Should we be working harder to educate the Muslim world about free speech?

Great Debates
101

Again, to a significant extent this is already happening. Plenty of drone strikes have either killed the wrong people or killed some suspected terrorists and some innocents. There are probably some situations where drone strikes are not authorized because of the risk of hurting innocent people, but in general that possibility is not preventing heavy use of drone strikes.

I think made up numbers are a poor basis for an argument, and the drone attacks are rarely done in response to attacks. If the U.S. believes it has solid information about where a terrorist is, he gets targeted.

Given your lack of interest in what’s happening in the Middle East, your conclusion that most Libyans are “guilty” (or what, not liking America enough?) is worthless.

This idea is totally useless and silly on every level.

102

Oh, my apologies. You merely suggested a partial rewrite - basically just a minor bit of editing - to the Koran. That’s perfectly reasonable and i’m sure there would be zero people at all offended or incensed by the idea.

[QUOTE=Rune]
We don’t have to convince them of anything since what they believe in is only of secondary concern; it is how they behave that is the issue. So if they were confronted on a daily basis with things that is a challenge to their beliefs then supposedly eventually they’d get used to it and don’t go into retard mode over some random stuff they dig up on the bottom of the Internet. But in any case the Internet is full of stuff that is a much worse affront to Islam than this movie or the previous cartoons, so I’m not sure it works that way. It’s more like they want a nice riot and then they go find some random thing to riot about.
[/QUOTE]
I’m not entirely convinced. I think, simply, access to information, especially on an individual level, is a good idea - the other part is that people would have to know that such information was avaliable to look for, but that’s a secondary issue - rather than, as seems to be the case here, certain people deliberately selecting which things to show in order to stir up a reaction. Information arrived at by yourself is always going to be much more convincing than anything else, especially when one of those elses is from people you might already mistrust. IOW, what you said, except less “bombardment with things they dislike” and more “access to context”.

103

Based on your argument Martin Luther King Jr should have known his place and kept his mouth shut so as not to offend others and avoid unnecessary bloodshed. And his namesake shouldn’t have nailed his manifesto to the door of a church.

I’ll keep repeating this until it sinks in, we didn’t thrust this movie upon anyone. It was on the internet along with an unlimited number of other things that are insulting to Muslims. The Muslims who are most vocal about their objections live in Islamic nations based on Sharia Law where other religions are sitting in the back of the bus.

104

“Keeping one’s mouth shut” is not the same thing as “not insulting people”. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t base his activism on spewing pig-ignorant offensive lies about the despicable contemptible antecedents of white people. Nor did Martin Luther’s 95 theses consist of hurling scurrilous insults at Church officials.

I’m certainly not arguing that pig-ignorant offensive lies about Muslims should be suppressed or shouldn’t fall into the category of protected speech, or that violent reactions to them should be condoned in any way.

But Revenant Threshold’s point is spot-on that insulting people with pig-ignorant offensive lies about them just increases acrimony, doesn’t change anybody’s mind, and isn’t necessary for meaningful exchange of opinions.

105

A great idea! And when more planes fly into buildings in the meantime? And all Americans everywhere brought home to avoid making them targets in the meantime, which seems somewhat problematic.

As for drone strikes, what’s the saying? You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs. If we send out ten drones to take out 10 known terrorists (as in, people we KNOW to be engaged in terrorist activities) and 9 of them do their job, then the 10th kills folks at a wedding, then that is regrettable and we should improve our technology and training, but not stop drone strikes.

106

How would you implement this strategy, pray tell?

  1. If it is on a purely voluntary basis, there will always be a few people who will refuse to play along, and as you can see, all it takes is one crappy movie by a handful of people on a shoestring budget to set off the Islamists.

  2. If the strategy of not offending Islam is legally sanctioned, what you will in fact be doing is giving in to Muslim demands for world-wide blasphemy laws and consorship of religious criticism. Then you will have sent the Islamist baboons a message that violence works, and will encourage them to believe that their Sharia values are indeed meant to be universally applied. The abject surrender of our western freedom to Islmaist violence will make the Islamist troglodytes heroes in the Muslim world.

Smart strategy that!

107

Fortify American embassies in Middle Eastern countries, expel foreign security guards and hire only highly trained American security specialists. Ignore the handful of baboons rioting in the Muslim world, they are being given too much attention and if you surrender an inch to a mob of angry Islamists they will try to take an entire dar al Harb.

108

Unless I have missed it somewhere in this thread, nobody seems to have used the “A” word that is at the centre of this entire controversy: appeasement.

Basically, every suggestion that we in the west rein in our freedom of expression to avoid provoking the rabid dogs of Islamism is nothing more nor less than appeasement. Every time we give in, there will be a new demand. Churchill knew it when he saw it in the 1930s. He saw the Nazis for what they were and he knew where appeasement leads. He called it a “slippery slope”.

Interestingly enough, during the 1930s, people like Churchill were condemned as Germanophobic old cranks out of touch with reality while the apostles of appeasement were seen as modern men of peace and reasonableness.

