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RayRo View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 19 2015 at 16:42
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

I don't think Maher is an islamophobe. He probably exaggerates the Islamism of terrorists but it's his contempt for all religions showing through, nothing more. 
Maher's non stop OTT rhetoric about Muslims as has been countered by many people aside from Aslan, with actor/activest Ben Affleck being the most vocal both on Maher's show and off. If enough people start saying that you quack like a duck, then you're a duck.
No, it doesn't work that way. I watch Maher every Friday and yes he's consistent in his attacks on religions (and lately especially on Islam) but he clearly stresses that he's not attacking all muslims. 

Also, even though you didn't say it, but some people do, so let's just clarify again: even if a person was an islamophobe (which I don't think is a good thing to be) that doesn't make said person a racist since Islam is NOT a race. You are attacking a set of beliefs.  
Well, we may disagree on the extent of Mr. Maher's views on Islam, but we are in complete agreement vis a vis race and religion. I yield to your council.

Edited by RayRo - November 20 2015 at 12:04
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 19 2015 at 16:45
Or we can disagree in agreement
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 19 2015 at 16:50

Absolutely, and I will pay more attention to the Maher show to get a better insight to his views on Islam, as it seems that I may be mistaken. Smile

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 19 2015 at 16:56
The refugees are fleeing ISIS. The same idiots and bullies who wanted to close borders for 'economic' reasons of being paranoid bigots will now want to close them for 'security' reasons of being paranoid bigots.

Now, this post is a case in point:

Originally posted by sukmytoe sukmytoe wrote:

To me it boils down to a numbers game. If 2 million people enter Europe as refugees and as little as 1 in a hundred of those people is a plant then I end up with 20000 potential terrorists in Europe. That is horrific when you think of the potential danger to us people loving, peace loving, love your brother. help your brother individuals. When Western children are murdered, Western homes are torched and Western ideology is made irrelevant then who will we all blame?
Further than that - not now but in 50 years time - our grandchildren could well be living in an Islam dominated Europe because they will and do procreate more children than the typical Western family does. If I can have more than 1 wife because my culture tells me that I can then I will have more children than you will. My question in that possible future scenario is where is Israel then and because of that where is everything that I have held dear and believed in then? The refugees couldn't have been taken in by other Moslem dominated countries? Ask yourselves some serious questions and you may arrive at some serious answers perhaps.   


One in a hundred refugees being terrorists is an extraordinary statistic to pull out of your arse. I see your loving semantics are couched in how the good people are 'Western'. I know a lot of British c**ts. Some of them are in parliament.

The breeding rates argument is peculiar as anything
. Bigamy is still illegal in the UK, so that doesn't hold up. The same arguments about bigger families apply to the British working class (and have usually been used to justify eugenics programs of one sort or another historically) and are continually used to strip away the rights and privileges of British citizens.

The Europe and in particular the Britain I'm proud of is the one that's opened itself up and is multicultural and has wonderful people from all over. f**k people like you who want to destroy that every bit as much as ISIS do (and incidentally, who have a far better chance of doing so).

(Where's Israel? You know that Israel was founded by extremists, its political leaders had a long history of being drawn from former terrorist groups and it still has a national day of celebration for a terrorist bombing in which British, Arab and Jewish civilians were murdered... I may not be a fan but I don't feel the need to lash out at people who aren't part of that political state)


Edited by TGM: Orb - November 19 2015 at 16:57
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 19 2015 at 17:00
Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Absolutely, and I will pay more attention to the Maher show to get a better insight to his views on Islam, as it seems that I may be mistaken. Smile

I'm not going to say he loves Islam. And a quick watch of a program might give one the idea that he is an islamophobe,. I just think he is a religion-phobe in general and Islam is the current (of the last few years I mean, not just recently) target because of, well, obvious reasons. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 12:29
Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Absolutely, and I will pay more attention to the Maher show to get a better insight to his views on Islam, as it seems that I may be mistaken. Smile

