nb Mohammadans: Texas is not France.
Security guard punching down :(
Attributing the actions of two people to the 1.57 billion members of the Islamic religion is good, and reasonable, and an indication of strong critical thinking skills
Well, Texas. We do have a lot of guns here. I mean even i have a lot of guns, jesus. That’s cool they were holding an exhibit, have to give them props for that.
Although, the content of the exhibit is unknown to me, so perhaps it sucked and i suck for supporting it.
Good point. This is the first time islamists have ever tried to kill people for offending the faith. Oh wait, its not. But surely every other major religion today has the same problem where random fanatics kill people for parodying their faiths. Oh wait, they dont.
Olaf, I’m extremely uncomfortable with you using this forum as a platform for your bigotry. Either put a lid on it or I’m going to close your account.
-Tom
The Friendship State strikes again!
(no it’s not the first time)
Ouch man. I PMed you. I don’t consider myself a bigot and I do not think that calling out violence committed in the name of islam, with a sarcastic thread title, to be bigotry. I have been an active participant at QT3 for over a decade and the vast majority of my posts are outside of P&R. I explained in my PM but I am bothered that a dissenting opinion from the majority here is labeled as bigotry. And again, most of my posts are outside of P&R, in no way do I use the QT3 forums as a ‘platform’ for anything.
One of the hallmarks of bigotry is that the bigot doesn’t acknowledge it as bigotry.
Look, olaf, although I don’t participate in P&R, I follow it. And as much as I appreciate your participation on this forum, much of your participation in P&R is the exact equivalent of anti-Semitism. And just as I wouldn’t tolerate repeated anti-Semitic comments, I won’t tolerate the same towards another religion. You are welcome to believe what you want to believe, and you’re even welcome to tell yourself it isn’t bigotry. But you aren’t welcome to voice it here. It’s flat-out offensive.
I haven’t read your PM yet, but if you’d like to discuss it further, we can take it up there.
-Tom
It’s Tom’s forum and he can make what decisions he likes; I haven’t looked at any pattern to olaf’s posts over time, either. I do think it massive overkill to call what’s in this thread “bigoted” and compare it to anti-Semitism. If anything, it’s comparable to being anti-Zionist (a subject discussed with much vigor), since olaf called out “Islamists” (among other internetesque snark) and its an indisputable fact that there was an attack by what are believed to be Islamists on a gathering in Dallas tonight.
There has to be a comparable way to discuss this type of incident without tiptoeing past the graveyard.
As someone who is not a Muslim, but who is intimately involved with one and has many, many friends who practice at various levels of devoutness…yeah, there’s plenty of bigotry going on in this thread. That you’re not seeing it kind of confirms what Tom just said.
So… we’re not allowed to discuss how Islam is a collection of terrible and violent ideals?
We’re all in agreement that Islam is a religion and not a race? We’re intelligent enough to dismiss so-called “Islamophobia” and instead talk about Islam as a religion and what it represents?
Can we agree that no one is born a Muslim (though Muslims would disagree) and Islam is taught? And can therefore – ideally – be rejected via rational thought?
Anti-Semitism suggests racism. I don’t think there’s anything racist here. It’s not their genes or heritage that’s at fault. That would be ridiculous since we’re all one race. It’s their religion I take issue with.
It sucks.
I have no problems with the discussion of Islam and the extremism of totalitarian assholes who hide behind it so as to hide their true agendas of power for the sake of power at any cost.
That being said, this is a thread title and original premise that mocks every practitioner of that religion from the casual to the devout and results in Balasarius and rhino clutching their pearls in mock indignation. Swell.
Maybe you should acquaint yourself with olaf’s posts before you characterize this as “tiptoeing past the graveyard”. I tolerate a lot of bullshit in P&R, but even P&R has limits.
Discuss away. You sound pretty ignorant on the subject, so I have no interest in participating in the discussion with you. But if you use this forum to repeatedly express bigotry, you won’t be welcome here, whether that bigotry is targeted at blacks, Asians, Jews, Muslims, or Christians.
-Tom
The actual event is sad on so many levels. I’m glad the security guard wasn’t killed though!
What I am curious about, is whether people think that the exhibition is in the ethical right to do what it does? Its a debate we for obvious reasons have a lot here in Denmark - While its of course legal to draw a picture of Muhammad the prophet, is it really necessary? Its often an obvious provocation, especially in light of what we’ve seen over the last few years.
I don’t normally go out of the way to incite anger in other people, and call it freedom of speech (We have the same in Denmark) - thats just normal polite behavior, even at societal level. Unfortunately some see this as an attack on their freedom of speech - Hell, if anyone should know how often people get that wrong, its people posting at gaming forums.
