The Social Taboo of Criticizing Radical Islam

reply to post by melatonin


We can certainly add that into the discussion if you'd like. I cannot update my OP anymore but we can begin here if people would like to discuss the possibility it is 'socially ignorant' to criticize other religions and whether or not it causes a backlash to do so. I brought up Islam because of something I am going through personally at the moment but by all means we can increase the scope of this discussion.

Another smart post from a smart young lady.

Why is it that religious threads always get heated? There's a lot of spitting and scratching on this thread.

I don't think that it is taboo to criticize Islam. It just that Muslims get their back up more when their faith is attacked. So it gets more media coverage.

If someone attacked a radical Christian, nothing would happen, they would just take in on the chin. It's not because they are less faithful than Muslims, it's just because radical Islam has some sort of weird blood lust.

Although i'm sure if you lived in a Muslim culture you would think that radical Christians have a blood lust. Seeing as one of the biggest radical Christian countries, the United States, have been bombing the hell out of them for years and years.

Like all religious discussions, it's all about perspective. It depends on you follow.

I hate that I have so little time to type each day, and yet this will probably be passed over.

I agree with the OP about "special treatment". I give you this. When that artist, can't remember who, just posted that "art" that was offensive to christians, the peaceful protesters ( who numbered in the 100's ) were the story. How dare they show intolerance to the ideas of the artist! However, a danish cartoon, printed Thousands of miles away, sparks protests by millions, and cause a number of deaths. Yet the story is, how could you offend these nice people?
The muslim nations are choosing to be a part of the world community, yet tolerance is not a part of many of their agendas. (again, MILLIONS) BTW, the catholic church did a lot to help bring about a peaceful settlement to the IRA. Who, again, rarely did anything even resembling the atrocities done by these muslim extremists. You cannot compare other Christian atrocities, they happened at the same time ALL religions of the world, and governments BTW, were doing the same.( a loooonnnggg time ago) I would like to think, that if one is going to say that they are a contemporary nation, that they would fight to have tolerance, that all other modern nations are expected to have. (modern Christian atrocities are not committed in modern nations)
And if you are going to say that the U.S. is a Christian nation, please feel free to point out all the good things our country does. African aid anyone? The Tsunami disaster? Where are all of the Muslim nations? (certainly not helping their own.)
Also, we lost a heck of a lot more people in our own civil war. Don't preach about the price of freedom, not when you personally have done NOTHING to earn or defend it. (p.s. I am a veteran) I'm not saying I have more claim to it. I am just saying, its real easy to lament the cost of which you have never had to pay.

Oh, and the "cost" (dollars) of the war? most of it goes to American companies.


-Jason

?

Dutch filmmaker critical of Islam killed.
Nun murdered after Pope's comment.
A Christian teacher gets fired for complaining about the portrayal of Jews and Christians in Islamic educational literature.
Norweigian reporter murdered.
Author protested against in India and in hiding.
The cartoon Jihad.
Canadian woman attacked in her home after complaining about Muslim leader.

Though the assassin was Morracan, the first link does not proove concrete evidence that Van Gough was killed because of his movie making. It does not even state that his killer was a Muslim!

An elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital Sunday in an attack possibly linked to worldwide Muslim anger toward Pope Benedict XVI. Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunch time after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Her bodyguard was also slain.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope’s remarks last week on Islam and violence.

Note the word 'possibly.' In the English language, possibly does not mean the same thing as conclusively. The fact that no one claimed responsibility also casts doubt on the murder's relationship to the pope's comments.

The teacher in the third link can't seem to make up his mind as to why he was fired:

And Mr Cook, of Feltham, said he finally got the push after 18 years at the school when he revealed cheating in GCSE exams.

His allegations of discrimination seems almost like an afterthought.

Did you actually read the fourth article? It states that the tensions of Muslims in Norway result directly from her foreign policy!

On the surface, the fifth seems to be a genuine case of discrimination, but I do not want to commit to that too firmly, because I know nothing about the woman herself.

I understand that the cartoons resulted in violence, but I am not sure that that is a good example, because I beleive that they were intended to provoke a response.

The last one also seems very circumstancial.

poo yourself -
show me where the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob tells his people to kill Jews and then the Christians ?
and Christ
who is God incarnate said
love your enemies

Moslems are in a deadly bind if they ever want to get out and away from the fascist line - literally!
y

Originally posted by asmeone
reply to post by Yacov

 

Pooh.

The Bible has similar texts.

