Are middle easterns good people overall? Or true terrorists?

reply to post by poet1b


Oh c'mon. It's not the religion, it is the interpretation, it's been hundreds of years since the original event. Christianity has some of the worse atrocities in history to it's name, yet people still herd into the churches and get their weekly dose of lack of confidence, self loathing and guilt. The west should not under any circumstance criticize islam. Not that Islam is all that great, granted, but we're hardly in a society to judge, no matter how many of us think they are.

And it's been 2 millenia since the life of JC, by now the noise is so much we don't even know what we're talking about.

I wish people would stop this exterior intolerance, just shut up for a while, and look calmly into themselves for a bit of truth and connection to whatever God may be.

reply to post by Zepherian


What world do you live in?

It has been close to five hundred years since Christians were as barbaric as the Muslim religion is today.

You don't think we have the right to denounce the flogging of women for not wanting to wear burkas? For wanting an education, for wanting religious freedom.

Heck, if a Muslim woman dates a non-Muslim man, her family will kill her.

How can you pretend this is not a barbaric religion still to this day.

reply to post by poet1b


Not wishing to be confrontational, I'll call you out on that one, all you have to do is compare murder rates in the US, perhaps the country in the world with the largest population of devout christian people, and compare with the majority of arab countries, excluding those currently war torn. Or replace the US with Brazil if you prefer, you'll get a similar result. Christian people can still fall into barbaric behaviour, and the middle east, although in some respects pretty backward, is not what your media has painted it to be. The Arab world has some pretty developed and high tech places.

I saw a BBC documentary (I believe, it's been a while) that said it best, as they were interviewing a saudi woman, and she said she realised that they did have social problems and oppression, but that the west would have to let them solve them at their pace. This was the mindset behind the veil. You cannot nation build. Over time nations change by themselves, and there is plenty of positive influence in the arab world, it's not all hand cutting and wife beating. They are opening up, at their own pace. Accelerating that creates schizms and social convulsion, and, ultimately, more problems than it solves. See: Baghdad.

Quick edit to answer the question on religion: all theistic books are basically historical accounts and have a fairly high signal to noise ratio. It's natural they are somewhat violent and graphic sometimes, the bible is hardly an exception. The interpretations vary. There are plenty of peace loving muslim populations, some of which would probably put you and I to shame.

[edit on 26-6-2008 by Zepherian]

It certainly isn't about a religion. It is about a religion being the law of the land, not separate from government or criminal law, or family law, which should have high standards and equality for women. Sharia law is amongst the worst, most abusive, discriminatory and primitive legal system on the planet. All people, even children, have the right to chose for themselves what they think, what faith or lack of faith they wish to have, and they are sovereign beings. All people should be respected for their individual rights. Women the world over are very concerned with the plight of those who need to be freed from massive abuse. Its one of those things we considered more important than the price of oil.

[edit on 27-6-2008 by mystiq]

reply to post by mystiq


It's almost like they are one nation... united... under god...

Yes, there are women in plight... but just what can the west do about it? Invade the whole middle east? And I just have to point out there are women in plight everywhere, there's pretty massive human trade all over europe for prostitution unfortunately. They have a problem and they need to deal with it, there is no problem there big enough to justify invasion imo.


[edit on 27-6-2008 by Zepherian]

Originally posted by Sonya610

Originally posted by Bombeni
Stealing of course. 10 or 12 times a day using the "no-sale" key can break a business.

When I said brother and sister I meant they are both muslim. And if they are true, devout muslims I would trust their honestly above most everyone elses. Like the poster above said, they truly abhor stealing, and if anyting being around OTHER devout religious friends would be an added encouragement to stay honest.

Are you Indian? I get the feeling you are, well strict Muslim countries are a WHOLE lot different than India. Even tourists are rarely ripped off when visiting true Islamic countries in the middle east.

Yeah Bombeni I know exactly what you are talking about, I know a lot about the digital surveillance industry and know that theft prevention and lowering food costs is a major selling point for quick serve restaurants. Subway or Dunkin owner? : )


[edit on 26-6-2008 by Sonya610]

It's my observation that some of the young muslims here in the states don't practice Islam, are becoming more like average Americans especially if they've been here awhile. Either way I have had problems when all family worked together, not all the time but it happens.

