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dogma wrote:Funny, I have that particular copy of the Koran.


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Monster Rain wrote:
Willfully obtuse poster is willfully obtuse.

He's saying, if I may break it down, that you can't reasonably complain about an American burning a Khoran if you have a burning American flag in your hand.

That depends on whether or not you differentiate between religious and nationalist symbols.

To an Islamist there is no difference.

Monster Rain wrote:He's saying, if I may break it down, that you can't reasonably complain about an American burning a Khoran if you have a burning American flag in your hand.

Bingo

The American Flag isn't a religious object. It's annoying but the contexts are radically different.

Ahtman wrote:The American Flag isn't a religious object. It's annoying but the contexts are radically different.

Maybe if you're dealing in purely logical terms.

From the reaction of the "Man on the Street" I don't think this comparison is nearly as nuanced as all this is making it out to be.

Monster Rain wrote:

Ahtman wrote:The American Flag isn't a religious object. It's annoying but the contexts are radically different.

Maybe if you're dealing in purely logical terms.

From the reaction of the "Man on the Street" I don't think this comparison is nearly as nuanced as all this is making it out to be.

I'm a man on the street (only when I'm hookin of course) and I see the difference.

Monster Rain wrote:
To an Islamist there is no difference.

Sure, but Islamists don't usually stage protests.

Lots of people hate the US, and lots of people that hate the US also hate their own nationalist 'identities'. They burn flags because they believe nations are artificial, and that they should not be considered valid means of discerning between groups.

It seems though in a lot of Middle Eastern countries that religion and government or nationality are one in the same. So, I can see how burning an American flag is like burning a Quran. Here's a key difference though. We don't issue fatwas to kill them when they burn a US flag. Also, we aren't accepting billions of dollars in aid and training from them and then burning their flags and calling them infidels and watching their soldiers die to defend our country and try to stabilize its government.


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dogma wrote:Sure, but Islamists don't usually stage protests.

There was a protest in Kabul protesting the preacher who was going to burn the Quran. It including 500+ people including government officials. They were burning US flags and effigies. Also, they were claiming that the entire US population backed the decision to burn the Quran and that President Obama backed the decision. And these are the people that are accepting our aid and money and training and our troops lives.

So, yes, they do protest.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
There was a protest in Kabul protesting the preacher who was going to burn the Quran. It including 500+ people including government officials. They were burning US flags and effigies. Also, they were claiming that the entire US population backed the decision to burn the Quran and that President Obama backed the decision. And these are the people that are accepting our aid and money and training and our troops lives.

So, yes, they do protest.

You're missing the Islamist part. Islamism is explicitly related to terrorism, not hatred of the US.


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DarkAngelHopeful wrote:Also, we aren't accepting billions of dollars in aid and training from them and then burning their flags and calling them infidels and watching their soldiers die to defend our country and try to stabilize its government.

Do you really believe that the aid and training provided to the Islamic world is designed to help the average Muslim?

dogma wrote:

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
There was a protest in Kabul protesting the preacher who was going to burn the Quran. It including 500+ people including government officials. They were burning US flags and effigies. Also, they were claiming that the entire US population backed the decision to burn the Quran and that President Obama backed the decision. And these are the people that are accepting our aid and money and training and our troops lives.

So, yes, they do protest.

You're missing the Islamist part. Islamism is explicitly related to terrorism, not hatred of the US.


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DarkAngelHopeful wrote:Also, we aren't accepting billions of dollars in aid and training from them and then burning their flags and calling them infidels and watching their soldiers die to defend our country and try to stabilize its government.

Do you really believe that the aid and training provided to the Islamic world is designed to help the average Muslim?

1. The terrorists hate the US. The Kabul protesters were Muslims and were spewing forth hatred towards the US.

2. Do you not?

dogma wrote:

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
There was a protest in Kabul protesting the preacher who was going to burn the Quran. It including 500+ people including government officials. They were burning US flags and effigies. Also, they were claiming that the entire US population backed the decision to burn the Quran and that President Obama backed the decision. And these are the people that are accepting our aid and money and training and our troops lives.

So, yes, they do protest.

You're missing the Islamist part. Islamism is explicitly related to terrorism, not hatred of the US.

Not necessarily.

There are those that consider Islam to be political ideology as well as a Religion and aren't terrorists.

Let me give you guys another example of Islamic tolerance.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100917/882/twl-muslim-extremist-threat-forces-spain.html

So now we are talking that the name of a city is holy to them too (and before the usual crowd complains there is another disco nearby making a reference to a Catholic monastery in their name).

Remember guys, be respectful with the Quoran, Muhamad, their names, their arquitecture, their culture, their pets, their cooking, their traditional flag burning.... or else.

M.

PS: Yes I`m being sarcastic
PSS: In Spanish Meca means a place very attractive to people for being the center of an activity. Hollywood es la meca del cine (Hollywood is the movie´s mecca. That´s the reason for the name and no, no matter what some Arab TVs say there was ever a mosque there

Miguelsan wrote:Let me give you guys another example of Islamic tolerance.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100917/882/twl-muslim-extremist-threat-forces-spain.html

So now we are talking that the name of a city is holy to them too (and before the usual crowd complains there is another disco nearby making a reference to a Catholic monastery in their name).

Remember guys, be respectful with the Quoran, Muhamad, their names, their arquitecture, their culture, their pets, their cooking, their traditional flag burning.... or else.

M.

PS: Yes I`m being sarcastic
PSS: In Spanish Meca means a place very attractive to people for being the center of an activity. Hollywood es la meca del cine (Hollywood is the movie´s mecca. That´s the reason for the name and no, no matter what some Arab TVs say there was ever a mosque there

This is taken from that article.
'Calling a place for dancing and drinking by that name shows disregard to the feelings of Muslims.'

So, burning the US flag and threatening our citizens lives and strong arming us to conform to their religious standards isn't hurting non Muslims feelings?

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
So, burning the US flag and threatening our citizens lives and strong arming us to conform to their religious standards isn't hurting non Muslims feelings?

But you forget... the US is the Great Satan and there is no obligation to consider our feelings. Only the one and truly holy Muslim must be considered, tolerated and respected.

Feel free to saw the heads from the infidel. /sarcasm

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
1. The terrorists hate the US. The Kabul protesters were Muslims and were spewing forth hatred towards the US.

That doesn't make the protesters Islamist.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
2. Do you not?

No. Most of US foreign aid is wired through US contractors. Basically the US government buys some sweet things from sweet US contractors, and then send the resultant product to other states. Whether or not it does any good is not a paramount topic.


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Monster Rain wrote:
Not necessarily.

There are those that consider Islam to be political ideology as well as a Religion and aren't terrorists.

Yeah, but that's not Islamism. Islamism is basically Islam + Fascism, and it doesn't correlate with non-terrorist behavior.

The people you're talking about are basically just the Huntington version of Muslims, very much akin to the Huntington version of Christians (Koran burners).


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The Green Git wrote:
But you forget... the US is the Great Satan and there is no obligation to consider our feelings. Only the one and truly holy Muslim must be considered, tolerated and respected.

Feel free to saw the heads from the infidel. /sarcasm

I assume that you ignore the many traffic fatalities that occur in US life every day. Why are 'head sawings' more important?

Relapse wrote:As you might or might not recall, an obscure preacher in Florida a couple of weeks ago set off a firestorm in the Islamic world by threatening to burn some Korans. Even Christians in large numbers spoke out against this guy.

People are given death threats and attacked for a cartoon, article, or a book against Islam, yet there doesn't seem to be an outpouring of moderate Muslims decrying actions like this as there are against the preacher.

Is there any reason the larger media would cover it if they did? I mean seriously, 'calm guy has opinion' does not make for sensationalist news.

If you actually take a bit of time to look into it, you'll find exactly what you are looking for, it just isn't on cable TV with any regularity.

Contrasting to this:

When the Twin Towers went down, there was dancing in the streets in various cities in the middle east and celebrations among a fair section of the Muslim populace. The highjackers are regarded as heroes.

Contrasting that, there were and still are people in the U.S. that considered our government directly responsible for the attacks on 9/11.

I don't know what a fair section is, TBH. It doesn't mean anything to me. As far as I remember it, there was an awful lot of repetitive imagery and there still is, but it is almost always limited to less than a dozen occurrences. None of that makes it reasonable to wage a culture war on the greater part of two continents, if not three if we want to be thorough.

The U.S. went to war in Afganastan over the twin towers, yet somehow find themselves the ones being blamed for starting the war.

We went into Iraq and pretended that our army was addressing the problems coming from Afghanistan. By many accounts, our presence is a catalyst to creating terrorists. We are the reason that so much of this is happening, our presence in the middle east plays a big role in the fact that many countries do in fact hate us, all told. In spite of that, not all of those countries are responsible for terrorist acts against the U.S. It is no more reasonable to say that the people in those countries are individually responsible for terrorist acts against U.S.

They can burn as many flags as they please, I really don't care. I would however, like coverage of all sides, instead of the angry, loud, moronic, news selling movements that we are used to now. It's bunk, even with excuses about fringe elements presenting the greatest threat OF ALL TIME.

