amen

I read the thread title and lolled. I don't know what's worse, them islamics or them hispanicans.

assholes that participated in embassy burning: a few hundred
number of people trained by al qaeda: anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 (source)
amount of islamic people in the world: 1.3 billion (source)

must be going pretty fast.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060206/ap_ ... t_drawings

"Muslim rage over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad grew increasingly violent Sunday as thousands of rampaging protesters — undaunted by tear gas and water cannons — torched the Danish mission and ransacked a Christian neighborhood. At least one person reportedly died and about 200 were detained, officials said."




"As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"

- Salman Rushdie

Damnit, I'm agreeing with you again!

I found this interesting rundown of depictions of Muhammad throughout history. Some of it is interesting; some of them are silly.

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/

Fundementalism is a very scary part of every religion. There's even violent fundemental Buddist out there, and it should be a concern. But to deny that fundemental Islam is not more prevelant than the rest is ridiculous. It's not the Muslims fault, but it's still a problem. Also not many governments are as close to fundementalism like the predominantly Muslim nations are. I know some jack-ass is gonna say Bush and the U.S. is but that is a far cry from Iran and Palastine.

ok, i stand corrected, it was a few thousand in the embassy burning. still not anything close to a majority of muslims, in that country or worldwide.

but the idea that no muslims have stood up and denounced suicide bombing and random acts of violence is just plain not true. how many people on this board can read arabic or farsi, or spend our time cruising arab papers' op-ed pages? it just strikes me as kind of snooty that americans expect muslims to denounce these actions in english in the american press--cable news is always going to find bombings and fires more interesting than a cleric denouncing terror. plus, as several other people have pointed out, many countries in that area of the world are brutal dictatorships or have been hijacked by fundamentalists, and lack protection for freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. would you take the fact that there were no editorials in russian papers denouncing stalin's purges as evidence that all russians were wild about such practices? or that all germans were gung ho about the holocaust? assloads of moderate, secular muslims do exist, but just like moderate, secular americans, they get drowned out by an extremist minority.

It's defintely America's fault that the Danish embassies were burned because of cartoons in Europe.

Also you people do realize that Mohammed was a warrior, right?

TRUF.

I seriously doubt that a protest over a video by Madonna is the "original pissed-offness." And are you condemning the practice of boycotting? Surely this is preferable and more effective than the torching of embassies?

Please read this:

http://www.sorrynorwaydenmark.com/

This site was set up by a group of Arab and Muslim youth.

Choice quote:

"When confronted with such a situation, we deplore the use of violence in all its forms, as well as threats of violence and derogatory and racist remarks being thrown in the opposite direction. We condemn the shameful actions carried out by a few Arabs and Muslims around the world that have tarnished our image, and presented us as intolerant and close-minded bigots.



Anyone offended by the content of a publication has a vast choice of democratic and respectful methods of seeking redress. The most obvious are not buying the publication, writing letters to the editor or expressing their opinions in other venues. It is also possible to use one’s free choice in a democracy to conduct a boycott of the publication, and even a boycott of firms dealing with it. Yet an indiscriminate boycott of all the country’s firms is simply uncalled for and counter-productive. We would be allowing the extremists on both sides to prevail, while punishing the government and the whole population for the actions of an unrepresentative irresponsible few.



We apologize whole-heartedly to the people of Norway and Denmark for any offense this sorry episode may have caused, to any European who has been harassed or intimidated, to the staff of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish Embassies in Syria whose workplace has been destroyed and for any distress this whole affair may have caused to anyone."

I don't think you followed what I was getting at. My point was that it's not uncommon for strongly religious figures to overact in response to things that most people outside of their ring of belief find to be trivial or minor offenses.

The denigration of symbols isn't always thought of in the same way by outside observers.

that's largely because we keep killing the nice ones by accident.

But are you saying then that you can read arabic and farsi and know that arabs and muslims alike are outraged by these actions and in their language denounce the violent actions? --if it is not this then this argument is kinda pointless because you dont know any more than your opposition knows in referrence to the language and the "majority of muslims think".-- Or are you just saying that since we can't read/comprehend arabic or farsi that we are just supposed assume that these violent actions that take place on a daily basis are rarities? I agree with you here, it doesn't even matter if the majority of muslims wouldn't act or don't condone these actions. The majority of these muslims you seem to be referring to are not really in charge of anything. It seems that they are oppressed by the violent "few". But, it makes things tough when you have leaders of Islamic nations calling, not for peace, but for the complete annihilation of other countries, or threatening the world on a consistent basis with their nukes(?).

