Accidental Troll

this is not to criticize you in any way, simply furthering the discussion/presenting my own opinion...

i don't know what the solution is either, and I not a racist or a culture-phobe, being from a middle-eastern (albeit Christian) culture myself.
But you cannont excuse these outrageous calls for murder and destruction on account of the fact that you don't want to be/be seen as racist. The desire to withold judgement, the desire to be open-minded or sensitive is not a valid reason for rationalizing the inhumanity and utter barbarity of the situation. I refuse to suspend the base line morality that is is simply too far gone to be demanding the execution of people who have drawn a picture (or happen to live in the same part of the world as the people who drew the picture).

That doesn't mean I know any more than anyone else, but I'm completely over trying to reserve judgment. When something is fucked up like this is, to pretend otherwise is a symptom of cultural sickness.

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Oh I'm absolutely not supporting or tolerating the calls for murder and mahem because their religious idol was mocked. It's more lumping all muslims together with those lunatics in the street.

I also note the irony of their calls for death and violent imagery is very inconsistent with that they are asking for. It's ok for them to do it, worse, but not for us? Or their god is sacred and ours aren't? Or do they respect our god and just trash us, and wonder why we aren't civilized like they are?

I think you made good points though.

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djkangal.livejournal.com

There are Muslims, and then there are lunatic assholes shouting fire in a crowded theatre on any flimsy pretext. The ratio on that is about 20 to 1. It's important to remember that, I think, and not have a "muslims are crazy" attitude. There are billions of Muslims, and only a few hundred burning buildings over a stupid cartoon.

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BUT, I think the ratio of Muslims who don't want to burn anything now, but still believe it should be illegal to defame the Prophet, is a lot more even. Granted, there may be nearly as many Christians who would want to ban defaming Jesus, but there is a real culture gap when it comes to the basic concept of freedom of speech.

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That's where I start to get worried.

It relates to the same point that was made about the gay-bar axe-maiming and shooting guy: when you spread hateful rhetoric, the fact a minority act out their hate in violence is very predictable. The accepted disdain by the masses will result in action by a numerically sizeable minority.

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It also worries me that their cultural disregard for freedom of speech ends up bleeding over into OUR society. If THEY want to make it illegal todefame the Prophet in their own countries, well, that's up to them. But writers, scholars and artits in the WEST have to constantly second-guess their choices when discussing Islam out of fear for their very lives. Ask Theo Van Gogh. Oops, you can't. He got shot to death IN HOLLAND for making a film criticizing misogyny in the Islamic world.

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I agree wholeheartedly. Their intolerance is stunning and deadly, and I'm not sure how much stems from the culture/religion as a whole and how much is fringe elements. Do they mostly feel like that, or are the actors as fringe as female-clinic bombers are to xtianity?

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djkangal.livejournal.com

Granted, there may be nearly as many Christians who would want to ban defaming Jesus, but there is a real culture gap when it comes to the basic concept of freedom of speech.

Very true. However, that doesn't really scare me a lot because, well, I've been dealing with people like that my entire adult life, right here in my country, constantly. So have you, so has

vicar. There's large groups of people who think a huge portion of my life should be illegal. It's their right to think that, and express it under responsible circumstances. And quid pro quo. My point was that there is a difference - a big fat honking WORLD of difference, in fact - between the protesting lunatics who burn buildings, and the Muslims who oh, say, stand outside the Philadelphia Enquirer with signs or post to their blog. The latter I can live with. The former are fuckheads who should be treated like the criminals that they are.

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I just haven't seen extremism in such numbers in the US. Like I said in my post a few days back, no Christians tried to burn down NBC over "Book of Daniel". There are certainly individuals who turn to violence (clinic bombers, gay bashers, etc.) but you don't see mobs thronging the streets setting the Belgian embassy ablaze because they recognize gay marriage. And you don't see artists fearing for their LIVES if they remotely criticize Christianity. Or else Trey Parker and Matt Stone would have been in hiding with Salman Rushdie long ago.

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There's possibly a mitigating curcumstance concerning the numbers of extremists to which you refer - for the last 4+ (and many would argue far more than that) years a large proportion of Muslims have believed their religion to be under attack, and find that they themselves are *physically* under attack by this Christian nation of ours. At what point does an otherwise rational, peaceful human being decide that enough is enough?

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I dunno, but I'm pretty sure it isn't over a cartoon.

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That was a pointless minimization of the issue.

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i don't think so. i think it's exactly the point.

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No, no it's not. I'd say the call of 'enough is enough' was the attacks of September 11, 2001, which went completely unheeded by the US. Prior to that, we'd interfered nastily in regional politics for decades, and the UN's sanctions were (indirectly, if you desire to frame it that way) responsible for the deaths of as many as 8,000 children/month (100k/year) due to starvation and lack of basic medical supplies - as a result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait 15+ years ago, etc, etc. That was just for instance.

