Bakustra wrote:"It's just a cartoon" merely makes you out to be the worst high-school English teacher I have ever encountered.
Wait... since when am I a high school English teacher?
The point is that they weren't just cartoons- for many Muslims, it was a sign, a symbol that the West hates Islam and Muslims (and, frankly, they're not too far off judging by this thread).
They were just cartoons.
So they protested what they saw as unreasoning hatred against themselves. Of course, as people have been telling you for a while, they were manipulated into doing so by a small group that deliberately included fake cartoons that would have been illegal under hate-speech laws, which is why the 41 countries that you crow about called for legal action- they were suckered in too.
Nonsense. The 41 countries' official position was true of the 12 specific cartoons republished in 2010. They knew exactly what was going on by then, but their stance was the same. Turns out that the additional cartoons, contrary to your claims, were not the cause of the problem.
But even if they were suckered into demanding an official government apology from Denmark, why would that matter? Why would additional cartoons be sufficient to justify this sort of demand?
Now, no doubt you'll say that this is indicative of something greater, and I agree, but not with you. You would attribute this reaction to the "primitive" and "barbaric" attitudes of Muslims, I would suggest that it is probably a result of the generally poor relations Islamic countries often have with the west.
Nonsense. I would attribute it to their religious beliefs. It is their religious beliefs which are primitive and backwards.
Moreover, prove that it's the result of "generally poor relations Islamic countries often have with the west?" Why did countries with strong relations with the West, and particularly with Denmark (e.g., Afghanistan, Jordan, the UAE, etc.) join in the official protests?
You, meanwhile, are being dishonest yourself. You need to provide evidence even if you are a bigot, and indeed I would say more so. If you believe that the majority of Muslims protested, then that requires evidence.
I never claimed that the majority of Muslims protested. I claimed that the protesters represented the mainstream view of Muslims, and the fact that all 41 Islamic countries adopted thier position indicates such widespread approval.
f you believe that the majority of Muslims supported the protests, then I suggest that you prove it. I have been generous in taking "thousands" at face value; but I will go no further for a bigoted individual. Go dig up some evidence, and then come back to spew intolerance.
Again, the official position of the governments of all 41 Islamic countries was that the cartoonists were wrong to publish the cartoons, and those countries demanded apologies from the Danish government and the newspaper for publishing the cartoons. This is their official position.
Your attitude to free speech is curious- you feel that people should be able to say whatever they want, but that nobody may object. No wonder you react so negatively- you feel that I'm infringing upon your free-speech rights. You also ignore the point about hate speech, but I am reasonably sure that you feel that such laws also infringe upon your right to screech slurs in public.
You're ignoring that the controversy was limited in a country with an Islamic population. In other words, the majority of Danish Muslims did not object to the cartoons enough that they protested, let alone use their magic murder powers to kill all the cartoonists and Salman Rushdie.
How am I "ignoring" that? Again, I'm not claiming that all Muslims were out torching cars and embassies. However, a substantial number of Muslims did just this. As of
2010, 11 of the 12 cartoonists are still living in hiding because they fear for their lives because of the cartoons they penned.
Why do you need an exact percentage to determine mainstream? Why do the "majority" (prove it, sir, prove it) of Muslims believe that Arabs didn't commit the September 11th attacks?
I need an exact percentage to determine mainstream because of two competing demands that you have persistently made throughout the thread.
1. First, you have insisted that a religion must be defined by the "mainstream" beliefs of its adherents, rather than by resorting to its holy texts. Although I disagree with this approach for reasons which I have repeatedly stated, I am curious as to what result this approach would produce and so I am curious as to the precise methodology that I should apply in order to use such an approach.
2. Second, you have repeatedly refused to define "mainstream," even as you run around demanding "scientific proof," in the form of poll data. In your own words, you demanded "statistical analysis," to show the "the actual opinions and beliefs of the adherents" of a religion. In order to do any such analysis, I need to understand what it is that I'm looking for. What are you asking me to prove?
The combination of the two demands makes it necessary to have a precise definition of "mainstream." In order to gather and cull polling data, I first have to have a baseline percentage that you believe is acceptable to determine what it means for a religious belief to be "the actual opinion[] and belief[] of the adherents" of a religion.
But I also note that this entire line of argument is a transparent stall tactic that you are using only to drag out the debate until your opponents are exhausted. When I posted a poll which
shows that:
Pew Research Center wrote:Just 40% of Muslim Americans say groups of Arabs carried out [the September 11] attacks.
you responded by demanding more proof!
Is it, as you suggest, the fault of religion, or is it a response to a mishandled response by the American government to the attacks which had decreased support for the US around the world and especially in the Middle East?
Actually, support for the US in the Middle East has
increased over the course of America's response to the September 11 attacks (as has opposition to terrorism), which you would already know if you had bothered to look at the proof of my claims that I had posted earlier!
If people feel that they are being persecuted by the US, then it seems that they would be more likely to believe that it made up the attacks in order to carry out its crusade.
People living outside the US cannot be "persecuted" by it. Muslims living inside the US overwhelmingly do
not feel that they are being persecuted--over 70% responded that their communities were good or excellent places to live. Again, had you bothered to examine the evidence I have already posted, you would already know this.
But you're not concerned with reasons, you're only concerned with making correlation imply causation and assigning blame.
Keep in mind that in 2007 almost 50% of Americans believed that some part of the government knew about the September 11th attacks in advance, which is also an unlikely proposition. Does being an American make you stupid, then? Perhaps it also makes you violent, given our large prison population. I suppose that we'll have to wallow with the Muslims, then.
