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Muslim Groups Attempt to Censor Wikipedia
Nom du Keyboard writes "The New York Times is reporting that Muslim groups are attempting to censor Wikipedia because of images of Muhammad contained in the article about him. 'A Frequently Asked Questions page explains the site's polite but firm refusal to remove the images: "Since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group." The notes left on [online petitions against the page] come from all over the world. "It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately."'"
jimw@wiki:/var/www/wikipedia/wiki>tar cz * |uuencode /dev/stdout |mail -s "Just in case" jimw_backup@gmail.com
All of that on Wikipedia? How does Jimmy Wales sleep at night?!
Oh, I am so going to end up trapped in my grave being tormented by djinns until the end of time. After that, Shaitan be kickin' me old school. Hope he likes classic rock and indie bands! The notes left on the petition site come from all over the world. "It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately." Perhaps you should instead choose simply not to use the site? If you believe that to be true, you should be condemning images of him everywhere at once, not just on Wikipedia. Why aren't you petitioning against all of these sites? Why are you picking on Wikipedia?
My work here is dung.
Good luck with that. People all around the world of all religions and beliefs need to learn that not everyone in the world will bend your views all of the time.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
Perhaps someone could copy and paste the article here so the rest of us don't have to register? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
Seems ever so glaring now that I have read through it...
As an atheist I am offended by this Muslim group deciding what I can an can see baised on a set of beliefs and ideals that are not my own, I demand that they stop bothering wikipedia it shows a total lack of respect and understand to athiests.
In the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D.
This is just crazy. If they do that, then I will put on my effort to recreate one page every day, with a different name. Is like the fact they can build a mosque in rome but then don't allow to put a church there. And I'm a jew! :)
As the profit of the universe I hereby censor my image from view by the hethenious masses as well as by the devout itsybitsyers who worship me.
Bow down and don't see my image.
Subject says it all. Its a picture. Nobody should feel compelled to be "sensitive towards the feelings" of random arbitrary religious views that aren't their own.
For instance: can't eat pork, fine. Don't expect us to not kill a few pigs. Can't eat beef, fine, more cows for me.
I'm offended by members of your religion blowing themselves up in populated areas as terrorist acts. When you stop doing that, then we can talk.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
that Mohammed's objection to him being pictured is the danger of that image being worshiped. I don't think he would mind if his image is presented in a educational forum, such as Wikipedia, where the forum itself doesn't give any reverance other than historical fact to the picture.
I am soooooooo tired of the muslem community pushing their views on everyone else.
Yes it may be an insult in your culture to publish a pic of the dude, which is why you should complain if it was a muslem run website, however it isn't so you shouldn't complain, learn to live with others, if everyone had the same mentality as these extremists, the pedos would say it is mentally unacceptable NOT to see naked children on all their favorite websites.
Just cause you believe in something doesn't make it right, right?!?
"I believe the world is flat and get away with murder" : (
We all know some idiot will soon post an excuse absolving the culprits of any blame and instead will point the finger at:
a. Christianity
b. The United States of America
c. George W. Bush
d. All of the above
Because, you know, we have to respect our muslim friends beliefs even if it means giving up our own to do so.
ya know I'm just about sick of trying to give a shit about Muslim feelings. they of all people should realize that the profit's image can only be there if Allah wills it to be so, and if He's fine with it, they might as well shut up too.
Being a muslim shows insenstivity towards my atheism, therefore you must stop being a muslim.
Yeah, it does sound kind of stupid when one put the flashlight on how fucking special you think you are, doesn't it?
I'm reminded of a (legendary) announcement from a British Airways cabin crew member on arrival somewhere in Saudi Arabia.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Riyadh (or wherever) please set your clocks back five hundred years.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
You know, I am generally pretty politically correct, and I totally understand the need to let a thousand flowers bloom.
But in this case, it really seems like people are trying pretty hard to be offended. It's fine if your religion prevents YOU from creating pictures of your prophet, or eating meat, or working on Sundays, or using vowels. Best of luck with that. But it's a different thing entirely to tell ME that I am not allowed to either.
I gotta know, why is it so disrespectful to show a picture of Muhammad? and if pictures are so bad why do they not ban cameras outright? I don't understand, and I think explaining it as opposed to just complaining would help out a lot here. Educate people, it works better then explosives...
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
I would like to point out that it is also insensitive to fly civilian aircraft into office buildings, it is also insensitive to drive a car loaded with explosives into crowded street and blow it up. It is also insensitive to take advantage of mentally handicapped women and use them as suicide bombers.
"It's totally unacceptable to print the Prophet's picture?"
Oh, really?
Centuries of your own culture's actions suggest otherwise, sweetie. Sorry to have that little inconvenient truth drag you kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Try the veal...
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/
... but I just cannot give a flying shit about "Muslim feelings" anymore. For Pete's sake, they show absolutely zero interest in non-Muslim "feelings" and don't even try to hide the desire to kill all infidels, and I'm supposed to walk on egg shells... why again?
So, allow me to officially state the following, having had enough of this -- Fuck off, Muslims. Your idols mean nothing to me, and I couldn't possibly care less how offended you might be. Please continue blowing each other up, and leave those of us who have progressed beyond the stone age alone.
I never used to be this way...
Honestly, Muslims around the world need to shut the fuck up.
:)
If you complain about something, especially on the internets -- people are going to do it MORE. What happened after the complaints on the drawings of Muhammad? MORE were made by random people all across the internet.
You cannot expect people to respect your religion just "because". Jews, Christians, etc... are all mocked all over the internet on a daily basis. Muslims are no exception to this.
The inherent problem is, that they are quick to complain and rarely change anything in a negative light about themselves. It's why I am non-practicing now, even though I do stick to the tenets of morality (which are largely the same as Christianity or Judiasm -- because they are frankly just stolen and modified) the religion preaches. I cannot get along with people who are so virulent in their attacks of the "West", "blasphemers" (like they think of those editing Wikipedia now), etc.
Besides... as a friend told me -- Wikipedia is a "non prophet organization".
So why are they worried ANYWAY?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Five seconds on Google got me this:
http://www.zombietime.com/mohammed_image_archive/islamic_mo_full/
These are pictures from Islamic illuminated manuscripts showing pictures of Mohammed. These pricks are as ignorant of their own history as they are of the notion of liberty and free exchange of ideas.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... by severing all their access lines. Wait... what's that? (whisper in the background)... sorry, someone has apparently already followed that suggestion. Well then, if that doesn't work, perhaps they can start logging in from China.
Is the claim that the picture _really_ depicts the exact image of Mohamed? Or is it the association of any picture with Mohamed?
My understanding is that some Muslims do not want to see images of Muhammad because they feel that images of him may encourage idolatry. I won't speak to that point, because it's a personal / religious opinion. I will say that if you don't want to see something, you shouldn't look at it. As far as I know, no one is forcing anyone to look at Wikipedia.
Silly humans... they should know Cthulu, the one true God, after which the FSM was created, doesn't care if you speak its name!!!
This is an example of an article that may offend Christians. Nobody seemed to have too big of a problem with it (the article) displaying prominently a picture of the work in question. To me, this would be like having a picture of the 'offensive' Danish cartoons displayed with an article about them. Is it really that big a deal?
Why is there such an uproar about free speech and freedom of the press? Thankfully I can print whatever I like, knowing full well that I am responsible for my remarks and the uproar that may ensue. Wikipedia should be completely uncensored and unbiased (wishful thinking).
I'm a Muslim who also happens to be quite active on the Wiki and I see absolutely no reason why the pictures should be taken out. But then again, I see nothing wrong with starting an online petition either. Somehow, I wasn't surprised to see Zonk's name associated with the sensationalist headline.
