You know...some irony

[Xantar]

Originally Posted by Professor S

The commonality is that Islam reacts to problems with the sword instead of the pen. That is all the comparison I need. The cause of the violence is not my worry, it is the constant falling back to it that worries me and should worry everyone.

So I suppose you think that black people looted New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina because black culture is criminal in nature with no respect for the law? It couldn't just be because New Orleans is a majority black city and you probably would have seen the same thing if it had been populated by a bunch of poor white people?

This is the hole in your thinking you seem to be missing here, and your post betrays a vast ignorance of the situation in France to say nothing of lazy thinking. Have you even talked to any French people or any people belonging to the minority ethnic groups there, or are you so arrogant that you think you understand the reasons for the rioting better than the rioters?

If the rioters had all been Asians (let's say), your position would have no standing. And what I'm saying is that in France, it happened to have a bunch of Muslims but it could have been any group. If you take any minority segment of the population and marginalize it (or cause it to feel marginalized), it will erupt into violence at the slightest "provocation." It doesn't have to be a Muslim population. Just take a look at what happened after the Rodney King verdict.

If violence is such an integral part of the culture of Muslims in France, then why did Jews, second generation Portuguese, Albanians and non-Muslim Africans join in rather than stand to the side to demonstrate that "we aren't like them"? You can discount their presence and say that the majority of the rioters were Muslim, but what the variety of ethnicities suggests to me is that violence was not the response of the Islamic community but of the poor. Aren't you the one who thought that we are divided along economic and not racial lines?

If you want to show me that Islam runs on fear and is intolerant and uncompromising, by all means cite the reign of any number of regimes in the Middle East from Palestine to Afghanistan. Tell me about Islamic terrorists in the Philippines or in India. I'm probably not going to argue with you, and I'm open to seeing a pattern of behavior. I fully agree with you that the leadership is corrupt and needs to be reformed one way or another. All I'm saying is that this instance is not an example in support of what you're saying, and it's not because I feel the need to be politically correct. And trying to force it to fit through a tenuous connection helps nothing.

[Professor S]

Xantar, we won't know whether I'm right or wrong until 10-15 years from now. You can sit and say that my opinion is ignorant on the situation in France, but I could go source for source with you any time you'd like, but that would simply be a waste of time and wouldn't change either of our opinions.

The situation in France was created by a socialist economic scheme that has produced a generation on French that need support from their government and are therefore subject to their government's bias's and inability to run their own country. My problem isn't with what caused the riots, but the fact that they happened and that they fit very appropriately into a horrific vision of cultural strife in the future. Strife that will be, IMO, the West vs. "Ismlamofascism" (oh YES, I said it) If you want to dillute the importance of the Muslim influence in those riots, you can, but I'm not biting.

You used the Rodney King riots quite unconvincingly because those riots do not fit into a greater context. My citing of the French riots was specifically used to show a trend. You could not use the Rodney King riots to show a trend because they are a singular incident that were not followed by increasing violence that spread like wildfire across the US.

And why didn't they? Because prominent political and religious figures quickly spoke out against the violence and there was a large rebuking of it by the people at large. That is the difference between Western reaction to violence such as this a Islamic reaction, as was my point.

Half of the entire problem is perception, also. All the West sees is the bad side of Islam. I know there is good Islam and modern thinkers in Islam. My problem is that I think those people also let themselves be ruled by fear of fanatical Islamic factions. If Islam wants to revamp its image and promote a peaceful version of itself, its members must stand up and take control of their belief, and not let the violent minority keep the majority under its thumb. The silent many are as damaging as the violent few, a violent few that appear to be growing in number with each passing day.

On a side not, I'm more than a little offended that you would think so little of me to be simply basing an opinion on ignorance an racsim. By jumping to that conclusion and adding the irrelevant example of the Rodney King riots, it is you that is guilt of lazy thinking. Not me.

[Xantar]

Originally Posted by Professor S

On a side not, I'm more than a little offended that you would think so little of me to be simply basing an opinion on ignorance an racsim. By jumping to that conclusion and adding the irrelevant example of the Rodney King riots, it is you that is guilt of lazy thinking. Not me.

Well, you have to admit that when you say something like, "Islam reacts to problems with the sword instead of the pen. That is all the comparison I need," it certainly sounds like reductionism taken to an ignorant degree. I understand your position a lot better now even if I still don't agree with it, and I appreciate that you took the time to clarify instead of just flaming (that much I have come to normally expect from you).

