Sciforums Muslim/Arab Bias

[Mrs.Lucysnow]

And as soon as I see some evidence of that, I'll be happy to sign on to your vision.



And while covering up the problem, no one will have any idea what goes on underneath.

As for Hypes first sentence you have to admire his faith. He is neither a cynic nor a realist but an idealist. We need idealists to some fair degree.

As for Hypes second sentence he is beginning to sound like a 'statesman' and as you well know we all need a well orated statesman. Give him sway to seek higher ground. Maybe it will rub off on the rest off us

Give him the benefit of the doubt at least for his sincerity in the potential for all mankind.

 

[Ja'far at-Tahir]

I'm not sure if you're saying that the Sunni vs. Shia violence was political in nature? If so, then ok---perhaps. I will admit to not knowing the full situation.

They are often due to struggles for political power, control of resources, control over the means of production and capital. Shi'a throughout our history have been the opressed minority, with few exceptions. Even today we represent only around 10% of the overall ummah. Sunnis have been the ones whom have been in power which has lead to perscution of the Shi'i ummah, this evident throughout history and goes all the way back to the dispute between the companions of the Prophet (saw) and ahl al-bayt following the death of the Prophet (saw). While, yes, it does involve religious identity and affiliation and the struggle/conflict between the two parties can/has had religious undertones, it's also apparent that this is vastly more socio-political than religious.

 

[Ja'far at-Tahir]

That picture and many others like it have been posted here for years. Now, it's suddenly a problem you felt compelled to report? What about the insults and name calling you have provided in great amounts? Funny that you are allowed to continue to do so without any problem whatsoever, yet I've been censored to the point where I'm not even allowed to attack an ideology, but you can attack people unabated. Curious that...

The picture, in and of itself, isn't the problem. The problem is that you took the name of one of the holiest months in Islam and twisted it into "ram-a-plane." You're implicitly placing collective blame upon the entire Muslim community for the alleged actions of a select group of individuals, otherwise, why post this on a thread about the observance of Ramadan? Exactly. This is 'hate-speech.' This isn't even a detailed, intelligent or well-thought out critique of Islamic philosophy/ideaology, it's just a childish, bigoted insult.

"Oh noez, he kalled me dumbasses, frowney face."

 

[BenTheMan]

While, yes, it does involve religious identity and affiliation and the struggle/conflict between the two parties can/has had religious undertones, it's also apparent that this is vastly more socio-political than religious.

I guess this just underscores the point that statements like

Despite Jesus being anti-violence in a way that Mohamed never was Christians killed far more people for Christan reasons than Islamic people ever killed for Islamic reasons.

are ill-defined at best, and dishonest at worst. How do you even define ``Christians killing for Christian reasons'', or ``[Muslims] killing for [Muslim] reasons''? And even if you could define it, how could you even hope to quantify it?

To shift back to the OP:

I don't notice an anti-Islam bias on these fora, but I'm not Muslim. I don't notice racism in America, but that might be because I'm white: I would say that if you want to know about racism, you should ask a black dude.

Ok, that's fine---I can accept that it's just something that I can't detect, and can (at best) be aware of.

Since I haven't been following this thread, perhaps this has already been asked: what's the point? What do you want to see happen? What do you hope to accomplish with this thread?

 

[StrawDog]

And as soon as I see some evidence of that, I'll be happy to sign on to your vision.

"The times, they are a changing..." :m:

 

[Ja'far at-Tahir]

Since I haven't been following this thread, perhaps this has already been asked: what's the point? What do you want to see happen? What do you hope to accomplish with this thread?

I would like for the staff to do there jobs. If a member can get banned and have his posts censored for writing 'hate-speech' against the Jews, then it should apply to all groups, including Muslims. There is a difference between a well-thought out critique of Islam, Islamic philosophy, history or culture and blatant 'hate-speech' which has provided justification to kill Muslims by the hundreds and bomb our lands. I want to be treated like everyone else. I don't want blatant 'hate speech' to be tolerated. I don't want to be called a liar because I'm not an orange-beard Wahhabi waving a sword around and don't fit into the Western hegemonic view of what a Muslim "is," and "believes."

You know, I want some god damn respect. :shrug:

 

[IamJoseph]

would it kill you to build some bigger walls?

You tell us? I am sure you have read Hamas' charter and that it will never accept the existence of a 4000 year nation daring to occupy parts of its own land: is Hebron not the birthplace of Judaism?

I think Israel would be overjoyed not to have walls as does Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia - if genocide against the Jews [Oops, I mean the Zionists] was not openly proclaimed as the goal.

