quote:

rudatron posted:

A weak organized left that has abandoned the working class as a foundation, in conjunction with a series of economic crises and failed recoveries ('jobless recoveries' are effectively failures). "Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution".

Rather than think logically about the problems facing society, the path of least intelligence/greatest ignorance is to blame outsiders/'The Other'. Being inherently unknowable, it's very easy for them to appear monolithic and malicious, in the same way that you may see some threatening animal lurking in what is just a harmless shadow. Once this perspective is established, it is difficult to break, because of confirmation bias. You'll seek out what already confirms your suspicions and ignore those that contradict it. 'Muslims condemn paris attacks' Well that's just what they want us to think, secretly they support it, etc.

This is just one expression of the same problem you see throughout human history, one what will continue so long as people fail to love & understand each other unconditionally.

The fact that the main candidate being discussed here, Donald Trump, was able to transition seemlessly from degrading Mexicans to degrading Muslims should have been a tip-off about the psychology at play here.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

While the title of this thread is "Islamophobia", it seems that the OP and several of the replies are very much focused on the US. Do you all want me to change the thread name to "Islamophobia in the US", in order to help newcomers realize this focus, or would you rather the discussion were more general?

Black Baby Goku posted:

Honestly the concept of separate laws for separate religions is loving retarded.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

We need to string up the last pastor with the entrails of the last imam.

Flowers For Algeria posted:

Do you think that organized religion is cool and good, or do you agree that it is a net evil and that its promoters should be cleansed?

Flowers For Algeria posted:

You can't really make an omelet without breaking a few priests, I'm afraid.
Joking aside - religion is a major source of conservatism in this world and a lot more should be done to combat its evil influence, including ridiculing it, desacralizing it, breaking its taboos, and so on. Of course all this should begin at home, this is not a call to persecute the religious worldwide.

Wales Grey posted:

Honestly, I'm not sure what Muslims could say to appease the militant xenophobes. Other than "I believe Jesus Christ to be the son of G-d, and denounce the false faith of Mohammad as a deception by the tempter Satan, and pledge myself to Christendom. All Muslims who do not convert are devils daring the skin of men; pass the hairshirt, I've got some flagellation to atone for the acts of terrorists whom I supported by not immediately converting to Chistianity to get to." of course.

Cat Mattress posted:

Brown and black Christians are often assumed to be Muslims by racists anyway.

Black Baby Goku posted:

I can think of way worse things than racism and colonialism happening in the Middle East.

SlipUp posted:

I heard about the Colorado Springs shooting today. I haven't read or watched anything, but I find it disturbing no Christians have condemned the attack. Apparently It might not have been specifically targeting PP, but that white dude is definitely a Christian and those crazy extremists think their enemies are going to burn for eternity and that the bible advocates violence in the name of their god, whatever that was.

SlipUp posted:

Easy enough for you to say under complete anonymity. Isn't true that you could just lie to my face and your god will forgive you later?

SlipUp posted:

That's cool. I was making a mockery of Islamophobes by applying the same criticisms they level against Islam on to Christianity, hoping to shock them into the revelation of how bullshit it is. I don't think any Christian should feel like they need to specifically condemn this one incident, or that a particular regressive branch of Christianity is representative of all Christians. Sorry if I got ya riled up.

Potential BFF posted:

The same criticisms of Islam apply to Christianity in America because they're both irredeemable garbage and preach poison. The current stream of right wing drivel getting barfed up about Islam is applicable to the Mike Huckabee crowd. The believers are pretty much just distinguishable from the taliban by their weight.

Panzeh posted:

Churches are Nazi party HQs in the US- a disloyal fifth column working to destroy America. The preist class has historically been fascist as gently caress and should be liquidated, but we won't do it.

I mean, just look at the entire notion of one god and no other. It's incompatible with democracy.

RACHET posted:

He's gay so let's throw him off a building and then stone him to death after his legs are broken.

An enlightened output from Middle Eastern Culture.

Baloogan posted:

VitalSigns posted:

Well sure, if your actual problem is homophobia and your critique is intended to advocate reform of the teachings of some Islamic sects and the legal systems of some Islamic countries that's not a problem, but some people use that criticism as an excuse for bigotry.

Which is why I want to point out a couple of things here. One, there is no monolithic Islam, it's a religion of 1.6 billion people with many different sects over a large part of the globe and includes countries like Indonesia, Turkey, and Bosnia where homosexuality is 100% legal. On the other hand, you have Christian countries like Uganda, Ethiopia, and Russia where homosexuality is severely punished yet rarely do you hear people blaming a nebulous monolithic Christianity for this. Hell, even in the United States, several states still have laws against homosexuality on the books and only the federal government restrains state authorities from enforcing them.

