Follow up to I sense that the jihad is coming to Forumosa.
Much of the previous thread dealt with tolerance or the lack thereof.
I’m hoping that someone can start this one off with a few ideas for resolving (or moderating) current, simmering hostilities without assuming the complete capitulation of any camp.
Takers?
[quote=“Jaboney”]Follow up to I sense that the jihad is coming to Forumosa.
Much of the previous thread dealt with tolerance or the lack thereof.
I’m hoping that someone can start this one off with a few ideas for resolving current simmering hostilities without assuming the complete capitulation of any camp.
Takers?[/quote]
Are you talking about the people in Pakistan or the 'mosans having a go at each other?
If you are referring to the latter, I think the discourse is healthy.
In the case of the former, there’s little we, on this side of the problem, can do. If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’d know the issue has deteriorated into a anti-west hate fest, targetting any western country (not simply Denmark --as if even that country deserves this nonsense). The irrational violence and hatred of the west being expressed right now is not something we “own”-- or are responsible for-- and it is really up those perpetrating these acts to stop.
People who are threatening and committing senseless violence lose all credibility in my mind. There is no justifcation for their actions and little possibility for reasoned discussion.
[quote=“Toasty”][quote=“Jaboney”]Follow up to I sense that the jihad is coming to Forumosa.
Much of the previous thread dealt with tolerance or the lack thereof.
I’m hoping that someone can start this one off with a few ideas for resolving current simmering hostilities without assuming the complete capitulation of any camp.
Takers?[/quote]
Are you talking about the people in Pakistan or the 'mosans having a go at each other?
If you are referring to the latter, I think the discourse is healthy.
In the case of the former, there’s little we, on this side of the problem, can do. If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’d know the issue has deteriorated into a anti-west hate fest, targetting any western country (not simply Denmark --as if even that country deserves this nonsense). The irrational violence and hatred of the west being expressed right now is not something we “own”-- or are responsible for-- and it is really up those perpetrating these acts to stop.
People who are threatening and committing senseless violence lose all credibility in my mind. There is no justifcation for their actions and little possibility for reasoned discussion.[/quote]
One thing missing from this discussion is the anti-East sentiment being expressed in our own countries.
Or do people believe that an invasion of a country under false pretenses isn’t senseless violence. Now this arguement is boiling down to semantics.
Toasty, I agree, the forumosan discourse is healthy, if not always enlightening.* Which is why I opted not to honour a request to shut down the previous thread.
I’m interested in the international situation; I have been paying attention, and it’s a clusterbuck.
Regardless of who is responsible, what are the options for avoiding further deterioration? ‘Preventing things from getting worse’ isn’t sexy, but it’s worthwhile and maybe manageable.
*Please, don’t flippantly, or heatedly accuse one another of racism, intolerance, ect… No flamage, svp.
[quote=“Jaboney”]Toasty, I agree, the forumosan discourse is healthy, if not always enlightening.* Which is why I opted not to honour a request to shut down the previous thread.
*Please, don’t flippantly, or heatedly accuse one another of racism, intolerance, ect… No flamage, svp.
[/quote]
But that is why I made the request. There was, IMO nothing healthy coming from it. Especially when you start getting posts mocking women and saying fucking them all and talking about other’s beliefs as if, those on this board aren’t going to feel attacked in some form or fashion.
The line taken by Canada’s new Conservative Prime Minister…
I didn’t vote for his party, and some of his moves have been goofy, but his public pronouncements have definitely been a major step up from Mr. Dithers.
I think that this comes pretty close to hitting the right balance, given the ‘prevention of making things worse’ idea I threw out.
[quote=“CBC Online: Prime Minister Stephen Harper”]
“Free speech is a right that all Canadians enjoy; Canadians also have the right to voice their opinion on the free speech of others,” Harper said in a statement, his first comments on the controversy.
“I regret the publication of this material in several media outlets. While we understand this issue is divisive, our government wishes that people be respectful of the beliefs of others. I commend the Canadian Muslim community for voicing its opinion peacefully, respectfully and democratically.”[/quote]
[quote=“Namahottie”]One thing missing from this discussion is the anti-East sentiment being expressed in our own countries.
Or do people believe that an invasion of a country under false pretenses isn’t senseless violence. Now this arguement is boiling down to semantics.[/quote]
You think that belongs here Namahottie? You see … the recent riots have been about 12 cartoons (plus whatever fake ones have been added later). Not the invasion of Iraq, not Israel, not Afghanistan and well … in short nothing of what you raise here as a smoke screen.
