While I agree that a more in-depth understanding of Islam would be a good groundstone for james t kirk, I also have a tendancy to agree with a lot of the points in this thread that have been posted by, AFAIK, generally white westerners. So, here are the facts as I see them:

Let's take iraq alone, for a moment, as that seems to be where Americans focus most of their distrust of Muslims lately. First, while Muslims are the majority remember that there are different backgrounds and cultures within that, and that there are also Christian religions and religions that are neither Muslim or Christian. You have Shi'ite and Sunni Arabs. You also have Shi'ite and Sunni Kurds. These peoples, even where a religion is shared, generally do not like each other. The Arabs feel the Kurds are an inferior people. The Kurds feel the Arabs oppress them unneccesarily. Then you have the Christian and Jewish Kurds... who generally also get along (within the tolerance of any social group) with Muslim Kurds and face the same persecution from Arabs (that is more racially based rather than religiously). Then you have Assyrians... some of whom speak Arabic, and some who speak Kurdish and some who even speak, if you can believe it... Aramaic. Some Jewish Kurds also speak this language. Now language, in and of itself, can be a huge marker for distaste and intolerance in the regions of Northern Iraq. You have Yazidis, which come from Kurdish stock and speak Kurdish, but are of a quite different culture and religious group (neither Muslim nor Christian). If this is confusing, there's more... There are two distinct dialects of Kurdish that are different enough to prevent fluent conversation (similar to Mandarin and Cantonese). There are also various madhhab (four I believe) of Sunni Muslims, Arabs generally belonging to Hanafi (stemming from the time Iraq was ruled by the Ottoman empire) and Kurds are generally Shaf‘i (which is futher broken down into two mystical sects that equate to something akin to Western political parties, but in a religious sense). Now mind you there are also additional religious, linguistic and cultural groups and sub-groups not listed here. The fact that the region is still populated at all shows that tolerance IS POSSIBLE within these vast groups of people.

So what was the point of all of the above? It is this...

There is certainly war and trouble within Christian countries, both between Christians ans Christians and between Christians and non-Christians. They are not a 100% peaceful people either. HOWEVER, historically speaking, there is a larger sheer number of occurances of extreme violence within the Muslim world, and to the same point, involoving the Middle East as a whole. Outside of the Crusades, Christians have never gone into a "holy war" and declared that God Himself dictated that rape and slaughter of the innocent was not only acceptbale, but part of their path to Heaven. Even during the Crusades, this type of practice, while it occured, was generally frowned upon. In the Muslim world, this type of thing is ALSO generally frowned upon, but the extremists have a much higher fervor regarding their religion than Christian extremists.

The end result of all of this is my opinion... which is that I do believe that military action to stop the slaughter of the innocent at the hands of Saddam Hussein was acceptable. I also believe that military force to stop Al Qeida in Afghanistan was acceptable. HOWEVER, I believe (even as a soldier) that the on-going war in Iraq is bullshit. It may, however, be partially nessecary bullshit, as many Iraqis truly DO want to have a more democratic nation. I don't, however, support George W. Bush as our President and/or Commander-in-Chief. I think he's a pompous ass, and that his outright lying does nothing but embarass us in the world's eye view. So... less tolerance for extremists... more tolerance for non... better understanding (all the way around) of everyone else's position, and less political bullshit.

How's that for a long-winded post?

That was their reason for asking people to submit the cartoons. Their reason for publishing them was to see how far Muslims could be provoked, to "test the limits of acceptance," as they put it.

It is a very childish example. There are no truths here. This is not historical fact. We don't even know if this is a standpoint shared by the newspaper. All they were interested in was to offend and gauge reaction.

Because the Western media can't be bothered to report it and because you're not looking hard enough.

A Saudi newspaper published in English

Wow, thanks DJ, that truly was enlightening... the whole west is weakening and a neocon said 'lets put a small country up against the wall and slap it around'. Ohh and the lovely non-insulting cartoon (obviously the west are uncaring business men simply throwing their money around at the aid machine).

Now let me go get my crusade hat, I feel a slapping around coming on.

If this has so lttle importance as you and others have suggested and since you can draw, why don't you do a caricature of God sitting next to a comatose Ariel Sharon saying, " Damn it, I wasn't aiming for you. My global tracking is on the blink again." Then take that to the World Jewish Congress or a syndicated paper for print and see if you get a laugh.

It seems most people have missed the point. These cartoons were purposely commission to spark outrage which it has done. But since we aren't offended means that those offended shouldn't be either. It's just a cartoon right? If anyone of you had your mother in a cartoon with two big black guys banging her senseless while a rabbi is charging admission and the caption stated your mother saying, "I can just imagine how much of a turn on this must have been before desegregation" would you just say it's a cartoon? Who other than you might be offended? Would anyone have the right to be offended?

The cartoons were unprofessional, ignorant and immature. So is the reactionary violence. Condemning one without the other is juvenile.

i would like to point out something rather depressing--and dangerous if this thread represents anything like an index of how folk are thinking about this extended donnybrook over the cartoons.

this is not so much about the positions one could take relative to the cartoons/reactions as it is about recurring structural features of the reactions here to the protests triggered by the cartoons.

on the controversy itself, none of it surprises in principle (in fact it does a bit)--i only wish that the cartoons had been smarter so that debate over questions of free speech vs. racism could be played out on better grounds.


what is clear is that these cartoons have been instrumentalized by all sides: the various demos over the weekend in particular are obviously motivated by a wide range of broad political agendas that are understood to dovetail with reaction to this matter: that regimes like syria, for example, leans heavily on the discourse of the "infidel" to prop itself up is evident. same with iran. same with the saudis. the mirror image of this operates in western contexts, however---in the states, the bush administration has trafficked in the same type of racist nonsense dressed up in elements drawn from religious discourse since 9/11/2001--in europe, you have a longer-term mobilization on parallel grounds undertaken by neofascist organizations (the relation between european neofascism and mainstream republican ideology is interesting...and it is no surprise that american conservatives "deal with it" by refusing to look)--the problem is the racist content itself--but more so that it is not socially marked as racist, and so operates as a prefabricated discursive structure that folk can adopt in particular situations. this adoption triggers a repetition of the central features of the discourse, which results in racist interpretations--regardless of the personal committments of those who adopt it.


in 2006, it is quite easy to avoid antisemitism because one knows that it is bad. it has been coded as bad--the sorry experience of the 20th century demonstrated its dangers by pushing the reaction to a very old discourse within euro-christianity to its horrifying conclusions. but apparently this coding of antisemtism as bad applies only to its surface features: when it comes to the type of argument, operating in a different context, aimed at another group, the problem is not evident.


