Muslims need a hobby

Ohh I'm not going to wade in... either this becomes Muslim bashing or apology thread. Reality is some vague place in the middle.

Jesus talking to press.

I fully agree with you that these people need to lighten up.

However in terms of reaction, i see similarities with how people reacted to the French which were opposed to the allied invasion of Iraq. And before you start yelling "totally incomparable cases" and also "different order of magnitude", in terms of content I agree with that btw, however the psychology of the response is rather similar.

Does anyone still call them Freedom Fries?

I don't dare to post the cartoons here as images for fear of to harsh a reaction, but if anyone is interested in what this is all about, s/he might have a look here.

I fully agree with you that these people need to lighten up.

However in terms of reaction, i see similarities with how people reacted to the French which were opposed to the allied invasion of Iraq. And before you start yelling "totally incomparable cases" and also "different order of magnitude", in terms of content I agree with that btw, however the psychology of the response is rather similar.

Well I think it's an interesting perspective. That was patriotism though and I think most people were mostly just making fun of the French if anything. The whole Freedom Fry thing in the Capitol cafeteria was funny. It's not really the same thing at all but an interesting point.

If anything I would say the boycott of French goods in Europe after their late 90's nuclear testing would have been a better example, but once again it's not quite relative.

These people are rioting, boycotting, and threatening violence due to a cartoon. It's not due to wars or nuclear weapons.

And how do they respond to the bomb turban?

With violence, guns, shootings, threats of kidnapping, etc. Hmm. Truth does hurt.

Priests don't rape children. Perverts become priests to gain access to children. They are still perverts not priests, same with teachers and fcuk knows what else.

cnn

Actually I think my example is better than that boycot you mentioned. In the essence of human psychology, it is about a group of people (clan) that feels threatened by another group. In this sense patriotism and religion are very close to each other, because they are defining terms in the sense of what holds a group of people together. And if a group feels threatened by others that attack its binding factor, group mass hysteria is possible, certainly if there are forces that use this binding factor as one of their main means of control over the group.

Sure, its a bunch of cartoons, and I fully agree with you that the reaction is completely off the scales. It shows that these masses are under a very tight control and that in itself is scary as hell, but (for me) it's not scary enough to want to go to war with them, yet. We need to find other means.

You're probably right about some if not all of the radical ones, but sadly that does not make the islam a very unique religion. It is not about religion, it is about backwards people.

I agree, but they will need some help. Some say that we should interfere with their internal affairs but apparently they cannot make it on their own and they need the help (and I'm not talking about military invasions here).

Most of these populations have been living in feudal systems for many centuries (mind you, in the medieval period and before the regimes in the middle east were considered by many to be the more enlightened ones in the world) and the western world using their natural resources through the hands of a few feudal powerful and filthy rich families, while the remainder of the population is living in poor conditions has not helped things along one bit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-d [...] 01040.html

There's a fundamental problem in the middle east where they keep making a big deal out of everything. Do you think we'll do the same thing when this movie comes out?[/quote]

I realize that unemployment is bad there but their governents really need to get an outlet for these people that doesn't involve bitching, throwing rocks, and blowing themselves up.

Just out of curiousity. What do you know about the whole freedom fry thing? It was just a symbolic mockery of the French by the congress.

How does renaming french fries equate to rioting, violence, kidnapping, etc etc?

Only in Canada.

Ah, I was just ranting....I thought they had threatened to kidnap people but I guess I was wrong.

Whatever they're doing is crazy. Boycotting, throwing bombs, rioting, chanting to blow up Denmark etc

French people beat up? They only got beat up because they're cheese eating surrender monkeys. It wasn't because of the Iraq war or anything....

(You? Devil's Advocate? NO!)

Well, I've considered that already and I submit the following examples for your perusal:

the "Piss Christ" debacle -- though I think that was more about public funding then it was about the blasphemous nature of the "piece", I think.

Last Temptation of Christ. . . (It was a stupid movie anyway).

Oh! I almost forgot about the sybject of Jerry Falwell's defamation suit against Hustler (that WAS about a cartoon).

"Holy Virgin Mary" piece. . .

The most recent is some uproar about NBC's Will and Grace and the "Cruci-fixin's" thing.

Oh, and lest anyone forget the whole X-Mas / Happy Holiday / Holiday tree / nativity scene bad mess.

For my part, I've long accepted that the entertainment and mass mediums accept bigotry towards Christianity as normal and proper and well within the realm of free "speech" or "seperation" of Church and State. . . whatever.

