OT:Hold all Muslims responsible; London, Bali, Madrid, 911?

[MrYellow]

These souless terrorist are brainwashed on a currupt idealology an its
spreading like a disease to the weakiest hearts and minds. The return is
death not the gift of life that the true God gives all of us.

oh my.

The soulless American's are brainwashed on a corrupt idealogy and it's
spreading like a disease through the weakest hearts and minds.

I just love when someone says something with so much "passion" that
applies directly to both sides .... Like Blairs speech the other day....
Couldn't figure out if he was talking about "terrorists" or Bush

-Ben

[MrYellow]

Here I wrote this back around 911..... Lets see if it still holds....

At the time I was thinking a lot about the problems Jefferson foresaw in
how media would consolidate power into the hands of a few, and how hard
individuals would have to work to learn the truth about events and make
informed choices.


"Within a representative democracy for the civilians to be innocent the
leaders must be responsible. If the rulers do not take responsibility for
their policies and actions, then the citizens must. If the people of the land
do not hold themselves and their lords responsible then their enemies
may. It is the duty of any truly innocent civilian to hold their leaders
accountable for the deeds they commit in the name of those they
represent."

On your marks.... Get set...... GO!

-Ben

[Benshik]

Benshik.

you are only aware of what is going behind one border and not the other.

this forum (including the media all over the world) is full of threads when it happens to Graet Britian, America etc...,
when the bombing sanctions of these nations are killing in the multitudes of another, its not called terrorism, its called war on terror.., but when they respond its called terrorism.

Benshink, corporations stand for terrorism, that silent bunch of ameaba.

someone here said something like, dont look at the action but the purpose behind it.
dont draw your conclusions only from the fight but the reason why they fight.

What you basically say is: "The West is very bad and Im too brainwashed by the media to see it"
Come on, are you kidding me??? The media is soooooo openly critical to Bush and the war on Iraq! In Europe, and even more in Russia!!!!!
Actually, being in a city culturally in between Europe and Asia, I think Im quite well situated to witness the situation and hear different point of views. But anyway, I don't think that living in wealthy, sophisticated, healthy, lime green New Beetle driving and Imac using Melbourne would change my opinion

Yes, the West is very nasty and we are loads to yell it outloud

BUT sorry, the terrorists are also very nasty boys. What Anonymouse said is: where is the Muslim street to yell "Stop!" and try to move things???

This little childish game of "who started first" and "who's worst than the other" won't bring us anywhere, unless you wanna write another useless Phd in Berkeley. We ALL must stop NOW! Forgive your ennemy, smallow your fucking pride and live together...

Ben

[Macrostructure]

The fundamental premise of the question is wrong so the question becomes meaningless and misleading. Muslim society is not a politically or indeed ethically cohesive whole any more than say the European Union is. So to talk of Muslim society rising up and cleansing itself is meaningless and absurd.

[anonymouse]

The fundamental premise of the question is wrong so the question becomes meaningless and misleading. Muslim society is not a politically or indeed ethically cohesive whole any more than say the European Union is. So to talk of Muslim society rising up and cleansing itself is meaningless and absurd.

Macro, I agree. that's why I polled the somewhat provocative question in the first place ... to see how many would really examine their own personal prejudice and realise whether they they categorise muslims as some sort of homogeneous stereotypical group.

I believe muslims are no more responsible for ridding society of terrorists than any other member of society, regardless of religion or ethnic background. And by that I mean that everyone is responsible for doing all they reasonably can to achieve this, should they have suspicions of dangerous activities within their community. True it might be the case that some situations members of a specific ethnic group will likely be closer to the "intelligence chatter" the media tells us exists; merely because they are aware, for example, that their nephew seems radically fundamentalist and hangs out with an extremist crowd.
This is no different than saying friends and family of the likes of Timothy McVeigh should also be responsible for forgetting family ties and notifying authorities should they have reason to suspect something odd is going on that might be dangerous.

Interesting to see the wide mixture of view points on this. Particularly the "Fuck you, shut up" attitude. That is probably the most dangerous of all. i.e. say no to dialogue and discussion, just let the current status quo fester.

[Hypomixolydian]

Another question to you Mr.Sleep, I have heard that music unless within a religious context is not allowed by islam. Is this true?

as i said, im no expert, but from what i know and read so far..

religion is an admonishment for man to be good.

so if its good (arbitrary term) music, then its religious like good words and good pictures to inspire for the better.

I quite like Marilyn Manson's music and I am inspired by it in terms of the passion behind it and the beauty of the sounds. So does that mean his music is religious?

all true beleivers are considered muslims regardless of a name, sorry for not making that clear inough because that is what i meant..

I doubt any devout believer in Judaeism, Christianity, Buddhism etc.... would agree that that they are in fact actually Muslims.

[conny]

I have to repeat myself:

Africa, the Middle East, big parts of Asia etc has been occupied/colonized in the past from Europe and America.
What we see is to some extent our "children" or "relatives", that is the enlarged shadow of the Westen world being the ruler of it all.
Look into that mirror.
You don't create an enemy without cause.

Bismarck get into war with France, thus engaging all the free cities and regions in what would became the state of Germany.
Cause and effect.

Further back Spain etc was "occupied" by "Arabia" (the Mores).
All this is about power, echonomy, influence and to some extendt to blurr internal conflicts and to some extent to draw attention away from the reasons why there are conflicts at all.