in many of the posts above, you find an image of "radical islam" or "jihadists" which function as a stand-in for islam as a whole.
this signifier in turn defines muslims as the enemy within and without, powerless and all powerful, distant and an immediate threat...it is the signifiers around which reactionary notions of community have been posited: if the Enemy is muslim and, in the main, brown, then it follows that the community threatened is also defined on religious and racial lines.
so the "them" is some hallucinatory image of militant fundamentalists that stands in for anything like coherent thinking about a religion that encompasses about 20% of the earth's population.
and the "us" by default is white and christian.
the conflict is then religious war.
the triggers are double: in particular "random" acts of violence; in general fear of "invasion" of the "us".

in the states, the first is dominant--in western europe, amongst those influenced by neofascist discourse directly or indirectly the second is dominant (the scope of that discourse is much wider than is the support for neofascist organizations--try to think of how chirac's law banning the wearing of the veil in schools could have been promulgated except in this kind of discursive context--an action that "protects" the secualr french state from invasion by the muslim hoardes....)

in ths states,a reductive and basically racist image of islam has been central to the bush administration's policies and marketing of those policies since it was handed what can only be seen as the gift of 9/11/2001. the central operational trope is obviously the "terrorist"--a fiction the content of which is filled in via television imagery (decontextualized, arbitrary images of violence) and fleshed out via the vast range of mediocrities who dominate conservative punditry--from the "respectable" version (huntington's "clash of civilizations" model) to the inane (the ann coulter school of thinking religious warfare)----this signifier has been central to the bush administration's marketing of itself and its republican supporters to the public--vote kerry and die, remember?---its logic is repeated endlessly, drifting in and out of "news" as the set of framing conceits around footage, for example, surfacing as a central line of demarcation between far right and everyone else, in speeches by dick cheney during the last campaign in particular...

you get the entire range of possibilities recycled above in this thread---it is a "respectable" form of racism, pre-articulated and available that folk can reproduce explicitly (pace ustwo or the lovely "diaperheads" crack above) or implicitly). and it operates despite superficial denials.

it is racist, but we dont call it that so...well....we dont have to exercise circumspection.
this is how it has traditionally worked, folks: racist pseudo-explanations knit themselves into the "common sense" of people who experience anxieties about a range of factors (economic stability, social position in a changing world, "the war on terror" particularly in the way the bushpeople stage it--that is as unmotivated politically, as a conflcit between good (white christians) and evil (brown muslims) etc. etc. etc.). it functions to shape projections based in these anxieties onto others in the world. it is an example of the usage of racism as a kind of collective therapy, a way of avoding political dimensions, of displacing it onto a different register.

it is most strange to see folk who i do not imagine to be racist as human beings using this kind of logic to unfold fundamentally offensive interpretations of this controversy over the cartoons. if you want to defend press freedom against these protests, then there is no need to move from that into projections about the "enemy"--but since there is no social sanction that accompanies this move, folk do it.

so it follows that, apparently, racism that is not coded as such is ok.

My favorite is if you follow the link in the bottom right corner of the newspaper... They boldly ignore the facts on 9/11 and publish their own.

http://www.arabnews.com/9-11/

At some point we are going to have to admit that they hate us because they are ignorant. More-over they have their own Supremacist views. We aren't worthy of having a dialogue with them -because we are on a level so beneath them.

So what is the solution? Move the dialogue into a more mocking tone. Our freedom MUST exist unchecked by their hatred. Remove our reliance on any part of their economy ie. stop the oil based economy. Let their economies suffer while ours thrive.

Maybe, it's just a dream.

Can you post some specific examples? I took a cursory glance and didn't find anything overly outrageous (no more than some of the exagerations I've seen in western publications about the middle east).

I found a translation of the original complaint made by a group of Danish Muslims that toured muslim countries looking for support. The translator makes comments in red. I have found the three original pictures which were not included in the newspapers -but which the Danish Muslims used as examples to incite the world's muslims.


The translation is here
http://counterterror.typepad.com/the...ish_letter.pdf


The Extra photos are from Wikipedia
And finally the pictures which were not included in the Danish Newspaper but were claimed to have been printed by this group:

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_i...ninger38sm.jpg

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_i...ninger39sm.jpg

http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_i...ninger40sm.jpg


Um, sure. Although I don't have a lot of time to read something and cherry pick what I think will be offensive to that person... Try this:

thanks, i posted something about this 2 pages ago and no one had any more information.

I have been at ktspktsp's all weekend and unable to answer posts (from his computer); see his posts for a more detailed treatment of the topic than I can offer.

I am not sure if it is doing any good to post here anyway, since this has long since turned into a thread worthy of the Politics board rather than General Discussion... :|

I will, however, address the last posts addressed to me. Do not get me wrong: I do not minimize the attacks of 9/11. However, do you think the reaction of the American people would have been any less severe if the attacks had happened in the middle of the night, and very few people had actually been killed? Probably not. We would have reacted the same way regardless of numbers dead, *because* of the symbolic value. The attackers knew how to push our buttons; the Danes and other Europeans certainly know how to push theirs.

Before we go counting the numbers of *our* innocent dead, how about those dead in the Middle East as a result of the West fumbling around there for god knows how long? The role of the British Empire? Israel? "Collateral damage" of the war in Iraq? How many dead brown people count for one dead person in the WTC? We may like to say that "it wasn't a symbol, it wasn't a picture, it was innocent people," but who is to say that the Muslim fanatics can't see themselves saying the same things, and feel justified?

As I have said before on this thread, I am NOT advocating the use of violence as a viable form of protest, by any means. HOWEVER: instead of polarizing ourselves with simplistic statements, I believe it would do us well to see how goddamn complicated this whole situation is, and that people on BOTH sides believe they have entirely valid reasons for what they are doing.

Now, whether or not those beliefs are correct, is something else. I'd rather condemn the actions of both than say that one is morally superior, however.

P.S. Free press? How would any of you respond to someone publishing child pornography on the front page of the NYTimes? We censor that kind of thing, but why should we, since that's limiting the right of the press (using many people's arguments here)?... I hope you see my point.

Astro... that is a letter from a reader, not something published by the newspaper itself. The whole point DJ Happy was trying to make was that there are moderate points of view in the Arab press and populace.

The article in this publication are decidedly moderate. To get irate about letters to the editor is kind of pointless, I can point to any number of similarly held conspiracy theories held by people in the west (some even posted on this website).

Another point to consider about many of the protests over the weekend. Most were peaceful. Some were not.

