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Four out of 10 British Muslims want sharia law introduced into parts of the country, a survey reveals today.The ICM opinion poll also indicates that a fifth have sympathy with the "feelings and motives" of the suicide bombers who attacked London last July 7, killing 52 people, although 99 per cent thought the bombers were wrong to carry out the atrocity.
Overall, the findings depict a Muslim community becoming more radical and feeling more alienated from mainstream society, even though 91 per cent still say they feel loyal to Britain.The results of the poll, conducted for the Sunday Telegraph, came as thousands of Muslims staged a fresh protest in London yesterday against the publication of cartoons of Mohammed. In Libya, at least 10 people died in protests linked to the caricatures.
And in Pakistan, a cleric was reported to have put a $1 million (£575,000) bounty on the head of the Danish cartoonist who drew the original pictures.
Last night, Sadiq Khan, the Labour MP involved with the official task force set up after the July attacks, said the findings were "alarming". He added: "Vast numbers of Muslims feel disengaged and alienated from mainstream British society." Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "This poll confirms the widespread opposition among British Muslims to the so-called war on terror."
The most startling finding is the high level of support for applying sharia law in "predom-inantly Muslim" areas of Britain.
Islamic law is used in large parts of the Middle East, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, and is enforced by religious police. Special courts can hand down harsh punishments which can include stoning and amputation.Forty per cent of the British Muslims surveyed said they backed introducing sharia in parts of Britain, while 41 per cent opposed it. Twenty per cent felt sympathy with the July 7 bombers' motives, and 75 per cent did not. One per cent felt the attacks were "right".
Nearly two thirds thought the video images shown last week of British troops beating Iraqi youths were symptomatic of a wider problem in Iraq. Half did not think the soldiers would be "appropriately punished".
Half of the 500 people surveyed said relations between white Britons and Muslims were getting worse. Only just over half thought the conviction of the cleric Abu Hamza for incitement to murder and race hatred was fair.
Mr Khan, the MP for Tooting, said: "We must redouble our efforts to bring Muslims on board with the mainstream community. For all the efforts made since last July, things do not have appear to have got better."
He agreed with Sir Iqbal that the poll showed Muslims still had a "big gripe" about foreign policy, particularly over the war on terror and Iraq.
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, said: "It shows we have a long way to go to win the battle of ideas within some parts of the Muslim community and why it is absolutely vital that we reinforce the voice of moderate Islam wherever possible."
A spokesman for Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said: "It is critically important to ensure that Muslims, and all faiths, feel part of modern British society. Today's survey indicates we still have a long way to go [but] we are committed to working with all faiths to ensure we achieve that end."
So, here's my question: how did things get so apparently fucked up in Europe, but not the USA? Or do I not realize that the U.S. is sitting in a powderkeg of Islamic unrest, too? Is it a geographic thing? Is there some sort of government policy that makes the difference, or is it good ol' fashioned racism? Perhaps most important: how does one fix it?
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
Even with the small percentages voting as they did, that is STILL atrocious. There's the right to religious freedom, and then there's that shit.
At the risk of sounding like a complete jackass, why don't they just ship those morons back to the countries that have what they want and be done with it? It sounds like they'd be a lot happier, and be less of a risk to everyone else.
What about the brothas? 
It's not something people hear about.
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Check out the big brain on Sean!
I see a lot of talk about white Britons.What about the brothas?
All the grandmas shipped out when they realized that Schlitz wasn't an acceptable substitute at tea time. 
Damn, even I'm offended by that joke.
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x--KarnajO-('-'Q) :
Specifically, Britain.So, here's my question: how did things get so apparently fucked up in Europe, but not the USA? Or do I not realize that the U.S. is sitting in a powderkeg of Islamic unrest, too? Is it a geographic thing? Is there some sort of government policy that makes the difference, or is it good ol' fashioned racism? Perhaps most important: how does one fix it?
There are a couple of things to be said for this.
A part of it is that Islamic emigration to european countries was done relatively suddenly and in large numbers. Emigration to the US was more gradual over a longer period of time.
