do hippies not realize how homophobic muslims are

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Example of hippies complaining only when Christians are homophobic?

Really, when was the last time besides Easter you went to church, Tim? Have ever even read the Bible, or do you just pretend you have by spitting out popular quotations from it that you haven't even bothered to reference?

Really, when Jesus refers, in Matthew, to Hosea, do you go back and review Hosea to refresh your memory of it? Does it matter to you at all whether you understand what Jesus was actually saying?

Short answer: no.

Should this bother you? Yes.

Do you have the guts to improve? Doubtful.

Are you calling me a bigot?

I'm not sure about "hippies", but a member of the social democratic left I can tell you why I think most leftists don't focus on Muslims:

1) They have minimal influence over Muslim Theocracies but have a bit more influence in Western Countries were they actually live.
2) Most members of the modern Anglo-American left have little first-hand knowledge and experience with Islam (Tariq Ali being a notable exception).
3) Xenophobes and neoconservatives tend to have a monopoly on criticizing Muslims to the point where the line between legitimate critique and scaremongering to support restrictive immigration/nation-destroying campaigns has been blurred (this, I think, is unfortunate, as modern Islam has quite a few unsavory and stupid elements to it).
4) Nevertheless, the leftists who most strongly fit this trend of not criticizing Muslims tend to be wishy-washy, New Agey, spiritualists who view "militant atheism as a mirror image of fundamentalism".

And, while this is merely an anecdote, about four to six weeks ago an anarcho-communist invited me to "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day".

Lol, can you get me a couple dozen cherries while you're up there? I suppose I'm in a pie-making mood.

I think what is mind blowing is not in 'this' above, nor does it particularly surprise me. Wayward old-fashioned dialects of Christianity that are still practiced in 16th century fashion from colonial imprinting still have not juxtaposed themselves in Jihad against Western civilization - ie. freedom of believers of other causes or freedom to be an atheist as you might choose. Nor are they struggling in North Africa to overthrow Egypt and get their thumb on the Suez canal. The later group is not only interested in asserting themselves on the world stage - they want the 'whole' cake. That's what I think the OP's people don't get, and the scary thing is, big government statists have everything to like about Sharia for how it works as an all-encompassing system.

As for Indonesia - you're talking about a very different situation. They're a significant distance from Mecca, likely haven't been hatred indoctrinated by having the radicals with imperial ambitions or the desire to overthrow oil-grubbing monarchs (is there a strong equivalent to the house of Sauds over there)? Additionally Indonesia is still open with practice of things like black magic, which shows that the several thousand years they spent as the center of trade for China, India, and Persia still holds more weight than Islam itself. Holding them up as 'Islam is peace' though is no more accurate than holding up Uganda or Nigeria as standard Christian practice.

Speaking from the atheistic perspective, as in atheism vs. fundamentalist Islam rather than Christianity vs. fundamentalist Islam, there's a lot of validity in the OP. Go after Uganda and Nigeria one of these days? Absolutely. Just that - as these countries aren't talked about much at all whereas the Middle East is, its still quite troubling that you would see this dynamic - people pounding what little is left of social conservatism in the US but endorsing modern day Torquemada. If they see post-Christian social conservatism as an enemy, why ever think that an enemy of an enemy is a friend - especially when that enemy of an enemy is exponentially worse. We're not talking about accepting a different religion over another, we're talking about an internal consistency check.

I think you nailed it. Unfortunately it is quite myopic.

My god, I hate those types. They are the most two-faced, jerky, shallow and pretentious human beings on the planet. I honestly hate them.

Hippies live in the West. They complain about the problems here first. They have voices here. Nobody in Iran is going to listen to anything anybody here has to say. They are doubtless outraged about the treatment that people get in the Islamic world. But I have yet to hear of them 'looking the other way' or 'wanting to get rid of Christians', that is just silly. Please provide evidence for either of these claims

@OP: This is a stupid thread

Nice pun, but I do think that it is unjust to accuse me of cherry-picking when I refer to two of the largest Islamic countries in the world. In fact, although I could be wrong, that list pretty much covers the majority of the Islamic population of the world.

But that's beside the point. I know that I was being selective, but part of my intention was to undermine Renegade's duplicitous attempt at trying to use the very real blemishes of Islamic culture as a free pass for contributing to the already strained relations between the Islamosphere and the rest of the world. It's like pounding on a nuke with a tack-hammer. It's reckless.