Let's have a look at the protests that have occured in the US, UK, France, Spain and Canada over the past 10 years... how many of these protests were hijacked by idiots who then proceeded to get violent. Some, not all.

Should we say then that all those who would protest Globalization (for example) are violent? That all people living in countries that have had protests like these are uncivilized barbarians? The answer is no (in case you couldn't do the math).

What the media shows us is a couple of shots of peaceful protest followed by inflamatory scenes of violence. The violence is way more titilating and therefore it is "the story to follow".

Repeat (since someone didn't read it the first time around)

I must be missing the point you are trying to make...

Here you seem to be indicating that Arab News is boldly ignoring the facts about 9/11 and publishing their own.

Then when I asked you to point to an example of this you posted a letter to the editor.

What am I missing?

I've now read more than a few articles from the Arab News, including a few in the area dedicated 9/11. Their articles are quite reasonable and spend time shooting down the kinds of conspiracies that your letter to the editor espouses.

If your beef is with the publication, please show me the article that pissed you off, as I can't seem to find it.

If your beef is with the readers who are posting replies to the articles, then I agree. Many of these letter writters are off their nut. But again, I can find just as many nuts in the west with bad information and an axe to grind.

The point DJ Happy was making was that Arab News is a moderate publication.

Dude, you are baiting me. This is off topic. Start a new topic and debate me there.

They're not any better. But nor are they any worse. It is precisely because of the material conditions of both groups that any ideology of violence or looting becomes justifiable, not the other way 'round. I ask people on this thread to carefully examine the infrastructure (material conditions), NOT the superstructure of the cultures involved (e.g. religious/free press ideology) for answers to this debate.

Most social science issues come down to material conditions and inequality; everything else grows out of that, including religion.

I am a cultural-materialist anthropologist to the core, and this Danish cartoon issue has only confirmed this stance.

... did anyone even notice Karsey's response to the thread, quoted above? (#84, on this page). It is very helpful for understanding the Danish side of things.

And please see ktspktsp's posts to understand the complexity of the other side (at least, the Lebanese one). These and other intelligent responses are getting pushed aside by all the shouting in this thread...

Yes.

But there is a very large difference in magnitude. Condemning them equally is insane.

This is utterly wrong.

Most of the terrorists do not come from poverty, and many come from very well off families (Osma being the very classic example).

Its not poverty that makes one a violent asshole, its culture, be it the culture of the ghetto in New Orleans, or the death cult that is modern Islamic thought.

We don't know that. To say that most terrorists are like Osama is blatently false. Osama has the economic wherewithall to be a leader of terrorists. Still some must be his followers. I submit that they are not all rich.

I think that you can not isolate culture from poverty. There are some extremely impoverished people in Uganda (the world's 7th poorest nation) but they come here and many end up working all the time -like three jobs. Poverty didn't make them violent. However in Northern Uganda, there is a huge problem with a Christian Fundamentalist Terror group known as the LRA. The Lord's Resistance Army was started within a tribe which was impoverished and had a sense of entitlement over other tribes. Feel free to argue with me on any of this... just start a new thread as it is nearly completely -off topic.

I think that is what is happening here. Allah has promised these people that they -the representatives of the One True Religion -should be masters of the world. The only problem is that their extreme adherance to this faith has resulted in a sort of "dark ages" for them. Now any criticism, especially by their "lessers" is like rubbing a raw wound. After all, why aren't they God's chosen people?

Me thinks Roachboys post #106 should be a sticky. Bang on.

/me agrees with Percy, particularly Roachboy's quote here:

As for the question of poverty: Ustwo, have ya been to the Middle East lately? There aren't millions of rich people running around. In fact, there are very few, and those are VERY rich, yes. But they are far from being the majority. Check out the movie Syriana for a semi-decent portrayal of what drives people to violence in that, or any, area of the world.

Poverty does not determine behavior 100%, I certainly agree. But being black or brown or living in a ghetto does not a violent person make. Material conditions have a very strong impact on culture and social organization in particular, no less so in the Middle East than right here in affluent America. Infrastructure is the foundation of structure and superstructure, not the other way around. And certainly, race is not the foundation of behavior... (can't believe I actually had to say that).

(I suppose we are getting off topic. Sorry.)

And I never said they were all rich, but the 9/11 hijackers did not come from poverty but solid 'middle' class famlies. I'm saying poverty has very little to do with it.

I submit that poverty has nothing to do with islamic radicals. Sure they use the poor like everyone else, but the movement is not due to poverty.

that's because you haven't done any reasearch, ustwo, and so havent the faintest idea what you are talking about. unless you think that all arabs are basically the same, that all muslims are arabs, and that knowing factoids about **some** aspects of the situation in saudi arabia means that you know everything you need to in order to write authoritative sounding sentences. (it's hard to write while listening to morton subotnik's music, btw--in case you were wondering what it would be like)

researchers working in france and north africa have shown that the vast majority of "fundamentalist" variants of islam--the small, socially marginal groups that you refer to when you think you are talking about islam in general---the folk who identify share certain features:
they tend to be poor to very poor
they come from socially and culturally marginal areas
they are the main are quite young (under 30).

now you *could* make the argument that, in this case, judging from much of the work on these areas, that poverty in itself is not enough to explain these groups--you have to factor in the other two.
well those....and you need to add:
the complex politics of the major organizations that run the various muslim communities within each nation-state;
the characteristics of state power;
the history of relations between these states and the major administrative entities that comprise the muslim community

for example

....and matters of geography--physical, economic, social, cultural, religious....

to the factors of poverty and sense of marginalization (which may or may not be directly linked to poverty) and the sense of foreclosure of possibilities experienced by younger generations within the more marginalized areas.

then you might be able to model these groups

but if you wanted to extend the modelling, you'd have to gather parallel types of information for each new area you tried to include. that is because local histories matter, ustwo--and muslims have them--and they are every bit as complex and meaningful to the folk who live within them, who make them, as yours is to you.

Who knew that pastries could be so volitile?

A sarcastic post of this nature is really uncalled for, thank you.

The cartoon you refered to is in reference to the $700 million that has gone missing from the Palestinian coffers and is an indictment of the Palestinian officials. You complain how quickly Muslims are to take offence, yet you have just done exactly the same here, and in this instance completely without basis.

If all you want to do is hate, fine. But you please go and do it somewhere else so the rest of us can discuss these issues civily.

Never mind, Charlatan seems to have covered it...

I just read this. It seems that Jyllands-Posten does indeed have some sensitivities when it comes to offending religions:

http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/sto...=ticker-103704

DJ, that cartoon was very non-specific, it could easily be applied where I did and take offense at it (well not really, I didn't find it offensive but others could). The point was that their media is not exactly being "Western" friendly in all this, and that we could easily take offense as they have (heck if the Jews reacted as the Muslims have to some of the cartoons Israel would have been on the warpath by now...!).

Jesus fuckin christ. Just nuke that entire section of the god damn earth and let us be done with it. As an individual who finds all religions ridiculous, there is not one that stands out as more of a nuisance than Islam. You can find cultures with more malicious intents. You can find religions who don't even profess peace. But you cannot find a more obnoxious, annoying and dangerous choice of lifestyle than that of radical Islam.

I'm gonna offend a lot of people by saying this, sure. I've had it though. I don't hold much sacred at all, and I don't profess to even understand what the fuck is going through the minds of these radicals. I'm also aware that they do not represent every single muslim in existence. With all that said, just nuke the motherfuckers the minute they have the gall to terrorize people of different beliefs simply because they do not agree. It's fucked and there is no justification.

We all share this planet, and after thousands of years to get adjusted, if you cant HANG with people who are DIFFERENT than you, you gotta go. Period.


+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Part 2.

That's exactly what they're thinking right now. Just swap their culture with ours. How do we resolve this? Is there even a way at all? Do we even want to? To begin, to have any shred of hope, I feel it's important to not even take the stance of Part 1 of my post. In fact, I should hope that those who are in charge of resolving this do not feel that they are AGAINST the Muslim people, and that they must force them to cope.

That is not to say they don't have to. It's all in how you present it to the people, though. Humans, in large masses, are dumb as fuck. Even angry, violent and empassioned ones. Hell, ESPECIALLY those ones. Dress up your message properly and they'll swallow it like it was an instant headache relief pill.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Part 3.

My own, real opinion. Often, people forget that NOW is simply a result of THEN. The FUTURE will be a result of NOW. I feel that the destructive and violent tendencies of these radicals will ultimately be the cause of their collapse, regardless of how they are dealt with now. They will be the reason for their own demise. When it happens, it will be not a moment too soon. It's a shame it will happen slowly.

Funny though.

The same could be said about us.

How on earth could that even be interpreted as "the west are uncaring businessmen?" What aspect of that cartoon came across as "uncaring?" It simply makes no sense. And if you didn't even find it offensive yourself, then what is the point of your post?

You complain that one of the authors feels that the Arab world is being bullied by the West as being "not exactly Western friendly." Are you even aware of what is happening in the world right now? What on earth do you expect? I didn't post the link to show you that all Arabs love the West and really appreciate their religion being denigrated merely for the fun of it. I posted it to show you that there are moderate Muslim opinions being broadcast and Muslims condemning the violent nature of some of the protests. If you are shocked that everyone in the Arab world is not having a West love-in during this episode of world history then you are deluding only yourself.

The way I read that story, I got the impression that it was an editorial decision not-to-publish unfunny cartoons, submitted on a whim, by an unfunny cartoonist.

DJ, look at the picture, the expression looks rather blank on the guy throwing in the money, and basically we often do have a plan to give money to charities and the rest of the aid machine, however getting the aid (money -> useful stuff) to those that actually need it can be very difficult. The point of my post was that I could be upset by the comments and images and could go on a warpath... we all find things that upset us, personally I don't find much offensive (I am an overweight computer geek, being thick skinned helps), however I could easily find things in the links you posted that would make me theoretically upset.

What is happening in the world right now? That truly depends on the spin you place on events. Personally I do feel that removing Saddam was the right choice, ok it should have been done years ago but at least its done, pulling out right now would be silly as it would leave a country in a very vulnerable stage and likely lead to someone similar to Saddam reexerting power except with plans to not get ousted. What else is happening in the region? Israel/Palestine truly depends on which side of that fence you stand, I stand with Israel (even if they claim they want to wipe me out they haven't acted on it yet!). Iran making inroads towards a nuclear enrichment program? I think anyone can see why people are objecting to that, Iran are not know as the most enlightened government in the world, and having access to nuclear material that may fall into terrorist hands is pretty scary, I could easily build the rest of the bomb, the delivery system and any incidentals, the only hard part of making a nuke now adays is getting the materials for the fission/fusion.

Ok our media is perhaps slanted against the Arab/Muslim world, however theirs is no better towards us. All my point was is basically that someone can take offense at anything, to censor everything that may cause offense would well, well I suppose we should just kill everyone now because we might offend in the future.

I think the cartoons proved the editors point.
The world is afraid to say anything bad about Muslims, and the radicals have shown exactly why.

A good quote was in the morning paper: "We're no longer in political correctness, but approaching a state of Islamic correctness."

From the article:

"The Danish daily turned down the cartoons of Christ three years ago, on the grounds that they could be offensive to readers and were not funny."

"Zieler received an email back from the paper's Sunday editor, Jens Kaiser, which said: "I don't think Jyllands-Posten's readers will enjoy the drawings. As a matter of fact, I think that they will provoke an outcry. Therefore, I will not use them."

The Mohamed cartoons aren't funny either - most of them are just drawings of a man they say is Mohamed. I just find it somewhat inconsistent that Jyllands-Posten rejected cartoons satirising Jesus because they might cause offense an provoke and outcry, whilst they published the cartoons satirising Mohamed because they would cause offense and provoke an outcry.

There's a massive difference between an editor rejecting cartoons which he didn't ask for and publishing a series of cartoons which he specifically requested.

Personally, I find the entire concept of gods ridiculous so I can't sympathise with your offense towards the mohamed cartoons.

Not quite out of context
 

Here's an interesting portion from a BBC report on this story:

Emphasis mine in the quote.

Gee, Mawli, I think your quote and your protests sort of color my opinion...

For whatever reason the "insert hyperlink" button wouldn't work, so if you want to visit the story, go here ~ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4684652.stm

That is the most convoluted argument I've ever heard. You might be offended by what they said, but you're not, but you could be, so it's as bad as the Mohamed cartoons? Forgive me for being totally confused by this train of thought.

Why have none of the other cartoons/satires/parodies of Islam provoked this kind of response? You make it sound like this happens everyday all over the world. Jyllands-Posten knew that these cartoons would result in enormous outcry and they deliberately set out to provoke a response. Well, I guess they got what they wanted.

imagine we would meet over here...and amidst someone smelling like a marxist to boot! :D

but I digress, the thing I want to comment on is this notion of dispute you (and abaya) are having with ustwo. I have to preface with the statement that I filter from the same general schools of thought you two often pull from. According to the most current literature from my wing (Crim & socio-legal scholars), ustwo comes close to being accurate. But I don't know how he conceptualizes his points. That is to say, the evidence seems to support the contention that terrorists are coming from the "solid middle class". But that doesn't really tap into the full realm of anxiety and decentering and a full range of other complex issues many of our population are dealing with: oh say, lots of previously working people in Detroit or in a mill town
in anyVille, USA. Or even lotsa people running around over "there" shooting "them" if you wanted a more parallel analogy.

That said, the numbers of the 'kinds' of people ramming large aircraft into symbolic skyscrapers (actually if you had outlined what the symbolism meant to the respective populations you might have not fallen into what I think is a semantic argument with ustwo) is very, very, very small in relation to the people you and abaya seem to be referencing lately--the impoverished, downtrodden, marginalized, & etc. And infintismal (?) in relation to the general muslim population. but you seem to have done what you carefully tried to avoid and alert others from doing--collapsing various groups along distinct class lines into a homogenous group.

Shit, it's getting late (early, wth) and I'm supposed to be doing something entirely different so this is coming out rapid shot and not at all the tone I wanted to add to your and abayas insightful comments (among a couple other people I found myself nodding along with, but can't quite remember how to spell their names)

But I mean to say that the people we are reading about, the fire, gun, and sign slingers are a different group than the bomb slingers. you and I and abaya, I am almost positive, would agree that the bomb slingers are not filling the mosques. No, their members are of the sign, rock, fire, gun toting variety. Many of the people depicted in some pictures in this very thread would have trouble skinning a live rabbit much less hacking a human head off its stalk. And it's not too difficult to start to draw some lines between the youthful, angry, distraught faces in the mosques and their parents--those men (and it's almost always men, isn't it so far?) who very infrequently blow themselves up as their last act of powerless(ness).

I guess I just wanted to remind you that ustwo sees all of these characters as a one large mass. The youthful protesters, as they move into terrorists, and all coming from this large cauldron of muslimicity. So I think he tries to make these vertical connections between the muslimness of it all, the civil unrest, and the tangible things he feels might actually kill him or his way of life if left unaddressed. Meanwhile his politics don't allow him from analyzing the horizontal connections between structures in our society as impediments to theirs and its consequence on what he sees as a 'solid' middle class. You know, maybe in another time and place, you might have even questioned that particular premise of his: that there is anything approaching a "solid" middle class. For it seems likely that if one were to talk about the evisceration of such a strata then one might go a long way towards addressing terrorism. And by addressing I mean thinking and discoursing about it in a copmlex manner. and then maybe the who's we are discussing wouldn't congeal while the what's they are doing wouldn't collapse into some anti-american, anti-freedom, anti-US kind of understandings that become so difficult to disabuse in an internet forum medium.

but hot damn it was a pleasure to read your comments out here in general and I'm glad I decided to tighten my seatbelt and delve on into this thread after all because I had no idea what I was going to slap into and especially after I read the first page or two of responses.

To me, this whole thing is less about the cartoons, about the portests, about Islam, and more about the media.

The cartoons were posted in september, then reposted. Only violent protests are shown on the news. Few, if any, views by mulisms denouncing the violent protests are shown.

The media is fueling this, and the rest of the Islam vs. Everyone Else feelings that seem to be around lately.


Oh, and blowing up people is bad, whether by straping explosives to yourself or during an unjustified war. Don't do it.

What Goes Around Comes Around
 

From ~

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117....html?from=rss

I'm also an atheist. I don't find the cartoons offensive, but I am not impressed by the deliberate and, it appears, measured provokation of an entire religion whilst hiding behind one of the most sacred and powerful tenets of democracy.

This entire episode is about far more than just a cartoon.

700 million people are enraged, to the point of burning embassies, threatening beheadings, and burning flags... by a cartoon?

I don't believe that for one second.

Time to stop using oil and wash our hands of everything between Morroco and Indonesia.

Neither do I. Remember the Dutch artist Van Gogh who was murdered because of his criticism of Islam in his film, Submission? For some reason that film didn't spawn the same reaction like our cartoons have. Go figure.

Yeah, it's interesting after Van Gogh was murdered by an islamofascist, the Dutch were quite outraged. Holland considers itself (and rightly so) one of the most tolerant nations on earth. The Dutch could not understand how a person living in a nation which which welcomed him / them with tolerance could be so INtolerant themselves.

There has been a backlash in Holland since that murder against closed minded and extremist thinking that so many muslims subscribe to. Denmark is no doubt going to follow suit after all this I would imagine.

The one thing I find amazing is watching the islamofascists protesting in Britain and Europe is that I can't help but think how a similar protest by Christians (not that Christians would be so thin skinned) would be dealt with in the Islamic world.

I think you have to be careful saying something like this... what you are suggesting here is that 700 million people (of Muslim faith) are supporting the burning and the beheadings while in fact that is not the case.

Yes, there are many, many that are upset and offended, enough to protest, these cartoons. But to suggest that every Muslim supports the extreme actions of the few is just wrong.

Wow! You mean just like not every Christian is a Pat Robertson following fundamentalist? What a concept.

I'll stop being sarcastic now, as those at whom it was directed...probably aren't going to get it anyway.

^^ I think he merely just threw out a number. I think we're all aware that obviously not all the Muslims support the violent actions that have occured lately.

Naser Khader (Danish Muslim politician - originally from Syria and chairman for the Moderate Muslims society) has asked the Imams to speak for themselves from now on as the vast marjority of Muslims in Denmark do not share their opinion on the situation.

I know he just threw a number out there and wasn't intending it to read that way... I just wanted to point out that, given the heat of this particular thread and the topic in general, we should try not to generalize where possible.

And yes, Bill, that's exactly what I'm trying to say.

There are many in this thread who are taking a very knee jerk reaction to this situation and I don't think it's ultimately productive of anything. All it does is further inflame an already ridiculous situation.

Interesting....very interesting.

Wow. Not even sure I want to get started on that. In fact, I won't.

Nancy, thanks for your input... was wondering about your take on the situation. Good to hear about the moderate Muslim politician taking a stand in Denmark. I am sure there are many more moderates whose voices we are not hearing because of the media's bloodlust.

It's too late for that now.

~I'm leaving the forum~

Bye.

Right, I'm back.


What did I miss?

nothing really. We were discussings some riots about some cartoons and Iran decided they want to do a Holocost cartoon contest to see if the western media reprints the cartoons they publish "just to be fair." Aint Iran a great country, such a beacon of peace and understanding? If only the whole world was one big Iran...then we wouldn't have to depend on foreigners for oil...hmmmm.