I think what the op was referring to is the image of the terrorist muslim. And a lot of people still have fear from 911, and yes a lot of people lump all mid easterners together which is a matter of not being educated. I know not all are terrorists or support terrorism. Actually I think this thread did me some good, opened my eyes to some truths and untruths and sorta got my thinking straight about the whole muslim thing. If the op had asked "do you hate terrorism?" I would answer a resounding YES, but not all mid easterners are terrorists just like not all Americans wanted Bush to go to war, like me.

reply to post by Zepherian


If you did more research you would find that the murders in the U.S. are not being committed by devout Christians. If living in a free society, or one that is more free in comparison with the average Muslim nation, means having to put up with certain levels of crime, then I'll live with the crime. The reality is that most of the crime in the U.S., and many of these other nations is being committed primarily in specific identifiable geographical and demographical areas. You want to blame all of the U.S. for the acts of a few.

I agree, you can't create democracy, or representative government with a gun. Types of social institutions like this take time to evolve. Do you ever ask yourself, if these people are not ready to accept representative government in their own countries, if they immigrate to a country with representative government, will they be any more ready, and what impact will large scale migration of people not ready to deal with democracy have on a democratic nation? Do you think people living in the western world have the right to ask this? Shouldn't people living in a democratic style of government have the right to be selective in who is allowed to move into their nations in order to protect their freedoms?

Who is committing most of the acts of violence in Iraq? It is not the U.S. soldiers. Who is doing most of the killing in Iraq, and in Afghanistan these days?

Originally posted by DuneKnight
reply to post by jedimiller

 

so jedimiller, i bet i scare you, HA?...BOO! im coming after you!

seriously, arabs can be nice too sometimes just catch us in the right mood, OKAY!

basically i dont know how to answer this but here goes: we are people too like you, some of us are crazy no doubt, some are pretty pissed off, many are funny, many are kind, most would like to have an interesting conversation with an American. so please no more generalizations, because that scares me too.

Just an FYI, please don't take jedi's comments as to what the average American thinks about Arabic people and the middle east. Most of us have a live and let live policy.

On a side note, nice avatar. Stargate rules.

Nicola Telsa

go ask your american teacher who this dude is ask him where his from

I am American and I am not afraid of Middle Eastern people or Muslims.

I have had one very bad experience with a Middle Easterner and a Russian and one of these days I intend on using that situation as a scene in a novel. Let's just say I told my friends that "this was a writing adventure." You know, when you're in your twenties you really think you're invincible

I do not think all Middle Eastern people are terrorists nor do I think that they are all evil or what not. I do believe that some of them are misled by their leaders and I don't agree with what I have read for myself in the Koran, I still respect their rights to believe whatever they want.

I am curious about several of the customs and I don't understand them, but I am willing to learn about them. I just don't have the opportunity

Right now, the two Iranians I have met are both in the restaurant business - one of them having the most wonderful restaurant that serves the absolute BEST prime rib that you've ever tasted in your life regardless of where you are from and the other working in a Middle Eastern gyro and grocery store. They are both great people and I would love the opportunity to get to know them better.

If there are any Middle Eastern people who would like to pen pal with me, I would love to hear from you via u2u

--Karij

Originally posted by Bombeni
reply to post by DuneKnight

 

Are you Islamic?

Does it Matter?

Last i checked, race wasn't important on this forum.

- Carrot

reply to post by poet1b


The US is pratically on a crusade, you can't excuse the responsability of christianity in that any less than you can discount the influence of Islam in their problems. Both cultures are flawed in the same way, which is the point I am trying to make. And no, the crime in the US is not geographically limited, because the high murder rate is linked to the availability of guns. Sure, some urban demographics have extreme stats, but that's not racial or religious, it's an economic phenomenon imo. As, funnily enough, is a lot of the crap in the middle east.

And yes, american soldiers and mercs are doing a fair bit of the killing in Iraq, although there is a quasi civil war going on at the same time. Mission accomplished, huh?

reply to post by Zepherian


Both Islam and Western cultures are flawed, as I have consistently stated, but I would say in very different ways. The Western world is certainly far more progressive.

Crime in the U.S. is primarily geographically and demographically clustered. I don't know why this is, I suspect many things, and race would not be one of them, I am just stating the fact. Not only do we have guns, we also have a great deal more ethnic diversity here in the states, and more cultural conflicts.

As far as what is going on in Iraq with the civil war, it is starting to look like peace and democracy might have a chance. U.S. soldiers in Iraq are on a mission to establish peace, not to create violence, that is what the Muslim extremist do. While I doubt GW's motives, I do not transfer them onto U.S. soldiers who are only there doing their duty. I would say that the motives of U.S. soldiers are a lot more pure than the motives of the Muslim extremists.

Regardless of my value judgement, it is safe to say that the West is on a mission to stamp out radical revolutionary Islam.

We tend to frown on violence that doesn't make money for people in republics with at least lipservice to a modicum of separation of church and state.

