06-12-2017, 02:40 PM
(06-12-2017, 11:21 AM)Dill Wrote: Your selective outrage certainly could go on for days. And that is part of my point.
It's not selective at all, as michaelsean points out and I'll go into more detail in a bit.
Quote:I am not "discounting" your logic; I am pointing out the structural features it shares with all ideologies which target ethnic, religious and racial groups for hate. Because your target is different from some Islamists does not make your denigration of a world religion structurally different from theirs.
This point is inane, you are not equating me with anything, you are labeling me a racist. Your comparison is as absurd as comparing someone who wants a strong national defense to the nazis because they wanted the same thing.
Quote:We are all "labeling" one another. The question is whether and/or how the labels are constructed and applied selectively.
No, the question is whether the "labels" are accurate.
Quote:"Chopping peoples heads off, mass rape, horrific executions, genital mutilation, attempted elimination of entire cultures"--all these practices hardly distinguish Western or "christian" culture from Islamic in any definitive way, even if your favorite qualifier "today" is added. Only in the selective reading of groupthink do these practices always become what "They" do and never what we do.
I can only imagine the pretzel you had to twist yourself into to make this "point". The kind of behavior I described occurs in only one "section" of the world. Deny all you want, but attitudes and behaviors in muslim majority countries are often times completely at odds with western values and basic human rights.
Quote:And as I write this there are other forums around the world where some Muslims attempt to dissuade other Muslims from denigrating all Christians because of mass rape, executions etc,--unfortunately with about the same rate of success I have in this forum.
Good, they should be. At the same time they should be pointing out the behaviors that underlie the extreme ones.
(06-12-2017, 11:37 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Why do you think he selects Muslims? Remember he doesn't like any mono-theistic religion, but he is really going after one right now. There are only a couple of reasons he would do this. What do you believe his reasons to be?
He's going to give you a non-answer but we both know the truth. One monotheism is an especially egregious defender at this point in time. If we lived in the 1850's and had an internet I'd surely be railing against the Catholic church, as I will demonstrate below.
(06-12-2017, 12:30 PM)Dill Wrote: The US is in conflict with a number of Muslim groups at the moment, not Buddhist or Hindu. One consequence of this is attacks on Americans and American interests at home and abroad. Hence SSF targets Islam, not other religions.
Nope, not even close.
Quote:This conflict does not produce the same reaction in all Americans, though. Only some have a predisposition to render it in black and white, Us vs Them terms. Only some use the actions of a few to negatively characterize the whole, just as Americans in the past targeted Jews or Indians or blacks or socialists.
Again, nope. I don't labor under a cloud of liberal white guilt, hence I am able to call things out as they exist. I don't have to bend over backwards to prove just how "woke" I am, or sensitive to the plight of others, because I have facts on my side. No outrages committed by people in the past who share similar genetics to me is going to change that.
Quote:Those Americans then select fragments of news and history and religious tradition to construct a monolithic enemy which threatens "who we are" as a people. Hate sites and hate books hoping to explain the conflict in ways that further intensify it then produce the kind of groupthink we see on the internet today regarding Islam. SSF participates in this. He can refer you to books and websites which "explain" Islam in this manner. And he has not been trying to examine this conflict from any other standpoint. Until very recently, he was wholly unaware of efforts by Muslims to mitigate and bridge the conflict he seeks to exacerbate. He has not sought familiarity with scholarship on the Middle East to balance his views and get a better understanding of the conflict as a whole. That why his views on Islam are so limited and partisan.
How would you account for SSF's behavior? What reasons for it have you identified?
Easily summed up, I am an educated adult familiar with logic and common sense. I am also not burdened by the need to atone for the actions of people before me. Actions that I took no part in and would have opposed if I had existed then. Your friend GMDino is so paralyzed by this fear he can't even provide an honest answer as to why people won't publicly display a depiction of Mohammed.
I'll show you how the logic and common sense, coupled with education, works while debating this topic.
You accuse me of having a special fixation on islam, which would be partially correct, however the reason you give, and try and label me with, racism, could not be less true. Putting aside for a moment that the term racism is improperly used in this context as islam is a religion and not an ethnicity I will now demonstrate how, as michaelsean pointed out, my issue is with religion in general. Islam is merely the most egregious offender, by far, at the present time.
Here are a list of horrific actions(crimes) committed either directly by the catholic church or enabled by the teachings of chrisitanity in general.
-The Crusades, the most horrific one being the "Children's Crusade" a crime so cynical and callous that I strongly recommend to anyone not familiar with it to read up on it.
- The subjugation of women
- The African slave trade
- The subjugation, enslavement and in some cases genocide of the native population of the American continents
- By collectively accusing the jewish people of the crime of deicide they promoted and enabled the persecution of jews, leading up to and enabling the Holocaust.
- The persecution, torture and murder of homosexuals
- The rape of children under the care of the catholic church
- Currently, aiding the spread of HIV throughout the African continent by not only forbidding the use of condoms, but spreading the deliberate lie that using condoms actually increases the spread of AIDS
You'll notice that the list, while hardly exhaustive, only lists two points that are ongoing. The question then becomes why the other behaviors listed no longer occur? Was it because catholicism and christianity mellowed out and acknowledged their historical errors? The answer is absolutely not, at least not in that way. Christianity "mellowed out" because Western society forced them to. Education and enlightenment led to a secular society, (secular being key here) in which the excesses of monotheism, in this case christianity, were both no longer tolerated but forceably curbed. This was no mean struggle, christianity bitterly fought to hold on to every ounce of temporal power they once held. It was also not a quick victory, it took over a thousand years. All that being fact, when I say islam is incompatible with Western values I draw a direct parallel to islam of today (as you keep harping on my stressing the present) to chrisitianity of the Dark Ages.
Given this hard fought and dearly purchased victory over the forces of religious autocracy and theocratic dogma we would be fools, all of us, if we didn't actively point out and resist any attempt to move us back in that direction. This should be done no matter what the religion or the melanin content of the majority of that religion's adherents (since you seem to like to make this a racial issue). Secularism has made possible all the recent (in human history terms) advancements that the west has achieved. I am not prepared to surrender a single inch of ground to any force who would take that away no matter whose feelings get hurt in the process.
I hope I've made my stance on this issue clear. If not please feel free to simply call me a racist again.