Wonder why the western media doesn't want to run holocaust cartoons. Afterall, cartoons don't mean anything and anyone insulted in the least by them shouldn't be. Bring em on I say.

And in Toronto,

By BRODIE FENLON, TORONTO SUN

A week-long conference on radical Islam organized by Jewish student groups at the University of Toronto has stirred up controversy and resentment among Muslims at a time of heightened sensitivities due to world events.

The "Know Radical Islam Week," which includes presentations on terrorism and civil rights violations in Islamic regimes, began yesterday at Sidney Smith Hall just as violent protests swept the globe over published caricatures of Prophet Mohammed.

The coincidence was not lost on U of T student Jonathan Jaffit, director of campus affairs for Betar-Tagar, the Zionist student activist group that helped organize the conference.

"The issue of the cartoons in the European media just goes to showcase even further how radical Islam is suppressing freedom of speech through violence," he said.

"This is about a political ideology that's hijacked a religion," he said of the conference topic. "It will definitely stir up controversy, but we cannot shy away from these events."


Student Mubdi Rahman, academic affairs co-ordinator with the university's Muslim Student Association, said the conference "seeks to divide, as opposed to bridge any sort of dialogue on these issues."

Rahman said he has heard from many Muslim students who feel threatened they'll be viewed as "radicals" due to their beliefs, some of which will be criticized at the conference. The MSA issued an e-mail to its 2,000 members urging them to "exercise restraint and dignity" over the next few weeks.

What's next? Know Radical Judaism Week? Guess it's ok for some but not others



http://www.torontosun.com/News/Toron...29452-sun.html

I found this next article from the Guardian to be balanced. It wasn't the only one on there, not surprisingly:

Link

I agree with the notion that with the right to free speech comes a certain duty. Oughtn't free speech serve truth? Who are Jyllands-Posten to teach freedom of speech anyway?

This is the part that upsets me and that those who cry foul and hide behind, "freedom of speech". As spiderman says, "With great power, comes great responsibility."

Just because you have freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to be an asshole.

I would like to see the reaction. I seem to doubt the jewish population of the world would react in the same way.

I say the moderate muslims are just as guilty as the radicals for not speaking out against the violence. This talk of not branding the entire herd because of the actions of a few doesn't wash with me. What needs to happen is that the majority need to somehow reign in the minority, because it is the minority that are causing the problems for everyone. It is the minority that make the frontpage headlines every day. It is the minority who are causing the violence and attracting the attention.

So while the majority sit on their hands, the minority continue to draw everyone into the fire. Silent majorities have never started wars to begin with -- it has always been the ideologically outspoken minority that have been the catalyst for war. So saying that not all muslims are terrorists is saying the obvious but misses the point. Of course they aren't. But until the majority take a stand (which is usually impossible in the islamic world because dissent is violently suppressed), it is the minority who run the show.

The point is that they would be upset. They would protest.

The whole point of the Danish cartoons, as stated by the editor that commissioned them, was to provoke a response.

It was a very ignorant thing to do. Let's put out fires with gasoline while we are at it.


Powerclown: In the past few days, I have seen quite a few so-called moderate muslims speaking out against the violence of the various protesters. In the same breath they have also condemned the Danish paper for their irresponsibility.

I have also seen a few pictures of peaceful protests... multi-faith protests condemning the violence and condemning the further printing of the cartoons.

Sadly, these voices are not really heard above the din.

My thoughts exactly. Do they have the right to publish them? Abso-fucking-lutely. It's free speech, clearcut. Should they have published them? Abso-fucking-lutely not. They knew it was going to be inflammatory, and regardless, it's just disrespectful.

I do think the whole thing has gotten way out of hand though. Burning embassies over a cartoon? Thats ridiculous, and makes me more than a little scared for the future of the Arab middle east...

We will all recognize sincere condemnation when we see it, as it will be on the front page of every major world newspaper, on every world radio and tv news program, and the subject of discussion for every major politician involved.

The official slogan the world continues to hear from the islamists remains:

"DEATH TO THE INFIDELS"

I disagree. Was there ever an organization set-up by Americans to explain to the Japanese that not all Americans supported the bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki? You assume that the "majority" feels a kinship with the "minority." I don't go around feeling I have to answer for the decisions of George W. Bush or Stephen Harper. Even closer to home, as an improvising musician, I don't feel like I have to answer for the actions of Kenny G.

This isn't the first time I've heard the "majority must reign in the minority" argument, and it's attitudes like these that show how little of an understanding is being shown about Muslims.

This infuriating idea of "they" is ridiculous: There are over a billion Muslims on earth. How can they possibly share the same ideology, even if they tried??

I don't think they would. Someone figure-head would issue a statement or speak out against it, but I seriously doubt there will be organized protests. Whatever cartoons are drawn and published in the State-run Iranian newpaper will be no worse than what are published on a daily basis in the islamic world. Most jews would just roll their eyes, its only more of the same.

Then you had better start writing some letters to the editor of those papers to start publishing these words of condemnation that I have seen...


The fact is that the voice of moderation has been systematically crushed in the middle east. The regimes in power are largely not democratic and do not have provisions for free speech. In fact it is these regimes that control much of the debate (such as it can be called a debate) in the local media.

As these regimes cracked down on the moderate and censored any attempts at free (or freer speech) the only place where dissent was allowed was in the Mosques and largely in mouths of Fundamentalists... fundamentalists who see moderates as soft and ineffectual in bringing about change.

Ironically, a lot of this situation has come to pass due to Western intervention either in the guise of propping up regimes like the Sauds or instigating coups like in Iran that ousted Mossadegh and re-installed the Shah.

Where are the moderates now? Largely they do not have a public voice. Largely they have immigrated to the west.


So no, you are not likely to see the moderates splashed across the front pages of the western media... you will find them in most stories but you probably didn't notice them for the splashy violence that keys into our ADD addled brains.

I agree that more of the same from Iran is just that.

I was envisioning this as something done in the west. Let's say, The New York Time or the Washington Post ran anti-Semetic cartoons.

I think there would be an outcry and protest.

:lol: Great analogy.

Protesting is cool. Protesting things you don't agree with is very important.

