Is one of the qualifications for this year’s Miss World the ability to outrun an angry crowd of Muslims?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20021121/wl_nm/religion_nigeria_missworld_dc_6
I bet the person who picked Nigeria as this year’s host site will be given the old heave-ho pretty soon.
-DavidCPA
As I understand it, Nigeria got the job when Ms. Nigeria won Ms. World last year.
But that’s now moot, as over 100+ dead has forced the organizers to move the show to London.
But, oh boy. Talk about a fuckup of epic proportions. Someone should have figured that maybe holding a Western contest that features scantily clad women in a half-Muslim country that’s already had a major history of deadly religious strife with the other-half-of-the-country-that-is-Chirstian might not be such a good idea. Only thing I could think potentially more offensive is if they had the swimsuit compeition in Mecca itself. Oy.
Apparently, the newspaper that started the entire fracas by publishing that the Prophet himself would have chosen a Ms. World candidate for his wife is now blaming it a computer error. Apparently, the computer sent the wrong text to get printed. Yeah, right. But it figures. Somehow, someone was gonna blame MS for this.
Yes, of course. The computers just decided to make up an offensive religious statement out of the blue. Silly me, can’t be human error.
And of course, you can never blame the fundamentalist Islamic zealots whose first step of protest is to participate in the wanton slaughter of innocents and the destruction of homes and businesses.
Seriously, is there something in their version of Islam that prevents fundamentalists from protesting peacefully?
Since when is the first reaction to a perceived slight murder and destruction? Apparently, only when fundamentalist Muslims are perceiving the slight.
Honestly, after reading about the Miss World debacle, the recent Palestinian suicide-bombing on a commuter bus that killed several children as well as adults (which was in response to Israeli killings of murderers in response to the murder of Israeli settlers), and the cheering and hero-treatment of the executed CIA murderer by Pakistanis, I’m seriously questioning my ability to stay unprejudiced towards Islamic nations. What is it about fundamentalist Islamic belief that seems to encourage violence as a response to any conflict and makes heroes out of the murderers of innocents?
Is fundamentalist Islam simply irrevocably, diametrically opposed to the rest of modern society and civilization?
In a word, yes.
I’d agree as well. I believe that the hatred towards America and the west exhibited by Islamic fundementalists is not so much about US foreign policy, as most bleeding hearts will have you believe, as it is disgust for what they percieve as a morally bankrupt society. Freedom of speech, and the lack of censorship therein, sexual freedom and the non-opressed status of women, and of course freedom of religion and tolerance for all faiths, these are all things we have in spades, and broadcast around the world. The fundementalist power structures that exist in many primarily Muslim countries are violently opposed to those kinds of freedom spreading to their cultures. It’s about keeping women down and perpetuating the status quo. US forces stationed in holy lands, past US support for corrupt regimes, these types of things are excuses and propaganda, not the reason for the hatred. It’s hard for me to remain tolerant, and American ideal, when there is no reciprocation.
Certainly there are contributing socioeconomic factors, namely poverty, but again this is something that religious leaders inciting violence does nothing to solve. A post war Iraq would likely be better off economically than any other nation in the region.
Is fundamentalist Islam simply irrevocably, diametrically opposed to the rest of modern society and civilization?
Unlike it’s brothers Judaism and Christianity, Islam never went through an era of getting its ass kicked by secular empires. To put it simply, it was never beaten into submission, so it never had to learn to get along with the rest of the world.
-Tom
"Unlike it’s brothers Judaism and Christianity, Islam never went through an era of getting its ass kicked by secular empires. "
BZZZT. Game over.
I suppose Genghis Kahn never conquered shit?
Cpt. Kirk: KHAAAAAAAAANNN!!!
I suppose Genghis Kahn never conquered shit?
How far west did he make it? I admit I don’t know, did he get down as far as the Holy Land? The Euphrates? Egypt? Or are we just talking the parts of the USSR which have names ending in -stan now?
I suppose Genghis Kahn never conquered shit
Genghis Khan never presided over the Islamic world the way the Greeks and Romans presided over Christianity and Judaism. Both earlier monotheisms were forced to adapt to a hostile secular world. They learned the art of co-existence.
-Tom
The Mongol Empire stopped their expanse in the Hungary/Poland area, I believe. Largest empire that ever existed.
Tom’s right. Islam has never undergone any type of reformation movement. It has never embraced secularism, which is one of the West’s major advantages. It’s treatment of women effectively nullifies half of its population’s talents. It’s major grudge against the world because most of its inhabitants live in shitty, backward countries ruled with iron fists by despots and tyrants. And to deflect their population’s anger, those leaders, through their state-owned news agencies, highlight every wrong that Israel and the United States have ever done, and never highlight their own faults or give the US any credit for stuff it does right. After all, it’s easier to blame the Jews and their American defenders for all their problems, even if the folks complaining live thousands of miles away from the Middle East.
Going to have to disagree with you on this one, Tom. As a matter of fact, I think you’ve got it exactly backwards. The Greeks to some extent and the Romans to a great extent were polytheists who were happy to bring more gods into the pantheon. That’s why the Romans stole the Greek gods almost wholesale. There is even evidence of Egyptian deities making their way into the everyday beliefs of most Romans.
The Jews and the Christians, on the other hand, were monotheists who weren’t so openminded about this whole polytheism business. The early Christians in particular were not willing to recognize any other God by YHWY and his boy, JC. Those early Christian boys, as my professor would like to say, just didn’t get along to go along.
So when the first Reich came along with Charlemagne, he established a single, Christian empire. It was the Christian empire the kicked the ass of those secular barbarians and their poor table manners. And that empire stood for about 1,200 years, well through the crusades until the reformation and the wars of religious intolerance that racked Europe for 400 years eventually led to a political system built on individual rights, restrained government, private property, and a growing seperate of church from state.
The West has already suffered through its growing pains of religious intolerance and the force that did it was Christian religion, divided, turning on itself, not the influence of some secular conqueror. The Islamic fundamentalists haven’t learned the hopelessness of intolerance yet, and I’m afraid we may be forced to teach it to them.
Islam cannot be reformed, as the Koran contains God’s exact words. It must be read in its original Arabic, as anything else is a human translation of God’s word.
The only half-decent country with an islamic majority is Turkey. That’s because the Turks are brainwashed with secular nationalism instead of religion.
It’s not really about religion. It’s the mob psychology of poor people rallying together to fight a perceived injustice against their class. We get the same thing here with our “kill the white man” race riots. Europeans have to deal with their football hooligans.
If by modern society, you mean a society made up of people just like me, then, yes. Not just fundamentalist muslims, but fundamentalist baptists, hassidic jews, jesuits, mormons, etc, etc, etc.
Why’d Constantinople get the works? That’s nobody’s business but the Turks.
We would all be much, much better people, and a lot more lighthearted, if only we all had a bit of Sparky in us.
We’d also be better at quoting random 80’s song-lyrics which capture the moment, too.
TMBG nerd to the rescue!
That album was released in January of 1990, plus that song is actually a cover of a 1950s song by The Four Lads. It went to #10 on Billboard in 1953.
And we all know just how impovershed some of those poor Arabic oil baronies are.