Second, culturally speaking people come to America to be Americans. America has a long established attitude that encourages cultural assimilation, whereas, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard, europe could be the biggest melting pot in the world, they just won't melt. Needless to say, cloistering any minority fosters "groupism" which is invariably destructive.
Lastly, there are jihadist wahabbi muslim mosques in America, they're just a lot quieter about it than european ones. My guess is that it's because they know America does not tolerate militant islam.
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Maradon! impressed everyone with:
Lastly, there are jihadist wahabbi muslim mosques in America, they're just a lot quieter about it than european ones. My guess is that it's because they know America does not tolerate militant islam.
That's the damn truth right there. I live near Dearborn Michigan, which has the most muslims of anywhere in the US. They makeup nearly the entire city.
That said, most of them are very nice people, and quite tolerant of people different than them.
But the government keeps a close watch over this area, they've already shut down several muslim operated businesses that they found to be filtering money over to the terrorist groups. It's amusing, you can drive by a restaurant one day, then the next it is completely stripped naked with a for sale sign out front.
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Maradon! impressed everyone with:
There are a couple of things to be said for this.A part of it is that Islamic emigration to european countries was done relatively suddenly and in large numbers. Emigration to the US was more gradual over a longer period of time.
Second, culturally speaking people come to America to be Americans. America has a long established attitude that encourages cultural assimilation, whereas, to paraphrase Eddie Izzard, europe could be the biggest melting pot in the world, they just won't melt. Needless to say, cloistering any minority fosters "groupism" which is invariably destructive.
Lastly, there are jihadist wahabbi muslim mosques in America, they're just a lot quieter about it than european ones. My guess is that it's because they know America does not tolerate militant islam.
Americans also tend to be much more friendly and welcoming towards their immigrants for historical reasons. Continental Europe is stone-cold towards immigrants of any color and tends to not allow citizenship or deport people whose parents were born in the county. Attourney general Alberto Gonzales didn't really catch flak for his last name but I guarantee you that if Germany were to nominate a guy called Khaan Özgün as minister of Justice the party who even suggested such a thing would be torn to shreds in the political arena by racist anti-immigrants parties within minutes.
So yeah, a group of people who, somewhat justifiably, consider themselves under assault by pretty much everyone around them join extremist groups which offer them some sense of belonging and play to their already existing religious biases. Not that surprising.
A lot of those people really aren't die-hard jihadists, the extremist mosques are just the places which offer them some sort of social group. People hate being lonely, to many it's on par with being hungry or ill. Without a group of like-minded people to help them out and talk to all their worries look ten times worse and they grab on to any group of people which appear to be in the same boat as them.
Edit: Also why is 'sympathy with the feelings and motives' of suicide bombers bad? One can fully agree with those and yet fully reject their methods, as 99% of those questioned apparently do. I.e. I can say that I fully understand someone being opposed to American involvement in the middle east and that I can empathize with a poor Muslim's feelings of frustration over his lack of prospects in life while rejecting his decision to go blow up a bus. That opening line was pure spin. Mod fucked around with this message on 02-19-2006 at 02:18 PM.
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Maradon! enlisted the help of an infinite number of monkeys to write:
.. Needless to say, cloistering any minority fosters "groupism" which is invariably destructive.
....
This happens here in the states, but not really outside of dense urban and suburban area.
Half of it is I think these people, as proud as they might be of their heritage, realize at some level they left their country behind for a better life for a reason. Outside of that it might simply be because we are a world away and because quite frankly, the fuzz wouldn't stand for some of the shit talked about in that article.
--In Lakewood they have that deal was they have the religious police among the Jewish population. They have been told by the local cops and the state cops that that shit no fly, but they still do it anyways. The only people in America that have that sort of deal I think are the Native Americans.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Peter booooze lime pole over bench lick:
This happens here in the states, but not really outside of dense urban and suburban area.
Sure it does. Ever hear of the feminist movement? the NAACP? Black history month? Ever wonder exactly why it's ok for black people to use the N word but not white people?
It's all group mentality.