I'll let you finish. Thanks for clarifying on that, BTW, Relapse.

Oh, here is a pretty good clip.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:Well, I'm back. I've been up for over 24 hours waiting for my replacements and inprocessing them. Now it's time for some much needed sleep.

Actually, things have been pretty civil on this thread. Thank you guys. I think there has been some good debating without hate or venom.

Well, personally, I think if you belong to a religion and you profess to believe it, then yes, you should probably be held accountable for your actions and conduct within the regulations of that religion. Although, I know that no one is perfect which is why I believe you can't follow your religion perfectly. However, without going into a ginormous religious discussion, I also believe in the principle of repentance which helps you overcome said imperfections. I don't know what to say if a Christian doesn't want to be held accountable for their actions in relation to being a Christian. I suppose even if they don't want to be held accountable, by the very nature of professing to be a Christian, you would still be held accountable.

As far as an attack on someone in Seattle, I couldn't give you a 100% answer. I imagine whatever city you live in there is the possibility of an attack. I would venture that your probability would be higher in a larger city, such as Seattle, than a rural area like eastern Washington.

But I'd like to point out again, that we're all being pretty civil in this thread. Go us!

mattyrm wrote:Just because we don't share the view of others, doesn't mean we can't respect them eh Luna?

I've been to several Muslim nations, they treat women like rats. They think gays should be stoned to death, they treat kaffirs and infidels worse than everybody else simply because they don't agree with them. And you talk about respect?

You wouldn't be able to argue with me in a Muslim country, for god made the man superior to the woman.

Islam disgusts me, almost as much as apologists like you who aren't even Muslim but take great offence on behalf of them.

Respect is earned, nor given freely. I don't respect rapists or murderers either, so how can anybody demand I respect something that makes equally little sense to me, and causes misery to millions of women around the world.

I don't respect Islam for perfectly logical reasons, I never will, and if you actually knew what several million afghan women had been through, I very much doubt you would as well.

Albatross wrote:

I don't know how credible the threats posed by Fatwas are in Seattle, I would imagine Seattle would be a much harder place for Assassinations than most.

O RLY?


Tell that to this poor sod.

I genuinely have no idea who this character is.

Really EF?

Wrexasaur wrote:Really EF?

Ohh. He died?

Kilkrazy wrote:It is all a crappy mess.

All Muslims didn't overreact hastily, only the most traditional extremists.

Stop tarring them all with the same brush, it is thoughtless and bigoted.

It strikes blows against the moderate majority and drives them out of western society into the hands of extremists.

Some of us are of the opinion that there is no "moderate majority".

There are thousands of millions of Muslims in the world. More than a billion, less than two billion. Roughly 20% of all people, or 1 in 5 people are Muslim.

By accusing that many people of being much of anything, you are being thoughtless and bigoted, just as KK suggests.

Thousands of millions of people, seriously take a few minutes to think about exactly how many people that is. It is roughly 3-4 times the number of people living in the U.S., of which there are something like 1-7 million Muslims.

Think about it.

Or...

meh. Religion is bad mmmkay?

BluntmanDC wrote:

Wrexasaur wrote:I'm going to ignore the fact that you grossly generalized with the sentences before this. I simply want to know what you mean by this sentence.

Backwater preacher --> Pictures of Mohammed --> 9/11 --> War?

I don't follow.

i think he was saying while the actions of one right wing preacher in america or a defender of free speech cartoonist gets embassies bombed/attacked/set on fire, hitlists made, and riots, while the group of muslims that say the west has no respect for their beliefs, have no problem burning effigies of world leaders and a country's flag or making persian rugs depicting the burning world trade centre

Isn't it part of free speech to burn effigies of world leaders and such?

Isn't that part of western beliefs?

It's nasty when it happens to you of course.

Miguelsan wrote:Let me give you guys another example of Islamic tolerance.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20100917/882/twl-muslim-extremist-threat-forces-spain.html

So now we are talking that the name of a city is holy to them too (and before the usual crowd complains there is another disco nearby making a reference to a Catholic monastery in their name).

Remember guys, be respectful with the Quoran, Muhamad, their names, their arquitecture, their culture, their pets, their cooking, their traditional flag burning.... or else.

M.

PS: Yes I`m being sarcastic
PSS: In Spanish Meca means a place very attractive to people for being the center of an activity. Hollywood es la meca del cine (Hollywood is the movie´s mecca. That´s the reason for the name and no, no matter what some Arab TVs say there was ever a mosque there

Guys, if you want Islam to be tolerant you won't achieve it by being intolerant.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote: We don't issue fatwas to kill them when they burn a US flag.

