Oh goody, we’re back to that whole West v Islam thing.
Tell you what, let’s make it Christian v Islam, and I’ll pick both sets of countries. Waddya say? I’m plumping for Turkey, Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia, Morocco and Lebanon. I’ll get tutted at, probably even shouted at, and imagine the police will tell me to cover it up or get lifted.
You get Uganda, CAR, EG, Honduras and Venezuela. Best of luck, and believe me you’re better off not mentioning being gay.
Or alternatively how about a t-shirt saying “Fuck the US of A”, and I pick which American city you’ll wear it in? It’s likely to be in Texas, but I’d have to give it some thought. Hell, if you fancy coming this neck of the woods why not try wearing a “Fuck the pope” t-shirt in certain areas of Glasgow and see how it plays out. My guess is badly, with a closed casket funeral to follow, but you never know your luck.
So, other than showing that it can be dangerous to mock things that people hold dearly, was there some sort of point to this little wager?
True enough - if you walked the streets of Manchester with your “There is no God” sign, nothing much would probably happen. If the sign read “ManU sucks”, however, I would not vouch for your safety. Maybe we have just changed our religions? :rolleyes:
But you are of course right: The countries most of us here are living in are providing us with a freedom of expression that is unparallelled in the world. We get to speak our mind *relatively *unworried about repercussions. Still I find it a bit unfair to single out the Muslim world as having less freedom of opinion. Wear a sign that insults Mother Russia in Moscow, or a sign demanding more democrracy in Beijing or even your “There is no God” sign in Kinshasa and see what happens.
Every country has its far right extremists worse luck but what is happening is ordinary people are starting to shift their opinion to the right. In the U.K. we have the BNP much despised by both the EDL and ordinary people, the swing towards the right will not go as far as the BNP the British are not naturally racist. The left has been caught out as liars and is the main reason that there is so much upheaval in the Labour party.
I have never really understood the equivalency arguments used by you and your fellow Islamist apologists. If something can be found to exist in some small proportion in the west, or even if it DID exist decades or even centuries ago, then Islam is completely immune from criticism. Let’s play that game with other countries shall we?
Nazi Germany gassed and murdered millions on account of their perceived race. But Canada and the US interned thousands of Japanese, many native born, in order to get them inland and away from the Pacific Coast. Complete equivalency! Nobody in Canada or the US may criticise Germany for the Holocaust.
Apartheid in South Africa imposed official racism on millions of blacks for decades. But wait, what’s this? Freedom riders in the US south were beaten by racists while the Kennedy administration did nothing. The two are equivalent. Nobody in the US may criticise Apartheid.
Muslim states do not by generally respect separation of Church (Mosque?) and state. Over 80% of Egyptians told PEW research that Muslims who leave Islam should be killed. But wait! in the province of Ontario, Canada there are publicly funded Roman Catholic schools that are legally allowed to hire only RC teachers even though their salary comes out of public revenues. Totally equivalent.
Anybody else want to play that game? Join in!:D:D:D
And thankfully my dear many of them are. I have never had a dull evening in a Gay bar and two drag queens of my acquaintance are completely over the top both professionally and in real life.
No I am not on the change I am happily in love with my wife and have been for 42 years
The impressive feat here is finding so much fresh straw at this stage of winter.
As an atheist I have precisely fuck all interest in defending Islam. Like any religion, relies on belief in an entity who doesn’t exist, while attacking anyone else who believes in another sky pixie. All the while you have to then follow the rules laid down by those who were his intermediary several centuries ago, which have since been retranslated and re-interpreted several times over. They are all, of course, massive piles of undiluted horse shit. Fuck’em.
But I also have no interest in seeing fucked up situations continue indefinitely, and that is what will happen if we blame the symptom rather than the cause. Ignorant, poor, starving people clutch to stupid belief systems that perpetuate gender imbalance, homophobia and other bigotry. People who have been bombed and invaded by much more powerful countries will seek revenge via assymetric warfare tactics. They will also quite happily try to drum up local support by claiming theirs is a holy cause.
