Unlike our anti-Islamic rhetoric, which we would never back up with military action and a multi-billion dollar per year stream of military aid to Israel?Sea Skimmer wrote:You mean that quote from Hamas, which consistently backs up its words with military action?
I don't think you're making any effort to imagine how the other side perceives this. I am not fan of Islamic or any other kind of religious fervour; I think this is well-established. But that doesn't mean I don't try to understand what's going through their heads. The fact is that they perceive the West to be stirred up into fits of anti-Islamic hatred by right-wing ideologues (this is actually not entirely unreasonable, and has some truth to it), and they believe that this induces the West to undertake a global campaign to eradicate Islam.
In that context, they view criticism of Islam as part of this global campaign: a means of inciting the masses and inflaming their passions to go to war, as the Crusaders once did. Is it really so surprising that they think it needs to be silenced?
Not in mechanism and formality, no. But the end result is similar: rhetoric ends up being used as justification for policies which result in hardship and death.That’s not what I thought we were talking about which is international influence on the matter. Hamas is at war with Israel, it exists for no other purpose, so of course its damn well going to be attacked, that is exactly what it wants.
That is not damn well the same as throwing people in jail in America for saying Islam sucks on a blog, or Syria declaring that Israel should not exist, but then turning right around and suggesting that it’s open to negotiating permanent territorial boundaries with the Jews while barely even reacting to overt Israeli military provocations.
