To all. Why can there be no questioning of Islam here?

Originally posted by yeahright
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

I don't know. What does this mean, to you?

Originally posted by IamBoon
I have repeatedly tried to make intelligent, well written posts on Islam and the dangers of it's political/social system of belief. Everytime I get moderated as being"insulting and negative"

What it means to me is that any post insisting that islam is anything less than a religion of peace and light is received as hate speech. It does not seem to matter that muslims carry out despicable acts on a fairly regular basis. Like it or not, islam is not just the blueprint of a religion. It requires theocratic rule over the populace.

Actually, there are dozens of threads all over that are bashing Islam, so I'm not sure what you mean.

The main thing is how you frame your argument, and what exactly you are attacking, and discuss it in a civil and polite way. It might be difficult, but people should make some sort of attempt at objectivity. Usually they don't, and the threads turn into the afore-mentioned 'poo-flinging'.

I myself have seen this. Seeing sanctioned Islam-flaming going on in a thread, these very scary characters crawl out of the woodwork of ATS, start discussing how mooslims are all inbred retards (seriously, this happened), 50-100% are undercover terrorists, you shouldn't trust anything they say because they are allowed to lie to you , and they all secretly want to kill you, and "Yeah, I had this neighbour who was a muslim, and he used to look at me angrily, and one day just before 9/11 he justup and disappeared", talk about how they should all convert "if they decide to live with us" and otherwise "they should be sent back" (even if they're locals born and bred), and having a presumption of terrorism (instead of the presumption of innocence).

And it certainly isn't just Islam. I wrote out a thread detailing some dangerous trends in certain zionist-geared groups in Israel, all completely backed by quotes from the Hebrew Bible for each point, and my thread got deleted. So I worded it more carefully (see what I did with "certain zionist-geared groups in Israel"? ), lightened the tone a bit, and posted it again, and it hasn't been deleted (it barely got 5 responses, but whatever ).

It is my suggestion (although this might not be the place to suggest it), that when a thread violates the T&Cs in such a way, instead of deleting it, it should be locked, and some moderator should post the last post explaining what happened and why.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


What it means to me is that the thread starter has made a false claim, making baseless accusations against the site and staff. I dispute the entire premise of the thread. Or, had we forgotten the premise was that Islam couldn't be questioned here and intelligent well written posts are moderated due to some hidden site agenda?

That's the title and opening statement. It's completely false, and paints an untrue picture of the site, what's permissible, and how the staff moderates.

For all the false indignation taken by individuals who create straw man arguments like that, I can assure you the irritation felt by staff when we're wrongly accused of something is that times 10.

It's not a simple or easy task keeping highly volatile threads on-topic and civil. The reason we generate the traffic we do is to a large part, we've come to be known as a place where topics people find interesting can be discussed and the personal attacks will be held to a minimum. We don't see everything, and can't action what we're not made aware of. The idea that staff and the site in general has any agenda beyond maintaining a civil and on-topic environment for discussion is misguided at best and a deliberate lie at worst.

No, I don't take that lightly.

reply to post by yeahright
I grant a lot of what you say as accurate. I also agree that the vast majority of the mods here do a splendid job. However, I still maintain that there seems to be an undercurrent of bias(not necessarily on the part of the mods) against any non-PC position taken. Especially when it comes to islam.

For example, I maintain that "islam" is at the root of the vast majority of the conflicts currently ongoing in the world at this moment. I am not blaming "arabs" or "iranians" or "pakistanis"; I mean "islam". I also maintain that there is no majority opposition within the ranks of muslims against the egregious actions taken by the so called "radical minority". I am sorry, but I see no evidence anywhere that clearly shows a MAJORITY opposing the actions of the radicals. I can search and find a very few imams crying out against their actions, but they are few and far between.
For a comparison, let's look at the public reaction to the idiot preacher in Florida who was burning the koran. Our MSM, our politicians, many religious leaders, and much of the general public stood in opposition to his action and even publicly condemned the burning. I think it was foolish to have burned the book, but I did/do support his free speech right to do so. He is not blowing up buses, or assaulting embassies, or chopping off heads as the muslims do. He just burned a book as muslims seem to burn our flag on a daily basis. Huge difference.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


You wrote:

["For a comparison, let's look at the public reaction to the idiot preacher in Florida who was burning the koran. Our MSM, our politicians, many religious leaders, and much of the general public stood in opposition to his action and even publicly condemned the burning. I think it was foolish to have burned the book, but I did/do support his free speech right to do so. He is not blowing up buses, or assaulting embassies, or chopping off heads as the muslims do. He just burned a book as muslims seem to burn our flag on a daily basis. Huge difference."]

Your post indicates knowledge of liberal (etc) democratic principles, the application of which naturally depends on a society willing and able to uphold them.

Being unfamiliar with details of what's happening in US, the interesting point here is, if the book-burner actually got into any legal trouble as a direct result of his trigger happiness with matches. If not, those people criticizing him where just exercising THEIR freedom of speech rights.

So it's the on ATS recurring argument-chain of a group being accused of oppression, where the accusation of oppression is in itself claimed to be oppression, and the accusors are then in turn being oppressed because they oppressed those who originally were accused of oppression.......endlessly: "They did it first, and we're justified in continuing, because we're the slighted part".

There's no real beginning or end to it, and the process is the price we pay for having liberal principles.

Real persecution starts with practical interference in other peoples' lives.

And btw I think I would like to bring up small Denmark's attitude on this. The danish Mohammed carricatures really p*ssed some muslims off, and the consequent physical and economical threats were tangible. But the danes stuck to their liberal principles

This shows, that even a small, relatively vulnerable liberal nation can and will stand for its principles, and that liberalism isn't just the wishy-washy impotence as some anti-liberals want to make it into.