I'm not going to say he loves Islam. And a quick watch of a program might give one the idea that he is an islamophobe,. I just think he is a religion-phobe in general and Islam is the current (of the last few years I mean, not just recently) target because of, well, obvious reasons. 
I  would like to add that Maher has shown little tolerance for religions as a whole. It is the right of an American citizen to hold religious beliefs and to practice them. Even though I am a staunch atheist, I defend any citizen's right to hold these beliefs.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 12:45
Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Absolutely, and I will pay more attention to the Maher show to get a better insight to his views on Islam, as it seems that I may be mistaken. Smile

I'm not going to say he loves Islam. And a quick watch of a program might give one the idea that he is an islamophobe,. I just think he is a religion-phobe in general and Islam is the current (of the last few years I mean, not just recently) target because of, well, obvious reasons. 
I  would like to add that Maher has shown little tolerance for religions as a whole. It is the right of an American citizen to hold religious beliefs and to practice them. Even though I am a staunch atheist, I defend any citizen's right to hold these beliefs.
Hmm. You don't need to have tolerance for someone's beliefs to defend their right to hold said beliefs; conversely you don't have to defend anyone's right to hold religious beliefs to have tolerance for those beliefs. Similarly, you don't have to respect those beliefs to have tolerance of them or to defend anyone's right to hold them. Also, tolerance of someone's beliefs does not validate their beliefs. Tolerance simply means non-interference in someone's right to hold a belief, it does not mean you cannot be critical of them.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 12:54
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Originally posted by The T The T wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Absolutely, and I will pay more attention to the Maher show to get a better insight to his views on Islam, as it seems that I may be mistaken. Smile

I'm not going to say he loves Islam. And a quick watch of a program might give one the idea that he is an islamophobe,. I just think he is a religion-phobe in general and Islam is the current (of the last few years I mean, not just recently) target because of, well, obvious reasons. 
I  would like to add that Maher has shown little tolerance for religions as a whole. It is the right of an American citizen to hold religious beliefs and to practice them. Even though I am a staunch atheist, I defend any citizen's right to hold these beliefs.
Hmm. You don't need to have tolerance for someone's beliefs to defend their right to hold said beliefs; conversely you don't have to defend anyone's right to hold religious beliefs to have tolerance for those beliefs. Similarly, you don't have to respect those beliefs to have tolerance of them or to defend anyone's right to hold them. Also, tolerance of someone's beliefs does not validate their beliefs. Tolerance simply means non-interference in someone's right to hold a belief, it does not mean you cannot be critical of them.
To get off the PC train for a moment, religions do have, and have had, socially redeemable values. Mr. Maher, for all his enlightened views, fails to even acknowledge that. His dislike of religions strays too far into fanaticism at times and it's religious fanaticism that Maher constantly attacks.
On these grounds, I feel that my criticism of Mr. Maher is justified.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 13:13
Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

To get off the PC train for a moment, religions do have, and have had, socially redeemable values. Mr. Maher, for all his enlightened views, fails to even acknowledge that. His dislike of religions strays too far into fanaticism at times and it's religious fanaticism that Maher constantly attacks.
On these grounds, I feel that my criticism of Mr. Maher is justified.
You don't have to acknowledge a things good points to attack its bad points. When a set of beliefs interferes with someone else's beliefs (i.e., it show intolerance) then being critical of that intolerance can in turn look like intolerance.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 13:33
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

To get off the PC train for a moment, religions do have, and have had, socially redeemable values. Mr. Maher, for all his enlightened views, fails to even acknowledge that. His dislike of religions strays too far into fanaticism at times and it's religious fanaticism that Maher constantly attacks.
On these grounds, I feel that my criticism of Mr. Maher is justified.
You don't have to acknowledge a things good points to attack its bad points. When a set of beliefs interferes with someone else's beliefs (i.e., it show intolerance) then being critical of that intolerance can in turn look like intolerance.
I agree with you. However, if someone's views are not challenged, then how does one enact change?
 
There are two ways Maher can go with his views. He either see that his views are extreme and change them, or he can simply continue to hold and express them.
 
Questioning someone's views is not fanaticism if based on the actions of that individual. Fanaticism would only manifest itself in censoring Mr. Maher. Mr. Maher has the right to say what he wants. Just as I have the right to question what he says. 
 