Why?
Again: Who benefits from it.

BTW: Muslims treat Jesus as an prophet among others (correct me if I'm worng), the christianity does not even regard Muhammed as something to regard at all.

// C

[mikemc]

Actually, being in a city culturally in between Europe and Asia, I think Im quite well situated to witness the situation and hear different point of views. But anyway, I don't think that living in wealthy, sophisticated, healthy, lime green New Beetle driving and Imac using Melbourne would change my opinion

Yes, the West is very nasty and we are loads to yell it outloud

BUT sorry, the terrorists are also very nasty boys. What Anonymouse said is: where is the Muslim street to yell "Stop!" and try to move things???

This is a question well put, if that's what you meant, it's worth asking.

The "should we hold everyone in a religion responsible for something a few who claim to belong to that religion did" is simply a non-starter, if that's what you meant, then that's not really worth asking.

I've got a lot of ill informed half baked opinions on the subject, but I think a signficant part of the issue in a nutshell is this:

0) The religious sectors of the world need to chill out a bit. To interpret that you're directly sponsored by some supreme deity because you trick some young people to act like students, legitimate immigrants, or 'regular folks', teach them how to smile in someone's face and then kill them when they are not looking is insane. Conversely, to intrepret that the supreme deity has somehow abandoned you, is trying to 'teach you a lesson', 'rouse you to the Final Battle', or 'send you a message' when some group does something to you and gets away with a sick act is insane.

1) The technological sectors need to focus on developing an affordable, clean, renewable replacement for gasoline.

2) The social/political sectors need to focus on establishing a clearer understanding of the baseline goals of human society.

There are signficant portions of the world where key aspects of the cultural identity and/or practices are completely disgusting to other signficant portions' cultures. These are difficult things to reconcile: for example, I kinda see the appeal of NASCAR, but still am having trouble with ProWrestling.

[basetwo]

You know, I wish threads like this would cease because all it does is get people upset. I know my opinion of quite a few people has suffered because of it.

[conny]

You know, I wish threads like this would cease because all it does is get people upset. I know my opinion of quite a few people has suffered because of it.

Elaborate, please.
If I'm doing wrong, I want to know why.

// C

[tom b.]

Anonymouse I really like your version of northern Ireland. are you from the future?

good point Angstrom, I know I am painting far too rosy a picture. Northern Ireland is still a very fragile place. Plus that problem is a poor analogy for this new type of extremist global terrorism that is now emerging. But the murdering of civilians, guerilla tactics and seemingly unsolvable nature of the faceless conflict is the closest example. Particularly for Londoners who remember the fear that the IRA brought to their city not so many years ago.

and what about the 800 years of fear that English peeple brought to Ireland??

[anonymouse]

You know, I wish threads like this would cease because all it does is get people upset. I know my opinion of quite a few people has suffered because of it.

Wake up and smell the coffee. It is a big bad world out there.

I had the "pleasure" of being subjected to FOX news for a few weeks recently.

It was 24 hour non-stop coverage of the search for a missing girl in Aruba. Not a single other international story even mattered.
No doubt the runaway bride and the switching off of the life-support machine of a vegetative woman in florida filled the previous 4 months worth of FOX "news" coverage. It made it more clear to me how introverted the US is. (though I know Jon Stewart does his best to enlighten people)

Upsetting comfortable people by raising issues that they don't like to think about (in an OT) says more about society preferring to look the other way rather than face critical problems that they should at least register exist, if not have an opinion on.

There is no "right way" with any of this, but perhaps people prefer to spend the conscious part of their day toying around with music, playing playstation and keeping those blinkers tightly focused on their own lives.

[anonymouse]

Anonymouse I really like your version of northern Ireland. are you from the future?

good point Angstrom, I know I am painting far too rosy a picture. Northern Ireland is still a very fragile place. Plus that problem is a poor analogy for this new type of extremist global terrorism that is now emerging. But the murdering of civilians, guerilla tactics and seemingly unsolvable nature of the faceless conflict is the closest example. Particularly for Londoners who remember the fear that the IRA brought to their city not so many years ago.

and what about the 800 years of fear that English peeple brought to Ireland??

If the Irish had stuck with the UK they'd probably have broadband now, nice heavy sterling in their pockets, better roads, less corruption (thanks Mr Burke & Mr Haughey), higher standards of education, less paddy whackery, a decent suburban and interurban rail system, wealthy ports on the Atlantic coast, a more mixed gene pool (better looking women), etc etc.

But seriously the activities of the English in Ireland over the centuries differed little than their exploitation of many other colonies.

[Macrostructure]

Personally I find few more devastating than a black haired, green eyed feisty Irish woman, but that's another story

On a more serious note, let's all accept that the sins of the father are NOT the sins of the son. Furthermore, I think it's perfectly legitimate to title a thread "OT: xxx " and talk about whatever you like on a General forum.

ms

[braj]

Personally I find few more devastating than a black haired, green eyed feisty Irish woman, but that's another story

On a more serious note, let's all accept that the sins of the father are NOT the sins of the son. Furthermore, I think it's perfectly legitimate to title a thread "OT: xxx " and talk about whatever you like on a General forum.

ms

But the Bible (and possibly the Koran?) say the sins of the father will follow the family for 7 generations. Which, although I don't believe in the Bible or Koran, does make some sense. It takes a long time for peoples to forget and heal.