In a freedom of speech situation christians AS WELL as moslims can be the target for criticism, irony or similar.

reply to post by bogomil
You are correct in that those criticizing the Florida preacher were exercising their free speech by speaking out against him. I think you missed my point though. My point basically boils down to "we speak out against our bad apples, but they do not", and moreover our "bad apples" only burn books or draw pictures; they do not riot and blow up innocents or chop off people's heads.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


I hope, I don't give the impression, that I'm 'politically correct' or even worse, tone down the dangers of Jihad.

Actually I'm at local political level a strong supporter of anti-islamification politics (which I believe is a greater danger here than in US), but with an emphasis on anti-islamification not being the same as anti-islamic.

Islamification is the same extra-parliamentary process as extremist-christian claims of priviliges.

That we only burn books and let people get away with burning books is because we are blessed with living in democracies. This is not overbearing weakness; it's the strength of democracy, that it can give its citizens the automatic right to individual freedom, as long as they are not criminal or threaten the democratic/parliamentary system.

By grateful for that, instead of wishing for the same options fascists in theocracies have.

Originally posted by bogomil
reply to post by sonofliberty1776

 

I hope, I don't give the impression, that I'm 'politically correct' or even worse, tone down the dangers of Jihad.

Actually I'm at local political level a strong supporter of anti-islamification politics (which I believe is a greater danger here than in US), but with an emphasis on anti-islamification not being the same as anti-islamic.

Islamification is the same extra-parliamentary process as extremist-christian claims of priviliges.

That we only burn books and let people get away with burning books is because we are blessed with living in democracies. This is not overbearing weakness; it's the strength of democracy, that it can give its citizens the automatic right to individual freedom, as long as they are not criminal or threaten the democratic/parliamentary system.

By grateful for that, instead of wishing for the same options fascists in theocracies have.

I am sorry, but somehow you are completely misunderstanding me. I am anti-islamic. I believe islam is a death cult. I was only pointing out that we exercise free speech and they react by killing.

reply to post by yeahright


Thanks for clearing things up as to why accounts get banned. I will be the first to admit discussion can escalate into arguments, and then into personally attacks. Its the natural digression of any dialog.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


You wrote:

["I was only pointing out that we exercise free speech and they react by killing."]

I'm in total agreement with you about the 'they' killing deserve all possible opposition. But there's a lot of non-killing 'they's also, and if you through sweeping generalizations include those also, you actually undermine the democracy, which is free of fascist groups killing minorities.

It's cutting the branch you're sitting on.

But even then, you're still free to have such public opinions, at least in US. In Europe the protection of minorities is more extended. You can't legally instigate violence or defame them, where I live.

I may have missed it in your posts, but I'm curious as to your deeper motives. A lot of ideologies have invasive and fascistic fringe groups; do you find islam especially bad in that direction?

Originally posted by bogomil

I may have missed it in your posts, but I'm curious as to your deeper motives. A lot of ideologies have invasive and fascistic fringe groups; do you find islam especially bad in that direction?

While they might have some leanings that are in line with those of certain fascist governments, I would be more prone to describe islam as an expansionistic, militaristic, theocracy.

reply to post by sonofliberty1776


And how does that differentiate itself from Christianity?

Oh, the difference is that secularism and the Enlightenment dragged Christianity kicking and screaming out of the Dark Ages, when it was exactly as you described Islam.

Originally posted by sonofliberty1776

Originally posted by bogomil

I may have missed it in your posts, but I'm curious as to your deeper motives. A lot of ideologies have invasive and fascistic fringe groups; do you find islam especially bad in that direction?

While they might have some leanings that are in line with those of certain fascist governments, I would be more prone to describe islam as an expansionistic, militaristic, theocracy.

I use the word 'fascism' in its more recent commonly used definition, as 'ideological fascism' (i.e.I'm not talking about specific political versions of fascism). Such an ideological fascism contains strong elements of exclusivity and elitism with requests of priviliges to the elite and/or its ideology.

So if or when islam is suppressed, who will be next on the list?

ALL christians, because 'christian soldiers' and christian missionaries sometimes can be intolerable in a liberal etc democracy?

Democracy is a process of accepting and including all various types of ideologogies, worldviews and lifestyles, and only 'removing'/neutralizing those groups, which threaten this overall principle actively.

reply to post by IamBoon

I have repeatedly tried to make intelligent, well written posts on Islam and the dangers of it's political/social system of belief. Everytime I get moderated as being"insulting and negative" . So does that mean ATS is restricting our speech on criticizing Islam? What are they fearing?

Well I can't comment on your removed threads directly, but plenty of threads are alive and active talking about the exact things you are. See, there is a difference in discussing something, and using a topic as cover to spew racist generalizing crap. You did that almost immediately in this post, so I can only assume the things you said that got removed.

Read the T&C and stick to it. Plenty of us are discussing Islam and Judaism without racist diatribes and outright garbage.

i'll go out on a limb, from what you said so far, that you consider all Muslims to be the tiny fringe radicals. And you probably go on about how they are all blood thristy monsters waiting to murder you and every Jew on earth. This couldn't be farther from the truth.

ATS allows almost any topic to be discussed as long as you stick within the T&C. Maybe of the threads I'm involved in get rather heated, yet, we stick to the topic and keep the crass generalizations to a minimum, could it be that the problem isn't the other users, mods, or site owners.

Could it be...... YOU ?

Here's a thread criticizing Islam that I made not too long ago:

Skeptic's Annotated Qu'ran.

It's a link to a skeptical annotation of the Qu'ran with mentioning of a bit of the funny bits...and nobody bothered to care much about it. There's little you can do worse to Islam than criticize the Qu'ran.