Killing people, threatening to kill people and burning down embassies is ridiculous, savage and not to be defended in any way.

the basic rule of news coverage is:
if it bleeds it leads.
given the choice between footage of a bruning building and that of a panel of moderates holding a news conference to denounce violence, which do you think would get more play?

you react to the play of images, powerclown. and not to what is happening in any more complex sense.

given that most reactions to this cartoon farce are predicated on the play of images and arbitrarily cut-up "context" the question of interpretation becomes central--whence the outline of what deleuze would probably call a "machine" for processing factoids i tried to outline in no. 106, and its centrality/importance.

smooth:
nice to run into you here as well.
the argument i was making against ustwo is basically one of sociological profile of these "fundamentalist" groups that constitute the signified (referent?) that organizes the notion of "terrorist"....the trick in the post against ustwo's characterization of "terrorist" as "middle class" was that it was directed mostly against his absurd claim to universal knowledge about class background of this phantom he refers to as "terrorism"--all that was required was to juxtapose a vast body of work that argues precisely the opposite, and that based on various types of close research on communities (mostly in french banlieux and north africa, particularly morocco and egypt) that show--clearly, obviously--the intertwining of economic position, social and political marginality and generational factors in the populations that identify as being part of these various "fundamentalist" groups.

i wasn't making a reverse variant of ustwo's claims. if it came across that way, then it was a function of my not being adequately clear.

what i was saying links to post 106 in that assumptions about the class position from which draw the various small groups that constitute the curious, multiple phemomena that are lumped together as "fundamentalism" (the quiescent--like a popsicle--version of "terrorist" in the parlance of our times)---are elements of an ideologicl image of the "terrorist" and/or "fundamentalist" that is false empirically (in that there are different vectors of tension that play into different patterns of engagement in different places)

given this, the assertion that all "terrorists" are somehow "middle class" seems to me to lean on some strange ideological distortions---the claim reflects an image constructed without the slightest concern with who these folk are empirically and why they do what they do---rather, this image is an aspect of the selling of reactionary responses to the threat posed by the image itself to a credulous media audience--the function of it seems to be to set up an immediate identification between the audience and agents responsible for particular actions--that "they" are somehow also "us"---which positions the signified "terrorist" precisely in a space of the enemy within and without, all powerful and powerless, a kind of persecuting double--and from this follows a logic of unlimited war--no enemy less likely to be stopped by security measures than the double of those who put them in place----no-one more clever at trapping you than yourself---no-one more dangerous than your personal evil twin---no fear more total than that of self-erasure---reaction to an image predicated so thoroughly on setting up identiciation as a preliminary step toward structuring a particular delinieation of that which is Other is support for any and all responses, no matter how violent, not matter how self-defeating.

it is a logic of hysteria.

another way: given the following:
if it bleeds it leads (basic media select criterion for determining newsworthiness)
and
the route chosen by the bush administration since 9/11 (at the levels of ideology and policy)
on their own
it is pretty obvious that the image of islam presented in the american mass media is at best fragmentary.

because of the political context, people seem to be particularly compelled to assemble these fragments into something that passes as a coherent image of islam.
almost all the links between fragments are rooted in dispositions that are, here as elswhere, funnelled through particular ideological filters--discourse--which stages both meanings (the content attributed to particular signifiers) and posits a logic for combination (the derivation of broader implications from assemblages of signifiers)
post 106 argued that this filter is evident, highly structured--it is also racist through and through---but it is not socially coded as racist, and so appears neutral (if you dont think about it at all, which it appears that folk often dont) and because it appears neutral, it is available for appropriation--and the features of this filter reproduce themselves in the interpretations of folk who use it--in ways that cross political positions that operate on other grounds, it seems---and so the conclusions it makes available to folk are as the filter itself is--that is racist through and through.

the post against ustwo was about the other side, the lack of correspondence between the elements within this filter/framework and the empirical world.

this one tries to connect the two.

i gotta go.



o yes: there are few eternal mysteries in this fallen world: why kenny g has a career in music is one of them.

I don't think anyone here is defending those actions. I think most can agree that like most protests that turn violent, it is a minority that turn to violence.

Abaya and Ktskpt (or however you spell it :lol: ) have pointed to the local politics of Lebanon as a way of understanding what is happening there (i.e. Palestinians and Syrians with issues that have little to do with the cartoons and much to do with stirring up shit).

Some here are upset that there are even peaceful protests about the cartoons. I disagree with this. I defend both the right to print the images (as misguided as it was) and the right to peaceful protest.

Then who/what is the moral authority of the Islamic religion?

Agreed, which is part of the problem, and a reason why I support what the Americans are trying to do in Iraq for example. /threadjack

I am able to read and listen, too.

most likely

no doubt, powerclown--but the point remains....

No, I gotcha on many of your points and I definately didn't think you making a facile reverse argument of his.
I also don't know how he conceptualizes what he was trying to convey...or how he got that data. Nonetheless, enthnographic and demographic data from at least the last 10 years are available showing that the people who actually act on certain fundamentalist ideoologies are not the poorest and most marginalized, but are coming from what used to be a middle class. Upon reflection, we ought not to be surprised (although I was when I read the data). I mean, if you and abaya and myself sat down over a beer, isn't it a fair statement that we would agree that the person most likely to feel the pain of marginalization and powerless is someone who previously thought he or she had some atual stake in the process?

I think here I'm going to have to go off to class but come back later with a couple of citations for you to peruse at your leiser. Because the inability of us to see eye to eye with one another is due to my inarticulate conveyance of the position I'm trying to relay. I best just leave it to the authors to explain and then perhaps pick it up thereafter.

But suffice to say, and Ustwo may just be quoting some comment I made a century ago, that his factoid is correct. But I'm unimpressed with his tendency to contextualize such factoids. And it shows in this kind of a discussion where a number of sociologists and an anthropologist would discuss the notion of material conditions as an impetus for change and behavior, and his retort is that ah but hese people are middle class, as if the middle class he refers to are happily milling around. Such statements don't seem to take into account what happens when the mills shut down. And they don't seem to recognize the effect the "West" has had in relation to those sectors and ways of life shutting down (and for more people than 'middle class' muslims).

I don't need to tell you that all of this is more complex than any of our comments do justice. I guess I just wanted to engage you in conversation ;)

i still haven't heard a good explanation of the pamphlet distributed by Imam Abu Laban. if anything can incite the types of riots we have seen over "just a cartoon," perhaps it is his arguably skewed view of Denmark coupled with the blatantly offensive cartoons that are obviously manufactured.
Wikipedia says on KCRW's To The Point 2/6/05, Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations was asked about these shoddy fakes, but claimed to know little about them and dismissively noted that they have been featured on right-wing blogs. this is not really true; the first place i saw the fake cartoons was on a website that also has a lot of left-wing, Berkeley, & anti-war protest photos.

anyway, i wonder what's going on with the people who organized these violent protests. (i really appreciate ktspktsp's post on pg. 4 about the complexities in Lebanon.) so far i haven't seen evidence that separate the fradulent pamphlet from Imam Abu Laban and the resulting angry anti-cartoon movement. if i were to hear about Denmark from this man, i'd probably be pretty angry. again, i'd really like some details, because it seems that he may be more to blame for the violence than the European newspapers repeatedly mentioned in coverage of this story.