I’d have little problem if these riots were about any of that. But face it, they are about cartoons and that someone dared to criticise Islam. No matter how much easier it were to defend them if they were aout Iraq … Afghanistan … Israel …
Or do you want to tell us it is okay to raid embassies over cartoons because of Iraq / Afghanistan / Israel … ? Most curious to hear how one would like to construct that. There are a many good reasons as to why protest in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, suicide bombers, their own authoritarian governments, local nepotism, terrorism spawned from their local religion etc. etc.) but what is and remains picked are 12 cartoons (in specific) and criticism of Islam (in general). You telling me there is some Asian thing going on there? Indirect communications: “well, it is actually about Iraq … they just try to express it more indirect and thus pick on cartoons instead”? Well, let’s call that an ‘interesting’ idea for lack of a nicer word.
Adding to that: the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and how Israel acts HAVE been under heavy flak in the West ever since. Check this massage board in case you missed it. You see the same willingness to address Islamic mistakes in the Middle East?
If yes, can you provide a link? One hears a lot about that ‘silent Muslim mainstream opposing extremism’. Somehow I must have missed all these self-critical demonstrations (not to mention the riots) about that recently. Odd, the ones when there were demonstrations all over Europe about the invasion of Iraq in 2003 somehow made it onto my screen. Ditto the constant criticism the Bush administration draws within the U.S…
I assume that makes me a close-minded bigot, cherry-picking my news. Being bent on seeing problems in the Mid East where none are.
Looking forward to your links to correct my view. Once you posted them I hope sincerely to finally ‘get it’ and get on with the program again. There is no problem in the Mid East … it is entirely a Western problem.
Other option: keep things to where they belong. Iraq is one thing and the Danish cartoons are another. Sure … all connected to the Mid East. But my question remains:
If this all were about Iraq … then why aren’t the riots? You will riddle that one for me Namahottie, will you?
Namahottie,
You mentioned that it would be better to write a searing criticism of Islam than to draw the cartoons. Well, many people have done just that, and are in hiding for it, for the same reason the Danish cartoonists are currently in hiding. Salmund Rushdie is the most well-known of these people, despite the fact that his “criticism” was a fictional novel. Other examples include Robert Spencer, a Christian of Middle Eastern descent, and Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian born Jew who lived under Islamic oppression in Egypt for many years. Both people are Arabic-literate historians who have spent the better parts of their lives studying and writing about Islam. They live in undisclosed locations in the United States and Switzerland. I could give you many other examples, but I think you get the idea. Even if tens of thousands aren’t rioting in the streets and burning down embassies, those who openly criticize Islam and are discovered doing it invariably go into hiding, or, like Hirsi Ali of the Netherlands parliament, must be surrounded by police guard at all times. The most amazing and frustrating part of all this is that liberal commentators continue to write of the golden tolerance of Islam.
The problem is not with Muslims. The problem is with Islam. What I mean is that while most Muslims are peaceful, good, ordinary people who have no desire to take any part in a jihad, jihad itselfs remains an integral part of the religion. Sure the term jihad has several meanings, including the spiritual struggle against sin, trying to convert others to Islam, etc., but it has always also held the meaning of holy war. Just think of how Islam spread in the seventh and eighth centuries. Muhammed was not the pacifist that Jesus was. Plenty of Jews in Jesus’ time wanted badly to rebel against the Romans, and many saw the Messiah as a warlord who would help them to throw off the yoke of Roman oppression. Jesus opposed violence and did not want to see any armed rebellion. Muhammed, on the other hand, was not remotely a pacifist. Muslims start their calendar with the time that Muhammed was exiled from Mecca, from where he went to Medina, eventually taking over the city. He did wage war against the Meccans, in fact he authorized 27 jihads and directly took part in 18 of them. He believed in spreading Islam by whatever means necessary, and by the time of his death he was the ruler of all of Arabia, and most of the pagan tribes had been converted to Islam. His successors, particularly the first four, continued his mission and sent out armies from India to Portugal. Within one hundred years of the rise of Islam, almost 2/3 of all Christian lands were under Muslim rule, hundreds of pagan religions were extinguished, and the Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule were subjected to all the cruelties of dhimmitude.