No, we post threads on the internet where people regularly express the view that the entire region should be nuked, for example. Hooray for progress !

Kilkrazy wrote:Guys, if you want Islam to be tolerant you won't achieve it by being intolerant.

yes the fact that non muslims aren't allowed to go to mecca (the religious mecca), the fact that forgeign women have to wear head scarve in muslim countries, the fact that you are not allowed to bring non-muslim religous items into Saudi Arabia compared to the openness reseved to the thousands of muslims that live in the 'west' (yes there are a handfull of that think the only good muslim is a dead one, and a larger portion are uneasy around them)

Islamic nations (not people) and the ismalists and angry muslims (just so dogma can can see the difference) are intolerent of anyone other than their version of islam let alone other religions.

dogma wrote:Lots of people hate the US, and lots of people that hate the US also hate their own nationalist 'identities'. They burn flags because they believe nations are artificial, and that they should not be considered valid means of discerning between groups.

that is the most rediculous thing i have ever read, muslim protesters and general mobs burn U.S. flags inparticular to express their hate of the country and its people not cos they are humanists

to many Americans the U.S. flag is more than just a symbol of state but an idiological symbolso for many Americans it would be as bad as burning a quran (you may not agree)

Emperors Faithful wrote:

I don't get it.


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reds8n wrote:

DarkAngelHopeful wrote: We don't issue fatwas to kill them when they burn a US flag.

No, we post threads on the internet where people regularly express the view that the entire region should be nuked, for example. Hooray for progress !

I haven't ever said that. Also, I haven't seen anyone say that in this thread. Not everyone who disagrees with the behaviors and actions of Islamic clerics issuing fatwas wants to "nuke them all."


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Kilkrazy wrote:

Isn't it part of free speech to burn effigies of world leaders and such?

Isn't that part of western beliefs?

It's nasty when it happens to you of course.

So, are you saying that we should be okay with what they are doing? Not every one is as relaxed about the burning of the US flag or effigies of it's president or rugs that depict the burning of the two towers. Also, where are the internet forums that have a dominant Muslim base that are discussing these same issues and have a big portion of them being apologists to the West? Do you think there are sites where they are saying, "You need to respect their freedom to burn the Quran." Just curious.


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Wrexasaur wrote:There are thousands of millions of Muslims in the world. More than a billion, less than two billion. Roughly 20% of all people, or 1 in 5 people are Muslim.

By accusing that many people of being much of anything, you are being thoughtless and bigoted, just as KK suggests.

Thousands of millions of people, seriously take a few minutes to think about exactly how many people that is. It is roughly 3-4 times the number of people living in the U.S., of which there are something like 1-7 million Muslims.

Think about it.

I think most people realize they shouldn't make sweeping statements about demographics of people. In contrast, should the 500+ protesters in Kabul have made sweeping statements about the US population and about president Obama saying we all supported the decision of the burning of the quran?

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:

Isn't it part of free speech to burn effigies of world leaders and such?

Isn't that part of western beliefs?

It's nasty when it happens to you of course.

So, are you saying that we should be okay with what they are doing? Not every one is as relaxed about the burning of the US flag or effigies of it's president or rugs that depict the burning of the two towers. Also, where are the internet forums that have a dominant Muslim base that are discussing these same issues and have a big portion of them being apologists to the West? Do you think there are sites where they are saying, "You need to respect their freedom to burn the Quran." Just curious.

What I am saying is that if you believe that western culture and values are better than Islamic culture and values you should not descend to their level.

They burn a flag. You don't burn a Koran.

DarkAngelHopeful wrote:
I haven't ever said that. Also, I haven't seen anyone say that in this thread. Not everyone who disagrees with the behaviors and actions of Islamic clerics issuing fatwas wants to "nuke them all."

You haven't no..well..AFAIK anyway ....but it is a view commonly expressed both here and elsewhere.

Not everyone who disagress with the USA burns flags or blows things up or etc etc

@Killkrazy, I understand that. I also agree with you. It makes sense. I grew up with my mother teaching me to take the high road (doing mean things to your sister after she does mean things to you usually doesn't help the situation in any significant way). But, I guess what I'm saying is, who is teaching them to also take the high road?


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@Dogma, While I have no reason to doubt what you say about US aid and contractors, I've been in Afghanistan for 6 months and know that we hire lots of local nationals to help the local economies. Loads of them work on bases. Also, there are entire teams of soldiers dedicated to rebuilding Afghanistan and helping them out in their towns and communities. The focus shifted from winning their hearts and minds to their trust and respect. I truly believe that along with any other reasons we're here, we are here to help the people of Afghanistan get their country back from terrorists. A stable and self governing Afghanistan = a win for the US.