This is not fanaticism. This is the cornerstone of the rights of individuals to act in a free society.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 14:08
I understand and even defend your right to criticize Maher. I'm kind-of defending him (kind-of only because in a way I agree he is kind of a religion-phobe). Again, being a religion-phobe doesn't necessarily make you intolerant, abusive, or a bigot. If you purposefully try to stop people from having their religious beliefs, then yes you may be one of those things.  
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 16:23
Originally posted by TGM: Orb TGM: Orb wrote:

The refugees are fleeing ISIS. The same idiots and bullies who wanted to close borders for 'economic' reasons of being paranoid bigots will now want to close them for 'security' reasons of being paranoid bigots.

Now, this post is a case in point:

Originally posted by sukmytoe sukmytoe wrote:

To me it boils down to a numbers game. If 2 million people enter Europe as refugees and as little as 1 in a hundred of those people is a plant then I end up with 20000 potential terrorists in Europe. That is horrific when you think of the potential danger to us people loving, peace loving, love your brother. help your brother individuals. When Western children are murdered, Western homes are torched and Western ideology is made irrelevant then who will we all blame?
Further than that - not now but in 50 years time - our grandchildren could well be living in an Islam dominated Europe because they will and do procreate more children than the typical Western family does. If I can have more than 1 wife because my culture tells me that I can then I will have more children than you will. My question in that possible future scenario is where is Israel then and because of that where is everything that I have held dear and believed in then? The refugees couldn't have been taken in by other Moslem dominated countries? Ask yourselves some serious questions and you may arrive at some serious answers perhaps.   


One in a hundred refugees being terrorists is an extraordinary statistic to pull out of your arse. I see your loving semantics are couched in how the good people are 'Western'. I know a lot of British c**ts. Some of them are in parliament.

The breeding rates argument is peculiar as anything
. Bigamy is still illegal in the UK, so that doesn't hold up. The same arguments about bigger families apply to the British working class (and have usually been used to justify eugenics programs of one sort or another historically) and are continually used to strip away the rights and privileges of British citizens.

The Europe and in particular the Britain I'm proud of is the one that's opened itself up and is multicultural and has wonderful people from all over. f**k people like you who want to destroy that every bit as much as ISIS do (and incidentally, who have a far better chance of doing so).

(Where's Israel? You know that Israel was founded by extremists, its political leaders had a long history of being drawn from former terrorist groups and it still has a national day of celebration for a terrorist bombing in which British, Arab and Jewish civilians were murdered... I may not be a fan but I don't feel the need to lash out at people who aren't part of that political state)


Mate - you are a little acid in your comments to what was essentially a thought pattern from me. I will though for your "benefit" go a little further because you seem to be a bit of a moron using the kind of language that you do and the kind of slights that you do.
I have a very good friend who is Muslim who very pointedly warned me that I must not ever believe that I have friends among the Muslim community because I am seen to be beneath them as I do not believe in the same God that they do. It is all smoke and mirrors. All of it. Look at Slavery today - do you know that it is alive and well and do you know where it is alive and well? Probably not because of where you keep your head. Look at the woman and children trafficking problem. Look at the fact that young girls are stoned to death by their own families for the crime of adultery simply because they were raped. Look at men who have their hands chopped off for stealing a loaf of bread purely to feed their children. You enjoy that and you obviously condone it as you condone the fact that Christianity is being eroded by people who believe that saying morning prayers in school to a Christian God offends Muslims. Wearing a crucifix visibly while working for an airline that is visible is proven to be offensive to "other" religions" that wear their own religious regalia as they please. Kind of wake up - oh and stop using the kind of verbal garbage insults that you do - it proves who and what you are without me having to make judgement.

For you - http://qpolitical.com/someone-said-muslims-bad-woman-delivers-amazing-response/



Edited by sukmytoe - November 20 2015 at 16:56
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 20:02
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Also, tolerance of someone's beliefs does not validate their beliefs. Tolerance simply means non-interference in someone's right to hold a belief, it does not mean you cannot be critical of them.

Worth bearing in mind - especially in times such as these!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 20 2015 at 20:27
Originally posted by sukmytoe sukmytoe wrote:

Originally posted by TGM: Orb TGM: Orb wrote:

The refugees are fleeing ISIS. The same idiots and bullies who wanted to close borders for 'economic' reasons of being paranoid bigots will now want to close them for 'security' reasons of being paranoid bigots.

Now, this post is a case in point:

Originally posted by sukmytoe sukmytoe wrote:

To me it boils down to a numbers game. If 2 million people enter Europe as refugees and as little as 1 in a hundred of those people is a plant then I end up with 20000 potential terrorists in Europe. That is horrific when you think of the potential danger to us people loving, peace loving, love your brother. help your brother individuals. When Western children are murdered, Western homes are torched and Western ideology is made irrelevant then who will we all blame?
Further than that - not now but in 50 years time - our grandchildren could well be living in an Islam dominated Europe because they will and do procreate more children than the typical Western family does. If I can have more than 1 wife because my culture tells me that I can then I will have more children than you will. My question in that possible future scenario is where is Israel then and because of that where is everything that I have held dear and believed in then? The refugees couldn't have been taken in by other Moslem dominated countries? Ask yourselves some serious questions and you may arrive at some serious answers perhaps.   


One in a hundred refugees being terrorists is an extraordinary statistic to pull out of your arse. I see your loving semantics are couched in how the good people are 'Western'. I know a lot of British c**ts. Some of them are in parliament.

The breeding rates argument is peculiar as anything
. Bigamy is still illegal in the UK, so that doesn't hold up. The same arguments about bigger families apply to the British working class (and have usually been used to justify eugenics programs of one sort or another historically) and are continually used to strip away the rights and privileges of British citizens.

The Europe and in particular the Britain I'm proud of is the one that's opened itself up and is multicultural and has wonderful people from all over. f**k people like you who want to destroy that every bit as much as ISIS do (and incidentally, who have a far better chance of doing so).

(Where's Israel? You know that Israel was founded by extremists, its political leaders had a long history of being drawn from former terrorist groups and it still has a national day of celebration for a terrorist bombing in which British, Arab and Jewish civilians were murdered... I may not be a fan but I don't feel the need to lash out at people who aren't part of that political state)


Mate - you are a little acid in your comments to what was essentially a thought pattern from me. I will though for your "benefit" go a little further because you seem to be a bit of a moron using the kind of language that you do and the kind of slights that you do.
I have a very good friend who is Muslim who very pointedly warned me that I must not ever believe that I have friends among the Muslim community because I am seen to be beneath them as I do not believe in the same God that they do. It is all smoke and mirrors. All of it. Look at Slavery today - do you know that it is alive and well and do you know where it is alive and well? Probably not because of where you keep your head. Look at the woman and children trafficking problem. Look at the fact that young girls are stoned to death by their own families for the crime of adultery simply because they were raped. Look at men who have their hands chopped off for stealing a loaf of bread purely to feed their children. You enjoy that and you obviously condone it as you condone the fact that Christianity is being eroded by people who believe that saying morning prayers in school to a Christian God offends Muslims. Wearing a crucifix visibly while working for an airline that is visible is proven to be offensive to "other" religions" that wear their own religious regalia as they please. Kind of wake up - oh and stop using the kind of verbal garbage insults that you do - it proves who and what you are without me having to make judgement.

For you - http://qpolitical.com/someone-said-muslims-bad-woman-delivers-amazing-response/



In 1933, which side do you think you'd have been on?

You sit there on your high horse about language and insults and then dare to suggest I 'enjoy' the existence of rape and corporal punishment. I'm aware of our own abysmal prosecution rates for sexual offences and that the British public would bring back hanging if it could, so I condemn the evil and the perpetrators rather than becoming a dribbling xenophobic c**t.

Now, still unanswered from your original post:

Your implication that one in a hundred refugees are terrorists is strange and unsubstantiated, your arguments about breeding rates are more or less the same ones that Yeats leveled at the working class back in the 20s. They're the same ones Keith Joseph used to advocate eugenics on the working class which ended his chances of leading the Conservatives.

Do you care to defend either of these assertions?

And your new notions:

I clearly have very different experiences of British Muslims to you.

Slavery is absolutely evil, as are all forms of exploitation and should be opposed wherever it's found. The de facto slavery of many (Muslim) Rohingya by Buddhists in southern Thailand is also something you should be concerned about, as are the continual attempts to erode workers' rights in the UK and across Europe.

Trafficking problems are absolutely not exclusive to Islamic countries - look at Mexico, for instance. Yes, many Islamic countries have horrendous, unacceptable laws and extralegal practices but the laws and practices are absolutely not uniform across the Muslim world (and not unique to it, either, I'm afraid). Treat states on their own merits.

Now, on your 'erosion of Christian culture' bit. I don't believe anyone is genuinely offended by crucifixes - the airline case you refer to was entirely a matter of corporate idiocy (not of anti-Christian complaints by Muslims) and the lady in question was vindicated by the ECHR. By contrast, the ECHR upheld France's ban on the burqa. You'd (luckily for you) have to be a complete idiot to interpret that as some kind of systematic discrimination against Christians.

The thing that really gets me about people arguing about the 'erosion' of Christian culture is that the people who say that generally don't *know* anything about Christian culture. This is purely anecdotal, based on every t**t I've ever known to say anything like that but they don't know the folksongs, they don't tell or listen to stories, they generally aren't anything to do with the church, they've not read the Iliad, the Mabinogion or even Chaucer unless they were made to at school; they've usually not even read the Bible. In short, they don't have any part in the culture that's happening now or the long and beautiful history of that culture and they ask why 'Christian' culture is receding?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 00:42
Originally posted by Guldbamsen Guldbamsen wrote:

^You may want to read up on Muslims/Islam. Like Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jedis and Swedes they too come in all kinds of versionsWink

Crash course coming up:




HOWEVER, I do want to say we cannot dismiss Mahler's opening argument completely out of hand where it concerns Muslim reactions to cartoons of the Prophet.  I was in an FB discussion soon after the Charlie Hebdo where some Muslim friends participated and they were outraged by the very idea that the Prophet could be caricatured...never mind whether or not the cartoons portrayed him in a sympathetic light.  They were actually prepared to sacrifice freedom for the sake of ensuring nobody 'insults' the Prophet.  MAYBE Muslims, esp second generation ones, in advanced nations have moved beyond that but that is not the case even in Pakistan or Bangladesh which have had democratic govts and certainly not been under a classic dictatorship a la Gadaffi or Saddam (the Pak army generals who usurped govt were more 'benevolent' and trained their guns at Kashmir!).   One of my good friends here in India, a Muslim and an accounting professional like me, once said an eye for an eye may make the whole world blind but it would also make it equal.  I had to tell him frankly that I completely parted ways on that one. 

So we need to understand what kind of people they are and what is it their religion conditions them to believe...in brutal honesty without political correctness.  This does not mean we have to treat every Muslim as a potential terrorist because we will only make matters worse by boxing them into a corner where they start sympathising with ISIS.  

Which brings me to the difference between ISIS and past extremist Islamic entities like Taliban or Al Qaeda.  The ISIS's enemy no.1 is in fact 'infidels' and 'unbelievers' from their own religion.  They see the Shia sect as an innovation of Islam and any innovation of Islam from what was originally proposed by the Prophet is a strict no no for ISIS.  And the only solution for that, and a whole lot of other problems, is the punishment of death.  When American troops landed in Iraq to fight Saddam, they reportedly faced opposition from local Shias who hated Saddam but hated America even more.  But ISIS so directly attacks other sects of Islam or even less hardline Sunnis that it has forced ordinary Muslims to introspect deeply about their religion and what do they stand for.  

