Anyone else tired of whining Muslim bitches?

[Superman]

Yeah, Christians do this shit too, but is anyone else tired of the Muslims crying and whining every time goddamned time someone says something negative about Mohammed or Allah? Two churches were firebombed recently due to the pope's comments, and threats of violence were made. When that cartoon of Mohammed came out a while back, they went ballistic.

Yeah, Christians can be bitches too, especially fundie assholes that want to shove their BS down everyone's throat, but I think these Islamotards really are the ultimate in whiners. What gives?

[Gandalf]

It's because the ME acts like the Bible Belt. There's no other religions from which to choose, it's All About Allah. In the west, religious arsehattery needs a little subtlety to be successful. You don't bomb things, you write letters and so forth.

It also helps that Islam has fewer "shades of grey" than some other religions. The line from zero to fundie is shorter.

[SirNitram]

I don't give too much of a crap, but the way Christians who get up in arms over atheists and the like being mean to them complaining is always such a moment of pure irony.

[Superman]

It's because the ME acts like the Bible Belt. There's no other religions from which to choose, it's All About Allah. In the west, religious arsehattery needs a little subtlety to be successful. You don't bomb things, you write letters and so forth.

It also helps that Islam has fewer "shades of grey" than some other religions. The line from zero to fundie is shorter.

Good points. Definately some crappy cultures centered around a crappy religion.

I wonder what would happen if the whole planet were full of these idiots. I don't think humanity would ever progress past the 12th century...

[Gandalf]

I wonder what would happen if the whole planet were full of these idiots. I don't think humanity would ever progress past the 12th century...

It would fall apart fairly soon, after all, what's Christianity/Islam without some sort of persecution to drive up enthusiasm?

[SirNitram]

I wonder what would happen if the whole planet were full of these idiots. I don't think humanity would ever progress past the 12th century...

It would fall apart fairly soon, after all, what's Christianity/Islam without some sort of persecution to drive up enthusiasm?

Slaughtering each other. See the time immediately after Emperor Constantine rose to the throne.

[Big Orange]

I wonder what would happen if the whole planet were full of these idiots. I don't think humanity would ever progress past the 12th century...

It would fall apart fairly soon, after all, what's Christianity/Islam without some sort of persecution to drive up enthusiasm?

Slaughtering each other. See the time immediately after Emperor Constantine rose to the throne.

But wasn't Pagan Rome already brain crushingly violent long before Christianity was introduced?

[SirNitram]

But wasn't Pagan Rome already brain crushingly violent long before Christianity was introduced?

They liked their violence in coleseums. I'm referring to the slaughter of Heresies.

[Morilore]

Good points. Definately some crappy cultures centered around a crappy religion.

I wonder what would happen if the whole planet were full of these idiots. I don't think humanity would ever progress past the 12th century...

I think you're putting the cart before the horse here. Doesn't matter what the Koran says, if there were economic reasons to liberalize Islam would liberalize. I think the real problem has less to do with culture and more to do with the Middle East being a desert, with the only wealth of note buried in oil reservoirs. Oil reservoirs are easily monopolized, so that's what happens, and inequality goes through the roof. The discontent this causes is focused in mosques, which are the only things dictators can't really ban. Thus all the angst in the region is focused on Islam.

[Akhlut]

What gives?

Associated with the long denoument of the Ottoman Empire, the European powers (France, Britain, and some Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary for good measure) started doing things like colonizing areas that had high populations of Muslims. After the 1800s, the Europeans essentially crushed and colonized the Ottoman Empire and other areas (the few areas west of Algeria, India/Pakistan region, Persia partially). This, combined with the rapid industrialization of the West, led to widespread resentment among the peoples of the ME. Some people thought that their defeat and colonization at the hands of Western Christians was because the people had lost their faith and that Allah had turned away from them and that the best way to regain their historical power was by adopting the Islam of their most successful and powerful forefathers, ie, the Islam of the 1100s. This is one of many views in the region (other fun ones include Marxism, Pan-Arabism, partial adoption of Western ideas, and full adoption of Western ideas), but it tends to get the spotlight because it is very antagonistic and is very much in vogue.

[Akhlut]

But wasn't Pagan Rome already brain crushingly violent long before Christianity was introduced?

They liked their violence in coleseums. I'm referring to the slaughter of Heresies.