Anyways - I’m interested in your thoughts on this.
Yeah, we drew Muhammad before it was cool.
Also, Razgon, the discussion has been done to death on the topic of “yes, we can draw these things but should we?”, I firmly believe that, yes, we should. We should draw and draw until nobody, including every Muslim, cares anymore. Why? Because while being offended and annoyed is completely acceptable, lashing out violently is not. There’s simply no room for such fanaticism in any civilised country. You get to believe what you want, I get to draw what I want and there’s nothing you can do about it except to call me a buffoon and an ignoramus. That’s how things work in a free society, people can be impolite all day every day and if you think that’s unreasonable, there’s really no place for you here.
Being a hedonistic, hellbound atheist there’s nothing you can draw that would provoke me enough to care. I’m glad I live in a country where religious support has been on a heavy decline for years now, I’m not thrilled that anyone would try to reverse that healthy development, regardless of their religion of choice.
What I am curious about, is whether people think that the exhibition is in the ethical right to do what it does?
Arguably what ends up happening with that line of reasoning is that whether or not the right is ethical depends upon if the response evokes a violent reaction. Which means: is it ethical to have a slavery exhibition if it evokes violence from racists? Or a holocaust museum? What about some cutting-edge contemporary exhibit that evokes a strong reaction from the community? Flag burning, for example?
The real problem with representations of Muhammed vs similar one of Christianity are these underlying, oftentimes unspoken frameworks of sociopolitical power which are assumed to attenuate the response. So it’s “wrong” to attack Islam because of the complicated relationship and inferior status of Islam in the West, while attacking Christianity is a-ok because of its supposed high status. This also means, paradoxically, that westerners are loathe to attack Islamic persecution of Christianity for the same reason if not numerically identical argument.
While that does represent something that is true it also disguises a certain, i don’t know… “post-colonial/post-modern” cultural relativism that makes taking a judgement on cultures other than your own more or less impossible. But if we can make fun of Scientology all day long for being the horrible, life-ruining scam that it oftentimes is - despite only have probably at best a few hundred thousand members - it seems strange that we can’t also take Islam to task as the single largest and most widespread force in the world opposing modern conceptions of women’s rights, ‘oppressing’ hundreds of millions of women worldwide.
So to that end being able to treat it like every other cultural product and not with kid gloves is an important thing, worldwide, into the future, imo.
I think that if olaf had actually read the article that he linked, he would have seen that “the religion of peace” had actually responded to these idiots (the conference organizers) appropriately by choosing to not protest the event in an effort to reduce the chance of any possible incident.
Makes me glad this community is one of the things I don’t share with my wife (who is a progressive feminist Muslim humanist). Because she wouldn’t feel very welcome seeing threads like this.
As for not getting it, I think it’s a bit like the privilege thing so often discussed in the context of gender equality. It’s happened to me too; I genuinely considered the whole of the Kurdish minority in Turkey to be a bunch of violent extremists, because my only exposure to them was violence perpetrated by a vanishingly small minority of them. To me they weren’t really people for the longest time. They were the enemy, and a fairly pathetic enemy at that.
We haven’t done that in this thread. The closest we have come, has been to suggest that Islam is a collection of terrible and violent ideals, and that all Muslims hold to those ideals. Which is about as accurate and constructive as suggesting Christianity is a collection of terrible and violent ideals, and that all Christians are abortion clinic bombers, or at least supporters of abortion clinic bombers.
And that’s what makes this thread read like prejudice entirely alike to racism. This thread isn’t a discussion of Islam or any particular part or parts of it, it’s about latching on to an excuse to condemn, diminish, denigrate, and dehumanise a significant percentage of the global population. Much like, say, a Stormfront’er would latch on to the fact that African Americans on average score lower than European Americans on a variety of school tests and try to present it as evidence that African Americans are inferior human beings.
My sympathies to the security and police involved in this. I’ve never been in a fatal shooting before, but I have been in a couple of fire fights and I still have nightmares about them. I probably always will. I can’t imagine what the security and police must be going through, but I’m quite sure it’s nothing good.
The more venomous side of me wants to say everybody won. The violent extremists got to go out in exactly the way they wanted. The non-violent extremists got the terror attack they wanted. The media got a great story. All at the cheap cheap price of a mildly injured ankle.
Sadly the reality is that this shit will just further fan the flames of hatred on both sides, possibly leading to more injuries and death. And my not so venomous side mourns the loss of all human life, the lives of wannabe-murderers included. The world isn’t a better place without the two dead assholes starring in this story. The world could have been a better place if they had lived, especially if they had lived long enough to learn the value of human life and liberty.
I ignore religion and religion ignores me. Win-win, I guess…