Old Testament Violence
New Testament

reply to post by mrwupy


Very interesting and thought provoking reply, Mr Wupy. This is something I was thinking about the other day. Christians had their dark ages and it seems it is now Islam's turn. But does that really make it acceptable or justify what is occurring? It's like a child saying, "Well everyone else was doing it!" Also, no one is trying to justify what Christianity did during the middle ages so how could we possibly defend the same actions now but in another group? Two wrongs don't make a right.

Also as another poster wisely mentioned: If this is the way they want to live their lives then that is none of our business. But it appears they are making it the world's business as well.

reply to post by Blaine91555


Good points Blaine!

Do you approve of strapping bombs to children and using them to blow up your own countries civilians?

Do you approve of stoning or jailing women for being the victim of a rape?

Do you approve of blowing up civilian market places that contain only your own people?

Do you approve of men who treat women like livestock?

Do you approve of men who beat their wives and children?

I can not tell from your posts how you feel about the above actions. Are they OK or not?

Now here's some issues, that haven't been completely explained:

Thoughts?

~Ducky~

reply to post by Yacov


OK, let's not get the Bible, or the Koran, or even the Torah involved. Once a thread descends into who's religious text says what, it descends into complete madness.

The OP is brining up why a certain group of people may or may not seem to have preferential treatment. Replace 'criticizing radical Islam' to 'criticizing men in tights' and you have the same basis.

Your averga Jo-ali Muslim on the street, working hard making a living, is not going to read into bits of radical text and get himself locked up. Believe it nor not, Muslims are actually people too. There are MANY radicalized Muslims, such as the ones that get their panties in a knot over a cartoon, but most of them just want to get on with everyday stuff.

Originally posted by Yacov
poo yourself -
show me where the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob tells his people to kill Jews and then the Christians ?

That doesn't make any sense. Why would the God of Abraham destroy his own people?

I posted that to show that the Bible has similar commandments to destroy the unbelievers. The point is not what histtorical context the verses are in, but the fact that they are there.

For the record, I have read the Koran, and you are taking it out of context. It states that the 'People of the Book' should not come into conflict. Unbeleiver refers more to a person that doesn't recognize God.

reply to post by mattguy404


Let's say...we don't get any religious book involved, but look at my post regarding the'customs', that are supported and carried out, to this day, by Muslims.

Thoughts?

~Ducky~

Originally posted by asmeone
Though the assassin was Morracan, the first link does not proove concrete evidence that Van Gough was killed because of his movie making. It does not even state that his killer was a Muslim!

Look at some more recent articles relating to the story. More facts came to light as coverage progressed.

Note the word 'possibly.' In the English language, possibly does not mean the same thing as conclusively. The fact that no one claimed responsibility also casts doubt on the murder's relationship to the pope's comments.

Again, that is an older article. That list took me five minutes to put together. You have heard about the incident with the Pope right? It was all over the news and so were the riots that broke out causing him to retract his comments about Islam. Yikes.

His allegations of discrimination seems almost like an afterthought.

The books being burned seemed like a clue.

On the surface, the fifth seems to be a genuine case of discrimination, but I do not want to commit to that too firmly, because I know nothing about the woman herself.

I understand that the cartoons resulted in violence, but I am not sure that that is a good example, because I beleive that they were intended to [url=http://www.rense.com/general80/dan.htm]provoke a response.

Great. So you can see that something seems to be going on. If there was proof, it wouldn't be a conspiracy theory now would it?

Let's face it, Islam is a religion that advocates violence.
If you allow that religion to flourish, violence will also flourish.
Islam is not a religion of peace. The Bhuddists are as close as the planet comes to a peacefull religion. You only need to look at countries who poulations have a marked increase in the Islamic populace, to see what you can expect to come in small populace Islamic countries. As a minority, they will badger away and be given concessions and sympathy. Once they become a majority, then it begins the enforcement of Islamic rule. Not all muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are muslim.

Shows how much you guys know your facts about Islam, it seems like the media have done a great job brainwashing you all to believe all that. Keep up the good work, I'm sure you all make God happy by how much knowledge you have of Islam. Bravo! Now, let's get real and take a step back, and really ask yourselves.. Is starting threads like this going to change anything about how you feel about Islam? No, it just seems like this is the only place to express your hate against a religion. Why not go somewhere in public and ask Muslim's all these questions you have, and see what kind of answers you get, instead of all this ignorant chibberish.. You people have really out done yourselves this time, all I gotta say is may God have mercy on your souls.

reply to post by TheDuckster


I'm sorry... I posted mine at almost the same time and didn't see this request.

