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).
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In such a place you might be concerned about making a comment that could be construed as support for gay marriage or racial equality as you might be ridiculed or shunned in some way by your community.
In such a situation would it be fair to say that the person in question should necessarily adjust their views to conform?
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There aren't really distinct groups of "racist" or "liberal on race" , this is an over simplification. There are in fact many separate and overlapping issues which relate to race and it is possible to have differing opinions on any or all of them.
It is certainly worth re-evaluating your position if you have new information or a good argument to consider, but not simply because category X of people mostly disagree with you.
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The guy upthread related an anecdote as an example of where people might engage in doublethink, the example included a guy who was a muslim because that is who he happened to have the conversation with.
He then stated that he is hesitant to use muslims as an example because that tends to bring with it all kinds of personal biases. Then you made the comment quoted above, which is what I am mainly referring too.
You talk about "the liberal coast of america" as if it is some defining oracle of truth and if you disagree with it, then you are wrong.
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
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?
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.
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?
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.