Some thoughts about the Mohammed Cartoons

[shadron]

withdrawn.

 

[~enigma~]

At this point it may be appropriate to know that Sunni Man has been on a few other threads, and has introduced himself as an American who has converted to Islam. For what it's worth. That would make for an articulate observer, if he cares to do so, but it appears he wishes to also extend a point of view. Interesting times.

Question...do you find reason to believe him?

 

[H3LL]

Fascinating.

At least Lies for Allah make a change from Lies for Jesus.




.

 

[PrincessIneffabelle]

Fascinating.

At least Lies for Allah make a change from Lies for Jesus.

We can call it "Abrahamic Lies, Incorporated".

 

[Nogbad]

Yes.

Thought you had stopped speaking to him after he broke your lawnmower.

The thing I can't get my head around is the fact that in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan they got so upset about these cartoons that they killed each other. I mean what is that all about?

Is it perhaps the case that any old thing drags the nutters out on to the street where upon they behave like nutters?

 

[JoeEllison]

Thought you had stopped speaking to him after he broke your lawnmower.

The thing I can't get my head around is the fact that in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan they got so upset about these cartoons that they killed each other. I mean what is that all about?

Is it perhaps the case that any old thing drags the nutters out on to the street where upon they behave like nutters?

More like any old spark in a powder keg. People who have reason to be angry in general often reach a snapping point that is set off by something that seems meaningless from the outside, especially if you ignore the entire context. I'm not defending this sort of thing, but it IS more complicated than many people make it out to be.

 

[dglas]

Fascinating.

At least Lies for Allah make a change from Lies for Jesus.

Same ****, different pile.

Islam is just a reminder of what it looks like when dogmatic religion rules a society - lest we forget.

We must never let it happen again.


Win Powerball!!!

 

[fuelair]

More like any old spark in a powder keg. People who have reason to be angry in general often reach a snapping point that is set off by something that seems meaningless from the outside, especially if you ignore the entire context. I'm not defending this sort of thing, but it IS more complicated than many people make it out to be.

According to other sources who supposedly have more data than I do (and I am willing to accept that as true) they are angry because their god hasn't brought them better and more stuff than we have, their leaders bleed off most of the income, they are at the short end of a long stick and they don't even have any peace to live somewhat happily in their poverty because they get attacked/picked on/robbed depending on which side of the functionally meaningless Shia/Sunni thing they are on. It's a lousy life, but it's safer to yell about us and Israel than it is to yell about their own "brothers". BUT when an excuse like the cartoons, a koran used to clean up after crapping and/or flushed down a john,etc. comes along they get to express their sealed up anger and hatred towards themselves and their situations and the world in general by killing each other and burning their property and supplies. Not the first place in the world this has happened (I have faith that your own memories can come up with exactly similar occasions of this in a variety of western locations).

Quite stupid, quite common. And a great method of control.

 

[WildCat]

Thought you had stopped speaking to him after he broke your lawnmower.

But he gave me a goat in compensation. The goat not only keeps my lawn cut, but I get milk to boot!

 

[JoeEllison]

According to other sources who supposedly have more data than I do (and I am willing to accept that as true) they are angry because their god hasn't brought them better and more stuff than we have, their leaders bleed off most of the income, they are at the short end of a long stick and they don't even have any peace to live somewhat happily in their poverty because they get attacked/picked on/robbed depending on which side of the functionally meaningless Shia/Sunni thing they are on. It's a lousy life, but it's safer to yell about us and Israel than it is to yell about their own "brothers". BUT when an excuse like the cartoons, a koran used to clean up after crapping and/or flushed down a john,etc. comes along they get to express their sealed up anger and hatred towards themselves and their situations and the world in general by killing each other and burning their property and supplies. Not the first place in the world this has happened (I have faith that your own memories can come up with exactly similar occasions of this in a variety of western locations).

Quite stupid, quite common. And a great method of control.

That's pretty much what I was getting at. The worst of it is that there's no way any of these people would have really even cared or even seen the cartoons. What happened was that their leaders saw the cartoons, and used them as symbols for all that other stuff just simmering below the surface. The ignorant reaction of much of the Western press, which was to pretend that the cartoons were the beginning and the end of the issue, only served to fan the flames.

When someone like Rush Limbaugh screams about something very obviously petty and silly and possibly not even true, we understand the cultural context of his remarks, and that he is addressing larger issues and using the smaller issue to illustrate the big picture. Why do we all pretend that when someone from another culture does the same sort of thing, that they are only talking about the petty little issue, and that there is no bigger picture?

 

[Sunni Man]

Why do we all pretend that when someone from another culture does the same sort of thing, that they are only talking about the petty little issue, and that there is no bigger picture?

Excellent point Joe

 

[CFLarsen]

Excellent point Joe

Welcome back.

If Allah choses who are his, why do you care what non-Muslims say about god?

That wasn't infantile, was it?

 

[JoeEllison]

Welcome back.

If Allah choses who are his, why do you care what non-Muslims say about god?

That wasn't infantile, was it?

I don't think he's really a Muslim... do you?

 

[meg]

Trying to get back to Undesired Walrus and the OP,

"..Despite my desire for religion to see itself for the falsehood I believe it to be, my most pressing desire is for it to be treated with the same respect I give a political opinion.."

I agree with this statement completely. That is my most pressing desire, too.

I think that you are missing something, though, when you compare religious beliefs to homosexuality or military life.

The thing that is missing from your comparison is the understanding that most people are born into their religion. It not only informs their day to day behavior and understandings, but it informs their social standings and social interactions as well as their entire worldview and sense of self. Even if you are not born into a particularly religious family, the religion of your society informs and influences your sense of self.

If I were going to compare it to something, I think it might be more appropriate to compare it to something far more fundamental to a person's worldview, like heterosexuality and stereotypical gender behavior, or perhaps to race. Almost from the day we are born we are inundated with social ideas about "boys behave this way" and "girls behave that way". Or "white people do this" and "brown people do that". These messages, which we are programmed to blindly accept, not only come stated verbally by people in authority over our lives, but unstated by the behavior and actions of those people we love and mimic; our parents, family members, community members and leaders.

I think for a person to realize that their religious beliefs are just that, - beliefs, no different in importance from anyone else's beliefs takes a huge shift of worldview. Similar to a person realizing that they are a homosexual. Or a person realizing that they have been guilty of racism. It takes acknowledging that how you were raised is not necessarily "The Truth", the world is different from what you thought, and that other ways of being exist. It takes acknowledging that the people you love and admire, who have raised you and cared for you, and done a darn fine job of it, just might have been wrong about things. Important things. It takes a lot of bravery to make that shift.

I think the strength of homophobia and racism still in even the most civilized of nations is a testament to how many people are not willing to make that shift. We don't like to have to rethink our worldviews. And we really resent it when "others" tell us we have to.

We are a clannish and cliquish species. We often have herd mentalities. We tend to first define things as "us" and "them". We tend to jumble nationalism, patriotism, religion and race in our brains. It is so deeply ingrained in our psyches that we have a hard time separating them out. We don't think about "who" a person is first, we usually try to define "what" they are. And each "what" we come up with (gender, race, sexuality, religion, nationality, political affiliation, etc.) is a value judgement.

So, in thinking about how we can actively help people to make this shift of worldview, I personally believe it is better to concentrate the conversations on individual laws or individual events on which we wish to exert change and let individuals work out for themselves how the ramifications of these conversations are justified within the context of their social identities, rather than making broad statements that work to offend large groups of people and encourage a defensive "us against them" attitude. I think we get much farther discussing why we as individuals shouldn't burn down embassies rather than the religion of people that burned down an embassy.

Yes, you may have the right to publish a picture of poo on a scripture, but I would question your motives for doing so. And I would question whether your publication of that picture did anything to move us toward more peaceful negotiations, toward better human rights, toward more equitable trade negotiations.. toward any of what I consider to be our higher goals.

We all self-censor every day. And honestly, I question the motivation of some who declare that an appropriate response to muslim indignation is to create and publish even more material that muslims might find offensive, in the name of "free speech" or "fight against censorship". If one really wants to make a point about free speech, why not publish something that would be considered almost universally offensive? Why not publish cartoons depicting humorously the murder of children, or the funny torture of kittens? Why not publish cartoons depicting the owner(s) of your newspaper doing these things? Or yourself? Why not lead by example and make the point about freedom by publishing something we ourselves find offensive, then dealing with the fallout in a peaceful manner?

 

[H3LL]

We can call it "Abrahamic Lies, Incorporated".

Yes.



.

 

[gtc]

I don't think he's really a Muslim... do you?

He may think he is. He sounds almost identical to a Christian man of a similar age who used to disrupt a whole series of Australian forums.

He was opinionated and certain of his superiority. Before he was a Christian he was incapable of justifying his opinions or proving his superiority. The fact that as a Christian he was headed for Salvation while we were all headed for hell justified the sense of superiority he had always possesed. Pointing to the Bible allowed him to prove his opinions without bothering with any of that tedious evidence. His only proof of the Bible was some numerology crap (oddly enough I have seen the same numerology used to prove the Koran).

Of course, he was almost totally ignorant of the Bible and of Jesus' teachings (such as the one about not being an opinionated jerk) and could never see that he was just making everyone hate Christians.

If you replaced the quotes from the Koran and Hadith in Sunni Man's posts with Bible quotes I would have thought they were the same man.

 

[CapelDodger]

More like any old spark in a powder keg. People who have reason to be angry in general often reach a snapping point that is set off by something that seems meaningless from the outside, especially if you ignore the entire context. I'm not defending this sort of thing, but it IS more complicated than many people make it out to be.

Absolutely. None of the violent responses can be credibly regarded as spontaneous.

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Trying to get back to Undesired Walrus and the OP,



I agree with this statement completely. That is my most pressing desire, too.

I think that you are missing something, though, when you compare religious beliefs to homosexuality or military life.

The thing that is missing from your comparison is the understanding that most people are born into their religion. It not only informs their day to day behavior and understandings, but it informs their social standings and social interactions as well as their entire worldview and sense of self. Even if you are not born into a particularly religious family, the religion of your society informs and influences your sense of self.

I'm afraid I can't agree they are different because of their birth.

The Nazi's surely had at least as much, if not more investment in their ideology than religion. Shouts of 'Mein Fuhrer'? Destruction of literature? As for being born into this ideology, we only need to point to the Hitler Youth. I'm sure many of us could have been Nazi's, hating the idea of slaughtering Jews.

Yet, we know this is not what their message stood for.

I'd be horrified if we treated their ideology with respect.

 

[meg]

Are you really comparing muslims to nazis?

 

[Undesired Walrus]

Are you really comparing muslims to nazis?

Meg,

Of course I'm not.

I'm comparing an intensely ingrained belief sytem to another.