Seriously, there are riots raging all over the globe because some douche made a film they didn't like. Anybody still care to defend Islam as a peaceful and moderate religion? http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/17/world/film-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t1 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/world/asia/unrest-protests-over-mohammed-film.html
Religion has nothing to do with it. Revised: Religion is not the root of the problem. Vancouver 2011, after losing in the Stanley Cup Final (Hockey) Anti-Japanese riots in China, 2012 (territory dispute) Anti-american riots Egypt, 2012 (butthurt over film) Blaming Islam is like blaming the colour of your car for crashing into a tree. Yes, your car is red, yes it ran into a tree... it did not run into the tree because it's red.
How many billions of people are Muslim? Islam is just as peaceful as any other religion. Here is the thing with these riots, they arent as big as you think they are (think occupy wall street size).
I guess I just hold a religious group to a higher standard of behavior than I would a bunch of drunk sports fans or racists.
But to say there isn't an institutional level problem within Islam related to violence and intolerance is naive. It's a systematic problem.
Strangely enough, despite the artful photography, none of these protests have been all that large. Erase "Peaceful Religion" with "Angry Young Men", and it's not really worth thinking about. In most of those Countries, there is a lot more going on than just some manufactured outrage over video clips. It's a political tug of war between moderate islamic groups and the more fundamentalist "Islamic Social Conservatives", if you will. It isn't an institutional problem with Islam, so much as it's a societal problem in poor areas where fundamentalist religious groups flourish. And when I say "poor areas", we have nothing in the US to compare, since the poorest of our poor are well off by the standards of these Countries.
But these young men aren't rioting in a vacuum. Their religious and government leaders have either been openly supporting and inducing the violence, or idly standing by. Hillary Clinton didn't give a threatening speech to the kids in the streets throwing Molotov cocktails, she was talking to the Islamic leaders.
To conclude Islam as violent by the action of those people; is some how like those people, who are thinking USA is responsible for the movie. The movie was simply made by some individual. Also media as always, being very bias. You really have to go deeper to understand alot of these people and what religion means to them. Alot of those hell holes are corrupt, from top to bottom. Majority of innocent civilians live in that system endures, with a belief that in the end it will have some meaning (a higher purpose). So they try be good, because in that darkness around them, the only light that sustains them to good, is there religion, and its prophet. To them it is very personal. To put thing is prospect; it be like if some one breaks in your home and do some thing very unacceptable to your family. That rage/anger that end up driving you is how they probably feel when some one disrespect there ray of light. And I am very certain half the people you seen in those crowd are victim them self. They are victim of Mob Mentality. A person is smart but people are stupid (MIB).lol
Every time this comes up I hear similar rationalization. Of course there are good and peaceful people within Islam. But it's important to not write the violence off as the acts of a small, leaderless minority. It's a significant number of people, with the active or complicit participation/organization of their leaders, across the globe... So yeah, Islam is by definition violent. The violence is written in their religious texts, and acted upon on the streets. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.
Well I guess you've already made up your mind. An offensive video does not mean Americans as a whole agree with it. But an offensive video that a few Muslims view as America condoning it does represent the view of all muslims? That makes sense/s Seems pretty small minded to me though.
i'd like to see a worldwide video making fun of jesus. imagine the christian redneck crusade of arms and churches turning into militant camps oh wait.
People poke fun at Christianity, Scientology, Judaism, etc, all the time. It doesn't really make the news because bodies are generally not mutilated and dragged through the streets.
If they're supporting it, it's because they're trying to gain more power and they're willing to ride the anti-american wave to get it. A vote is a vote. If they do nothing maybe it's because they're scared to stand up to the mob. Chris Stevens was blown up and dragged through the streets, and he didn't have anything to do with anything. Imagine what would happen to a leader who directly opposed them? Another possibility, they're trying to hold on to the power they do have by not getting in the way. Nothing more nothing less. It's not a rationalization, it's perspective. Nobody here is justifying the violence. Some people are violent. Sometimes they justify that violence. Sometimes their justification is Islam. Some people are charitable. Sometimes they justify that charity. Sometimes that justification is Islam. Islam is by definition neither charitable nor violent. Islam is an ambiguous world view. It is an interpretive belief system. The argument could be made that what the people actually need there is MORE Islam. Consider this: many muslims do not read the Quran. They have it read TO them. It's like back in the dark ages when the Bible was read in Latin. Nobody knew what was being said, they only knew what the priest told them. These people were poor and desperate and more longing than anybody for someone to give them hope. Depending on the priest and situation, sometimes he mollified them, sometimes he incited animosity towards the enemy of the day. Whatever was needed, the bible could be bent to suit that purpose. It still goes on today. Preachers tell their congregation who to vote for and why. Those people don't go home and read the bible and consider it for themselves. They've never been taught how to think critically, or interpret.... they've been taught how to be sheep, how to be faithful, how to obey. And it's in the powerful/rich leaders best interests to keep it that way. If people actually read the quran maybe they would see that there's 100 positive messages for every negative one, much like in the Bible. But like Goofus said... these people are poor. Many couldn't even read the quran in they wanted too... they're illiterate.