There are right now ongoing demands at the UN, mainly from Muslim countries with some support from some non-Mulsim states they have bought off, for some kind of world-wide system of suppression against expressions of opinion deemed to be offensive to Islam or to religions in general.

What would happen to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the brave and beautiful woman who is an apostate from Islam and from Muslim misogyny, who now lives with 24-7 protection, even though she lives in the west?

When this wom,an speaks at university campuses in the the west, she already faces demands for censorship and exclusions from Muslim Student Associations.

If we give in to Islamist violence now, even if it is to defend a truly ridiculous and crappy movie like the “Innocence of Muslims”, how long will it be before we agree to surpress people like Hirsi Ali to avoid violence?

Appeasement never satisfies the Islamist. It simply confirms that he is ready for the next demand and the next step towards the ultimate mandate given to Mohammed by Allah, namely, to fight until all the world is under Islam.

109

Call leading mullahs of all Islamic nations to the UN for an International debate on quran in an effort led by say Japan, don’t tell them that you intend to edit/secularize it. Ask them what’s the difference between teachings of Jesus, Buddh etc and those of Muhammad. Obviously they won’t be able to tell any because there isn’t any. Then propose to add those couple of sentences and convince them what enormous difference will it make to world peace, then seek concensus.

110

Perhaps posters were hoping to be able to discuss the issue at hand without Godwinizing the thread and suggesting their opponents wouldn’t stand up to genocide.

The ones you’re hoping to reach are the ones who wouldn’t participate. I’m sure your heart is in the right place, but this fails on every single level. Sorry. Religious leaders don’t compromise their authority this way, and proposing changes to the Quran is very blasphemous. Even liberal Muslims would agree on that. Christian leaders wouldn’t let someone else rewrite the Bible, Jews wouldn’t let you rewrite the Torah, and Muslims wouldn’t approve rewriting the Quran.

There are enormous differences between all three. Buddha and Jesus didn’t mention Muhammad, you know. There’s that.

Except there are lots. Or are you proposing that if you gave them an altered version of the Quran, they wouldn’t notice- like in the Folgers crystals commercial?

111

Saying that the teachings of Buddha and Mohammed are the same is a statement so unbelievebaly, incredibly bat-shit crazy that I will not even START to try to disprove it because I could be writing into next week.

If you think all religions preach identical values, you are just unbelievably misinformed.

112

To start with you don’t know the movie is pig-ignorant lies. This has not been established. It’s blasphemous to Islam but then about everything is.

And again, I point out that it was not spewed on anybody. It’s mere existence is in question. You’re essentially concerning yourself with the thought police.

113

Not to derail the thread, but, wouldn’t it be a good idea to first list what exactly did US do in Middle East to promote democracy.

You know, like a catalog — for, say, last 20 years — a catalog of concrete actions publicly available that one can take a look at and say, darn it, you really tried and those b@stards would not take it.

The action, of course, whose motivations and outcomes can sustain an independent scrutiny.

To make it feasible I’m interested in actually JUST ONE.

Please…

114

thid

We know that Jesus, Buddh and Muhammad were enlightened souls, that is they had realized their true selves. We know that all such noble men preach the same thing to all which is that God/Allah resides within each one of us, that we must lose our egos to realize our true self and that weare the same as God. I am sure each religion say this same thing in essance, try n take this line f arguement. I think we will have a reasonable chance to succeed. What do you say?

115

Not to derail your thread derailment but feel free to start your own thread.

116

Sorry, I should have specified that the movie trailer is pig-ignorant lies. It seems reasonable to conclude that the movie as a whole, if it exists as a whole, is unlikely to be any better, but that is not yet proven.

No, the thought police are the ones who advocate punishing or suppressing offensive speech. I don’t think anybody here is suggesting any such thing.

Criticizing offensive speech, however, and explaining why it’s offensive, are perfectly fine in a free society.

117

Not even close. Islamic scripture does speak highly of Jesus but I don’t think Buddha’s teachings are compatible with Islam in general.

No, you don’t. You’re not explaining the details of your conference, but regardless, you can’t edit the Quran.

Parts of it might be. I don’t know that every bit of it is.

118

Not that I want to encourage truthseeker2’s well-meaning but misguided efforts at extreme ecumenism here, but there’s more connection between Buddhism and Islam than you might think.

Sufi philosophy is significantly influenced by Central Asian and South Asian Buddhist traditions, although you’re quite right that classical Sunni and Shi`a traditions, especially in the extreme Salafi/Deobandi forms, are not easily reconcilable with Buddhist thought.

119

I understand that. But of course hardline Sunnis and Shia would consider them to be unbearable infidels or apostates.

120

you know, I live in India and here I get to listen to spiritual gurus of Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sufism(Islamic) in local language. Having listened to them, one can notice all of them preach the same thing, the things that I wrote in last post.
So that is for sure the commonality and ultimate objective of all religions. This is why I thought if this could be reflected in their religious book, it could bring world peace.
Maybe its not possible, But worth a try imo.:slight_smile: