Originally posted by finneganCitation please on the New York "tube" case.
Yes I appreciate the argument and I agree it is a difficult matter.
For example, muslims using the New York tube must accept being confronted with Islamaphobic posters because your courts regard this as an example of free speech and the transport company must accept these posters knowing they offend their customers.
Eventually, the creation of a cli ...[text shortened]... democratic system because it is actually fundamental to the way politics is now being conducted.
Which climate of fear do we choose: the one where some people are offended, or the one where people are afraid to speak out for fear of gov't reprisal?
I don't agree with SC that spending money equals speech and would like to see Citizens United reversed.
I'm not quite following your paragraph on 'hate figures'. Who exactly are the 'hate figures'?
I wish our country would get out of Afghanistan ASAP and I wish we had not re-escalated that conflict.
If there is a problem with speech, it's not that the bad guys are speaking out; it's that the good guys are silent.
Originally posted by finneganI keep telling you Islam is not a race.
What Prubhupad has not said about Islam would doubtless fill an encyclopedia of many volumes. What he has said about Islam I have quoted.
You do not show that I am dishonest. Instead you announce that all atheists are dishonest, I am an atheist, and therefore I must be dishonest. However, if you feel that syllogism is sufficient, and many would agree w ...[text shortened]... um, I would be delighted. By all means walk away. Personally, I would favour having you banned.
And you keep telling me it is and that I am racist.
I have told the forum many times that I love all people and therefore I am not racist............
I love the Iraqi,s and the Iranian,s and the Turks and the Russians and the Somalians and the Indonesians and everyone on the face of this earth.......So when I make a point and present to the forum the atrocities of Islam it has nothing to do with racism........so why do you keep saying it does? (Rhetorical question.)
This baseless attacking all the time........ Is your dishonesty.
Originally posted by stellspalfieYour play on words are dishonest.
exposed and defeated by what? you really are a complete loon. I dread to think what you did in your previous life to be reincarnated with such horrific mental issues. Maybe you just need a new hobby, or to get out of the house more, or a girlfriend, are you sexually frustrated is that it? still a virgin? cant talk to girls? or secretly like boys? maybe ...[text shortened]... try and guess why you are so mental and if we get close you can say hot,hotter,hotter and so on.
Originally posted by DasaOn 19th December last year you started a thread in which you advocated the deliberate genocide of all Muslim men in the world, without exception, and even if they were to convert to other religions. Some Muslim women were to be executed also, although you apparently allowed for the children "to be spared". [At least 60 people saw the content of that thread, so there's no point you denying it]. There are millions of Muslim men in Iraqi and Iran and Turkey and Russia and Somalia and in Indonesia. On one hand you want to wipe them all them all out with a systematic genocide, and on the other you claim to "love... everyone on the face of this earth" including the men living in the countries you mentioned. Which is it to be, Dasa?
I have told the forum many times that I love all people and therefore I am not racist............
I love the Iraqi,s and the Iranian,s and the Turks and the Russians and the Somalians and the Indonesians and everyone on the face of this earth.......
Originally posted by SwissGambithttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/26/activist-new-york-anti-muslim-poster
Citation please on the New York "tube" case.
Mona Eltahawy, the prominent Egyptian-American writer and activist, has been arrested in New York after spraying paint over a controversial poster on the subway that has been condemned for equating Muslims with "savages".
The posters were put up in the city by the anti-Muslim American Freedom Defense Initiative, led by Pam Geller. They were approved by a US court, which ruled that they were "political" statements and protected by the first amendment, which guarantees free speech.
The poster states: "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man." Between two Stars of David, it adds: "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad."
...The posters are now displayed in 10 New York stations – including Grand Central and Times Square – after a court ruled that the local transport authority could not refuse the ads.
The Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA) had originally ruled it would not permit the posters because they were demeaning, but was compelled to take the $6,000 (£3,700) ad after Geller's group went to court.
Last month US district court judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that it is protected speech under the first amendment.
"Our hands are tied," New York subway spokesman Aaron Donovan said. "Under our existing ad standards as modified by the injunction, the MTA is required to run the ad."
The posters have attracted widespread condemnation including from Jewish figures. Among those who have spoken out against them is Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, of Rabbis for Human Rights — North America, who wrote for CNN online: "As a rabbi, I find the ads deeply misguided and disturbing … The coded message makes clear who the savages are: those who support jihad, which in Geller's mind includes all Muslims. She has called Islam 'an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the Earth'.
"As a Jew, I know the extreme to which baseless hatred can lead. And the Jewish community has been in the past a target of hatred in the United States. Geller's message ignores the positive contributions that our Muslim friends, neighbours and colleagues make to our country every single day.
As for the source of these adverts, the Wikipedia entry on Geller is thought provoking:
Geller has also lent her support to a number of other political causes. She has strongly defended former Serbian president Slobodan Miloševi&;, denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps in the 1990s, said that black South Africans are engaging in a "genocide" against whites, and expressed support for the far right English Defence League....
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Originally posted by Dasa
I keep telling you Islam is not a race.
And you keep telling me it is and that I am racist.
I have told the forum many times that I love all people and therefore I am not racist............
I love the Iraqi,s and the Iranian,s and the Turks and the Russians and the Somalians and the Indonesians and everyone on the face of this earth.......So when I ...[text shortened]... s? (Rhetorical question.)
This baseless attacking all the time........ Is your dishonesty.
...In 1997, the British Runnymede Trust defined Islamophobia as the "dread or hatred of Islam and therefore, to the fear and dislike of all Muslims," stating that it also refers to the practice of discriminating against Muslims by excluding them from the economic, social, and public life of the nation. It includes the perception that Islam has no values in common with other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology rather than a religion
....Islamophobia was recognized as a form of intolerance alongside xenophobia and antisemitism at the "Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance".The conference, attended by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, the OSCE Secretary General Ján Kubis and representatives of the European Union and Council of Europe, adopted a declaration to combat "genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and xenophobia, and to combat all forms of racial discrimination and intolerance related to it." Some scholars of the social sciences consider it a form of racism, but this is controversial
There is a nice academic debate to be had clarifying the distinctions between racism, xenophobia, intolerance and other terms and it certainly allows racists to equivocate like yourself along the lines "I am not a racist but... [insert hated target group here]" In my view politics is too complex for such subtleties to be of any positive value - they are used to cloud issues and not to clarify them. It is worth bearing in mind that there are no "races" but only differences. The groups identified as hate targets are arbitrary and socially determined. In other words, people invent races for political ends. The classic demonstration of this process was the famous brown eyes - blue eyes classroom demonstration which you should know but can google for yourself.
Racism, in my mind, identifies a set of behaviours which is consistent across all these academic categories of xenophobia, islamophobia, intolerance, bigotry et al. But it is the more useful word to describe accurately just what is happening and the most effective word to remind people just what are the consequences.
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-Removed-Many people enter into debate about religion with such an ignorant and ill mannered approach that they do not merit more than a polite rebuttal. That is a social problem that falls short of racism.
There are examples in our societies - certainly around the world - of hate speech against Christians and the west. In Britain these are prosecuted as such. In the US they are presumably absolutely fine - just somebody's opinion. Certainly the US cheerfully gave political, financial and practical support to the IRA in its sectarian violence in Ulster, in which of course the victims were christians and identified specifically by their religious affiliation. You will notice then that I am more concerned about hate speech against Christians than Americans seem to be, as long as it is accurately defined. Yet I certainly would not support laws against blasphemy. Something more is required.
However, there is also a process of Newspeak going on that I find disturbing, a term as you will know created by George Orwell. Essentially this involves twisting the meanings of words in order to frustrate informed discussion and conceal political agendas. Words literally are used to mean the opposite of their common usage.
In the Muslim World and in the American Christian world, fascism has been given a fresh lease of life (if it ever required one!) by borrowing the cloak of religion to repackage the age old game of inventing hate figures and provoking fear. The refinement is to accuse anyone pointing out what is being done of being an oppressor in one way or another, or being unpatriotic, not a good American, not a good Muslim or not a good democrat.
Strong and even aggressive disputes are part of human social life and the purpose of democracy is to provide a container in which strong opinions can be safely expressed. It is a misunderstanding of democracy to try and insist on conformity when the whole point is to accommodate difference. So this includes providing a workable framework in which it is accepted that others are not required to remain silent in order to avoid offending those with starkly diffferent views.
At its boundary, this framework demands a rejection of violence and that includes rejecting the provocation and incitement of violence. Locating and defending this boundary is the job of a successful democracy and the boundary will always be open to debate and change over time.
The mission in a fascist ideology is to establish uniformity and destroy those who are defined as "other." It is of course a practically impossible task, though it has been undertaken many times in history. A good example might be the survival of a Jewish community in the Iberian Peninsula after centuries of the Inquisition. It is also profoundly nihilistic and destructive. Again, an example would be the economic and intellectual collapse of Spain after the Reconquista. But what does work is to destroy social groups that might oppose the grip on power of the fascists. Even the most popular groups can be undermined by picking on a hate figure and exaggerating this. In England, the disabled have been attacked in this fashion very effectively by a neo-liberal government seeking to destroy welfare support for the most vulnerable in our society and they can do that - people fall for it.
Fascism is the danger to which I pay most attention and I recognise in this that Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism,Shinto and other religions are misused and distorted in the pursuit of undemocratic power. When this is apparent, I would argue with people of religious faith that they are being manipulated.
I am not looking to impose an atheist culture on everyone because I agree that such a monoculture would be intolerable to many people and the process of imposing it would be unbearable. But in arguing for a diverse multi-valued world I am certainly prepared to prick the arrogance of dogmatists who insist their view of things is infallible. And as an atheist I am certainly not going to stand for having religious rules imposed on me or on society in general; I cannot agree with the frequenet attempts to privilige religious teaching. I attack the attempt to impose (sectarian) religious teachings on non believers. If that is what you think of as "racism" then you are simply misusing the term.
You would do well to learn a lesson from the world of door to door selling. When a potential customer is wavering they typically tell you what their objections are. A bad salesman reacts by giving up. A good salesman recognises that the key to a sale is the ability to answer the objections well. Of course, if you are selling a rubbish product to an informed audience, then you will not succeed, and I regret to tell you that in some aspects of the debate the religious camp is not going to succeed unless it is allowed to get away with telling lies - most people of religion appreciate this and some people of religion resort to telling lies, as in the current evolution debates.
That leaves adequate space for religion to hold its own and meet human needs. Religion needs atheists. At the very least, it needs a secular political world in order to protect its freedoms.
-Removed-You're right, Christians here do have their beliefs ridiculed and debated. You can't object to it because you engage in the very same practice yourself, one of your favourite hobbies in this forum is to ridicule and debate with robbie and galveston.
In all my time here though i don't ever recall someone calling for the genocide of all Christian men, i don't see people talking in general terms of Christianity as 'evil' or 'Satanic'. Granted i may talk of particular parts of the Bible in quite disparaging terms, but i don't talk about the whole of Christianity in such terms. Do so would be ignorant and intellectually lazy i feel. Yet people here do talk about Muslims and Islam in such general terms here, you yourself called it an 'evil religion' and believe it is the work of Satan.
If we can recognise that Christianity has an extremely diverse set of beliefs, then surely we can recognise the same with Islam. The fascist fundamentalists in the madrasa's of Pakistan are not the same Muslims as those i have seen in Morocco wearing board shorts and bikini's.
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-Removed-You are not really listening and hearing what you expect to hear instead.
I consistently present an atheist position on this forum and that applies to Islam as much as to Christianity.
I use "racism" to refer to a pretty clear set of behaviours and I make a distinction between racism and criticism. They are not even similar. In my mind the term refers to the behaviour of racists and not to the existence of races. There are no races. Racism works by giving social significance to differences between people all whom of are in reality more similar than different.
I do not object to people ridiculing Islam or any other religion. I do it myself. Nor do I accuse everyone who does of being a racist. I am not aware that I accused you of that either. Maybe you are being too defensive.
