The religion of peace strikes again!

I agree. Just as importantly there is such a huge double standard regarding Islam. The Broadway play Book of Mormon was certainly far more offensive to the church of Latter Day Saints than it sounds like anything in the exhibit was. There were hardly any protest, much less somebody actually being shot.

There was huge amount of hate directed against the Westboro Bapist folks, including plenty by folks on this forum myself included. Yet nobody was accused of being anti-Baptist. In fact there is huge amount of stereotyping and anti-religious bigotry routinely expressed on P&R, especially against fundamentalist or evangelistic Christians (I am agnostic) and no gets called out for posting that.

Freedom of speech has no meaning unless the most offensive speech is protected. Mocking Islam for being the “religion of peace” seems down right mild in comparison to the attacks on Christians, Mormons, and Scientology which are always tolerated on P&R. It’s Tom’s forum but it seems like double standard to me.

It’s good to see that CAIR choose to ignore the exhibit but clearly two guys didn’t get the memo. This is non-negotiable point as far as I am concerned you don’t get to react to offensive speech by resorting to violence. If it take a thousand more cartoons, and thousand more dead gunman, and equal number of victims that’s the price of freedom.

There was huge amount of hate directed against the Westboro Bapist folks, including plenty by folks on this forum myself included. Yet nobody was accused of being anti-Baptist.

Because no one portrayed the westboro douchebags as indicative of all baptists.

A big problem with dealing with these sorts of cartoons - as a standby for freedom of speech in the West - is that those that support such movements tend to be of the Marie Le Pen persuasion, and such make strange and discomforting bedfellows. One tends to instinctively feel that if those are your allies than you must be on the wrong side of the issue… just as here, apparently, the people sponsoring this exhibition were some sort of fringe anti-Islamic organization.

Also because there are few harsher critics of Westboro than Baptists and former Baptist (speaking as the later myself). Though that is not to say I’d have a particularly charitable view of Baptists in general, just that I wouldn’t paint them with the same brush as Westboro whom I would not even acknowledge as Christian.

Islam is already the target of our national Two Minutes Hate, and leftists realize that no good comes from a dogpile. One day Americans will be distracted by a new group of people to bomb, and leftists can go back to saying what they really think about all religions.

if we can make fun of Scientology all day long for being the horrible, life-ruining scam that it oftentimes is

If we ever cause as much needless destruction to Scientologists as we have caused to Muslims, then we would be wise to stop mocking Xenu for a little while.

This is among the funniest things I’ve ever read in P&R.

Well, if P&R had an army then I certainly would be much more careful about what I said here!

Of course, you could think Nazi ideology was bad and the bombing of Dresden was bad at the same time.

It’s just as well all the Mohammed cartoon supporters whose community I identify with tend to be well… not Marie Le Pen, but a group demonised, disempowered, disenfranchised, attacked and denigrated by the authoritarian left just as much as by the Islamists.

However, most of the apostate/atheist/secularist (but not all) ex-Muslim community clearly delineate the split between Muslims as a whole and Wahhabism/Islamists faction*, which Olaf isn’t doing.

  • I don’t use the word minority any more, as they are dominant.

I think people everywhere on the spectrum are equally likely to dogpile, but only against approved targets. Who gets to be an approved target depends a lot more on Red Tribe versus Blue Tribe dynamics than on high-minded morale principles.

If the Dominionists and those pushing Old Testament law were dominant in Rome, and Rome spent billions ensuring the majority of priests globally were preaching their version of Old Testament Christianity, and your local church was built and funded by the Dominionists, and your child was taught Domionism at Sunday School using textbooks printed in Rome then the Christianity comparison would be apt.

Maybe I should’ve chosen my words more carefully. Anyway, my point is that leftists shy away from criticizing people who are at actual risk of being bombed, because in general they don’t want to indirectly promote unnecessary violence. That’s why they were happy to criticize Suharto and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, but they were reluctant to criticize Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Yeah, leftists are hesitant to criticize people like the Charlie Hebdo editorial staff or Texan Mohammed cartoonists, because those people are manifestly at risk of getting bombed or murdered for their expression.

This just popped up in my twitter feed, and pretty much a continuation of the conversation here;

Ok, let me spell it out for you: Leftists don’t want to support a political faction that needs their political support to commence a military bombing campaign.

Leftist criticism of Charlie Hebdo or Texan cartoonists doesn’t really affect their safety, because Islamist terrorists don’t consult leftist activists when making their nefarious plans. In contrast, “bipartisan” condemnation of Saddam Hussein was an absolute prerequisite to the invasion of Iraq, and leftists don’t want to fall for that again when it comes to Iran or anyone else in the crosshairs.

Completely agree with this but I ask, who are the current housebroken PC anti-muslim crowd? Does that even work? Seems to me that you either love all Muslims and their mysterious ways or you are an inbred bigot that everyone important tries to distance themselves from. This seems odd to me.

So we shouldn’t be bombing Islamic State?

What’s a leftist for you?

Do you think it’s possible to both criticize and defend (or criticize the opposition, depending on the case) something or someone at the same time? Or do you think it’s always necessary to take a side? It’s amazing to me how a lot of these conversations veer to extremes, or at least perceptions of extremes.

It is very possible, for example, to be against CH racists depictions (I don’t care that much about the religious stuff) on normal circumstances, but at the same time be totally and unwavering on their side when talking about the atrocity forced upon them and their right of free speech. Or one can consider the Iranian regime both a pseudo totalitarian regime (it’s complicated, but definitely not a free country, and one that does some horrendous stuff) while at the same time consider them a positive stabilizing force in the region, as things stand.

Or being able to distinguish non-radical Muslims from radicalized Islamists.

I am very, very far left given this boards standards, yet I don’t see those ideological extremes people keep talking about being discussed in real life around me. Is this an American thing???

There are no leftists at all prominent in politics in the US except for Bernie Sanders, and he is as mild a leftist as you can be and still have the name. The people the wingnut-right label as leftists range from conservative to centrist. Certainly the Democratic party is basically conservative these days, compared for example to the policies of Republican administrations in the 20th century, much less to actual socialists.

Which is why, when I got my driver’s license in Florida, I registered as an Independent. The Democratic party no longer feels like my party.