Likewise, I'm sick to death about hearing about these Muhammed cartoons. Jesus gets ripped on often. Today's Penny Arcade could be construed as making light of the messiah. But I don't see Christians flipping out over it. Moslems CLAIM they want the same respect shown for Mohammed that we give to the Holocaust and to Jesus. Well...they already get the respect we show for Jesus. And the simple fact is religion is a fair target. And Mohammed was, frankly, one man. There's no verifiable evidence that he was spoken to by God. On the other hand, there is verifiable evidence of the Holocaust. It was a known atrocity, not some dude who lived centuries ago and apparently did some very important things. I'm not saying that making tasteless cartoons of Mohammed was a good thing, any more than making cartoons about the Holocaust is a good thing. But it is OKAY. We don't have Sharia law here in the Western World. You don't have to live in fear of pictures you draw. Moslems need to move on. And enter the 21st century.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael who doth quote:
Sharia is like theocracy-backed legalism.
Actually that's exactly what it is.
Europe can wuss out, but thick-skulled bigoted Americans stand firm!
Also, it's awesome that Deth is using the word 'Moslem,' like me.
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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
This is one of those moments where you can either wuss out or you can stand strong.
No it's not. There is a number of those who identify themselves as Muslim who would like to see some form of Sharia law implemented. This is no crisis. If you asked all the self-identified born-again Christians in the U.S. if they would want the word of the Lord to be the law of the land or something similar you'd probably get a percentage who would say yes.
I wouldn't call things in the US 'fair', look at the disproportionate amount of death sentences blacks recieve for similar crimes or the variance in sentences handed down between men and women.
Keep in mind that many European countries do keep laws against blasphemy and hate speech on the books and that a man is currently on trial for questioning some particulars of the Holocaust. While that same argument would not hold in the U.S., in Europe where states do offer some groups protection from offensive speech Muslims wanting the same and being angry (not violent) that the same is denied to them is somewhat valid, especially since many of the protected groups aren't really persecuted minorities but 'the establishment'. The solution of course would be to implement a U.S.-syle first amendment, but that will not happen in the current political climate thanks to the political left blindly backing hate speech laws and the political right welding the 'hate preachers'-boogeyman.
Childish us vs. them thinking is really burying this whole debate. You can be for free press, against violence, against religious extremism and against using the freedom of the press to incite ethnic violence and offend people for the sake of offending them. Just because the state can't bar you from doing something idiotic you don't have to jump on the opportunity to do it.
The paper who printed those cartoons deserves no sympathy, only the protection of the law. If printing them had been illegal this might have been a valid form of protest, but what did it accomplish the way it was done? A bunch of people died, a group of totalitarian regimes got to bolster their publicity and divert the locals from local issues onto burning random embassies and tons of innocent people will have their lives made miserable thanks to the anti-cartoon-backlash-backlash. Good going there you wannabe-martyrs, you've proven that yes, there are extremist Muslims in the middle east, thank you for that revelation and I hope it was worth the deaths you caused. Mod fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 10:19 AM.
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Moding:
The paper who printed those cartoons deserves no sympathy, only the protection of the law. If printing them had been illegal this might have been a valid form of protest, but what did it accomplish the way it was done? A bunch of people died, a group of totalitarian regimes got to bolster their publicity and divert the locals from local issues onto burning random embassies and tons of innocent people will have their lives made miserable thanks to the anti-cartoon-backlash-backlash. Good going there you wannabe-martyrs, you've proven that yes, there are extremist Muslims in the middle east, thank you for that revelation and I hope it was worth the deaths you caused.
The primary difference between you and I is that you see the paper as being at fault, and I see jihadist islam as being at fault.
No newspaper should have the "responsibility" of being inoffensive because civilized people do not burn down buildings upon being offended.
This scenario only proves that these people are not civilized, and must be dealt with as a threat to society. It does not prove that saying offensive things must be avoided, that's just idiocy. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 10:35 AM.
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Maradon! had this to say about dark elf butts:
The primary difference between you and I is that you see the paper as being at fault, and I see jihadist islam as being at fault.No newspaper should have the "responsibility" of being inoffensive because civilized people do not burn down buildings upon being offended.
