I'm not going to engage directly with your 'Islamophobia', but I will say that I am totally opposed to your insistence on tarring around 25% of the world's population with the same brush. EDIT: I'd like to see you stare one of the Muslims at Calais in the face and tell them they can't come to the UK because of the actions of the group of people they've been trying to escape the persecution of.
Well if you think it's a phobia that is your right. But technically a phobia is an irrational fear. Tell the victims of 9/11, 7/7 and Sousse it's irrational...oh you cant though, they're dead!
CT, JK is spot on it is simply outrageous to suggest that a quarter of the world's population should be categorised together. That is an irrational fear you are demonstrating, no doubt. In fact, it's that sort of attitude that pushes the moderate Muslims towards the extremists creating even more extremists, when in fact they are our natural allies.
The definition of a 'phobia' as needing to be irrational is archaic. 'Islamophobia' includes being prejudiced against Islam, as well as hating Islam, or being fearful of it. EDIT: Furthermore CT, your hatred of Islam is irrational, as it isn't Islam as a whole that you feel this way about, it's EXTREMIST/RADICAL Islam.
The fact is it's got very little to do with Islam. Apart from anything else "Islam" isn't really a single coherent thing, there are far too many variations to group it as one. It's got everything to do with some underprivileged, undereducated, poverty stricken strugglers, who have to survive in hot, poor, corrupt countries where abuse is a daily expectation. "Islam" and faith is merely an outlet, a tool to vent their frustrations and find someone to blame for their condition as well as force others to be grouped with them. By treating all Muslims as the same and Islam as a thing which we should all oppose as evil, you are merely doing exactly what the extremists want and need. And apart from anything else, it's basically tacit acceptance of a God because it implies that "Islam" is some sort of evil guiding mind that controls and directs people, rather than actually it being evil unpleasant or desperate people who use an abstract concept as a convenient excuse.
CT if all Muslims were Hell-bent on causing chaos and destruction the world would end tomorrow. Of the 1.6bn or so Muslims only a tiny minority are what we would consider to be crackpots with evil intent. The vast majority want the same as any of the rest of us - to be left in peace to raise their families as best they can. Historically Islam has been a far more tolerant religion than Christianity although sadly things seem to have got much worse in recent years as more and more of the poor and disenfranchised see a future in radical Islam funded by oil wealth via Saudi Arabia amongst others. I tend to mistrust anyone who places their faith and bases their actions on the possibility of a better afterlife and is prepared to harm or kill others to achieve this. Religion had its place as a method of social control historically and to be fair it gives the pious a vehicle to do good works and provides comfort to those in need but if everyone just treated each other with a bit of respect and decency then I suspect the world would be a much less dangerous place.
Well I do hate the religion. The reasons are that they are intolerant to the extent of hanging people from cranes for being gay, inclined to stone women for illicit sex, (Although not their male partners). They shoot people for drawing cartoons.Yes there are moderate followers of the religion but there are more zealots than we are led to believe. It is a religion that doesn't fit in with the modern world,it belongs in the medieval age. My standpoint is that I refuse to tolerate intolerance and I won't apologise for that.
Sorry CT, but you've missed the point. The religion doesn't throw homosexuals off buildings or stone adulteresses. People do that. People have done worse things in the name of all sorts of things, bad things even in the name of football fandom. The religion has nothing to do with it. It's simply the latest and greatest convenient excuse. No religions fit in the modern world, including football fandom if we're approaching it from a pure rational perspective. But they're here, we have to deal with them, they're part of the human condition and we've got to work with that. So it's all very well being intolerant of intolerant people as an extremist position, but does that make you any better? Far better to accept people like to believe in an afterlife and when things are going badly they like to trust in a greater being. Then when those people are in danger of taking it to an extreme, emphasise the similarities in your points of view, not the differences, and that way you don't encourage their extremism. Fighting one extremism with another extremism doesn't work. And that's all you're advocating tbh.
You could argue that ultimately the religion is represented by the clerics who formulate these laws and encourage such behaviour. Your argument is just a convenient cop out that excuses their outrageous inflammation and blames it on individuals. I just hope the naivety and the appeasement displayed in the face of such extremism doesn't end up like it did last time.