Two, gay rights weren't won in the west by attacking anyone's religion or saying Christianity is incompatible with modernity or anything like that. The gay rights movement didn't come out swinging against Christianity telling people their religion was the problem, because attacking people's religion isn't the way to get them to listen to you. LGBT people treated Christians as individual people with independent minds and appealed to them with out common humanity, that gay people are people too, that they're your neighbors, relatives, and friends and that homophobia was doing very real harm to ordinary people just like them. And that worked, a lot of Christians reevaluated what they'd been taught and reconciled their faith with their new realization that gay people aren't demonic perverts waiting in the shadows. Lumping them all together and saying "well your religion is wrong and you need to change it" probably wouldn't have been as effective and would have given ammunition to the conservatives who claim gay people are just out to fight Christianity.

GyroNinja posted:

I'm the >5% of Republicans who think that banning Muslims goes against everything our country stands for, but want to do it anyway.

Shoren posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when did Trump say anything about exiling, what I assume to be, American citizens because of their religion? I can make up with a hundred heartbreaking stories about children misinterpreting the news just to tug on your heartstrings.

Furthermore, what obligation does the United States have to accept any and all people wishing to immigrate? Because of an inscription on a statue? Do we have to remain beholden to the values of an era gone by when it may not be practical to operate under those same principles?

Jastiger posted:

If that is what you got from my post then I wasn't clear. Christianity is just as stupid and harmful and everything I said about Islam applies to Christianity as well.

Shoren posted:

Furthermore, what obligation does the United States have to accept any and all people wishing to immigrate? Because of an inscription on a statue? Do we have to remain beholden to the values of an era gone by when it may not be practical to operate under those same principles?

Jastiger posted:

As to the rest of your post, you're right, bad people can be bad absolutely with any motivation. But if you get rid of the normalization of faith based laws and norms it becomes WAY harder to act out on it. Look at how quick Christians are to ostracize the Westboro Baptists for example. WBB aren't wrong. They aren't according to the Bible. Everyone else has moved on and marginalizes them for the most part. Yet they can still exist tax free and not be held to a higher standard because they have cover for their faith from the more moderate people.

Jastiger posted:

So you have no grounds to condemn Westboro Baptist as not Christian and it all remains garbage. Thanks for clearing that up.

Baloogan posted:

Westboro Baptists have killed zero people.

Potential BFF posted:

Since no one has a time machine I'm pretty sure the Renaissance is safe. In the mean time we can all appreciate the contemporary contributions to humanity religion is providing us such as:

___________

___________

___________





Since religion is indeed just a lovely cultural aspect, it can, has, and should be stamped out so we have one less barrier to addressing reality and the problems that exist in reality.

PT6A posted:

Are you considering suing them, or is that something you reserve for women's shelters?

Recoome posted:

The thread title probably should be "Why my hatred of Islam is justified"

khwarezm posted:

First off, can we establish that said interviews represent what the majority of the fighters among ISIL think?

Second, assuming it does, so what? Most people don't know much about their religions, but that doesn't mean they aren't sincere about their belief. That they are uninformed is a nice idea that they are straying away from some platonic ideal, but do we if that really makes a bit of difference in the end? Al Baghdadi seems well informed given his background and education, while the authorities in countries ranging from Iran to Saudi Arabia to Sudan are also, I presume, well informed about Islam but it doesn't stop them from regularly performing gross human rights violations in its name.


And you claimed that the IRA proved that wrong by not launching suicide terrorist attacks, to which I pointed out that it is way less truly religious in nature compared to groups that do, like ISIS.

Could you give me some examples of atheists turning away legitimate criticism of Islam that comes from people of Muslim background? I was reading about a lady named Maryam Namazie who caused a major stir recently at a talk about secularism in Goldsmith College that saw a bit of a stand off with the college's Muslim Students Union. Somebody took a youtube video of it apparently. She also was going to give a talk in my college actually, but pulled out when security wanted to put some major restrictions on her talk. They also wanted a moderator and somebody to provide a counter argument to avoid offense, but she pointed out that other potentially controversial speakers, like Norman Finkelstein and Kamal El Mekki, didn't have to put up with that kind of thing and pulled out.

The interesting thing to me was that I saw a lot of criticism directed at her from my other leftist (mostly christian) friends, because she was perceived to be concentrating too much on Islam and being excessively harsh and uncompromising in her rhetoric. The thing is the language she seemed to use didn't seem like it would get any eyes batted at her if she was talking about Christianity or Judaism, and I would have thought that since she was speaking from a background of experience it made sense that she would talk mostly about Islamism.

Incidents like that make me wonder when legitimate criticism, even from people of Muslim backgrounds, can be voiced because I get this overriding impression that well-intentioned leftists are the ones too willing to throw critics of Islam from Muslim backgrounds under the bus compared to somebody like Bill Maher and talking to people from Secular or Ex-Muslim backgrounds they sometimes say that as well.

E; Here's the video, she had on her blog, excuse the dumb title and dear god don't read the comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1ZiZdz5nao