This scenario only proves that these people are not civilized, and must be dealt with as a threat to society. It does not prove that saying offensive things must be avoided, that's just idiocy.
I see both as being at fault, I honestly didn't think that someone would assume that I absolve the people who kill others or raze buildings of blame.
If I go into a prison and let loose the ten most dangerous people I can find and they go out and commit a few murders it's still their fault for killing but also my fault for letting them out knowing what will happen. Even if the brunt of the responsibility lies with those that actually kill, I cannot possibly completely absolve myself of blame.
Offensive things should be avioded where possible as a matter of courtesy, not legal responsiblity. Had there been a legitimate journalistic purpose behind the drawings I would accept that, but since the only purpose of publishing them was to gain the paper publicity and incite violence I consider publishing them worthy of condemnation but absolutely no criminal or regulatory action by the state.
So to boil it down in order to avoid being misrepresented again: Mod fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 10:45 AM.
Killing people: Terrible.
Burning houses: Terrible.
Taking actions which are legal but will result in others burning houses and killing people in order to gain publicity or incite hatered: Not as terrible, but still pretty bad.
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x--ModO-('-'Q) :
Taking actions which are legal but will result in others burning houses and killing people in order to gain publicity or incite hatered: Not as terrible, but still pretty bad.
This is precisely where you are flat out wrong. Absolutely none of the responsibility, legally or morally, falls on the inciter.
Look at it this way. If catholics had rioted and burned down buildings in response to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ, would you be arguing that artists have a responsibility to be inoffensive toward the interests of a potentially volatile people? Would you be arguing for all potentially religiously inflammatory imagery to be censored? What if Jews started rioting any time someone spoke the name of God?
What kind of world would we live in if everybody was expected to honor the radical sensibilities of every animate creature on the face of the planet, lest he start a riot?
There is no such thing as a right to not be offended.
The reality is that the newspaper was neither right nor wrong. The newspaper is entirely irrelevant to the issue. The cause of the riots is morally and legally irrelevant to the fact that they happened at all. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 10:56 AM.
I'm sorry if that concept is difficult to grasp.
It is not as if this paper was just going about it's normal and completely sensible business and just happened to peeve someone off... It was trying to get some noterity by being controversial.
By the way, do you feel that the newspapers that published all the guantanamo bay torture images have no fault in the resulting backlash against American troops in Iraq? Blindy. fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 11:10 AM.
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Maradon! had this to say about Reading Rainbow:
snip
Does the order of a military commander to kill PoWs means he is blameless of their deaths since his subordinates could have refused the order? I don't buy the justification that knowingly inciting violence is ok just because someone down the line could have done the right thing even though you didn't. Inciting violence is wrong even if nothing ever happens, you are attempting to bring harm to others in furtherance of your own, selfish goals. The fact that you're using some even worse indermediaries on whose recklessness you're counting to do the legwork (had there been no extremists to burn buildings, the paper would not have met it's goals of publicity / xenophobia) doesn't change a thing.
Offending people in the course of staging a protest, making an argument, conducting reseach, informing others or reporting on something is often inevitable and perfectly justifiable. Offending people simply for the sake of offending them is legal sometimes funny, but a somewhat childish thing to do. Offending people simply for the sake of offending them and in the course of doing so knowingly setting into motion a chain reaction which results in multiple deaths is extremely irresponsible.
If this were in response to the paper reporting on the victims of sucicide bombers or in response to the paper scientifically trying to debunk the Koran in the interest of science or enlightenment I would have no problem with their actions, the riots and backlash against Muslims would be regrettable byproducts of the pursuit of a worthy cause. In this case however the riots were all the editors of that paper wanted, they were not some unfortunate sacrifice in the name of truth or science, but the end towards which they are working.
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Blindy.ing:
If you pick a fight then the fact that you got hit is partly your fault.I'm sorry if that concept is difficult to grasp.
Your characterization of this as "picking a fight" is pure spin, and totally incorrect. It was not the goal of the newspaper to incite a riot.