Of course the Koran has plenty of passages that call on Muslims to be peaceful and live in harmony with their neighbors. But it also has passages that tell Muslims to “fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah” (Koran 8:39). But I’m not interested in specific passages so much as I am the history of Islamic warfare and theological interpretation. What alarms so many of us who have studied Islam is that there has never been any disenfranchisement by any major Muslim group of jihad as holy war. There is not one madhab (school of thought within Islam) that has stated jihad as a means of spreading Islam and Muslim rule is disenfranchised. Sure some groups have denounced the killing of innocents, but not jihad in and of itself. So when I say that the problem is Islam and not Muslims, what I mean is that as long as the more violent and intolerant aspects of Islam continue to be part of the religion, then eventually somebody is going to read the scriptures close enough to figure out that they need to go on a jihad and create an Islamic superstate. The masses of peaceful Muslims are suspectible to becoming rapidly politicized and drawn into the fray, because there exists no feasible alternative within Islam, no major Islamic group diametrically opposed to jihad.
[quote=“gao_bo_han”]Namahottie,
You mentioned that it would be better to write a searing criticism of Islam than to draw the cartoons. Well, many people have done just that, and are in hiding for it, for the same reason the Danish cartoonists are currently in hiding. Salmund Rushdie is the most well-known of these people, despite the fact that his “criticism” was a fictional novel. Other examples include Robert Spencer, a Christian of Middle Eastern descent, and Bat Ye’or, an Egyptian born Jew who lived under Islamic oppression in Egypt for many years. Both people are Arabic-literate historians who have spent the better parts of their lives studying and writing about Islam. They live in undisclosed locations in the United States and Switzerland. I could give you many other examples, but I think you get the idea. Even if tens of thousands aren’t rioting in the streets and burning down embassies, those who openly criticize Islam and are discovered doing it invariably go into hiding, or, like Hirsi Ali of the Netherlands parliament, must be surrounded by police guard at all times. The most amazing and frustrating part of all this is that liberal commentators continue to write of the golden tolerance of Islam.
The problem is not with Muslims. The problem is with Islam. What I mean is that while most Muslims are peaceful, good, ordinary people who have no desire to take any part in a jihad, jihad itselfs remains an integral part of the religion. Sure the term jihad has several meanings, including the spiritual struggle against sin, trying to convert others to Islam, etc., but it has always also held the meaning of holy war. Just think of how Islam spread in the seventh and eighth centuries. Muhammed was not the pacifist that Jesus was. Plenty of Jews in Jesus’ time wanted badly to rebel against the Romans, and many saw the Messiah as a warlord who would help them to throw off the yoke of Roman oppression. Jesus opposed violence and did not want to see any armed rebellion. Muhammed, on the other hand, was not remotely a pacifist. Muslims start their calendar with the time that Muhammed was exiled from Mecca, from where he went to Medina, eventually taking over the city. He did wage war against the Meccans, in fact he authorized 27 jihads and directly took part in 18 of them. He believed in spreading Islam by whatever means necessary, and by the time of his death he was the ruler of all of Arabia, and most of the pagan tribes had been converted to Islam. His successors, particularly the first four, continued his mission and sent out armies from India to Portugal. Within one hundred years of the rise of Islam, almost 2/3 of all Christian lands were under Muslim rule, hundreds of pagan religions were extinguished, and the Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule were subjected to all the cruelties of dhimmitude.
Of course the Koran has plenty of passages that call on Muslims to be peaceful and live in harmony with their neighbors. But it also has passages that tell Muslims to “fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah” (Koran 8:39). But I’m not interested in specific passages so much as I am the history of Islamic warfare and theological interpretation. What alarms so many of us who have studied Islam is that there has never been any disenfranchisement by any major Muslim group of jihad as holy war. There is not one madhab (school of thought within Islam) that has stated jihad as a means of spreading Islam and Muslim rule is disenfranchised. Sure some groups have denounced the killing of innocents, but not jihad in and of itself. So when I say that the problem is Islam and not Muslims, what I mean is that as long as the more violent and intolerant aspects of Islam continue to be part of the religion, then eventually somebody is going to read the scriptures close enough to figure out that they need to go on a jihad and create an Islamic superstate. The masses of peaceful Muslims are suspectible to becoming rapidly politicized and drawn into the fray, because there exists no feasible alternative within Islam, no major Islamic group diametrically opposed to jihad.[/quote]
These same problems occurred in Christianity. It took cooler heads to prevail in Europe during the Enlightenment. Do you not think that cooler heads can prevail in the Muslim world?
Perhaps there could have been a more moderate view of Islam by Muslims now if there had been less meddling by the West in the Middle East in the last century. And I mean that by: How the West divvied up land and in so doing divided ethnic groups. How the West has propped up oppressive regimes and removed popular governments (for oil). How the West played both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. And of course how the West supported the creation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
Or perhaps not.