When I said that Islam makes you stupid, I was referring to the fact that Islamic countries actively teach the Koran in lieu of teaching things like math, science, history, geography, etc. I see, however, that stupidity is not limited to Muslims. Thank you for demonstrating.
I disagree with a methodology that ignores quality in favor of mindless quantity. If the Qu'ran has 500 verses that say that unbelievers go to hell, and the Bible has thirty that all say different noxious statements (Say, in favor of genocide, murdering children for talking back, et cetera), which is really worse? One only says one noxious thing, and the other makes thirty vile statements. So which would be worse, then? (Note that this is a hypothetical, not that your pea-brain really understands such a thing).
The Qu'ran hating on non-believers does not make it somehow worse than the Bible, which does the exact same thing and even has repeated genocides of non-believers. There is no equivalent in the Qu'ran to the book of Job, either. Saying, "oh, it's far worse. Mohammedians are such foul and violent people." is not really supported thus far by what you have said, especially by people that studied the Qu'ran without such hateful preconceptions.
That is, at least, a fair criticism of the methodology of my analysis of the Koran. I still believe that much can be learned by a quantitative analysis of intolerant statements, though, particularly in the context of religious texts. In truth, much of what I'm responding to is the sheer density of hatred found in the Koran vis-a-vis the Bible. My Koran is roughly 250 pages long. You literally can barely get through a page without reading something about how bad scoffers are, and how they'll burn in the Fire, and how theirs is an awful doom, etc. (Indeed, according to the quantitative analysis presented, this indicates that there are two instances of cruelty and two of intolerance
per page.)
But I also think that too little has been made of the massacres and slaughter that do appear in the Koran because they are often hidden behind historical allusions like "Remember the story of [city]." When you go through and look up those cities, they're often claimed to have been destroyed by God in a kind of religious demonstration ala the Bible.
You reject using believers as a guide to a religion. This is convenient for reasons that I will elucidate later, but for now, I'll play along. I say that judging from my interpretations of your post, you have 300 statements of hatred towards Muslims and you think that killing a Muslim is neither sinful nor should it be criminal. No doubt you will roll your eyes, but you don't get it. If you don't tie your system to reality at some point, the reality of the religion, then you can interpret anything you want, just as I reinterpreted your posts to make you out to be a murderous maniac.
Nonsense. Your analysis has to be tied to the texts of the holy documents. That is the whole point. Not one thing that I have said can be taken to indicate that I am "murderous," which you well know. Moreover, how are you going to interpret the tenants of Confucianism "any way you want?"
That is perfect for literary criticism, wherein meaning is personal, and for personal religious beliefs, which are obviously personal, but when it comes to aggregate beliefs, dismissing the believers is saying that you define the religion alone.
No. It's saying that the
documents themselves define the religion. That is a completely different thing. Ignoring the religious texts entirely (even though believers themselves often turn to them as a source of religious understanding) is an absurd method of analyzing religious groups.
This is convenient for you because you can then define any non-violent, intelligent Muslim as an apostate and establish "good" Muslims in your personal life (assuming that you actually know or would want to meet Muslims, which seems unlikely) as opposed to the "bad" Muslims whom you oppose and that you seek to destroy.
At the outset I note that this is yet another appeal to motive fallacy, which your posts are laced with, but beyond that, distinguishing individuals from their religions is
a necessary element to non-bigotry, because it allows people to be evaluated as people and not as groups. Your method, which relies entirely on the beliefs of the practitioners as defining the religion (even though there is often dissension amongst religious groups on such things), is patently absurd precisely because it ignores distinctions drawn within religions and because it ignores the fact that practitioners of religions commonly hold that their religious tenants are ideals to strive for rather than actual codes that they live by. Indeed, even by your own standards, the Koran is clearly relevant to analysis of Islam because people who are Muslims read it as the basis of their religious system. Islamic countries often require people to memorize portions of it over the course of their education.
You obsess over "ceding your rights" because you cannot distinguish between valid criticisms and hateful ones. It is not bigoted to object to the death penalty for adultery (interesting fact: Michigan, my home state, has the penalty for adultery go up to life imprisonment. I guess it must be all the Muslims in Dearborn doing it, since no Christian could ever seek to criminalize adultery. That's why the Philippines lacks Christians, because they have criminal adultery penalties!). It is bigoted to declare all Muslims violent and idiotic a priori, without considering what they believe or how they act. Consider that modern Sufi Muslims are generally pacifists, and this is central to the sect. No doubt they are heretical in your view, but they exist and are considered Muslims by other Muslims. For that matter, what about the many Muslims that drink and drank alcohol despite its explicit condemnation and banning in the Qu'ran? Are they no longer Muslims, or are belief systems somewhat broader than "smug American bigot redefines religion to be as intolerant as possible to justify his hatreds."
Once again, your entire analysis is based on a false image that because I think that a religion can be defined by reference to its holy texts, therefore I assume that people who do not live by the tenants of those texts must not be adherents of that religion (in a form of no true Scotsman fallacy). This is patently false. In fact, I never believe that people will behave in a particular way because their religion commands them to do so
precisely because no one behaves in accordance with their religion 100% of the time. I find your implication that I would negatively view someone for deviating from the tenants of their holy books particularly baffling. I'm opposed to most or all religions, and deviance from some random article of faith is no concern at all of mine unless it harms others in some way. How many times will you make me go through this with you? How many times will you completely refuse to respond to evidence presented to you, in accordance with your own demands, as to the definition of a religion? How, precisely, would
you go about evaluating the tenants of a religion if not by reference to its holy texts?
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- PeZook