should not assume that the Muslims will not do the same. If we view the anti-Catholic riots and the Klan activities as aberrations in U.S. society, then I suggest we look to the riots over the Qur’an as an abberation, as well.
A riot is a violent public disturbance unless you want to change the meaning for discussion purposes. The article interchanges the words “riot” and “violent protest” when talking about Afghanistan. They have the same meaning. posting a list of countries that didn’t have riots has no real application to the fact that the riots occured. They don’t cancel each other out and I could only speculate on your question.
There appears to be 2 events that started the riots: the rebroadcast of the column, and the disseminated through Mosques for the purposes of creating ill will toward the United States.
Quote:
Worshippers in Pakistan poured on to the streets after prayers, chanting “Death to America”, and burning American flags. In Jakarta, hundreds gathered noisily at a mosque. Thousands marched through the streets of a Palestinian refugee camp in Gaza.
Thousands of Muslims gathered in Pakistan’s main cities yesterday after sermons in mosques denouncing the desecration, and effigies of President Bush and of their leader, President Musharraf, were burnt.
I’m not sure if you’r down playing the effects of the Newsweek article or trying to justify it.
I don’t see any good coming from such articles when we have soldiers in harms way.
Yes, fair enough, though I’m not sure the disturbances in Gaza and Indonesia were listed as “violent protests”, though perhaps they were.
No, of course not. But it brings into question the seeming assumption by the OP that this rioting was a common phenomena throughout the Muslim world. I haven’t seen evidence this was the case - instead indications are that the violence was limited in the main to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first a war-torn and reactionary disaster area, the other its neighbor, also a hot point of extremely conservative Islam ( far more conservative on a societal basis than, say, Iran ) and the area from which decades of guerilla war was waged in both Kashmir and Afghanistan.
Neither. My comments had nothing to do with the Newsweek article at all, actually, except indirectly. Really even my quoting of you was intended more to make a point to the OP than anything else. That point being that “worldwide protests” seem less universal than one might assume from that phrase and that violence was even more localized.
My impression ( perhaps badly mistaken ) was that the OP wasn’t arguing that some folks in Afghanistan and Pakistan have issues, but rather that ALL Muslim societies are barbaric. An opinion I think is unwarranted, based on the case he/she has presented.
- Tamerlane
OK, after rereading the original post, quote: So in short, what is up with this religion that tolerates/condones the murder of civilians yet riots when books are destroyed? I see the umbrella aspect of the question. Maybe it should have been narrowed down a bit. I read into it what I wanted to read.
I see the moderate side of the religion as being to the right of fundamental Christians, particularly in the use of the bully-pulpit. It’s been a historically dangerous thing to inflame them. If I were the Editor of Newsweek I would have killed the story because it served no purpose (at least in the short term). There is an infinite amount of information that can go into a news paper/magazine. Editors create the news by the choices they make. Even as a kid I looked at the national news and asked myself why they chose one story over another.
Statistics are fine things to kick around but you have to look at the total picture and also the current numbers: FNC has more than double the viewership of the 2nd place giant, CNN. CNBC is a mere 6% of FNC.
Primetime: FNC: 1,654,000 / CNN: 725,000 / HLN: 415,000 / MSNBC: 250,000 / CNBC: 98,000 (scratch)
You’re absolutely right, good ratings don’t prove factual accuracy but getting caught with your pants down like CBS, does. Dan Rather isn’t the only news head to weigh into politics. ABC’s Mark Halperin made it plain where he stood regarding the direction of news with his memo’s. If Fox is leaning to the right it’s because there is an audience that recognizes the traditional lean to the left.
I always enjoy the way that Halperin’s call for better and more thorough reporting gets misconstrued (deliberately by some people, with less malice by people who only saw the sound bites and not the entire message) to indicate a desire to tilt left.
What Halperin sought was a break in the tradition of giving exactly equal weight to unequal stories in an attempt to falsely portray “equal time.” He objected to news casts that presented three negative points on candidate A and three negative points of candidate B as if that balanced the report, when (for example) A’s faults included mispronouncing a mayor’s name, while B’s faults included a false allegation against A.
(Fox, by the way, (in the person of Chris Wallace) was one of the organizations that misrepresented Halperin’s memo.)
