Muslims march over cartoons of the Prophet

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I would take those pieces and treasure them. What I despise is this kind of behavior, and a bit more so when it is inspired by any given religion. Islam is different because more than any other it seems to have gone down the wrong paths. Not all of this is because of the influence of that person, but a lot of it is.

I could defend Christianity by saying that it keeps less of a tight grip on the lives of its followers, but Christians are nowhere near what I would call free. Neither are people who live within their influence. It is true that it is a bit easier to get away with criticizing Christianity. It is also true that the anti-Christian dissidents are a little more able to work in the Christian countries that I have some familiarity with. I can call the leader of Christianity a wealthy mad pedophile without fearing that someone is going to stab me with a curved knive while I'm walking to the grocery store, or that a religious leader is actually going to condemn me to death in writing.

On the other hand a man can appreciate thoroughgoing bastiches. All of these mealy-mouthed excuses for all kinds of inhumane acts leave a man's mind stuffed up with pastiche and potpourri. A portion of one's mental perceptions becomes a hodgepodge of bad logic scented with a mix of flowery prose that no rational mind could ever have put together and no rational mind dares to try to take apart. Then you see a scimitar lop off someone's hand and you think it's simple and direct. You don't want to look behind the curtain or you find that they are just as full of it as anyone else. They put on a good show.

No, Christianity just puts the electrified barriers a little far apart. None of them are all that great. The major religions all have a major criminal element within them that is running the show. Islam is more annoying because their petty leaders actually put out death warrants against people like Salman Rushdie, who as I understand it actually meant no offense. I don't know if the rotten-toothed vermin who wrote that death warrant actually knew one word out of that book. I'm going to make a point of reading it soon myself. There are a lot of very sickening practices that the Muslims do as part of their law. These include raping the women of their enemy so that their men will not want them anymore. They include selling young girls to older men, to this day. And again, I'm not saying that white Christianity is all that much better when British soldiers were recently jailed in Iraq because they were caught placing car bombs. That was the jailing in which the soldiers were busted out by British troops.

Even without feeling like any religion is that much worse than another, I have the complete right to deny any given religion the power to censor my speech or my depictions that may or may not resemble their religious icons. (Actually, if you see something that I drew and it looks like what I intended to draw, I was having a really good day.) Even without any bigotry, I feel like I should not cater to sensibilities that amount to the deliberate taking of offense. Also, I feel like this is the only road to enlightenment, to allow people the maximum possible number of ways to express themselves. By this I mean the maximum number of avenues that can be forced open and pried open, not just someone's ideas of what constitutes "safe" or "appropriate."

You are full of baloney. So full of baloney I am not even going to bother posting the other quotes. You are talking to yourself in your head all this weird craziness whose only basis is the hate emanating from FOX news and conservative talk radio.

Sounded pretty reasonable to me. No religion in a democratic society has a right to special treatment, to impose its restrictions on everyone else, or to censor freedom.

It works both ways. No country in a civilised western world has any right to invade another country because they disagree with the opinions of its ruler or the religion of its people.

I agree with that also.

I believe you're right. Most Westerners would.

The important thing to realize is that millions and millions of Muslims do not take this is as a self-evident truth. (Not all, but MILLIONS AND MILLIONS of them.)

They believe that the religion of Allah is a manifest destiny--that it's only a matter of time before a Muslim nation sweeps over the earth. The state is subserviant to Islam. The Koran teaches this, and to fight without quarter until this is achieved. (Read The Crisis of Islam if you have any doubt about this...) The nations of the world must be Muslim, and the sooner the better, including punishing infidels for drawing inappropriate pictures of the Big Mo H. There's no middle ground.

Our ignorance of their single-mindedness is making us doormats. We tell ourselves that we can appease and rationalize and mediate, because that's what our culture has treated religious differences since 1776 or thereabouts, and we think they're just like us that way. They are most emphatically not. The Enlightenment never hit the Middle East. And we hate ourselves as racists, a la Happeh:



when we actually call a spade a spade. This is weak and ignorant of the Arab/Muslim culture. To give in on this issue would be to compromise our viewpoint on freedom of speech and republican government.

A line has been drawn in the sand. There's a war on, but the guns haven't come out yet. The Muslims that are enraged over the cartoons are not going to be appeased until they have their way. It will be one way or the other. There will be no compromise.

It's a pretty common low trick to accuse people of racism when they don't want the race in question to become dominant over them. It is racism for them to decide that the white races should be ground under the heels of the darker races for a while. Neither way is good, but I am going to choose white Christian domination over Muslim domination. This is due in no small part to the fact that the religious part of white Christianity is weakening and the secular part is becoming stronger. It is much more likely to bear us forward into the next millenium as a more or less modern society. The Muslims will tear it all down and destroy our history if we let them. If they weren't planning to do something like that, there would be no reason for them to come after us at all.

China should also be allowed no dominance over the U.S. Its practices are if anything even more murderous.

I have a certain ethnic pride, but it's weak praise. It seems to me that the English-speaking superpowers are the only groups that, along with the Germans and the Russians, would even make the attempt to minimize casualties among civilians and the disruption of lives when they take over a country. Even at that, I think that the U.S. is well on its way to adopting the methods of the Chinese and the Shiites. There is no good reason to allow any party to take us over. We can expect what little freedom we have to end if they do, and if they do, we should fight them to the death of every last one of us or their withdrawal. The worst part of this is that none of them would have advanced enough technology to be any threat to us if we hadn't given it to them.

We need to keep what we have and build strength on it. If one country wants to turn their land into a cesspool and the other into a burning desert, let them. Don't import their dysfunctionality. Don't give them aid without strings attached. We work ourselves to death in the U.S. just to live in rundown housing and billions are going overseas to people who hate us and want to kill us. The ones who we are helping want to chop off the hand that feeds them. Well, if they want to be respected as independent people, let them BE independent people. If it's harder for them to grow up while accepting our aid, then they can give up that aid or they can make a greater effort. Most of their garbage is just plain childish and ignorant. Anyone who can believe the stories that some white people have fed Africans may well be a mental child. If you think that's a racist statement, ask yourselves what they do to smart people in Africa who go against the grain. If it's anything like it is here, they've either hung themselves or become the kind of conmen that their society will accept, maybe hoping for slow change, but forced by the necessities of survival to become what they don't really want to be.

Whoever has read this far, keep in mind that I give America some credit, but not very much credit. We have it all together, but we forget where we put it and can't quite figure out what to do with it. We're good, but we're weak-willed and absent-minded.

You are a tool. The government opened your head, filled it full of garbage, shut you head back up and turned the switch back on. Now you walk around spouting the garbage at everyone else.

You do know that the jewish people and the christian conservatives believe that only 150,000 people can go to heaven.?No kidding. They are that insane. You know what else they beleive?

They believe they have to kill the rest of us so that they make certain they are among the 150,000.

Now who do you think is more dangerous? Muslim people who want to live in peace without the neighborhood bully, the USA, murdering their people on a daily basis. Or jewish people and christian fundamentalists who believe they need to murder all of us because God only has room for 150,000 people?

Yep. You are hopeless alright. The USA minimizing casualties? That is an outright lie, or you have no clue what you are talking about.

When 3 USA mercenaries were murdered in Fallujah, the USA killed 850 of the people in Fallujah as collective punishment. You call that minimizing civilian casualities?



I wish. You obviously have free reign in exporting your dysfunctionality to everyone reading your tripe.



Racist. When was the last time you had your KKK outfit pressed and cleaned?



See? You even know you write garbage. You can't believe anyone would actually waste their time reading all of it.



When you say we, do you mean you and the mouse in your pocket? Or the voice coming in over conservative radio telling you what to say ?

Hey Happeh,

We need to talk, bud. I understand that this is a polemic issue, but I think we should stick to the ISSUE.

There's no call to be hurling insults at me such as that I am a "tool" with "my head full of garbage" who "spouts garbage."

If you look at my posting, you'll find that, while I disagreed with you, I said nothing about you personally--nor will I. You are welcome to attack my facts and arguments with the full force of your pen and intellect, and we can have a civilized dialectic on this issue. But comments like the following:


and



all of which you wrote to Remnant are out of line. Calling someone a "racist" and a liar isn't going to help anybody anywhere. Remnant put a lot of work into communicating what he thought was an important idea to you. Please respect his intention, even if you disagree. Behave as if we are there in the room with you, rather than isolated at our respective computers. We'll all have a lot more fun.

Also, I will be giving a copy of this to the moderator, to see to it that this sort of verbal abuse doesn't happen again. I guarantee you it will not be tolerated.

Very Sincerely,
GroovyDruid

That is what I think. What you say is garbage. Not only is it garbage, it is hurtful garbage. You are talking all this war stuff and who needs to be killed. That is crazy talk from someone who....OK. I stop here.



Why? Politeness is about lying. Someone says "Yes I am fine with you talking about who needs to be killed. It is OK because I am an intellectual who can discuss murder dispassionately.

Discussing murder dispassionately is what allows the murderers to get away with their evil deeds! If a news station had the courage I do to say what is real? If they showed footage of USA soldiers blowing up suburbs full of people in Iraq, do you really think they would still be doing it?

All that suffering happens because all the consequences are hidden away. Someone dies, nobody knows about it because the USA "does not do bodycounts". Talk like that garbage about muslims is going to lead to someone getting hurt. If my being "out of line" stops that kind of incitement, I am a happeh man.



Sure it is. If you listen, if you take my words to heart and stop talking about who needs killing, I helped you. If I report you for racism, someone will come by and make sure you stop doing that. I helped society.



You don't know me very well. If we were in the same room, I would get in his face and yell the same thing.



Ya. Whyn't you go sincerly cry to your mama?

You got the balls to say

" There's a war on, but the guns haven't come out yet. The Muslims that are enraged over the cartoons are not going to be appeased until they have their way. It will be one way or the other. There will be no compromise"

and when someone kicks your ass for it, you run crying to the mods.

Why is it you guys that know who needs to be killed, are always such cowards? All of you. I meet your type at boards all over the world. Every single one of you knows who needs killing. Then when I make you look bad in front of the rest of the group, every single one of you goes crying to the mods or the adults or someone else to save you? If you are man enough to call for killing, you should be man enough to defend yourself. Not look for someone else to defend you.

Not much I can add without repeating what I've already said. The U.S. is somewhat better, and unfortunately, it is true. We can't stop ourselves from exporting our dysfunctionality all over the world, which negates a lot of the good that we do. We also give far too much aid to people who hate us.

Yes, probably best that you stop there.



I'm all in favor of passionate discussion, but even passionate discussion must have courtesy if it is to continue without degenerating into name-calling and verbal abuse. These rules include:

FACTS--Site sources, not emotions.

LOGIC--Show that, regardless of who is saying it, it still makes good sense.

Then one can have a passionate dialectic. If not, we wind up talking about rules of courtesy when we could be writing about interesting stuff...



Happeh, someone has already been hurt. How do you think Remnant is going to feel when s/he sees that you called him/her a racist, a liar, and and essentially an accesory to murder? I certainly was hurt by your comment that I was full of "garbage."



Well, as someone pointed out to you a while back, "Muslim" is not a race, it is a religious affiliation, so really there's no way it could be racism.

But that aside, I don't know what to tell you to convince you I do not hate or wish to murder Muslims. Would you be interested in knowing my girlfriend is Iraqi? Her parents fled Saddam's regime. Her name is Yasmine.




Yes, I believe you would. That's precisely why we're having this tiresome conversation...



Whoa. I haven't heard "Yo' Mama" in a long, long time.



Probably not the best language to be using. There are many children on this site, and they have free access to this forum.



Hm, this is definitely the worst thing you have called me. I won't dignify it with a response, but I'll tell you something true: Calling someone a coward over the Internet when you are tucked safely behind your computer in Allah-know's-where is ironic, to say the least.



All right, rest-of-the-group. Let's here from you! Please do tell what you think of the last few postings. I stand ready to be humbled. Do I, indeed, look bad?



I'm looking forward to what those "mods" say. And who, by the way, are the adults? How old are you?

Last edited by GroovyDruid on 07 Nov 2005, 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

One of the problems is that the US cannot spout democracy and freedom and then go into another country that doesn't meet our standards (despite whatever future danger this country might pose) without being absolute hypocrites.

I still don't think the US is at war because we want to bring freedom to Iraq. If that were so, we would be in Africa as well, with people who aren't just having their liberties stripped from them but who are DYING.

But Africa doesn't have oil. Nor did they have Saddam Hussein who was possibly feeding shorter range weapons into Palestine (so I've heard).

I just wish the US were honest as to why we are over there.

But then, to note a point earlier made, I wouldn't doubt that many Muslims wish the entire world to be Muslim. Call it bigotry or whatever, but there's plenty of Fundamentalist Christians who aren't falling very short of that either. But they just talk and praise you to death and not kill you (in general).

I don't have a very grand ideation of the human race. Religions, yes, can bring people together and give them strength. But the people who follow these dogmas have also killed so many. There is too much religion without respect.

Religion is not the problem. It is the humans who practice it.

Wink. Oh my. Aren't you sooooo cutesy wootsy! Wheeeee!

Hello Happeh,

I feel rather silly. It hit me this morning what has been happening here:

You wrote hurtful and outrageous things to get attention, and like a fool, I played right into your hands by correcting you.

I should have remembered this from grade school: never acknowledge vapid insults. Well, lesson learned. I shan't reply to these juvenile gibes again. My appologies to those who found the banter caused by my misguided efforts distasteful. On with the discussion!