Do Muslims really need another 6 KM of more sacred Islamic soil?

 

[IamJoseph]

I'm not an orange-beard Wahhabi waving a sword around and don't fit into the Western hegemonic view of what a Muslim "is," and "believes."

You know, I want some god damn respect. :shrug:

Does that mean the wahhabis, who aligned with the Nazis in W.W.II - is a bad group, and when will the freedom fightin' brave martyrs boot them out? I mean, there are 50 ways to loose a lover, no? Maybe the brave ones are too busy with the Zionists!

 

[Ja'far at-Tahir]

You tell us? I am sure you have read Hamas' charter and that it will never accept the existence of a 4000 year nation daring to occupy parts of its own land: is Hebron not the birthplace of Judaism?

Why would an Islamic organization support the existance of a state that is killing and starving fellow Muslims? A Muslim who doesn't care about other Muslims isn't a Muslim. Zionism is racist imperialism. What Israel is doing is no less horrific and an affront to humanity than what the Nazis did in WWII. No amount of propaganda and apoligetics can hide what the Israeli state truly is. Let's see how history will judge the state of Israel. 60 years is to much.

"One who gets up in the morning and is not concerned about the affairs of other Muslims, is not a Muslim."-Muhammad (saw).

 

[nirakar]

Does that mean the wahhabis, who aligned with the Nazis in W.W.II - is a bad group, and when will the freedom fightin' brave martyrs boot them out? I mean, there are 50 ways to loose a lover, no? Maybe the brave ones are too busy with the Zionists!

Do you really want to live in a cartoon where everything is simple? Does loyalty require that? You might want to find out why some Arabs thought to ally with the Nazis. Hint, Jews are only tangential to the story.

There is an interesting story about how two separate parts of the British empire backed two separate powers against each other in their quest to rule what is now Saudi Arabia. One faction the house of Saud is historically tied to Wahhabism. The losing Sharifians/Hashemites were given Kingships of Jordan and Iraq by the British.

 

[nirakar]

Since I haven't been following this thread, perhaps this has already been asked: what's the point? What do you want to see happen? What do you hope to accomplish with this thread?

For me the OP the story of this thread begins in the World Events forum.

Shadow1 made a thread tittled " Shocking news! islam/middle east!" and his OP was "now that i got your attention, why do you always when you see any threat with a word "islam" in it, you all go running to it?!"

People chose ignore what he was saying and just attack him. But Shadow1 is not a confrontational sort of person so the thread meandered somewhat aimlessly.

Hypewaders locked the thread.

I could see what Shadow1 was saying and he was correct.

The thread was http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=103308

Here are some threads from that forum When shadow 1 made his thread:

Iran "Adultureress" may be executed
Iran TV airs 'confession' from woman facing stoning
Iran digging Mass Graves for US Troops
Iran To Execute 18-Year-Old On False Charge Of Sodomy
Islam and Terrorism

There seems to be no point to these threads other than to say "Muslims bad" or Iran bad". The threads themselves seem like trolling but Shadow1's more meaningful but sardonic thread gets accused of being trolling locked for being pointless.

There used to be a few anti-Muslim thread-spammers who completely dominated the Word Events forum by starting most of the threads with quotes from and links to news stories that made Muslims look bad. I did not like that.

I see a world heading towards a hellish future not because we lack the intelligence to create a wonderful world but rather because we let our normal human chimpanzee-like tribalistic instincts dominate our thinking. Tribalism needs to go because we can't afford it any more unless we are willing to damn billions of future humans to hell.

Nobody is helping Iran or Muslims by acting hateful towards them. But the point of all this anti-Muslim stuff is not to help them. We are just chimpanzees making threatening noises at the neighboring band. There is no more intelligence than that involved here. It is just instinct. I see it for what it really is.

I can't do much about what I know. Basically future humanity will just have to suffer because our animal emotions won't let us use our intelligences to collectively solve the world's logistical soceoeconomic and environmental problems. But I never expected to see the USA elect a black man president. How the hell did that happen. Maybe I underestimate humanity. I think I will continue to waste my time calling out tribalism in it's various forms when I see it here at Sciforums.

I tittled my thread: " Shocking news! Islam/middle east! Part 2" and put it in World events. Hypewaders retitled it and moved it to this forum.

Hypewaders is a decent and fair minded guy and I did not mean to be offensive to Hypewaders when I made a part 2 to a thread that he closed. But as decent and fair minded as Hypewaders is I don't think he sees the Muslim bashing for what it is.

kmguru started a few of the threads which is sort of sad because he is one of the few people that I expect to be able to see below the surface of things.