With all due respect CT, you're still missing the actual point (or perhaps demonstrating...) To state the obvious, something can only be represented if it's an actual thing. Religion, and more particularly Islam, isn't a single coherent guiding being capable of representation. So the clerics can't represent it, unless as previously stated you believe that Islam has some sort of substantive nature - i.e. it is an independent guiding mind, or a God. I don't believe that Islam is a guiding thing, let alone coherent and single-minded. So, for me, the clerics cannot represent it. It has to be the other way round - they can only use it to represent themselves. That's been my point all along - it (religion, Islam, support of Norwich City) is a tool. So I accept that some people might disagree with the above. But as I said, that's tacit acceptance of a higher spiritual guiding mind - you can't have it both ways. Now you might create the straw man and exclaim that's "a cop out" or "an excuse". But that's missing the point - I'm not excusing their behaviour, not in the slightest. In fact, I'm saying the individual is wholly responsible for their behaviour. It is those who say "Islam did it" who are providing an (all too convenient, for the extremists) excuse. It's not about naïveté and appeasement (an extraordinarily authoritarian point of view). It's about separating the wheat from the chaff. It's about saying "that is my real enemy, let's focus on that" rather than creating more enemies. There is no appeasement of the real enemy. If anything, it's more appeasing to our real enemies to hand them more people who we are casting out by labelling them god-botherers even when they are harmless.
So what are you going to say to the next set of grieving relatives paraded before us by a drooling media in the throes of a God-sent grief-fest? I don't think they are going to be especially impressed by what is essentially a philosophy of turning the other cheek. Thirty odd years ago I pretty much shared the values you espouse today and at one point I really thought that Michael Foot might beat Thatch and her entourage of the mad,bad and dangerous to know (Especially if you wre a kid) That didn't last long, the electorate don't do intellectual. I do respect your position though, it's cogently argued, even though I believe ultimately wrong on both Islam and Corbyn. The former I think is too important too ignore, the latter a good guy who would be more at home in local authority planning office than international politics, where he would literally be an innocent abroad. I've known a lot of lefties, I have even been one for a while, it doesn't pan out well. I just wish it did. It's hang on to your hat time in the Labour party. Meanwhile Dave continues the Devil's work.
It's not "turning the other cheek". I've already explained that. It's the opposite of that. I'm not saying don't fight. I'm just saying pick carefully whom you fight. The point is there are a lot of extremists (not just Muslims, but if we narrow them to Islamic extremists for the moment). I'm not sure how many, perhaps 100,000, perhaps even 1,000,000. A lot. There is no "turning the other cheek" when it comes to them. They are undoubtedly "the enemy". But there are nearly 1.5bn Muslims in the world. Why on earth would anyone sensible want to make 1.5bn enemies when you could have *only* 1m? Julius Caesar worked that one out 2,000 years ago with "divide and conquer", so I don't understand why we're still making the mistake of helping our enemy inflate and strengthen. And I strongly believe that seeing "Islam" or any ideology as a weapon, a tool, rather than a guiding force, is much more helpful strategically. The first thing to aim for when you're fighting someone is to disarm them. Currently no-one is attempting to disarm the terrorists (metaphorically, though people aren't really literally either...) which means they can attract more and more impoverished, isolated and easily-led simply on use basis of a nonsensical similarity "we're Muslim so we stick together". As for the rest of your post, I don't disagree (although Corbyn and Islam is, as ever, totally misrepresented by the media) but I think you're conflating a completely separate point. The problem from my point of view is that the right-wing press (and, if we're being honest, helped by New Labour) have manoeuvred politics such that what they describe as "centre" (which is subtle way of saying "normal) is now profoundly right wing so anyone moderately left wing is now painted as a proto-communist.
Of all the people to trot out the Daily Mail scaremongering nonsense I really didn't expect it to be Cruyffy! So you have a hatred of Islam driven by the three atrocities (spread across fourteen years) you mention? How do you feel about the Irish? Did you hate and fear them when they were blowing up ****?
No,because the IRA had "war aims" that arguably as it has turned out were quite reasonable, they didn't get everything they wanted but enough to do a deal. I think many Mail readers would agree with much of Islam's aim of keeping women in their place and stringing up the homos. Those are the parts of it that upset me. And you can't do a deal with Islam,it's their way or the highway. I must admit my fear is that this Islam stick the rest mentality will end up in a big mushroom cloud, probably caused by Israel acting in perceived self defence against a nuclear enabled Islamic state. Hence the efforts to prevent Iran joining the MAD club.
You're still conflating Islam with Islamic extremists. That plays into their hands. (Literally you could go through each instance in your above post and substitute them, then it would be correct)
I think there has been enough research done to confirm that the average Muslim in the street has general sympathy with the cause. Like the woman who refused to condemn the Imam who had put a fatwa on Rushdie but still claimed to be a moderate. I will agree that we don't know for sure what the views of the general Muslim population are but I suspect it will be far more militant than we are led to believe. I have to laugh the way the media wheels out the "Good Muslim" at every opportunity in an attempt to convince us . Even Corrie has spawned a Muslim family with a son ion the British Army and amusingly benign family members who integrate at every opportunity.
General sympathy =/= murdering extremist. They're exactly the sort of people you're pushing away when we should be able to persuade away from general sympathy. Otherwise you're handing the extremists more
I would be surprised if you come into contact with any Muslims where you are living, other than the family on the soap opera .