EDIT: What I end up asking myself though is: if these crazy radical fundamentalist muslims are such a minority, how is it that they not only gain power all over the world but remain in power for so long? I hardly think it is just because of a threat that "if you don't do what I say I will torture and kill your family" because it seems that this kind of thing has risen up over and over in history and there is always a group, majority or minority, that will revolt and change things. But, it seems like it's just not happening.

i just dumped out my pepsi

black jesus? fuck that

People should boycott Pepsi for the horrid Brown and Bubbly commerical.

i couldn't believe that either

i sat laughing
because i was thinking
whatever that backup vocal is
sounds just like "brown and bubbly"

then its spelled out on the screen
oh holy shit

sorry 'bout the offtopicness

Brown and bubbly is what my roommate has after eating dairy.

Iran cut trade ties with Denmark and Iraq has cancelled contract work with Denmark companies. I guess it's those few thousand irrational muslims that are hijacking entire countries.

to answer your question, no, i don't speak arabic or farsi. my information is admittedly second hand, but it comes from one of my very best friends, a devout muslim who happens to be related to iraq's oil minister (not a fact he's particularly proud of latley), a man who regularly does read arab papers, and is a living example of a highly intelligent, moderate, nonviolent muslim. and what he's telling me makes lots of sense--that the muslims who commit this kind of violence aren't anywhere close to a majority, and that moderate voices do exist and do denounce actions of violence, especially the killing of innocents (which the koran strictly prohibits)
what i am capable of reading on my own is reports in the american press about these kind of events. and from that, it's not hard to come to the conclusion that when you add up all the people involved in this sort of thing (suicide bombing, killing journalists and aid workers, embassy burning, insurgency, etc.) they don't even begin to come close to being a majority of muslims (i think we're in agreement on that basic point)
i don't think it's necessarily fair to fault all the citizens of arab countries when their leaders stand up and say things like "death to israel" (which is a bit of a hollow threat, it's pretty doubtful that any of these countries are going to attack the only nuclear power in the region that has the full backing of the world's largest military). most of these countries are repressive regimes with no real participation in their government.
i do think there's widespread fear and anger at israel and america, but i also think a lot of that is completely rational and not necessarily motivated out of anti-semetic hatred or radical islam. america has proved that it will unilaterally intervene in the region whenever it feels like it--wouldn't you feel threatened if there was a country much more powerful than america that reserved the right to bomb the shit out of us?

If a majority of these people don't agree with these actions, how do the governments of Iran, Palastine, and Syria have so much support? Obviously there is more than a small minority that support jihad. Nothing is inherently wrong with Muslims, but fundemental Islam is on the rise, and that is a concern. Also this problem predates U.S. involvement.

where do you get the idea that they enjoy so much popular support? i'm not trying to be contrarian here, i just honestly, aside from iran, haven't seen evidence of that (other than the "arabs celebrating in the streets" stock footage that always seems to get played whenever something like this happens). but my gut tells me extremist candidates can garner support through fear, just like in the good old us of a. for instance, i think it's a mistake to think that everybody who voted for bush in 2004 subscribed to his fundamentalist view of christianity. i think many of them (especially independents) thought he could keep us safe from the turrorists.
these arab leaders are speaking tough against the united states and israel, the countries that many people in that part of the world see as the biggest threats to their security. that doesn't mean that everyone who supports them drinks all the kool aid or wants to go on a righteous holy war against the infidels. i just think the "they just hate non-muslims" argument serves to dehumanize muslims, who just like americans are people with complex motivations and interests.
EDIT: and i'm not saying that actions by united states or israel justify burning embassies or killing innocent people, i just think the level of discourse in this country over the motivations of muslims can be in really simplistic, black and white, "us vs. them" terms that are not helpful to solving the problem.

I'm not saying it's black and white. But the reason the old pro-America royalty is gone in these countries is because the Fundementalist have taken hold of the popular support. You have State sponsored Fundemental religion in these countries. I don't think you're really comprehending that. And I'm not saying that America has done everything right. But just for the sake of clarity, Saudi Arabia ASKED the U.S. to get involved with Iraq the first time because they were afraid of other Imperlistic Middle Eastern Nations. So invading Israel isn't much of a stretch if Iran gets nukes.

And Bush is not fundementalist Christianity. If you really believe that than God help us.

here, maybe these will even the score


















we cool?