Voices of sanity
Contrary to news reports over the past weeks, not all Muslims are fanatics shunning Danish cheese and baying for the heads of cartoonists. Sunny at Pickled Politics has a great roundup of various Muslim bloggers and thinkers presenting the saner side of Islam.
Go there. Read it. Take heart.
(On the other hand, here’s a link to some pictures the other kind going mental in London and elswhere.)
Now the Syrians are burning embassys! Over a fucking cartoon. Not even a good cartoon. These people need to grow up!
Yay!! for Sunny.
How come the media don’t pay more attention to his (& his mates)??
Anything to do with the fact that boring old rationalism doesn’t sell advertising space?
Still. Yaaaayyyy!!! for Sunny (again)
Guess they won’t be saying that where they are burning down embassys. Islam can’t be all things to all men – it’s either violent and repressive or it isn’t and if it isn’t then free thinking “muslims” should pick theirselves a new religion. It’s never too late to invent one.
marc, perhaps they should grow up and give up stupid religions?
Ah Martyn. If only. Here’s another example of our Government’s double standards.
http://tinyurl.com/e4bes
Tony B’Liar wants to stamp out incitement to religious hatred – but when the religious incite violence agains others (in particular the non-religious) you can hear the crickets farting.
C L O S E R – Cartoonesque Marking the Boundaries?
As I said earlier, the Cartoon row/controversy/rage/riot/jihad or whatever you want to call it, seems to have world divided in two. One camp the white knights of freedom of speech and on the other side the martyrs of islam. See for example the edit…
Marc,
imagine the possible reaction to Jerry Springer: TO a few hundred years ago. Oh yes, there are a few reactionaries waging a campaign against Woolworths or whatever, but most people who might be offended by it deal with it by just not going to see it, or perhaps having a debate about it. In the same way proponents of creationism or ID offend my beliefs, but I don’t go burning churches or threatening to behead Christians (creationist or not), but merely ignore it, and argue against it.
Yes, these fools are wrong and abhorrent with their placards, which effectively want me beheaded, and their burning of embassies. But it is ridiculous to extrapolate that argument to say that anyone who is a Muslim is violent and repressive. I seem to remember someone being up in court recently who used that argument, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with that particular thug. Like anything, there are two ways of living, there are many ways of living with a particular religion or cultural outlook. Some are extreme, fanatical and exclusive, yet many are not.
I think the point was that Islam as faith is repressive (towards women and other faiths if their scriptures are to be followed).
Obviously, there are many different interpretations but that in essence is at the heart of the problem. Folk just make their own rules to suit their alignment – (good-neutral-evil) and use religion to justify it. Muslims, it seems to me are bloody good at it too.
Moderate muslims aren’t, by definition, good muslims. All religion is rooted in power struggles with other factions and you’re either with them or not. To me, people who believe in God should invent a new faith and gather under that banner denying violence and repression – rather like the Brights did for atheists.
Problem is, that I doubt that would be workable since none of them have any actual proof what their god actually wants!
Just step back and THINK about it! There is NO proof of this mystical supreme being, yet these poor misguided religious fools try to impose their misguided ways on those of us with enough sense to see through the entire bloody charade. Christian, muslim jew, whatever, the sooner people wake up to what a total sham that religion is the better. There’s no more reason to believe in the reality of gods or god than there is to believe in the monster under the bed or father bloody xmas. It always makes me laugh when a religious person (or should that read person with mental problems) tells me I will rot in hell or that the devil is influencing me. They can’t even grasp the fact that those characters and places are also mythical rubbish made up by their own deranged beliefs. Religion is the opiate of a weak mind.
It’s interesting that when people are blown to buggery by suicide bombers, there will just be a few ‘Oh dear, how awful’s, yet when a paper publishes some drawings thousands go mental and take to the streets. Wierd priorities. Says a lot, no?
As a young muslim girl, i want to clear a point to some people who have no idea what islam is really about, are brainwashed, and believe everything that their media tells them. If you actually read-not necessarily the Quran- but about the Quran..it gives EQUAL rights to women as to men. Also, the word islam means peace, so it’s sad that some people are soooo affected by the media and stereotype 1.5 billion muslims around the world and insult them because they have personal or even national hate against muslims. Islam is the largest growing religion in the world so maybe you people who think it’s so bad should look up what it is really about instead of info about some radical muslims.I am against terrorism, Bin Laden, Al Qaida, burning churches and killing innocent people, but it’s funny how people make their judgements according to one side of the story forgetting that hundreds of muslims are dying everyday for oil and stuff.All i can say is that we are humans too, we have brains and most importantly we do not stereotype a group of people just cause our government wants us to for their own good(oil).
Also, the “proof” you have there is soo wrong, i even laughed when i saw it, it’s an event of some shiite muslims and has nothing to do with the Danish cartoon!!!!
there’s an excellent piece at http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/02/why_do_the_syri.php
on why the Syrians burn embassies but the Iranians don’t. It gives the round up on the geological differences and the media’s inability to differentiate between them.
Rana, thanks for putting your point across about the misconceptions against Islam. I have been reading different views and I have to say that most stem from their lack of knowledge about the basics of Islam and their lack of willingness to correct their fallacy.
In this day and age very few of us are actually going out there and discovering the truth for ourselves. Most are just happy to be fed by media which pretends to gather under the banner of free speech, but actually reflect the views of their politically motivated owners. Discrimisnation is so common in the western society that they don’t even recognise it when they come face to face with it. It’s amazing that the media(T.V, Newsgroups) gave so much coverage to the isolated events, invariably violent but isolated due to their geographic and political motivation and in no way the representation of the rest of 1.5 billion Muslim inhabitants. All earnest to jump on the band-wagon and hate Muslims. The voice of moderate Muslims is either not heard or ignored in all this warmongering episode. I am probably plagiarising but I can’t possibly put this better than Raf at Aqoul, who says: young urban idiot mobs probably egged on by various parties is nothing new in the world and hardly something to throw entire global communal relations into a tiolet.
Oh, I apologise, that was Lounsbury who said that not Raf…