Considering the cartoons ran in September with very little protest, I think it is safe to argue that Akhmad Akkari and company, are a big part of why there are protests.

He wasn't satisfied with the level of outrage so he went on tour to kick it up a notch.

Reading the pamphlet he spread about already shows that it was full of misinformation. If it is shown (which is likely) that he also added the additional (and way worse then the Danish original) works I hope he is seriously taken to task for this.

Like I said earlier. You don't throw a match into a tinder box and not expect it to explode.

Some people will stoop to anything to stir up shit.

And some people have WAY to short a fuse. As soon as I hear more 'moderate' muslims rise up against this crap, I may think there is hope. Saddly I know these moderates, and they are only moderate in that they want someone else to do the suicide bombings, they don't really care beyond that.

If I answered this question I'd have about as much success as if I answered "The Pope" if the question referred to Christianity.

Out of the Christians you know, who takes anything the Pope says seriously?

This next paragraph from Wikipedia only begins to scratch the surface of divisions within the Muslim world:
Remember when Madonna was Christian? Heck, why not even use a current example!? How many Rabbi do you think would acknowledge Madonna's religion? I could go on with a list of different Jews who are worlds apart in thought. The key to understanding this situation lies in understanding differences.

Again...please prove there is an onus on "moderate Muslims" to explain and apologize for the actions of the extremists. Must I repeat my Kenny G or Madonna analogies?

Imagine if a member of the TFP committed a capital crime and we were all held accountable by the media!

If Kenny G and a large group of improv artists started bombing music companies who weren't purely improv, I think those who were heavily into both should stand up and say that there's more to life than improv and that they don't support Kenny G's actions, especially if he claims to be acting in the name of pure and true music.

Though, comparing a music artist to a chunk of people who are voicing death wishes to the whole western civilization is a poor argument and analogy if you ask me.

The moral authority over Muslims is supposed to be the Koran. That's why it's there. Same with Christians and the Bible. Obviously Catholics have Pope Whoever the Fuck, but nobody outside of Catholicism gives two shits about his wrinkled ass.

As far as this cartoon bullshit goes, the vocal, stupid few always screw it up for the many.

I'd venture to say that most Muslims don't care enough about the cartoon to burn down an embassy. All it takes is a few dumbasses though.

As with the Bible there are a multitude of interpretations... the Koran is no rock and neither is the Bible.

Very true.. Hell, it's all about people. They just don't agree.

And a lot of people are dumbasses.

If Kenny G started bombing anyone, then my analogy wouldn't exactly be an analogy anymore would it?
:rolleyes:

You misunderstood my analogy, which remains sound: if two groups of people share a religion, it doesn't follow that one should have to answer for the other.

True, you don't have to do anything, but you only hurt your own reputation when you allow people to negatively act in your name.

If the reputation of Muslims has been tarnished, it is only in the eyes of those too ignorant to understand the difference between the extremists and the moderates.

The same could be said of peoples of western nations
who disagree about the actions of their leaders
but never take to the streets in protest
which could be said of most of us at one time or another.

...or Christians who sit silently while Pat Roberston spews his garbage.

I know there's a completely different mindset with these people, but I see Jesus portrayed badly everyday.

My friends went to go get a tatoo; there's a tatoo of Jesus getting high. I want to watch Family Guy; Jesus is portrayed doing stupid tricks any third grader could do.

You know what I do? Laugh. I disagree, but I'm not going to kill someone for it. I love Family Guy,and I want a tatoo. (one day) It's not that big a deal. I just wish everyone could see that.

Even if only 1 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims were to end up being seduced by the global jihad, the West and moderate Muslim regimes would still have to deal with some 12 million jihadists spread across more than 60 countries. And if only 1 percent of these 12 million were to opt for “martyrdom operations,” the West would still have to deal, for a generation at least, with some 120,000 suicide bombers.

To some degree groups need to be proactive. Marginalize the extremists. Too much assumption by moderates that they obviously disagree with the nutballs in their crowd can lead to assumptions by we ignorant folk. It's in their interest to speak out, as many western figureheads finally do with Robertson when he goes off the deep end. (not that the West or Christianity have a perfect record by any means) Some Muslim leadship make a point of denoucing their nutballs, and that's great, but I wish we saw more of it. Whether the scarcity of denouncements is the fault of media or the leadership itself and politics I don't know.

Eventually, when survival becomes the question, it shouldn't be surprising for the masses to lose whatever refined reasoning and diplomacy skills they possess and resort to us-vs-them mentalities. It's happened throughout history, and if we aren't careful - if we don't set boundaries and just assume tolerance protests will take care of everything - this thing will get worse. As things get worse and people don't speak, to some extent it confirms the worst of fears in the healthy but fearful mind.

I'd be more concerned with the leaders of western nations denouncing the actions and voices of the extremists on the nation (i.e. moveon.org, Pat Robertson, etc.) than the people of western nations protesting the leadership.

I've never noticed a shortage of criticism of the western nation's leadership, be it the war in Iraq (which there were massive protests against) or against abortion. Even when there is, it's rare to have militants shouting for the beheading of the president, the senate, or all of those who stand for a certain way of life.

Yes I was putting on my suicide vest right now at Pat Robertson's bidding and will blow myself up in some Vezuelian school so I can get my 70 houris.

Pat was forced to appologize for his last outburst and did. I don't hear ANYTHING like that from the RoP :rolleyes:

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...Pakistan01.jpg Obviously....

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...ndonesia01.jpg Ah, a moderate Muslim nation.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...05Turkey01.jpg This one is from Turkey and is really great, shows that we Christians and Muslims alike should attack the Jews.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...05Beirut01.jpg Take that Danish Embassy!

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...lsDanish01.jpg Seems the Danish are controlled by Sharone!

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...hMuslims05.jpg Another fine upstanding member of the Religion of peace!

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...hEmbassy01.jpg Time to torch another Embassy!

Keep making excuses or wake up, take your pick.

Well, you've had at least one muslim post in this thread who clearly said "not all muslims are the same" (way back on page 2)

I have more respect for humans as a whole to use any kind of stereotypes like "muslims are all in favour of suicide bombings". Any time people make a blanket statement like that they just make their own arguments look stupid.