They did crucify political dissidents and did occasionally employ fun tactics such as wholesale city depopulation and forced diasporas. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that humans are just naturally and depressingly an extremely violent species.

[SirNitram]

But wasn't Pagan Rome already brain crushingly violent long before Christianity was introduced?

They liked their violence in coleseums. I'm referring to the slaughter of Heresies.

They did crucify political dissidents and did occasionally employ fun tactics such as wholesale city depopulation and forced diasporas. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that humans are just naturally and depressingly an extremely violent species.

Well, that's obvious. Our first tools were weapons.

[King Kong]

A lot of it has to with the nature of politics in the Middle East. Because so many people there live in shitty dictatorships, the only outlet for any political discussion is the mosque. So most politics becomes heavily tied in with religion. Combine this with a lot of historical baggage from falling from their height during the Middle Ages, being humiliated by Western powers, and the failures when trying to adopt Western societal models, and people will believe that the only possible way to survive and improve is through Islam. In fact, the governments resulting from a completely democratic election today in the Middle East would likely be more fundamentalist and anti-Western than the governments in place now.

So when their religion is mocked, they lash out harshly to defend what they think is their only hope. It'd be quite sad and pathetic if this mentality didn't result in so much hate and death.

[Darth Wong]

Shitty leaders need to refocus their peoples' anger on other targets, and religion allows them to do this.

In the Middle East, they have a lot of very shitty leaders and a lot of very miserable people living in horrible conditions while the Sheiks live in luxury, so they direct the anger of the masses away from the aristocracy and toward outside groups like the West, like secularism, like Christianity.

In America, they have some pretty shitty leaders and the biggest problem is the growing divide between rich and poor, so they try to direct the anger of the poor away from the aristocracy (ie- themselves) and toward people perceived as being outside the mainstream of America, like gays and liberals. Luckily, the poor in America aren't quite as miserable as the poor in Middle Eastern countries, so their anger isn't as violent.

[King Kong]

Morilore and Akhlut basically beat me to it, so I'll try and add something new.

With regards to fundamentalist Muslims in Western nations, many of them develop this mentality while growing up in these societies. There they are commonly viewed as outsiders and ostracized from the community, often having to deal with social inequality. This will naturally lead to repressed frustration and hostility at this society (expressed during the riots in Paris), as well as identifying and embracing what makes them different: their religion. And again, if others attack what they have come to think as the most important thing in their lives, which provides community and guidance to them, they will lash out.

[Darth Servo]

Its pretty clear that just about everyone on this board is tired of fundie bullshit, be it from Muslims, Christians or any other religion.

[mr friendly guy]

The thing is that in the latest case (involving the Pope) the whining actually got an apology of sorts. Why didn't the Pope apologise to pagans after accusing them of causing the holocaust? The answer is that the Pagans can't generate that kind of numbers and fanaticism, and whining the Muslims can.

I am less concern about the fact that they whine, but more concern that they have no justifiable ground to complain, considering Islam did use force to spread itself and that "sacred beliefs" shouldn't be allowed to over ride right of parody and satire.

[Naja]

As much as I, like anyone here on this board, believe that there is no excuse for fundamentalism, I must admit that I have much more sympathy for Muslim fundies than Christian fundies. Unlike the latter, Muslims have been on the ass-end of Western imperialism for over a century now. That feeling of humiliation that a century of the "White Man's Burden" inflicted on them, in conjunction with the terrible socio-economic conditions that colonialism left on the Middle East (or the European ghettos that they're confined to), left a breeding ground for violent backlashes like the Wahabbi movement.

That "whining" you speak of has its roots in European nationalism more than it does in the fundamentalism itself. Why do you think so many Muslims have radicalized in the first place? Why else do you think a class of people would blow shit up over something as inane as a cartoon?

[Darth Wong]

That "whining" you speak of has its roots in European nationalism more than it does in the fundamentalism itself. Why do you think so many Muslims have radicalized in the first place? Why else do you think a class of people would blow shit up over something as inane as a cartoon?

The cause of their violent and anti-social nature may be resentment against bad treatment, but the cause of the cartoon riots in particular is still religion.

[theski]

That "whining" you speak of has its roots in European nationalism more than it does in the fundamentalism itself. Why do you think so many Muslims have radicalized in the first place? Why else do you think a class of people would blow shit up over something as inane as a cartoon?

The cause of their violent and anti-social nature may be resentment against bad treatment, but the cause of the cartoon riots in particular is still religion.