To some's defense I admit that some so-called Christians make it easy for the bigotry inclined: Abortion clinic bombing, Waco, Oral Roberts (well, just the prayer tower thing that I know of) / Robert Tilton / Jimmy Baker / Jimmy Swaggart / Pat Robertson*, KKK, the Inquisition. . . I know there's more but my meory just failed me.

The point I want you all to take from all this is: if the Isalmo-fascists want to try something similar against Christianity, they have to get in line behind our own media. Besides: we already know they hate us in spite of Christianity, so what would be the point?

*(Falwell says whacky things sometimes, too; but only when on T.V.-- which, is unfortunate beacuse that's when most people outside of Lynchburg, VA see him)

This is the big problem I have with America's war on terror, you know. You bomb their countries, all they can do is burn your flag. We Europeans put a cartoon in a newspaper and they can walk from Mecca to Denmark. Uncle Sam had better join me when I'm digging a trench in my back garden in ten years

Now they've torched Norway's embassy.

Heh, thanks so much

The thing that gets me about this, and it's not something I take lightly nor should it be seen as a view of carte blanch towards anti-Islam feeling, is that the Muslims, to a large degree especially in cases like this, demand that they be respected and given their space when they come to European countries. They have a lot of separate schools, for example, and demand that their specific laws, such as those regarding women, be respected.

You even have cases in the UK and other European countries of, for example, fathers and brothers carrying out "Honour Killings" of daughters because they date men and so on.

Yet, if you go to an Islamic country (even a more liberal one where tourism is encouraged and suchlike) they will demand that you cover up and shut up, or else you'll be put neck deep in sand and stoned to death.

For example during the UN mission in Lebanon the family of one of my uncles lived in Israel, to be closer to him during his mission. They lived in the Palestinian half of Jerusalem, as it was cheaper, and one day my aunt and one of her friends, also there with her husband in the UN mission, were sunbathing in their garden. You would have to go out of your way to look in, notice this, round up a bunch of your mates and then do as the Palestinians began to do and throw rocks at them for not being covered up.

It is this demand for complete tolerance and respect combined with a lack of responding tolerance and respect, for example for our dearly held rights of free speech, which gets under my skin. Free speech should be curbed when it gets to the point of incitement to religious hatred, but this started because in Europe after various murders, beatings and threats by Islamic immigrant groups (not some boy in a cave far, far away) there were people too afraid to contribute to a children's book on Islam because they knew that drawing Muhammad is not allowed (this is where this whole thing started.)

When Europeans are too afraid to exercise their rights of free speech (the Danish editor has since said that if he knew he would attract so many death threats he would not have run the article) and Muslim communities are so separated from their countries that Muslims born and raised in a country can then murder their own countrymen (the London bombings), we have a major problem which needs to be addressed.

Welcome to the Politically Correct World, with our Winter Lights to cheer you up in December...

In London there were protests where they called for another 7/7 style attack. No arrests were made. Now I wonder what would happen if you or I walked up to the Saudi embassy and starting shrieking "I'm going to bomb the dome of the rock!" ...?

While I could not agree more that the reaction to these cartoons has been nothing short of ludicrous (on a civil, humane level, that is). I must remind myself that the Islamic holy scriptures clearly stipulate that no false images, mocking or otherwise, can be produced, distributed, etc., and that it is a holy crime not to be disgruntled at the production of said images.

Given that the Koran is by far one of the most zealously adhered to texts, I'm not surprised nor disillusioned by the initial, outraged reaction of Muslims offended by the depictions of Muhammed.

Truly though, it reminds me just how austere and stoical modern Islam is; that it is a religion still locked in the 6th century even though its adherents are living over a millenia later in a very different world.

That and I think we can also say there are reasons for keeping religion and governance seperate: that is Government should be religion nuteral (but not anti-religion).

Religion and politics. . . Grr.

The Turks will stay on side as they really, really, really want to join the EU.

All we have to do is weather this nonsense for another hundred years or so; after that, the oil will be gone and the middle east can go back to being a backwater of no particular importance.

I haven't, but I know my history of it and Afghanistan in general.

The thing about the Turks is that ever since before World War II (or after World War I, depending on how you look at it) they've been making great strides towards becoming more European. Their leaders began to wear European suits, they suppressed a lot of Turkish culture. It's funny actually, in coming towards Democracy the Turkish army has been known to lean in and knock any fundamentalist Muslim politicians back into their box if they try to lean the country more towards the East than the West.

It's an interesting country like that. It has always straddled East and West boundaries in Europe, but it is also a good example of how the promise of the European Union is bringing countries towards democracy. A Turkish prison is plenty nicer today than it was a decade or two ago because they so want to be a part of the EU, for example.