Iranians needs to fix Iran. If the Muslim bashers wanted to fix Iran I would cut them some slack but I trust my intuition that the bashers don't have a clue what they are doing and are just following their instincts. The Muslims are reading the Wests hostility correctly when they perceive it as hostility rather than as a loving concerned neighbor who wants to help.

 

[StrawDog]

"Fuck Christopher Hitchens."-Ja'far at-Tahir.

Seconded.
(There was a point, long past, at which I though Hitchens had some refreshing intellect on offer. I was wrong. :m

 

[Gustav]

ok then straw
take the hitchens quote apart, sentence by sentence

 

[StrawDog]

ok then straw
take the hitchens quote apart, sentence by sentence

Note that was a general rebuke, not limited to the quote.

Anyone who spews as vacuously as this (inserts mine):

"Don't Forget Why We're in Afghanistan and Iraq" - The needle oscillates, and will continue to do so, but the four requisites are in place: citizens rejecting theocracy and its partner, (no, this is far from clear) organized crime; (no, the drug trade has never been better) an indigenous army that fights for its own reasons; (no, that is paid US$ to fight, and swops sides arbitrarily) American airstrikes that are careful and discriminating; (no, they kill numerous innocent civilians) and the development of splits that can be exploited among the jihadists. (an ancient CIA tactic, which arguably created the present mix) A mixture not unlike this worked in Iraq, (no, Iraq is in tatters) at least to the point where the conflict could be redefined. (lets hear the definition) It is not yet inevitable that a comparable outcome is beyond reach in Afghanistan. (???)

Is a sycophant for militarism and the powers that support such. :m:

 

[spidergoat]

...You're implicitly placing collective blame upon the entire Muslim community for the alleged actions of a select group of individuals,

I think so-called moderate Islam creates the conditions for radical Islam to thrive, it's the gateway drug.

As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practising their freedom of belief. We can’t even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivalled. All we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of scripture imposes on us. It is time we recognised that religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.

Religious moderates imagine that theirs is the path to peace. But this very ideal of tolerance now drives us toward the abyss. Religious violence still plagues our world because our religions are intrinsically hostile to one another. Where they appear otherwise, it is because secular knowledge and secular interests have restrained the most lethal improprieties of faith. If religious war is ever to become unthinkable for us, in the way that slavery and cannibalism seem poised to, it will be a matter of our having dispensed with the dogma of faith.

Moderation in religion has made it taboo even to acknowledge the differences among our religious traditions: to notice, for instance, that Islam is especially hostile to the principles of civil society. There are still places in the Muslim world where people are put to death for imaginary crimes — such as blasphemy — and where the totality of a child’s education consists of his learning to recite from an ancient book of religious fiction. Throughout the Muslim world, women are denied almost every human liberty, except the liberty to breed.

And yet, these same societies are acquiring arsenals of advanced weaponry. In the face of these perils, religious moderates — Christians, Muslims and Jews — remain entranced by their own moderation. They are least able to fathom that when jihadists stare into a video camera and claim to “love death more than the infidels love life”, they are being candid about their state of mind.

But technology has a way of creating fresh moral imperatives. We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the book of Revelation — because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons...

Sam Harris​

 

[quadraphonics]

Is a sycophant for militarism and the powers that support such. :m:

And one that sounded quite a lot like you, back when he was your age. In fact, he still does sound a bit like you, if you remove names and identifying details from his polemics. Which has a lot to do with why he's so widely-read, and ought to give you a bit of pause before writing him off as a shill. He came to his positions late in life, and after considerable thought. He is serious about his principles, and has the courage of his convictions.

In the meantime, well, think what you will about Hitchens. I'll just say that he's almost-uniformly worth reading, no matter how much you may disagree with him. He deserves respect, if not admiration.

Oh, and also that going around slamming a guy who's only a handful of months' worth of excruciating pain away from imminent death is kind of a low tactic. If you really hate him that much, the tasteful thing to do would be to patiently bite your tongue for a little while, after which point you'll never have to worry about him again.

 

[nirakar]

And one that sounded quite a lot like you, back when he was your age. In fact, he still does sound a bit like you, if you remove names and identifying details from his polemics. Which has a lot to do with why he's so widely-read, and ought to give you a bit of pause before writing him off as a shill. He came to his positions late in life, and after considerable thought. He is serious about his principles, and has the courage of his convictions.

In the meantime, well, think what you will about Hitchens. I'll just say that he's almost-uniformly worth reading, no matter how much you may disagree with him. He deserves respect, if not admiration.

I think he is massively overrated by his fans. Something about his style makes me expect great intellect from him. I am still waiting to see the great intellect.

I guess his style is his substance and I should just appreciate him for his style and stop expecting substance. But I am no Hitchens expert. I can't swear the he never wrote anything brilliant.

Oh, and also that going around slamming a guy who's only a handful of months' worth of excruciating pain away from imminent death is kind of a low tactic.

We all die sometime. Are we really not supposed to disrespect sick or old people?

 

[IamJoseph]

Are Zionists a light unto the nations? Such news puts PAID to the Flotilla charade - how dare those bad Zionists refuse to be bombed everyday - only Egypt has that right! I won't hold my breath for 1.5 B Muslims to agree the bad Zionists also have a point here.

Egypt Stops Arab Ship Full of Explosives

Egyptian authorities stopped a ship from Israel, owned by an Arab and loaded with explosives, according to an Egyptian newspaper reports quoted by Chinese news agency Xinhua.


The explosives were inside containers on the ship, but no other details were released, and it is not known if the material was destined for terrorists.

Terrorist activity in Egypt, particularly in the Sinai Peninsula bordering Israel, has been on the increase since the Hamas military coup in Gaza three years ago. Several rockets were fired at Eilat three weeks ago, one of them killing a Jordanian when the missile exploded in a hotel in Aqaba, across the gulf from Eilat.

Last January, 25 Egyptians were arrested on suspicion of planning to ship weapons and explosives to Hamas and to attack Jewish holy sites and American ships in the Suez Canal.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139152

 

[quadraphonics]

I think he is massively overrated by his fans. Something about his style makes me expect great intellect from him. I am still waiting to see the great intellect.

I guess his style is his substance and I should just appreciate him for his style and stop expecting substance. But I am no Hitchens expert. I can't swear the he never wrote anything brilliant.

I hear this sort of stuff said all the time by his detractors - lots of harumphing without any actual analysis, or even attempts to evince some familiarity with his body of work. I get the idea that people feel so betrayed that he left the Marxist camp and was in favor of invading Iraq or destroying religion or whatever that they've just declared him persona non grata, stuck their fingers in their ears, and insisted to themselves that he's a some kind of mindless zealot. Apparently that's easier than aknowledging that intelligent people might well disagree with you, and have good reasons to do so (let alone, actually engaging their ideas in an honest way).

And when I encounter that, I tend to assume that the opiner is totally unfamiliar with his various literary works other than political/religious polemics. He's long been a prolific and highly respected reviewer of high-class literature and biographies, for one thing. So when I encounter people who regard him as some kind of cretinous villain (and these are invariable people with strong personal feelings about atheism and certain political questions), I conclude that this says more about them than Hitchens. The irony being that he doesn't really fit into many ideological boxes, and so has probably at some point penned some polemic that the detractor would whole-heartedly embrace.

We all die sometime. Are we really not supposed to disrespect sick or old people?

We aren't supposed to disrespect anyone. But that goes double for people that you will never have the chance to apologize to.

 

[StrawDog]

And one that sounded quite a lot like you, back when he was your age.

A compliment, I am sure. Regarding age. :m:

In fact, he still does sound a bit like you, if you remove names and identifying details from his polemics. Which has a lot to do with why he's so widely-read, and ought to give you a bit of pause before writing him off as a shill.

There was a time when I did not consider him a shill.

He came to his positions late in life, and after considerable thought. He is serious about his principles, and has the courage of his convictions.

It seems to me, his opinions were/are perhaps paid for.

In the meantime, well, think what you will about Hitchens. I'll just say that he's almost-uniformly worth reading, no matter how much you may disagree with him. He deserves respect, if not admiration.

IMHO, anyone who can, and does somehow find the capacity to justify the war in Afghanistan, is not deserving of admiration or respect. But I do read Vanity Fair and ingest some of his commentary with pleasure.

Oh, and also that going around slamming a guy who's only a handful of months' worth of excruciating pain away from imminent death is kind of a low tactic.

I do not wish Mr Hitchins any pain nor suffering, and I take no pleasure in his condition, rather I sympathize greatly. All this is beside the point.

However, I detect disregard for the mortality and suffering of Afghans, who in no way were or are responsible for the war raging around them?

If you really hate him that much, the tasteful thing to do would be to patiently bite your tongue for a little while, after which point you'll never have to worry about him again.

Notwithstanding your assumptions, there is no person on this planet that I hate, least of all Mr Hitchens. Seconding a profanity in his direction does not equate to hate, but is rather a reflection on some of his views.