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It is not as if this paper was just going about it's normal and completely sensible business and just happened to peeve someone off...
Actually, that's exactly what they were doing.
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It was trying to get some noterity by being controversial.
Which is the normal and completely sensible business of a newspaper.
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By the way, do you feel that the newspapers that published all the guantanamo bay torture images have no fault in the resulting backlash against American troops in Iraq?
Yes, that is precisely how I feel. Those newspapers are completely and totally without any fault in that matter, just as the NY Post is completely and totally without guilt for reporting the NSA wiretapping story. It's the people who leaked the information to them in the first place who are at fault.
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Mod - Mod = 0:
Does the order of a military commander to kill PoWs means he is blameless of their deaths since his subordinates could have refused the order?
That's not even remotely the same thing. If you issue an order, you do it with the intention that the order will be followed. To get down to brass tacks, this all boils down to intent.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy. booooze lime pole over bench lick:
That's not even remotely the same thing. If you issue an order, you do it with the intention that the order will be followed. To get down to brass tacks, this all boils down to intent.
No, not intent.
This all boils down to legality. Printing comics is legal, rioting and destruction of property is not.
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I gotta give it to Maradon! with:
No, not intent.This all boils down to legality. Printing comics is legal, rioting and destruction of property is not.
Because something is not illegal, it is not wrong. You heard it here first, folks.
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Blindy. booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Because something is not illegal, it is not wrong. You heard it here first, folks.
No, but as long as it isn't illegal it's irrelevant whether it's wrong or not.
Unless you want to argue that it should be illegal, but that's an entirely different and unrelated argument. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 02-20-2006 at 11:28 AM.
Just my 2 cents, don't take me too seriously.
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I gotta give it to Maradon! with:
No, but as long as it isn't illegal it's irrelevant whether it's wrong or not.Unless you want to argue that it should be illegal, but that's an entirely different and unrelated argument.
It is quite possible to discuss morality without discussing legality, dispite what your conservitive talk shows would have you believe.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Blindy. who doth quote:
It is quite possible to discuss morality without discussing legality, dispite what your conservitive talk shows would have you believe.
Sure it is, it's just that morality is irrelevant to this particular discussion.
And what are you talking about? Conservative talk shows are the FIRST ones to mix morality and legality. That comment made no sense at all.
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Maradon! says ta-ma-to, I say to-ma-to:
Sure it is, it's just that morality is irrelevant to this particular discussion.And what are you talking about? Conservative talk shows are the FIRST ones to mix morality and legality. That comment made no sense at all.
Which is exactly why you hear Mod and I say that it's immoral and think immediately that we're saying it should be illegal.
Pointing out someone's political affiliation is not an acceptable reply nor is attacking someone because of it acceptable, period. If you can't argue intelligently, get lost.
Do Muslims have the right to riot, kill people, threaten, and place bounties over the cartoons? Absolutely not.
This is one of the many reasons why I'm losing my patience with these morons. And if you recall that one article about this whole fiasco, it was a Muslim who created three new cartoons and ran them with the others some weeks/months after the original printing to stir up fervor. And it's not like the paper was originally intending to insult Muslims, this was for a kids book/humor book. It took a radical, hate-filled man to incite riots to get this whole mess to start. One might argue that the tinder was already there, but it was the Muslims themselves who sparked the fire.
They were looking for a reason to riot. And now they want to put their backwards, hateful law in place in a civilized country? Fuck no. Yes, they can have Muslim-related law for their own day-to-day practices, but if it starts harming people, that's where you draw the line.
And they'd be just as wrong. And not standing up to people who want to put that sort of thing into law is wrong. It's wussing out. Any sort of "eye for an eye" sort of thing is wrong. And there's no way you can mix Sharia with Western-style legal systems. They take your fucking hand for stealing. Never mind that the business owner will make the money back. Never mind the possibility you might reform. THEY TAKE YOUR FUCKING HAND. You can be stoned! Honor killings of "sullied" women are okay! Divorce rules suck. People of other religions can suck it. Sharia is a backwards, medieval sort of legal system. You either stand up for the rights people should have in the 20th century and tell people who want religious law to get fucked, or you backslide.