While neither the UN nor the US was "out to get" Muslims back then, nor, I believe, are they today, I try to picture my world from their situation, and while I can't know what it's like, I can certainly appreciate the fact that they may feel more than a little hard done by by the western christian world.

Sept 11 didn't happen in a vacuum, and neither does the Muslim response to the cartoons.

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But again, you will notice, there is a lot more rage being directed over these cartoons than I ever saw over the UN sanctions. One commentator from a Jordanian newspaper suggested in response to this that suicide bombers killing other Muslims throughout the Middle East were defaming the Prophet far more than any cartoonist. He was fired (and briefly arrested) for that insight.

I don't deny that the US is responsible for some injustice against Muslims, but so are pretty much ALL Muslim governments. It's one of those mote/beam dilemmas.

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you are apologizing for and trying to excuse this:

"Whoever defames our prophet should be executed," said Ismail Hassan, a tailor who marched in the pouring rain with hundreds of other Muslims in the
West Bank city of Ramallah. "Bin Laden our beloved, Denmark must be blown up," the protesters chanted.

...when around 150 members of the Islamic Defenders Front tried to storm the Danish Embassy in Jakarta after pelting the building with eggs. "Let’s slaughter the Danish ambassador!" Read banners carried by the crowd. "We're ready for jihad!" They shouted.

I'm not saying that there are not legitimate and numerous complaints to be laid at the foot of the west...

I'm saying that there is something fundamentally poisoned inside a society when the incidents cited above are perfectly accpetable and commonplace. That shit is just so fundamentally wrong that it bears no relation to any actual circumstance. It's about the shape of conciousness, the structure of the moral fabric of the individual and society. I won't excuse that, or try to explain it away. It is indefensible.

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OK, let me put it another way: there is NO point at which the simple SPEECH of others justifies mob violence, even if that speech comes as the culmination of a bunch of other stuff. The current unrest is NOT in response to the US presence in Iraq, nor against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. They are not attacking US forces, or even US embassies. No "otherwise rational, peaceful human being" attacks innocent people over the excercise of free speech.

That maximal enough for you?

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That's certainly better. See my response to ... whomever it was - it's in your response thread.

Have people been attacked thus far? I haven't read much about it in the past couple of days. I do recall that during the Parisian riots, there was a shocking LACK of person-on-person aggression, but rather, the targets were overwhelmingly vehicles and buildings. Note: this doesn't justify the actions, but it does give me a different perspective on things.

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Setting buildings on fire is an act of violence, as far as I'm concerned. Fire doesn't care if you're a building or a person. If nobody gets hurt, it's only by luck.

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No "otherwise rational, peaceful human being" attacks innocent people over the excercise of free speech.

That's what I was responding to when when I started musing about the Paris riots.

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xkommunik8.livejournal.com

I just haven't seen extremism in such numbers in the US.

I think we have an ever-burgeoning amount of extremism in the U.S.. It's in the news every day. I think that extremism, in this country, however, is shows up more micronically, here and there, like lunatics who walk into gay bars and start blowing people away. Also, i think extremism in this country is completed with much more stealth and cunning like our partisan government (far left.. far right). It's done more strategically. Evangelist christians are all over the place, trampling all over what should be free rights. For god's sake, look at our president. I also think extremism may be more potent in certain middle eastern countries because, well, there are a great many people who are jobless and impoverished who are easily incited, looking for someone to blame. Many of them blame the west for their miseries. They feel we are thumbing our noses at them. The war in Iraq certainly hasn't helped. I think many muslims in the middle east feel we are seizing their muslim lands. I guess, you could say, they feel their way of life is in jeopardy; their beliefs and their culture. Poverty is a breeding ground for extremist violence because people don't have anything else to do. Might as well blow some shit up. While I am all for freedom of the press, I thought it was a really BAD idea to publish the cartoon depicting Muhammad as they did. In a volatile climate these days, such as it is, that was a really stupid thing to do. They had to realize what effect it would have. Doing something like that only draws more attention to your country and its people by terrorists. Well, congratufuckinglations. Jees, even the cartoonist depicting Rumsfeld standing over the maimed soldier, saying something like "i'm going to classify you as battle hardened" is under a shitload of scrutiny. People want his head on a platter - literally. I just think there is a time to publish things and not publish things, even if it is sarcasm.

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While I can understand the underlying motivations, I cannot excuse them, any more than I could excuse justly-angry blacks burning down their OWN COMMUNITIES with MLK was killed.

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That's a very good point too, along the lines of something I was thinking of. I agreed with the comments by civil / gay rights leaders who noted that attacks like the ones in the Mass. gay bar were a predictable violent outcome when you allow speech and animosity regarding a group.

I don't like the xtian thing, but I note that they at least preach love and sometimes tolerance. They do not generally engage in violence NOW. I understand that xtianity has in the past, and that perhaps Islam is a young religion that may similarly mature with age. Or it could just be awful to its core, who knows. Steal and lose a hand - bad for people, or good for society?