Also remember we are not too far removed from World Wars I and II and that should remind us all that the West isn’t necessarily any more civilized.
So rather than demonize each other, we should work together and separately to remove the extremists on both sides who are fueling this so-called clash of cultures.
The Palestinians were offered their own nation-state by the UN and Israel at the same time Israel becoming a nation under the guidance of the UN and existing international law. The Palestinians refused, and their argument has always been theological: Islamic law forbids any land that was once Islamic to ever again be under the control of non-Muslims. I disagree that Israel was created at the “expense” of the Palestinians. The Palestinians and other Arab nations with which Israel has warred over the past fifty years have consistently refused to recognize Jewish control of what they perceive as Muslim land. Even now only a handful of the 53 Islamic nations actually recognize Israel at all, and only a few enjoy full diplomatic relations with her. To most Muslims in the House of Islam it is inconceivable that the Holy Land be under the control of non-believers. The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians will never have their own nation as long as they stubbornly refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist. The recent election in Palestine does not bode well for this potential reality. But that’s another discussion…
I certainly hope cooler heads will prevail and the Middle East will experience something akin to the Enlightenment. I fear that the ruling clerics, unlike the frustrated bishops and popes of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, will be successful in their efforts to prevent this change.
It is undeniably true that we’ve supported oppressive regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere (and still do, e.g. Saudi Arabia), but I can’t think of an instance in the Muslim world where we’ve opposed true democratization. Did we oppose the populist Islamic revolution in Iran? Sure. But have we opposed people who believe in secular democracy, who want to finally cleave the strong union of church and state in Islamic societies, enfrachise women and gays, grant universal suffrage, protect minority rights, and bring on all of the other components of true democracy? Not that I know of. It seems like your argument rests on the assumption that had the West never interferred with the House of Islam, then those nations would have adopted liberal democracy. Why do you think this is the case?
Unfortunately, I think the cold reality is that liberal democracy is not necessarily popular nor a natural evolutionary goal of all societies. The Palestinian election of Hamas is proof that given the chance to choose their own government, some Muslims will choose to be governed by Sharia
I have found gao_bo_han and NeonNoodle’s posts informative and interesting. However, I disagree with gao_bo_han’s assessment of the recent election in the Palestinian territories. As I understand it, the election of Hamas was less an endorsement of Hamas than it was a repudiation of Fatah (corruption and ineffectiveness). But what do I know? Actually, very little indepth about this topic, so thanks for your posts (gao_bo_han and NeonNoodle).
Bodo
The Palestinians actually did much more than turn the UN down, they tried to remove the Jews after partition and lost.
Or the problem is with the polarization of Arab politics. How fucked-up would it be to be a moderate in today’s Middle East? On the one hand, you wont get any thanks from Western governments who demand complete rejection of the violence that is being perpetrated by Hamas/etc, or Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or whatever; and on the other hand, you wont get any thanks from the Islamofacists who see you as a sell-out to Israel and the West, a traitor to Islam, or some such rubbish. What an awful situation to be in. My guess is GBH you’d pull your head in too if you faced the same dilemma. The polarization of politics is not unique to Islam. The West has it’s share of examples - the French Revolution, the Glorious Revolution in the UK, etc. - they just happen to be a fair way back. The Far East is not lacking in examples either - caught between the ambitions of the KMT and the CCP, I suspect it was no fun being a moderate in Republican China. To stand in the middle and condemn the extremes is an historical luxury, no matter what your religion.
Bodo,
That is one possible interpretation of the Hamas victory, but frankly I feel it smacks of the typical well-they-were-just-duped rhetoric so common in politics. It’s an easy way to exonerate an incumbent’s constituents while at the same demonize the incumbent. “Lookie here folks, it’s not your fault, President/Senator/Congressmen Such-and-Such is a lying weasel, you were duped into supporting him, and now you can make it all right by voting for me.” However, people in a democratic society must take responsibility for who they choose to lead them, and to a certain extent, the decisions of those leaders. It’s almost amusing the length Western commentators will go to exonerate the Palestinians for electing Hamas, but the Palestinian people elected Hamas in a free and open election, and they need to take responsibility for that, and we need to let them.
Hamas has always been upfront about its beliefs. Unlike the Fatah party, which talks out of both sides of its mouth (like when Arafat’s successor Farouk Khaddoumi told an Iranian newspaper that in the near future there will be two states, in the long term only one), Hamas has always been completely honest about its desire to destroy Israel. They are committed to driving the Jews into the sea and have never swayed from this position. The Palestinians knew who they were voting for.