And let's be clear here, Mod, they want Sharia law to apply to certain segments of the population. That's as assinine as Israel refusing to extradite Jews who flee prosecution to Israel. At what point do you cut Arab-descent individuals off from demanding Sharia law? Do you have to be an active practitioner, or do you just have to live there? Most people who've grown up in a western-style legal structure wouldn't live under Sharia, so we'd be creating little Arabian reservations. And what about white people who commit crimes in Sharia-controlled areas? Would it be the secular law of the land or would it be Sharia? Who can demand to be tried? it would be like me demanding to be tried by Iroquois tribal law because I'm of Iroquois (Mohawk) descent. What about Divorces? Husbands who could would inevitably want to go by Sharia law because it heinously favors the men, wives would inevitably want to go with secular law.
I wouldn't call things in the US 'fair', look at the disproportionate amount of death sentences blacks recieve for similar crimes or the variance in sentences handed down between men and women.
OJ Simpson. Got off because he threw an assfuckton of money into his trial. Black sports stars regularly get away from charges brought to trial against them, so do rap artists. I admit black people aren't on average as wealthy as whites, but let's make no mistake...it's a money thing. Plenty of poor white folks in the US getting screwed over. And even if there is racial bias, and all sources suggest that there is, it's STILL a HELL of a lot better than fucking SHARIA law.
Keep in mind that many European countries do keep laws against blasphemy and hate speech on the books and that a man is currently on trial for questioning some particulars of the Holocaust. While that same argument would not hold in the U.S., in Europe where states do offer some groups protection from offensive speech Muslims wanting the same and being angry (not violent) that the same is denied to them is somewhat valid, especially since many of the protected groups aren't really persecuted minorities but 'the establishment'. The solution of course would be to implement a U.S.-syle first amendment, but that will not happen in the current political climate thanks to the political left blindly backing hate speech laws and the political right welding the 'hate preachers'-boogeyman.
Did I ever say that I didn't have a problem with Europe's version of free speech? Tony Blair's whole deal with making "glorifying terrorism" a deportation-worthy offense bugs me.
Likewise, I don't have a problem with protest. There's a difference between protesting and rioting. As far as I understand it, this all started with peaceful (albeit noisy) protests. Extremist factions got in the mix and people turned into a riot. I would be just as pissed off if Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam rabblerousers turned a peaceful Civil Rights protest here in the States into a bloody, fiery, wantonly-destructive melee.
Just because the state can't bar you from doing something idiotic you don't have to jump on the opportunity to do it.
Sometimes you have to learn to take it. Jews have a LOT of fun poked at them in popular culture. Christians, and especially Jesus, have a LOT of fun poked at them. Would you EVER see a movie like "Dogma" crop up aimed at a Moslem audience? Apparently not. People would be scared for their lives. Religion has to take it on the chin. Threatening lives and putting bounties on peoples' heads for poking fun at your religion is wrong. And unfortunately, free speech means you have to put up with the assholes along with the insightful.
The paper who printed those cartoons deserves no sympathy, only the protection of the law. If printing them had been illegal this might have been a valid form of protest, but what did it accomplish the way it was done? A bunch of people died, a group of totalitarian regimes got to bolster their publicity and divert the locals from local issues onto burning random embassies and tons of innocent people will have their lives made miserable thanks to the anti-cartoon-backlash-backlash. Good going there you wannabe-martyrs, you've proven that yes, there are extremist Muslims in the middle east, thank you for that revelation and I hope it was worth the deaths you caused.
[If someone walks into a Star Wars forum and starts telling us how cool Jar-Jar is, he's going to get shot down, right? It's the sort of thing we in the Western world believe to be our right. We can loudly protest another person's ideals if they seem cockamamie to us. If someone who really likes Jar-Jar went out and started firebombing and killing the people who disagreed with him, we'd be shocked. "That's not right!" we'd cry. And we would be right.
I don't care how tightly you hold your beliefs. People have the right to disagree. They have the right to protest. They have the right to insult your Gungan. They have the right to argue the wrong side of an argument. And believe me, there are right sides and wrong sides to an argument. You can even argue for the right side in an argument and be wrong in how you do it.