That and the 72 virgins..

[Magnetic]

That "whining" you speak of has its roots in European nationalism more than it does in the fundamentalism itself. Why do you think so many Muslims have radicalized in the first place? Why else do you think a class of people would blow shit up over something as inane as a cartoon?

The cause of their violent and anti-social nature may be resentment against bad treatment, but the cause of the cartoon riots in particular is still religion.

That and the 72 virgins..

What a self centered religion, openly degrading to women, even in the 21st century.

I find it sadly amusing that the Pope's comments about Islamic violence...is retaliated WITH violence.

[Molyneux]

They liked their violence in coleseums. I'm referring to the slaughter of Heresies.

They did crucify political dissidents and did occasionally employ fun tactics such as wholesale city depopulation and forced diasporas. I don't think it is much of a stretch to say that humans are just naturally and depressingly an extremely violent species.

Well, that's obvious. Our first tools were weapons.

Actually...

Unless there's been new evidence, according to the anthropology courses I took a couple of years back, it's much more likely that our first tools were bone-scrapers and the like - tools used to enhance the efficacy of scavenging from kills by larger animals. Weapons didn't come 'til much later.


And for the OP:
Yes.

[Admiral Valdemar]

My main irk with Islam isn't so much the jihading and associated bullshit, but that they have a bigger hypocrisy quota to fill than Xtians. There was a protest outside a cathedral in England recently over Pope Ratty's little clusterfuck. One of the men in cloth commented that, had Xtians done such a protest outside a Mosque, they'd have hell to pay. Then there's the Danish cartoons and so on.

Personally, I want both religions of "peace" to find a quiet island and wipe one another out. It'd make smashing reality TV.

[Wyrm]

That "whining" you speak of has its roots in European nationalism more than it does in the fundamentalism itself. Why do you think so many Muslims have radicalized in the first place? Why else do you think a class of people would blow shit up over something as inane as a cartoon?

The cause of their violent and anti-social nature may be resentment against bad treatment, but the cause of the cartoon riots in particular is still religion.

That and the 72 virgins..

72 virgins? Screw that! MY paradise comes with 72 hookers!

Hmmm... The Muslim guy-martyrs would find 72 virgins waiting for them in paradise pretty appealing, but what do the the Muslim girl-martyrs get (and there's been a few)? Do they get 72 exotic dancers from Chipendales? Or do they get to be one of the 72 virgins of some guy-martyr? That doesn't seem like an even deal to me.

[Naja]

The cause of their violent and anti-social nature may be resentment against bad treatment, but the cause of the cartoon riots in particular is still religion.

Yes, and no. They wouldn't be killing in the name of Allah if there wasn't an Allah, of course. But more likely than not, they'd still be killing.

That's why I disagree with viewing fundamentalist Muslims in the same light as fundamentalist Christians, strange as that sounds. Fundamentalist Evangelicals for the most part aren't suffering, and aren't oppressed (contrary to what they'd tell you). A growing number of them live in middle class exurbs, while the poor fundies who are suffering keep voting into office the politicians who perpetuate/worsen their condition, under the misguided belief that some eeeeeevil liberal cabal is responsible for their situation. A classic case of mystification, in other words.

It gets trickier with Islam. Muslims in the Middle East and in Europe do live in shithole conditions, and either under oppressive governments, or in ghettos where the white mainstream (and employers) want nothing to do with them. Yet the same sort of mystification does occur in a lot of Middle Eastern governments, where anti-West diatribe functions more to keep the reigning party in power and distract the people from the true level of oppression (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.). However, unlike Evangelism, Islamism does choose the correct target: Western powers and industrial interests are responsible for the ghettos, the Israel/Palestine situation, the artificial borders of the Middle East, and those oppressive governments (religious and secular). Unlike the Christian fundies, whose ideology picks the wrong target of aggression entirely (liberal elite instead of economic elite), Muslim fundies' ideology is targetted at the correct object of anger. It simply picks up a middleman along the way (theocratic government).

Hence, fundamentalist Islam is ultimately a product of the true sentiment behind the violence, and not the cause. In the absence of militant Islamism you can bet your boots that something else would instantly step in to take its place. History has shown that this is true (Pan Arabism/Arab Nationalism, for example). You can't simply blame religion for the violence of today's radical Muslims, because it goes much deeper than that. That would be like blaming the Rodney King verdict as the sole cause of the LA Riots.