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Ask About Life, Blogging and Linux in the Middle East
Isam Bayazidi is about as far from the current U.S. media stereotype of an Arab as you can get. He's worked on the Arabeyes (Unix/Linux in Arabic) project, helped start the Arabic Wikipedia, co-founded the Jordan LUG, is a Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE), works as a senior software developer for Maktoob, an online community that boasts more than four million members, and created Jordan Planet, a blogging community whose members have many different religious and political viewpoints. Isam is also a long-time Slashdot reader, so he's the perfect person to ask what's going on in the Arab (cyber)world today. One question per post please. Isam will answer 12 of the highest-moderated questions. We'll run his answers verbatim as soon as he gets them back to us.
Do Arab kids play Western computer games, particularly ones where you play a (US) soldier shooting loads of (Arab) terrorist bad guys? Or do you have games there where the roles are reversed (ie. Arab freedom fighters killing invading Western armies)?
In Islam we learn to respect all religions can't you do the same?
One word... judaism.
Plus, let's not forget those buddhist(?) statues that were destroyed in Afghanistan under Allah's name.
Muslims can bullshit the rest of the world all they want about how their religion is peaceful, but actions speak louder than words. Currently, all of the world's major conflicts involve muslim combatants on at least one. Even in Iraq, right now, the rising conflict is between muslims of slightly different islamic variations!! Have you seen Africa lately? It's one muslim-driven bloodbath after the other.
You'd think the (alleged) peaceful muslims out there would stand up to be heard and march for peace or something.... but no, what are muslims marching and screaming bloody murder over? A MEANINGLESS CARTOON. What the hell is wrong with you people...
I couldn't stop staring at the screen when I read this string and I have to ask a simple question; are you (all of you) still determined to fight the first crusade/jihad?
Both arguments don't hold water, and yet they are both right in a way. What frustrates many 'westerners' is the lack of understanding in the Muslim world for how many western-style governments work. For example= Thousands of Muslims have demonstrated, peacefully and not, that the Danish government apologize for something they didn't do. Yes, that is right, the Danish Govt. does not control, fund, or dictate what is printed in the papers. Just as the average Afghani is not responsible for the Taliban's destruction of the Hindu monuments, the Danish Gov. it not responsible for the action of a private buisness, especially because the Newspaper did not break any laws in Denmark. (Also, your lack of acknowledgment that critical caricatures of other religions, especially christian, have been and continue to be printed often is disturbing. If you dare ask what the Christian response is to negative representations of Christ are, the answer is; they tolerate it.)
In response to the parent post... yes. The Jews have received, and in many cases continue to receive, the brunt of religious persecution in the world today, but NO RELIGION'S HISTORY IS PERFECT, because people are not perfect. In the same breath it is presumptuous to claim that the 'European' doesn't know his own history. Perhaps he simply is ignoring it. (You fail to mention that the Jews own recorded biblical history contains accounts of genocide and your assertion that it is unfortunate that 'people like him' exist smaks of the same hate you denounce.)
You must take people one at a time. I should not be liable for my grandparents or fathers actions and neither should you. Apologize for your own mistakes and I will apologize for mine. Expressing compassion and regret for whatever offense or negative incident has happened should be a human action, not a religion-specific trait. (If I remember correctly, the Danish Gov. did so.)
I don't condone offending anyone and I am sorry (any of) you were offended. That aside, I had no involvement in the cartoons or the Taliban destroying monuments or the holocaust or the crusades or slavery or Micro$oft or $CO or the Siberian Gulags, or Hiroshima/Nagasaki or 9/11 or Katrina or my sister-in-law's wedding - all of which are disasters. I like-wise don't hold you responsible for any of them.
The point is to learn from past mistakes and try not to compound them by over-reaction or repetition. Otherwise we will be fighting the crusades/jihad or world war (WW2 included some (not all) Muslims allied with Hitler along with Christians, WW2 was not a religious war).
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada