How disappointing to see anti-Islam polemic as the top comment. The comment then ties a marriage from 1,300 years ago to his justification for possession of child pornography. Real quality content the community is endorsing.
The person is very dear to me, and I was only pointing how there is a clear dissonance between values, even in the same person...
The Bible is also full of things that most people dislike, and I am fine with them. Most people think I am evil because of THAT.
I got kinda tired of avoiding commenting about Islam, or Jews, because every time someone talk about Islam people think it is a anti-Islam thing (mostly, because many times it is, unfortunately... I still remember when I told a person that rode the commuting bus every day with me how sad I was about Libya civil war, and he replied that muslims were all stupid evil dirty people and deserved to die, I never talked with that guy again, who knows what other shocking shit he might say), and every time someone say something bad about Jews it turns into anti-semitism (even if the object of the criticism is true).
I guess maybe I should have invented some fictional names for the historical figures mentioned, to still give a example of my point of someone that favours throwing the baby with the bathwater but at the same time respects a historical figure that clashes with their own values.
This story has nothing to do with any religion whatsoever, messianic or not, yet your first instinct is to go on about Islam and then call people overly-PC for wondering what the hell you're on about.
But where I live at least, you cannot talk about blacks, muslims, jews, gays (both for, or against), and on, and on, and on...
Slandering asians is fine though (I dunno why... but everyone is cool with that here).
Fuck you.
Our first laws restricting who can immigrate were designed to prohibit Asians.
In Plessy v. Ferguson (the Supreme court case which upheld racial segragation on trains), the dissent for that case made the arguement: "There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race."[1]
During WWII, the only people we locked up in concentration camps were the Japanese, despite the fact that many other countries were clearly hostile to us, and the fact that many of the Japanese clearly had no loyalties to Japan (they often didn't even speak Japanese).
So sorry, but Asians do have a special place in this country for being discriminated against.
[1] http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/163/537/case.html
If the beef is with religion in general, it begs the question of why focus on muslims?
I have friends who are practicing muslims, jews, christians, hindi and buddhist. They're good people.
People doing X and being good do not count toward X not being bad.
Yesterday, at least one American did at least one bad thing, somewhere. Are you culpable for that? Are you inferior?
So far in this conversation, the post I responded to identified muslims, jews, blacks and gays as morally inferior. I objected, and you're tripling down on the assertion. Am I misunderstanding you?
They want to make porn illegal? They just made everyone a felon, and they can pull anyone over and land him in a camp. Even fascist didn't have such a good tool. CheKa grade.
They want to tinker with age of consent? They'll make a 16 year old girl and her 17 year old boyfriend both felons. Is that nice?
They agree to predatory, murderous, bloody ideas all the time and they are still "good people". As a group they do that. That's so nice of them.
I try to find one thing religious people are getting right over agnostics/atheists and I seriously can't think of one.
UPD: I'm not saying people are inferior, just that their beliefs are and they would be better off without those.
Your problem isn't with muslims, it's with social conservatives and specifically social conservatives who want to legislate their morality on the rest of us (a population that, in the US at least, is 99% non-muslim and in fact most of them hate muslims). I'd suggest that focusing on muslims distracts from the issue, unless your actual problem is really with muslims specifically and you're being disingenuous with your policy concerns.
And no, my friends would not be operating death camps if they were allowed to. They're nice people, good work ethic, live and let live types.
If only people stopped being "a bit religious" social sociopats will lose a lot of turf and become a lot less scary. And currently they are very scary.
A few sentences out of many is not "going on about Islam." Why is mentioning Islam offensive?
I don't pretend to understand why.
The subject of Mohammed's child bride is frequently used to justify hate against muslims, and has a social context of islamophobia. If there weren't that social context it would be fine to bring it up randomly, but since there is, bringing it up is offensive. It's part of the discriminatory pattern muslims experience.
Is there any criticism of Islam that can be made that wouldn't be offensive? Or is it offensive to even hypothesize that someone might criticize Islam?
Let alone the fact that he wasn't even criticizing Islam, but using it to talk about a friend that was inconsistent in his beliefs. He never once said that Mohammed having sex with a minor was wrong. In fact he said exactly the opposite a few different times:
> never understood why all the paranoia with pedo...
> my grandmother married when she was 14...I have a hard time believing that a 14 year old girl is so dumb to the point of needing heavy-handed state protection in deciding her relationships.
So, how exactly is he criticizing Islam when he agrees with the example of Islam he used?
But he didn't say that. He went on about muslims specifically. Makes me, and hey I'm just an observer, but it makes me think his point was more about muslims than it was about child pornography.
Did you even read the OP? He was relating a conversation he had with a Muslim friend that had conflicted views. Why would he try to convince his Muslim friend using "all religions" instead of islam?
However, it is also true that many Muslim people are unjustly persecuted, and randomly bringing up that "their prophet had a 9 year old wife" fits into the pattern of discrimination. People who bring that up are either bigots who enjoy namecalling at Muslims, or people who are unaware of that social context of their words, which is a form of racism/privilege itself.
So, feel free criticise Islam (including for the 9 year old bride), but don't randomly bring it up if it's only vaguely related to the topic of discussion.
Surely, it's better to "respect" religion, and how can I do that if I cannot challenge it? And then, should a non-defendable religion be tolerated?
Fixed that one for you, if we're just going all in on senseless religion hate at this point.
Also, pffff. Senseless religion hate? I came to my conclusions as a believer, and I read the Quran with anticipation and hope, actually. Those were sorely disappointed, to put it mildly. My stance now is "if that's from God, God sucks and we're all fucked. If it's not, I can't wait until it goes the way of the dinosaurs." That's not hate, that's just paying attention. Not being American I don't particularly care about Christian fundamentalists. In Europe, there is ONE active religion and ONE that matters, and that's Islam.
Make yourself familiar with intellectual honesty and OT, NT and Quran, and then tell me they're not documents of fascism. Whatever any person does, if God says it's evil, it's evil; whatever thing God does, no matter how much more selfish and brutal in nature, is good.
It's very fucking easy to be "tolerant" about things you hardly know, or don't take seriously at all. I don't senselessly hate, I have reasons for my dislike. Are you, however, senselessly sucking up?
I love thought and logic; those religions hate them. Put differently, I didn't start this; I'm just not rolling over. If you don't want beef with me, don't put a pistol to my head, and don't call me wrecking that pistol an attack. For me that's real basic, but if you only deal in feel-good slogans, it's obviously going to confuse you. Well, good riddance.
There are plenty of reasons to not like religion, you didn't really bother having that discussion and instead resorted to a cheapshot driveby comment. That was what I was mocking.
And yeah, there's plenty of "fascist" behavior in American Christians too. To sit there and tell me I don't know what I'm talking about... in the same breath that you say you don't know or care about US Christians is a special kind of braggard ignorance.
Good riddance? I guess? I don't even know what your point against me was at this point.
How disappointing to see unsubstantiated claims. What is the part that is an anti-Islam polemic?
What a stupid, rude thing to do.