This is aimed at not a single person in particular: As Matt said, I really don't want this thread to spiral off topic with personal insults or about religious doctrine. Technically, this thread is about the conspiracy to silence criticism of Islam from the liberal media, teachers at school, your politically correct sensitive friend who doesn't like you talking about it, etc. It is not necessarily about Radical Muslims blowing up a radio station for speaking out against Islam although that is included in the topic as well.

reply to post by AshleyD


Then I must ask why, in your references, the cases detailed a backlash that came from Muslims themselves?

reply to post by Armin


wow man can you make it anymore obvious you read NOONES post before you decided to interject. If you read ALL of the posts you might of gotten a better understanding of everyones OPINION and INTENT...which is NOTHING like what you just assumed!

Originally posted by TheWalkingFox
A number of reasons that I can see.

First off, a number of the people who are so eager to talk about the subject are the same people who ignore, defend, or dismiss Christian extremism. You, for example, are in this crowd where every murderous, foam-mouthed freak of a Christian is either "not a Christian" or "not as bad as the Muslim just like him." One would wonder why you guys are so easy to talk about radical Islam when you refuse to do the same about radical Christians. You could let Muslims handle their own stable, and you handle yours. Instead, so many people are "let's ignore the pile of turds in the middle of our living room, and talk about the one in our neighbor's!"

So there's that.

Now the other reason, is because very few people talk about "radical Islam" - In fact the only people I've seen do so are Muslims. Instead, what we get are people who try to paint all Islam by the radical elements, or people too ignorant to learn the difference.

For example, that site you linked. Take a look at it. Seriously, shuffle through the links, look at the titles. Do you see anywhere mentioned that the site talks about radical Islam? No, you don't. Because thereligionofpeace.com doesn't talk about Radical Islam. Instead it paints Islam as being radical, violent, bigoted, and so on and so forth. The site does have a little disclaimer about not treating Muslims like #, but that's appended with "It's not their fault that they're too stupid to know what they're talking about"

How can truth be biased? You're kidding, right? Ashley, I know you're smarter than that. It's possible to present facts in numerous ways, without ever once being untruthful. Imagine you're speaking to a Kosovar about the independence of Kosovo and the tensions over that. Now imagine you hear the same topic discussed by a nationalist Serb. Both are being factual, telling you of the events. But do you think either is free of bias? Of course not. "Truth" and "bias" are not mutually exclusive, and I'm subtracting from your overall score for presenting a statement that begs that question.

If you want to talk about Radical Islam, I would suggest you first clean up your own backyard, and then, you know, stick to radical Islam, rather than gulping down hate-jizz. As for it being a "social taboo" I'm not sure where you're getting THAT from... As islam is absolutely the only religion that gets this treatment in widespread media, with an occasional mockery of Wicca thrown in for leavening.

[edit on 24-2-2008 by TheWalkingFox]

well that was a very well written response. Kudos. social taboo? not so much islam get's kicked around like a red headed step child but i haven't studied it that much and due to the fact that most muslim's have much lower standards of living (in the middle east where majority are IMO) i don't know if it is a reflection of the religous teaching so much as the reflection of poverty and western media reporting only the negative's

imagine america crashing down to the same living standards and then watch radical christian and radical jewish and radical catholics running everywhere.

[edit on 24-2-2008 by cpdaman]

reply to post by asmeone


Because you asked for evidence and that is the most obvious and closest piece of 'evidence' off the top of my head. There might be some things found in the media or education as well towards a slanted position but I am not aware of the facts of such incidences. I'll look for some tomorrow, though. I've heard about various universities and schools slanting things in favor of Islam and have seen documentaries on television that sweep the bad things under the rug but the above stories like the Pope or Denmark incidents are the most well known and not quite so anecdotal.

[edit on 2/24/2008 by AshleyD]

reply to post by AshleyD


You're missing, or ignoring, the point:

You said your thread is about a liberal bias in the media preventing criticism of Islam.

The evidence you provided are cases of Muslims reacting to some criticism of their beliefs. That is not the same thing as a liberal bias preventing criticism. The very fact that these people might have been targeted meant that thier views had to be represented by the media in some form or another, so the Muslims had a reason to react.


Also, I don't understand why you would use an older reference. If there's more to the story that makes it look less circumstantial, why wasn't that included in the references?