I agree. And also frankly, a lot of hippies probably just aren't aware of a lot of what goes on in the Middle East (sort of like, you know, most of the Islamophobes, in a strange coincidence). They hear about Islamophobia and that is the extent of their knowledge about intolerance in relation to Muslims. Since Islamophobia gets most of the press time, there isn't that much mainstream media covering the homophobia in the MENA or elsewhere with Muslim majorities. I have been aware of the homophobia there for a while, but there is not much any of us can do about it, as those are not even our countries. I find this to be a very fallacious argument made in this thread. Hippies live, generally, in the US, Canada & Europe, where there are Christian majorities. They are exposed to the homophobia that happens here, so why should they not complain about it? If there was more awareness of the things that go on in the Middle East, perhaps their protests about it would get more publicity, because I have met many people who are outraged at the treatment that homosexuals receive in the MENA. I don't tend to hang out with hippies though, for good reason
I recall Ahmadinejad claiming 'there are no homosexuals in Iran. This is an American problem' or something along those lines

With Indonesia and Kazakstan though there is a significant culture-blending, Turkey is a bit like the case of Iran if the Shah had never left, a bit like the Amsterdam of the Middle East.

I supposed one could say that Western Christianity is quite divorced from its point of origin, although it hit Europe and we're talking about mass emigration outward in most cases (the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, etc.) rather than the conversion of a majority of indigenous people and their unique blend of history vs. new religion. I think the problem most people have though, if you do hold Christianity up against Islam, both can be very violent but one has a book where one has to cut holes to make it a violent theology, another has a book where one has to cut holes to make a peaceful theology. To those who find all religious beliefs inherently delusional that's still a different category of complaint than how the books influence their followers in the aggregate sense.


I don't think anyone's saying kill em all or that we should have a Christian/Atheist joint coalition to occupy the middle east and other parts of the world to expunge Islam. Just that it is an odd thing for people to defend radical fundamentalism and gay rights in the same breath. If its really about their anger that we have troops over there - leave it at that, don't elevate what's antithetical to your own values (ie. radical fundamentalism) for the sake of spiting the local powers that be, it sends a weird message and additionally it puts public discourse in a place where real issues and frustrations have too much smoke blown over them to be addressed in a forward or constructive manner.

Who does this? Source please? One can protest Islamophobia and Homophobia in the same ideology. However, protesting Islamophobia does not = carte blanche for them to in turn be intolerant. That is a huge false equivalency and why I think this is a stupid thread

Whoah, there! You've got the wrong guy! Dude, I don't even think the British should have left India, and I don't think the Indians show enough gratitude toward the British for 1) defending them from the Islamic hegemony that was growing in the region, and 2) bringing at least some of them into the 20th Century. I am pro-Israel to the point that I actually pay attention to the internal politics of their political parties, and I am strongly of the opinion that Palestinians would rot if the Israelis weren't there to powder their butts for them. And, in spite of mistakes by the US government later, I think that the Iranians ought to show a little more gratitude toward the British for giving them the beginnings of a government that empowers them to live under something better than a murderous dictator like Qaddafi.

I am not in the crystal-waving new-agey leftist camp. I am one of those over-educated atheistical curmudgeons, and I'm proud of it, man.

Well, take it on faith that I'm on the same wavelength with you. My slant on this is that it is especially imperative that we try to drop our boundaries with the more rational Islamic cultures as an approach to hedging against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

I don't think there's nearly as much 'Islamophobia' as people at that end would think. It seems like, rather, this is a measure to make who they see at their primary enemy (American conservatives) look worse and its a way that they can arbitrary turn agreement into disagreement by stating that if someone's a centrist or conservative that they're doing it for completely different reasons. It would be a bad as hypothetically saying that any centrist or conservative who didn't vote for Obama is racist while anyone on the left who didn't likely just found a better candidate in a minority party or perhaps just made an applaudable move by not endorsing the military-industrial complex with their vote.

Then again though, that's probably just classic of how 'dyed in the wool' thinking works - ie. my people are always right, your people are always wrong. Makes me think of Dox's recent Ron Paul post.

They aren't leftist, they live in the gutter of politics

Being that I am neither...I think I can just laugh... Too funny!