This is the moment when the strain of fundamentalism can finally be extinguished from Islam because ISIS has taken it to a level where it takes extreme, fervent devotion to Islam to sympathise with their cause.  Constantly attacking all Muslims in these TV debates, indulging in more shock and awe operations will continue to divide loyalties as far as ordinary Muslims are concerned.  The first priority is to nail ISIS and Putin is right to propose using Assad's help to do so rather than going after him.  But after ISIS is done, there needs to be serious consideration on how West Asia can be rehabilitated.  Some countries in the region, like Afghanistan, are in terrible shape.  Even the rich Gulf states do not necessarily treat ordinary folk well.  And the USA must be forced to confront its beloved ally Saudi which is at the heart of many of these problems and give them one swell kick in the butt to shape up.  After ISIS is destroyed and peace restored in the region, abolish sanctions, open up trade in the region.  Treat these countries as normal, like any other, and stop discriminating against them.  Get them back into the mainstream and weaken the appeal of fundamentalists which stem largely from the apathy of the Sheikhs towards the common man.  

But believing that destroying ISIS alone would solve the problem would be misplaced.  Strengthen the hand of Islamic reformists and stop appeasing fundamentalist elements.  Don't suffer orthodox mullahs gladly; everybody needs to get the message that this is the 21st century.  Much progress has been made in the last century and the early part of this one in giving people the choice to be who they are, even if that means something radically different from others in myriad ways.  We cannot squander this progress by allowing intolerance to sweep the world into messy conflicts.   That got long but there was a lot of ground to cover in a thread I have stayed out until now.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 03:51
Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by RayRo RayRo wrote:

To get off the PC train for a moment, religions do have, and have had, socially redeemable values. Mr. Maher, for all his enlightened views, fails to even acknowledge that. His dislike of religions strays too far into fanaticism at times and it's religious fanaticism that Maher constantly attacks.
On these grounds, I feel that my criticism of Mr. Maher is justified.
You don't have to acknowledge a things good points to attack its bad points. When a set of beliefs interferes with someone else's beliefs (i.e., it show intolerance) then being critical of that intolerance can in turn look like intolerance.
I agree with you. However, if someone's views are not challenged, then how does one enact change?
 
There are two ways Maher can go with his views. He either see that his views are extreme and change them, or he can simply continue to hold and express them.
 
Questioning someone's views is not fanaticism if based on the actions of that individual. Fanaticism would only manifest itself in censoring Mr. Maher. Mr. Maher has the right to say what he wants. Just as I have the right to question what he says. 
 
This is not fanaticism. This is the cornerstone of the rights of individuals to act in a free society.
I'm neither disagreeing with you nor defending Maher. The only point I question (thou' not entirely disagree with) is the view that he has little tolerance of all religions (just) because he is critical of them. His views on islam are extreme and (as Reza Aslan pointed out) he is not very sophisticated in the way that he thinks. The question is: when does holding extreme views or being hyper-critical become intolerance? Which leads into the second, third and fourth questions: Is his criticism of intolerance in other people's views in itself intolerance? Are our criticisms of his views also intolerance? And can we counter intolerance with intolerance? [and my answer to those last three are a reserved "no"].

In my view criticism, however extreme, only becomes intolerance when it deems to interfere with the belief or view it is critical of. The so-called militant atheists (of which Maher states he is not, thou' the distinction is somewhat blurred and a little lost on me) are openly critical of beliefs that impose themselves on a secular view of a free society. Defending a [secular] free society from the imposition of religious beliefs is not intolerance of those beliefs. Where I (to coin Madan's phrase) part ways with those 'militant' atheists is when they turn that defence from the imposition of religious beliefs into an attack on those those religious beliefs that deems to interfere with the 'right' to hold those religious beliefs[I'm not a 'defender of rights' in the same sense that some appear to be in internet discussions, I do not feel obliged to (thou shalt...) defend anyone's right to hold a view that I disagree with. I could never bring myself to defend anyone's right to be a racist for example.]