So you’ll excuse me if I take exception to those who like to neatly blame the one factor they can’t be held responsible for. We invaded them, we operate drone strikes, we supply weapons to the region to aid the factions that we think will support us…but nah, fuck it, it’s all down to their religion right? The spread of ultra right wing Wahhabist groups in the region pushing sexism and homophobia? Nothing to do with us propping up the Saudis for all this time, again it’s just down to Islam. Huge inrush of asylum seeks in Europe bringing a tidal wave of entrenched sexism with them, the sheer numbers meaning that any form of social integration is out the window? Well that’s nothing to do with a proxy war in Syria leading to unmanageable situations such as this, again it’s because of religion.
Of course you don’t. It’s so much easier just to blame Islam, after all.
So let’s not think about how a million people in one year seeking asylum in Europe is going to cause huge problems like the above, as people with very backward cultural traits suddenly arrive en masse in a new country. And let’s not consider how most of them have fled countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya and other scenes of western military intervention. No, this sort of thing has nothing whatsoever to do with the shitstorms we’ve been kicking off in North Africa and the Middle East. It’s just Islam, honest.
Anyway, enough for one night, I’m off to play hockey.
I don’t believe we should be making sweeping negative generalisations about either gender, because its tarring everyone in the group with the same brush. We can be a bit more nuanced than that.
Anyway, that’s my last comment on gender issues.
As much as I’m loathe to defend the BBC I found this article quite fair:
I believe it makes a relevant point about why so many people are concerned about what occurred in Cologne and immigration to Europe in general. Why was the German public-service broadcaster ZDF so slow to report what happened? I’ve already mentioned my views on how the BBC covered the story. Apparently though its now stated that the Cologne chief of police was forced to resign not because of supposed failures in response to the event but rather for hiding information related to the background of the attackers.
People don’t appreciate the feeling that the powers that be are hiding things from them or trying to manipulate them into holding a certain opinion.
If unrestricted immigration is the correct policy for Europe then come out and explain to us, the people, why, and especially don’t try to guilt-trip us into accepting it or framing it in positive light while downplaying or hiding the negative aspects. As the final line in the article states:
“It is hard to think of a series of events so likely to feed the narrative of Europe’s anti-establishment and populist parties that an elite is misleading the people.”
(though I’m fairly sure there should be a ‘than’ in that sentence somewhere, but no need to bother with proper proof-reading these days, huh BBC?)
So I am imagining a young Muslim man in Cologne on new year’s eve. All his life he has been told that the hijab and/or the veil are what make a woman pure and virtuous. Modest dress for women is demanded in the Koran. He has been told that a good woman does not dress skimpily, and does not go out without a male escort. Her is told that women who do so are sluts who are easy meat and if they get raped then they asked for it. In much of the Muslim world, rape is not a crime but a punishment.
The young man may be a virgin because, once again, his religion is very sexually repressive. He is horny as a stoat.
He is standing in the public square in Cologne Dec. 31, 2015. He sees attractive young women who do not cover their generally blonde hair. The Koran tells him that Muslims represent good, that infidels will perish. The Koran also says that men are better than women, and Mohammed also told his followers that captives of their right hand (i.e. infidel woman captured in war) can be kept as sex slaves. The role of tempting infidel women has been clearly explained by the Koran and the Hadiths.
The woman he approaches is dancing with another woman, but welcomes him with a smile. She is obviously an available skank.
We know what happens next. So is Islam to blame? Nah, not in the least. It is all the fault of US drone strikes. Do you all see the logic in that?
Sure, The GIA in Algerias civil war. Anything else?
Direct me the Western equivalent of Saudi Arabia who has a fundamentalist Christian view point, enormous Wealth, whose countrymen actively support Christian terrorist organisations.