We are attemptimg to eradicate a culture. Funny.. no one seems to miss the Third Reich which was quite the cultural institution in its day.
Radical Teutonism, maybe? Pretty much extinguished. Peripheral now at best. Not too many people crying over that loss of cultural diversity.

Originally posted by djerwulfe
Funny.. no one seems to miss the Third Reich which was quite the cultural institution in its day.
Radical Teutonism, maybe? Pretty much extinguished. Peripheral now at best. Not too many people crying over that loss of cultural diversity.

In no way was the Third Reich cultural in any aspect. German society was highly cultured, mostly due to Jewish artists, and the Nazis all but destroyed it. Nazism itself had no cultural redeeming qualities.

Radical Islam is not true Islam. The ones who posts those seemingly militant quotes from the Quran are taking them out of context.

[edit on 28-6-2008 by TheComte]

reply to post by TheComte



*sigh* I'm not praising the the Third Reich. But to say it wasn't a culture or cultural movement is debatable.
"Culture "is usually a distinct set of skills, ideals, art, crafts shared by a distinct group during a distinct time. So . . .

Germans under Hitler contributed a good deal of know-how to the West in terms of industry and science. With and/or without Jewish particpation.

Germans/Austrians produced loads of brilliant people. To overemphasize the Jewish contribution is as bad as ignoring it.

Frederick the Great
Motzart
...nvrmnd

The third reich was a cultural schizm. It arouse very quick and dissapeared just as quickly. I think it was an elite funded social control experiment, in much the same way the neocon project for a new american century is also, again in my opinion. Not that the latter are nazis ofc, they're more jewish-christian than anything else and everyone knows their real god is the allmighty dollar, I'm just pointing out the mechanisms of their appearance. Elites don't really care about religions, only control and permanent conflict based economies.

Radical Islam won't be missed by anyone if it is successfully stamped out, least of all by the majority of the Islamic people. Radical islam is pratically an elite creation, and I throw it in the same bag as other wonderfull organisations such as the CIA and the Jesuits. Shadow crawlers, the whole lot of them, feeding on the gullability and ignorance of young males, and occasionally females. But radical islam is not, imo, a defining factor of the muslim people.

And we in the west are the real modern troublemakers, if we do manage to get rid of radical islam over the next 100 years, as Mccain insinuates, you can bet they will find another orgranisation to blow up over proportion, and we will probably end up fighting Shaolin monks or radical eskimo seal bombers.

The real problem here is not the minute impact of radical organisations, it's the massive impact of our war machines and our conflict based culture.

Ordo ab Chaos.

Just a minor clarification about my posts, I sometimes say "we" not because I am american, but because I am portuguese and Portugal was one of the few countries that has continually supported the US to this day, albeit in a token manner, much to the dissapointment of most of our people, so I do have a small stake in all this.

Originally posted by mystiq
Yes!!!Some hot looking guys there. Also, theres the lead singer of Monoral, half Morrocan, half Japanese

Cool, never seen them before. He's got a good voice for that music.

I know somebody who is half Korean half moroccan, and some half french half moroccans. Myself I'm half moroccan half welsh living in london.



Edit: starting to like their music even more, becoming a fan

[edit on 28-6-2008 by _Phoenix_]

reply to post by Zepherian

I wish I could have written that. Yes, what you said with much gooder words and stuff. "Cultural schizm." That sounds right.

And I do think there is a correlation in broad terms between the Iranian Revolution ideologies (Radical Islam) and Nazi-Germany. Intolerance. Violence, backed up by racist/ethnocentric/philosphical ideas of conflict and competition on the shirtsleeves. Devoid of civility or cross-border conventions. Insanity, really.

The Nazi party was influential in Germany from like 1920 to about 1945. (It's still aorund though, sortof isn't it?)

Khomeini kicked out the republic-profiteers in 1979. It's 2008.

Also, I agree. The radicals are not representative, but they are influential becasue they are willing to commit atrocities.
Again, ( and I hate to keep using Germany, but it's a situation most people can relate to) the silent people, scared or not, who passively allow these radicals to dominate the political arena are pretty guilty.

For instance, when I speak to young Germans now, every one of their grandparents were secretly saving Jews or part of some clandestine resisistance operation. Now... they couldn't ALL have been dissenter taking action or things would have been very different...



[edit on 28-6-2008 by djerwulfe]

reply to post by _Phoenix_

Since ethnicity is on the table, this slighlty off topic inquiry may not be wholly inappropriate.

Have you ever been discriminated against for being Welsh? Or know of anyone who has? Seriously.

I am occasionally discriminated against for being white trash.