Edited by Dean - November 21 2015 at 03:55
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 04:18
Originally posted by rogerthat rogerthat wrote:

Originally posted by Guldbamsen Guldbamsen wrote:

^You may want to read up on Muslims/Islam. Like Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jedis and Swedes they too come in all kinds of versionsWink

Crash course coming up:




HOWEVER, I do want to say we cannot dismiss Mahler's opening argument completely out of hand where it concerns Muslim reactions to cartoons of the Prophet.  I was in an FB discussion soon after the Charlie Hebdo where some Muslim friends participated and they were outraged by the very idea that the Prophet could be caricatured...never mind whether or not the cartoons portrayed him in a sympathetic light.  They were actually prepared to sacrifice freedom for the sake of ensuring nobody 'insults' the Prophet.  MAYBE Muslims, esp second generation ones, in advanced nations have moved beyond that but that is not the case even in Pakistan or Bangladesh which have had democratic govts and certainly not been under a classic dictatorship a la Gadaffi or Saddam (the Pak army generals who usurped govt were more 'benevolent' and trained their guns at Kashmir!).   One of my good friends here in India, a Muslim and an accounting professional like me, once said an eye for an eye may make the whole world blind but it would also make it equal.  I had to tell him frankly that I completely parted ways on that one. 

So we need to understand what kind of people they are and what is it their religion conditions them to believe...in brutal honesty without political correctness.  This does not mean we have to treat every Muslim as a potential terrorist because we will only make matters worse by boxing them into a corner where they start sympathising with ISIS.  

Which brings me to the difference between ISIS and past extremist Islamic entities like Taliban or Al Qaeda.  The ISIS's enemy no.1 is in fact 'infidels' and 'unbelievers' from their own religion.  They see the Shia sect as an innovation of Islam and any innovation of Islam from what was originally proposed by the Prophet is a strict no no for ISIS.  And the only solution for that, and a whole lot of other problems, is the punishment of death.  When American troops landed in Iraq to fight Saddam, they reportedly faced opposition from local Shias who hated Saddam but hated America even more.  But ISIS so directly attacks other sects of Islam or even less hardline Sunnis that it has forced ordinary Muslims to introspect deeply about their religion and what do they stand for.  

This is the moment when the strain of fundamentalism can finally be extinguished from Islam because ISIS has taken it to a level where it takes extreme, fervent devotion to Islam to sympathise with their cause.  Constantly attacking all Muslims in these TV debates, indulging in more shock and awe operations will continue to divide loyalties as far as ordinary Muslims are concerned.  The first priority is to nail ISIS and Putin is right to propose using Assad's help to do so rather than going after him.  But after ISIS is done, there needs to be serious consideration on how West Asia can be rehabilitated.  Some countries in the region, like Afghanistan, are in terrible shape.  Even the rich Gulf states do not necessarily treat ordinary folk well.  And the USA must be forced to confront its beloved ally Saudi which is at the heart of many of these problems and give them one swell kick in the butt to shape up.  After ISIS is destroyed and peace restored in the region, abolish sanctions, open up trade in the region.  Treat these countries as normal, like any other, and stop discriminating against them.  Get them back into the mainstream and weaken the appeal of fundamentalists which stem largely from the apathy of the Sheikhs towards the common man.  

But believing that destroying ISIS alone would solve the problem would be misplaced.  Strengthen the hand of Islamic reformists and stop appeasing fundamentalist elements.  Don't suffer orthodox mullahs gladly; everybody needs to get the message that this is the 21st century.  Much progress has been made in the last century and the early part of this one in giving people the choice to be who they are, even if that means something radically different from others in myriad ways.  We cannot squander this progress by allowing intolerance to sweep the world into messy conflicts.   That got long but there was a lot of ground to cover in a thread I have stayed out until now.

Great post Madan. I agree with just about everything you mention. The highlighted part resonates immensely with me as I just yesterday bumped into a guy from Greenland (of all places!), who magically injected himself into an IS (ISIS, ISIL) discussion I was having with two rather misinformed Danes who continuously stated that all Muslims from south of the border now are conspiring together and on the very brink of destroying Western civilisation. 
I'd like to think that he and I handed their asses to them by stating the exact same as you did, but then again do you really win an argument when the opposition a) doesn't understand that you've won b) doesn't care because it interferes with their beliefs?


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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 05:05
Exactly, all this prattling on about what IS really stands for is like banging your head against the wall. Well, maybe it's useful in keeping moderates from crossing over to the other side of the fence.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 05:08
One could hopeSmile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 21 2015 at 10:40
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