I reserve that accusation for specific types of communication. Dasa (who is not presenting himself as a Christian of course) is the most frequent culprit. I use it to describe the video The Innocence of Muslims, which Robbie relies on as evidence for false claims about Mohammed. I use it to refer to the anti-muslim posters on the New York underground, supported by evidence that the person responsible has also expressed support for the English Defence League, for Slobodan Milosevich, ... See earlier post and references.
In discussing the role of Islamaphobia in politics, I referred to its value in permitting defence spending of $711bn in the US, £37bn in the UK, for which the only half credible enemy to justify such costs (Soviet communism) is long defunct. The UK spends more on defence than Russia does! The US spends more than most of the planet combined. Our manipulators need new enemies and need to perpetuate a sense of fear and patriotic militarism.
I have no tolerance at all for the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, but the 11 year war against that mountainous and impoverished nation has no rational justification in that dislike. The connection is entirely emotive and unjustified by evidence. The Taliban are never ever going to threaten the military integrity of the USA, of the UK, or of any other state. The drone attacks on Pakistan, described in another thread, are again utterly unjustified by America's fear and loathing towards their brand of Islam.
Curiously, the US and the UK have no quarrel with Saudi Arabia, by any standard the active and large scale proponent of the most nihilistic and reactionary interpretation of Islam that is available.
Islam is not the problem here. The problem is the susceptibility of voters in a liberal democracy to Islamaphobia, as a cloak to permit the infringement of human rights and liberties within and outsdie our democracies.
So I am not defending Islam. I am attacking Islamaphobia. And as part of that, in order to expose the vicious lies on which it rests, I refer to Islamic history and culture as it actually is. The life of Mohammed for example is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of detailed and reliable written history. I am never going to leave unchallenged the attempt to falsify history for political ends.
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Originally posted by finneganMore posturing you poser 😛
You are not really listening and hearing what you expect to hear instead.
I consistently present an atheist position on this forum and that applies to Islam as much as to Christianity.
I use "racism" to refer to a pretty clear set of behaviours and I make a distinction between racism and criticism. They are not even similar. In my mind the term refe ry. I am never going to leave unchallenged the attempt to falsify history for political ends.
I refer to Islamic history and culture as it actually is. - Finnegan
really? Perhaps you can tell us how benevolent the Mogul rulers of India were?
lets say we start with Aurangzeb, shall we?
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Originally posted by robbie carrobieYou are just walking away from my complaint that the life story of Mohammed has been falsified in vile ways in the Innocence of Muslims video which you cite in support of your position. Changing the focus of discussion is not a credible way to avoid admitting your mistake in suggesting otherwise. You can admit mistakes you know without having to flaggelate yourself.
More posturing you poser 😛
I refer to Islamic history and culture as it actually is. - Finnegan
really? Perhaps you can tell us how benevolent the Mogul rulers of India were?
lets say we start with Aurangzeb, shall we?
I am not an advocate for Islam and I am an advocate for atheism. Hence any evidence that religion and violence are intertwined is less problematic for me than it is for you because anything you can say against the Mogul Empire or the Ottoman Empire can be redirected to the Spanish Empire for example, which surely brings Christianity into a very nasty light. And if you are convinced that the Spanish treatment of people in Central and South America arose because they favoured a heretical or inauthentic form of Christianity then the same can be said of the way muslim rulers have misapplied their religion to its detriment and shame. Indeed I can cite evidence of Mohammed being very concerned about the way his generals implemented muslim rule in his lifetime, promoting laws for religious tolerance and for the conduct of war that were very advanced for his age and far ahead of any Christian armies.
Robbie, fostering hatred is such an easy strategy. I am not advocating Islam which I consider irrational. I am opposing Islamaphobia, which is both irrational and dangerous. I can however look at Islam as a cultural phenomenon which has many attractive features and I cannot concede that all muslims are at all stupid, bearing in mind that it was Islam and not Christianity which protected and preserved the marvellous thought of the Greek philosophers and poets. Human life and culture is incredibly diverse and it is vain to imagine that, born into a different age and culture, any one of us would have been able to even imagine operating outside of that. Racism condemns us not because of anything we can choose or control, but by attaching negative significance to trivial differences.