I agree with the OP. Rioting over religion is the sign of a primitive society. A truly modern, advanced culture only riots over matters of great import. Like soccer games.
If you read down to the summary of his memo his intentions should be apparent:
Quote:
I’m sure many of you have this week felt the stepped up Bush efforts to complain about our coverage. This is all part of their efforts to get away with as much as possible with the stepped up, renewed efforts to win the election by destroying Senator Kerry at least partly through distortions.
It’s up to Kerry to defend himself, of course. But as one of the few news organizations with the skill and strength to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. Now is the time for all of us to step up and do that right.
If this doesn’t sound biased to you then try swapping the words Bush and Kerry and see how it reads. Halperin (ABC’s Political Director) clearly chose sides during the election and proceeded to act on it. I’d say he was a fan of George Orwell because the quote you are working off of is right out of Animal Farm. “All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
[QUOTE]
If this doesn’t sound biased to you then try swapping the words Bush and Kerry and see how it reads.
[QUOTE]
OK… I swapped the names. It still sounds like a call for thorough reporting rather than bias. (It helps, of course, if one is actually aware of when he posted the memo–at the end of several months of deliberate Republican distortions of Kerry’s positions and about two to three weeks before Kerry decided “to heck with it” and joined Rove in the cesspool.)
Now, does he sound happy with the Bush group’s efforts? No. However, he was hardly alone in recognizing that at that point far more slander and libel was being issued by elephants than donkeys and that the RNC had actually begun issuing press releases condemning the various news outlets for pointing out errors in campaign ads.
You got a memo from two months later calling for a smear of President Bush?
I didn’t think so.
Instead, we have Now is the time for all of us to step up and to help voters evaluate what the candidates are saying to serve the public interest. I see no call to make up stuff about Bush or to lie about Kerry. Only a call to get the facts out to the voting public.
By the end of the campaign, Kerry and the DNC were every bit as dirty as Bush and the RNC. This memo was not issued at the end of the campaign.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
[QUOTE]
If this doesn’t sound biased to you then try swapping the words Bush and Kerry and see how it reads.
You are trying to justify Mr. Halperin’s bias (or lack thereof). He clearly stated his intentions to help Kerry by prefacing his name at the beginning of the sentence. His entire view is that Bush is complaining to his news agency and that Kerry is under attack. He stepped over the line and was called on it. If you can’t see it then I don’t know what to say.
You don’t need to say anything. You have already demonstrated that you read the memo through the RNC filters.
This one?
Since the actual memo was in the context of an RNC attack on ABC and he explicitly said that Kerry had to defend himself, you need a particularly biased perspectivce to read that as an effort to “help” Kerry (as opposed to preventing partisan spin).
No,
His entire view is that the RNC is complaining about his news agency in a preemptive attack. He stepped over no line (unless you can find where he called for friendlier stories for Kerry) and was unfairly attacked for it (as part of the RNC disinformation campaign).
In 1997, the University of Arizona won the national college basketball championship. A riot took place on N 4th Avenue, Tucson, AZ.
One woman was riding her bike through the area at the time, and the police gave her an alternate route so that she could avoid the rioter-vs-police activity and get home safely. She took that route–and then police shot her 40 times with “less-than-lethal” pellets and beanbags (the same weapons which killed the lovely young college student in Boston after the Red Sox championship).
Another family was in its front yard on University Blvd near North Fourth. Police, for no apparent reason, commenced firing upon this family with abovementioned “less-than-lethal” weapons. They were indeed less than lethal: nobody was killed, but the family’s youngest daughter has had continuing panic attacks and behavioral problems in the 8 years since then. The family was forced to move away from a nice area of the city, with a lot of personality, out to the sticks because the girl will have traumatic memories associated with Tucson forever.
The city of Tucson has settled several other cases related to the riots, pretty much exclusively involving non-participants who were fired upon spontaneously by police. Cars were burned, homes and businesses were damaged. A happy, wonderful occasion turned into tragedy for hundreds.
In Tucson they talk a lot about that 1997 national championship: the players, the team, the games, the wins. They try to forget about the lives and the property damaged by violent citizens and a police force that was pressed into reactive violence. But some people will never forget.
It’s a good thing we don’t get worked up about the Bible!