Actually I’m GLAD Hamas has won. LET them have power. The best weapon against an idiotic government is for the people they represent to see for themselves how flacid and ineffective they are.
Sure, they can lob bombs at Israel, but can they get the goddamned water running? How about electricity? How about jobs? Money and the economy are the things they will be judged on.
But then again old Yasser Arafathead didn’t do squat for the Palestinians and they worship him.
My hope, for any democracy, is that some schlub gets elected and actually gets lucky and does something right. That will give the people hope and expectation from and of their government. THEN the leaders better watch out.
Nama, [i]please[/i] learn to follow the thread…I posted it the photos, not Durin’s Bane.
You don’t like me mocking some psyscho-bitch? Tough-shitsky. Save your outrage for the Muslims raping BLACK WOMEN in Dafur. Or beheading young girls in Indonesia. Or how about another Muslim psycho-bitch Mariam Farahat. She’s the mother of 3 suicide bombers and proud as punch over it. She was just elected to the Palestinian’s so-called parliment.
[quote]“I sacrificed my children for this holy, patriotic duty. I love my children, but as Muslims we pressure ourselves and sacrifice our emotions for the interest of the homeland. The greater interest takes precedence to the personal interest.”
She is most famous for her presence in a Hamas video, showing her 17-year-old how to attack Israelis and telling him not to return. Shortly afterward, he killed five students in a Jewish settlement before he was killed himself.[/quote]
abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=1536576
The Palestinian people clearly knew what they were doing when they chose Hamas. They were siding with extremists, just as the people of Israel did a few years ago when they put the Likud firmly in power in response to the Intifada. Just as the people of Iran did last summer when they put the religious extremist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power and just as the people of Saudi Arabia and Egypt recently did when they voted the Muslim Brotherhood in. Likewise in the U.S. when the American people chose the neoconservatives – or whatever they preferred to be called – puttng them into power to preserve them from Islamic extremism.
People everywhere on both sides of this conflict are deliberately and consciously heeding the siren call of extremists in their midst that hate, religious intolerance, death and destruction are the answers to their fears and feelings of victimhood.
In turn, these false prophets mock as weakness and capitulation the one thing which could save us – our traditional values of faith, hope, love, charity, justice and mercy – and no one seems to notice that from year to year the fruits of their false doctrines are an ever downward spiraling into chaos, destruction and polarization.
So it goes.
Or the problem is with the polarization of Arab politics. How fucked-up would it be to be a moderate in today’s Middle East? On the one hand, you wont get any thanks from Western governments who demand complete rejection of the violence that is being perpetrated by Hamas/etc, or Iran’s nuclear ambitions, or whatever; and on the other hand, you wont get any thanks from the Islamofacists who see you as a sell-out to Israel and the West, a traitor to Islam, or some such rubbish. What an awful situation to be in. My guess is GBH you’d pull your head in too if you faced the same dilemma. The polarization of politics is not unique to Islam. The West has it’s share of examples - the French Revolution, the Glorious Revolution in the UK, etc. - they just happen to be a fair way back. The Far East is not lacking in examples either - caught between the ambitions of the KMT and the CCP, I suspect it was no fun being a moderate in Republican China. To stand in the middle and condemn the extremes is an historical luxury, no matter what your religion.[/quote]
Good point. In inter-Muslim debates, calling one’s opponent a “moderate” is an insult because it carries the connotation that he’s a weak Muslim. As for me personally, I don’t see how that’s relevant, but honestly I like to think I’d have the courage to stand up for truth and justice regardless of the consequences. Anyways, although I agree with you that it’s hard to be a moderate in the political climate of the Middle East, I think it’s wishful thinking to believe that most Muslims in Islamic countries actually are moderate, at least in the same sense of the word that Westerners use. As I said before, I think the Palestinian election of a band of ruthless terrorists to lead them is proof that “moderate” does not necessarily describe the Muslim psyche.
spook, do you [i]really[/i] believe they’re all the same?
spook, do you [i]really[/i] believe they’re all the same?[/quote]
The message seems to be the same, that we should hate each other and embrace intolerance and that domination, death and destruction are the only hope we have.
The people living in the Middle East of course are much further down the path than we are – but we’re on the same path. It would have been unthinkable ten years ago, for example, for an American president to embrace torture, imprisonment without charges and trial, invading and occupying other countries as “American values”, yet here we are.
Five years from now we’ll be doing things and embracing values which we can barely comprehend today.
The enemy, in other words, is really more like us than we’re willing to admit.