Given our discussion, I have the feeling that 10-15 years from now we will see something rather in between extremes. Not an apocalyptic outbreak of violence engulfing a continent but not exactly a movement that would do Gandhi proud either.

Because prominent political and religious figures quickly spoke out against the violence and there was a large rebuking of it by the people at large.

Well, the riots were condemned in Lebanon by religious leaders although I agree that other countries were more quiet about it.

By the way, what do you make of this? I'm not asking rhetorically. I really want to know whether you think Forbes and Oxford Analytica have any idea what they're talking about (I've been leery of Forbes ever since they made asses of themselves multiple times talking about the videogame industry).

All the West sees is the bad side of Islam. I know there is good Islam and modern thinkers in Islam. My problem is that I think those people also let themselves be ruled by fear of fanatical Islamic factions. If Islam wants to revamp its image and promote a peaceful version of itself, its members must stand up and take control of their belief, and not let the violent minority keep the majority under its thumb. The silent many are as damaging as the violent few, a violent few that appear to be growing in number with each passing day.

Certainly there are peaceful and modern Muslims out in the world, but I think calling the majority "good" is a bit too simple. I mean this in the same sense that people usually mean when they say calling someone "evil" is simplistic. On the one hand, the majority of Muslims all over the world and even in the Middle East don't support blowing up innocent children. On the other hand, life sucks for a lot of them and thanks to failures in education and public discourse, they don't see that the root of their misery has just as much to do with the corrupt people in positions of power and influence in their society as it does with any (real or perceived) abuses by the West. Just as an example, school textbooks in Palestine don't acknowledge Israel's existence as a state. It's not too much of a stretch that they elected a terrorist group into Parliament, then.

I guess what I'm saying is that rather than fault a silent majority, I fault a system that's been built to perpetuate violence in order to keep the ruling class in power. It's well and good to say that Muslims need to reclaim their religion from the extremists, but what if they don't even know they've been taken hostage by corrupt leaders? Unfortunately, what Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon have demonstrated to me is that the best (and perhaps only) hope for peace is to have two courageous leaders meeting in the middle. A grass roots kind of movement won't do it.

P.S. Are we really that scary? Seems like everybody else suddenly stops having an opinion as soon as you and I have a conversation.

P.P.S. Swarthmore's swim team defeated Ursinus. So nyah and stuff.

[manasecret]

Originally Posted by Professor S

Half of the entire problem is perception, also. All the West sees is the bad side of Islam. I know there is good Islam and modern thinkers in Islam. My problem is that I think those people also let themselves be ruled by fear of fanatical Islamic factions. If Islam wants to revamp its image and promote a peaceful version of itself, its members must stand up and take control of their belief, and not let the violent minority keep the majority under its thumb. The silent many are as damaging as the violent few, a violent few that appear to be growing in number with each passing day.

That was the intention of the cartoons from the start, according to the Danish editor who allowed the cartoons. The cartoons, he said, were not a hate message saying that all Muslims are violent. They were meant to point out that the peaceful religion of Islam has been seemingly taken over by the violent minority and the peaceful majority needs to step up and take their religion back.

If you can find the interview with that Danish editor, obviously he says his opinion much better than I can repeat it. He did quite a few interviews back during the heat of the riots. I'd provide a link but I can't find it.

For example take the most cited cartoon -- Mohammad wearing a bomb for a turban. The face of Mohammad should be a peaceful symbol, but instead the perception is that Islam is blood-stained and violent, so the symbol is distorted and is no longer peaceful. The message is that the face of Islam has been pillaged and ransacked and stolen and it needs to taken back by peaceful Muslims themselves.

For any of you who haven't seen the cartoons, I think seeing them for yourself truly shows how much they have been blown out of proportion. Google them or here are the cartoons. Should I be careful about posting this link? The funny thing is, I did think twice about it, and I'm still not sure if one of you moderators will decide to remove it. I can't imagine any reason why it matters anywhere and especially at a forum like this, but with riots over such a little thing as a cartoon I'm not sure anymore...

The feeling is similar to one of the cartoons. There is a cartoon of a newspaper cartoonist sweating in fear as he draws a simple picture of Mohammad -- with no bombs or anything, just a drawing of his face. The perception of a violent Islam is so pervasive that we can't even draw a non-opinionated drawing of Mohammad and publish it without thinking twice about it.