Maybe the problem is that the religion of Islam is so intertwined with the culture in general, so that nearly anything any Arabic person does can be attributed to Islam. By contrast, consider Germany prior to and during the Third Reich. Though it's arguable whether Hitler and his inner circle were Christians, certainly many Germans who either participated in the Holocaust and/or in triggering WWII were. Most of the Wehrmacht Officer Corps were Christians, for example. The Holocaust was religious in that the main victims were defined by their religion, the Jews. But hardly anyone claims or thinks that the Holocaust was done "in the name of Christianity". Conversely, nearly everyone in the West thinks any time there's an outbreak or a riot in any middle-eastern country, it's done "in the name of Islam". And it probably is, because that's the culture. You probably can't take a shit over there without praising Allah. Fack, I dunno where I'm going with this, so forgive the mental masturbation . . .
I agree, religion and government don't belong, regardless of what the religion or type of government is being run. Which is why it's upsetting to me when I see people and politicians trying to intertwine the two. In my opinion (and yes I am going generalize), religion is for the weak minded or stupid and government is for smart minded people and when you have dumb religious people working in government you get stupid government. Stupid government is bad government. Tell me how I'm wrong.
I agree with the gist of what your saying. A distinction can be made between being culturally religious and actually religious. Lots of Jews don't believe in god but still would still identify themselves as Jewish. Same with Catholics. People get married in churches all the time... doesn't mean they pray to jesus. It's just a cultural thing. The Muslim population of these countries (Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc) is all well above 90%... in other words 90%+ of the people are, at least culturally, Muslim.
Also, for those of you with Twitter, and a hankering for a lighter-hearted Muslim view of this, look up the #MuslimRage hashtag. ACK! I didn't mean to post NEW!!! I thought I was editing my old post!!! GWARG!!!!
OK, if we're going to go after this as a cultural thing, then yeah. The Islamic culture is violent. But is that really much of a distinction? They claim the violence in the name of their god, are we not to believe them?
It is. The poorness of the groups being violent, combined with the SMALL NUMBERS of actual violent people in these groups, compared to their society as a whole, combined with the anger of people who remember DECADES of US supported dictators, and have suffered PERSONALLY under said dictators (of which the Shah was a shining example), and they don't need much excuse to vent. If Islamic culture is violent, it's largely because we made it so, by selecting out the moderate elements in our need for cheap oil and cold-war advantage. My problem with your statement, is that you're ignoring all the Islamic culture that is not violent, and confusing the poorer and more backward examples with the entirety of Islam as a whole. All while ignoring the decades of CIA actions that have planted rage deep in the hearts of those groups, and left them with a hair trigger that our own backward hating idiots know how to pull so easily. Indeed, to them, we are all painted with the brush of the '50s and '60s era CIA and soldiers who pee on corpses, with a civilian populace of Youtube Hatespeech Producers. They paint ME with that brush, as a US Citizen, making no distinction. In summary: Beware the Broad Brush. It's not the Religion; it's the region. There's more to the story than meets the eye.
I'm wondering just how many of those that are holding signs written in plain English, read, write and speak English. I see violence in the middle east, as power hungry people inciting it to hold on to the power over a vast multitude of very impoverished people. The use of hate and animousity, the "us against them" mentality and any other ploy to unite people who can't but barely feed themselves and families has been used by so many governments and religeons throughout the ages. Meanwhile, all those poor people are caugfht in the middle amidst a "with us or against us" mob. I feel bad for those unfortunates, but there's absolutely nothing we can do to change it. That change has to come from within. You can bet your ass that the people in our own government that get paid the big bux to think shit up, have already studied and implemented plans for the time when 'we the people' are pushed too far. Not saying or implying that this is an inevitability, just saying that if it's a know fact that they have made plans for when humans make firsat contact with an alien race, you can bet they've made plans for a domestic revolution.
The Diane Rehm show has a better discussion of this than can be had here. Guests include Salman Rushdie and a reporter for Al Arabia. For those Libyan poster-holders, it's entirely likely that they can read english. Libya has one of the best educated populaces in the Arab world. The "power play" aspect is very true and present, and is covered in some detail in the above-linked discussion.
But then is the Islamic culture significantly more violent than the American culture? Are people over there going into movie theaters blowing away groups of people, shooting congresswomen, blowing up governmental buildings with explosive fertilizer, etc.? Maybe they just need more cathartic outlets, like horror movies and the NFL (or tittie bars? Perhaps it's pent up sexual repression) Admittedly, when The Passion of the Christ was released, there may've been protests, but not violent rioting. Hrrrm.