I've seen you, Mod, in other arguments related to this same subject, state that the riots were really because Moslems in the EU aren't getting the treatment everyone else gets. That's fine. If they were rioting on that basis I think you'd have a lot more people sympathetic to their plight. People were reasonably sympathetic to the Moslems who rioted outside of Paris a while back. The problem is that the Moslems aren't, by their claims, rioting because of inequality. They're rioting, according to them, because a western newspaper with freedom of the press ran cartoons that depicted Muhammed unfavorably. Even if you MEAN for it to be about inequality, using the Muhammed cartoons is the WRONG way to make your point.
Further, rioting is NOT okay. Killing people is NOT okay. These people aren't fighting for freedom from an oppressive regime. They're not seeking to overthrow a government that's victimizing them. They're protesting pictures printed in a magazine, in a nation with freedom of the press. And they're murdering people in their frothing fits of self-righteous indignation. However tasteless the magazine's cartoons were, however insensitive, it's plain NOT okay. Islam does NOT get to dictate to the world what fun we get to poke at who.
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
I'm a liberal, on issues relating to the justice system more than anything else, I think a few people had me on ignore for a while just for that. You don't need to explain to me why Sharia law is bad, current western legal systems are often too harsh for my tastes, I'm in no way a supporter of sharia law. My point is that there is no impending Sharia crisis in the U.K., there is no support for it outside of a subset of Muslims, the vast majority of which are not actively trying to get it enacted but merely answered that it might be a good idea to a poll.
This is far from a make-or-break situation. If there was legislation with a possibility of passing which would pave the way for a major overhaul of the British legal system on the floor or a party supporting such about to be elected, that would be a case for standing firm or wussing out. What we have here is just a somewhat worrisome trend among a group of Muslims.
You don't have to tell my why rioting violently is bad either or that people should be able to deal with jabs at their religion. We agree on that. The point I am trying to make is that there are a lot of people out there who aren't that far along yet and that deliberately setting off those people, however misguided they might be, in an already tense situation for no reason is a really bad idea. Fred Phleps has the legal right to protest the Funerals of gays. You can agree with his right to protest but still think that this is a pointlessly insulting thing do to, even if taking the insult in stride is the right thing for the target to do.
I respect Catholics, but I don't genuflect when I pass an altar.
I respect Judaism, but I still eat pork.
I respect Islam, but I still drink alcohol.
Moslems don't like Mohammed being depicted? Fine. But don't expect non-Moslems to obey that prohibition. That'd be like us telling Moslems they have to recognize the divinity of Jesus.
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Callalron likes to say stupid stuff like:
You don't need to obey a religion's taboos in order to give it respect.I respect Catholics, but I don't genuflect when I pass an altar.
I respect Judaism, but I still eat pork.
I respect Islam, but I still drink alcohol.Moslems don't like Mohammed being depicted? Fine. But don't expect non-Moslems to obey that prohibition. That'd be like us telling Moslems they have to recognize the divinity of Jesus.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't riot if a non Moslem dipected Mohammed respectfully, the fact is the comics were disrespectful at best and racist at worst.
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Blindy. had this to say about Robocop:
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't riot if a non Moslem dipected Mohammed respectfully, the fact is the comics were disrespectful at best and racist at worst.
Sean said some pretty disrespectful things about my mother. I didn't light him on fire.
quote:
Snoota had this to say about dark elf butts:
Sean said some pretty disrespectful things about my mother. I didn't light him on fire.
The only thing en fuego around here is your mother. I ain't never seen an ass like that.
It's not something people hear about.
quote:
I bet Snoota's Mother is proud:
I banged your wife.
His wife is in a Coma.
quote:
Snoota, what the hell are you doin' out here? You oughta be in bed.
Everyone's having a good time and them some asshole always has to come stick his dick in the pie.
Pie.. Man, I'm hungry. You wanna go get a burger or something?
Because you're always hungry. Like the wolf.
It's not something people hear about.