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but I think one of the main problems is that it maybe just a "handful of extremists" or whatever, but the point is that their societies are tolerating and excusing this behavior. the bottom line is that this shit is so beyond the pale that it SHOULD be literally unthinkable. But instead enough people not only thought of it, they managed to get together in numbers so large as to stage protests in at least 7 countries, and protests so large that they were able to completely overwhelm security forces and attack another government's building!!

do you know what would happen if you tried to get a mob together and attack an embassy in DC??? hahaaa....good luck.

if there aren't enough decent elements in their society to prevent/stop this insanity, then I'm sorry, but those 19 other people you mentioned have probably already thrown in the towel.

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They don't parade in the streets or burn buildings, for one. Their leaders publicly distance themselves from the violent acts for another. They may suck, but they seem to preach a less offensive and incendiary message.

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Really? I got exactly the opposite impression, as do a few commenters above. I see xtians, much as I don't like them, as far more distant from their bombers than the muslim community. As noted, there are not tens or hundreds of thousands of xtains marching in the street protesting gay marriage - nor burning buildings to do it. Er?

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Er, yeah, but the present protests in the Middle East are against the excercise of free-speech in OTHER coutries. The analogy I gave would be American Christians burning down the Belgian embassy because Belgium recognizes gay marriage.

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xkommunik8.livejournal.com

do you know what would happen if you tried to get a mob together and attack an embassy in DC??? hahaaa....good luck.

ummm, that's not entirely impossible, you know. mob violence can overwhelm anyone and anything, if determined enough.

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what was that protest a few years back, the one in which all those people, including journalists, were cornered in Lafayette park and arrested en masse? And that was just for some stupid march. In this "post-9/11" era? Attack an embassy and you'd be lunch for the DC police, the capitol police, the national guard, etc.

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What disturbs me as much as the nuts setting stuff on fire are the more moderate voices (not just Muslim ones) who are saying that there should be limits on free speech where religion is concerned.

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dude, this says it all!

In neighboring Pakistan, 5,000 people chanting "Hang the man who insulted the prophet" burned effigies of one cartoonist and Denmark's prime minister. And a prominent Iranian newspaper said it was going to hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust in reaction to European newspapers publishing the prophet drawings.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the West's publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons was an Israeli conspiracy motivated by anger over the victory of the militant Hamas group in the Palestinian elections last month. "The West condemns any denial of the Jewish holocaust, but it permits the insult of Islamic sanctities," Khamenei said.

ok, ok, I've heard this shit comming out of the woodwork. some freaking nutcases are actually saying that if we allow cartoons of Muhammed, then we should allow more widespread publication of denials of the Holocaust. These are the same wackos who believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is for real!!

I don't know why they think that we don't allow people to publish denials of the holocaust. we do, but we simply recognize the authors of those theories for what they are...and then we get bored and change the channel.

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Well, technically, many European countries DO have laws which ban publication of Holocaust denial. I find these laws a rather reprehensable way to fight something more easily defeated with the monumental quantity of first-hand evidence.

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Actually that may be a fair argument. Freedom of the press is a universal one - you can't give it just to one side. In some other countries they do in fact censor materials about hate, and they perceive this as something like that.

greekphilosophy linked a great article about how westerners are not "getting it" about these cultures as we try to force our version of civilization on them (though I tend to agree with our freedoms etc.)
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/de155278-96b5-11da-a5ba-0000779e2340.html
(may require reg, but I was able to bipass that bs)

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greekphilosophy.livejournal.com

I want to have like ten million of the author's babies.

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ex-dasboot.livejournal.com

At what point does it stop being xenophobia, though? I don't feel that it's progressed that far, but at what point does the bad apple become the bunch? It's the fundamentalists that are worrisome, obviously. But, it does seem that extreme muslim fundamentalism is closer to center than extreme fundamentalism is for other religions.

The news stories I've read show that the protests number in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands. While each of those individuals is not partaking in the burning down of embassies and consulats, that's too large a group and too insignifigant a cause to really equate them to christianity's abortion center bombers. Maybe that's because of the nature of the religions, maybe it's because we tend to have cops in riot gear keeping those things in check, I don't know. But, the disconnection between muslim extremists and the rest of the world seems much larger than the the reality gap of other religious fringers. I don't really know why that is, either, but I think it's grown to big to fit into the tidy explanation of racism and ignorance.

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I agree, see above.

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xkommunik8.livejournal.com

While each of those individuals is not partaking in the burning down of embassies and consulats, that's too large a group and too insignifigant a cause to really equate them to christianity's abortion center bombers. Maybe that's because of the nature of the religions, maybe it's because we tend to have cops in riot gear keeping those things in check, I don't know.

i think it's because we have a lot of lazy, pacifist people in this country who are only content with where they should go shopping today and where to grab some dinner. that's why we don't have one 10th the scale of mob violence that they do.

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