Res publica non dominetur
I find it comical that the muslims are in uproar over some images while they have no problems with their Mohammad being a pedophile. Mohammad married a 6 year old girl and fucked her when she was 9. Today he would have been behind bars for statutory rape.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Zombietime's Mohammed Image Archive has a collection of most of the available images of Mohammed. The oldest dates from 67 years after his death, and is from a coin in the British Museum.
The site also has an archive of their incoming hate mail on this subject, some of which is quite funny.
If the image of Mohammed is sacrilege, how do Muslims know what he looks like if no one can ever create a picture of him?
Just saying things like "Don't draw Mohammed!" is rather impossible if you've never seen a picture of him in the first place.
While I'm not a Muslim, I have looked into this issue out of curiosity and found a few interesting similarities between Judeo-Christian and Muslim religious laws. And, Muslim "outrage", like all legalistic religious outrage, seems quite misguided. There is no verse in the Koran, per se, that forbids images of Mohammad or Allah. In Chapter 42, verse 11, the Koran does say: "[Allah is] the originator of the heavens and the earth... [there is] nothing like a likeness of Him." So the interpretation is that to try to reproduce Allah in whatever form you choose -- and by extension His prophet Mohammad -- is an insult to God. The Koran also states in Chapter 21, verses 52-54 that "[Abraham] said to his father and his people: 'What are these images to whose worship you cleave?' They said: 'We found our fathers worshipping them.' He said: 'Certainly you have been, you and your fathers, in manifest error.'" This verse is probably far more applicable to this modern outrage we're experiencing, and it mirrors the Judeo-Christian law (in the Ten Commandments) that forbid "graven" images of God. The reason behind it is quite simple: Man is prone to worshiping idols, which takes his attention off the creator and places it on the created. Religion is about creating a relationship with God. The first chapter of Romans in the New Testament of the Bible also addresses this. Much like Christian's have tradition, Muslim tradition, or Hadith, points to Muhammad and his companions explicitly prohibiting images of Allah, Muhammad and all other major Christian or Jewish prophets, but it doesn't explain why. So, at least on the surface, Muslims appear to be taking to a legalistic extreme both law and tradition by threatening death to anyone who might break such a law, when, like all Biblical laws, they were created for our own good, not God's. And, perhaps this is the greatest mistake of all that religious zealots make: God doesn't need a defender; He's quite able to defend Himself.
/* No Comment */
If you don't like something that is on Wikipedia, then don't connect to it. Trying to get it removed so that no one else can look at it either is stupid and against Western values. So are these Muslims, though.
;)) I don't care if you're offended, grow up and get over it, you whiny crybabies.
I say we put up a huge statute of Mohammed with his middle finger raised and point it towards Mecca.
Also, on anopther token, are Christians any better? Look at the whole situation with evolution, etc. How about Scientologists? OK, bad example, they're just fucking jerks. Jews? Try posting pictures of the holocaust or pro-Palestine ideas (not anti-Semite, btw, just pro-Palestine, it is indeed possible to be for something while not being prejudiced against its opposite).
The fundamental problem here consists of two elements - a general idea that spans all political sides of the spectrum that one is entitled to not being offended, and a general idea that religion is Inherently Good and thus must be given lots of leeway.
Fuck these Muslims. Not all Muslims, but these Muslims. (And a rather hot one I had my eye on a while ago, but that's a different story
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
Sorry, was that obvious?
This is surely bad news for Wikipedia's dairy-articles.
If the Muslims would quit changing the rules this wouldn't be an issue. It wasn't that long ago (relatively speaking) that it was appropriate to post images of their prophet. This is a recent development. They're probably hiding something....
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
an ASCII art of Mohammed? I need a new sig for message boards.
Attention Muslims: no one gives shit about the rules your fruity little cult chooses to embrace, so please stop acting as though we ought to.
Attention all other religious folks: likewise.
Maybe when you folks grow up a little and are no longer so arrogant as to believe yourselves to be the sole custodians of the ultimate truths of the universe, we'll have more to talk about. Until then, go screw.
In this day and age, there is no way to please all subdivisions of culture. The best one can do is upset them all, and equally. You aren't prejudist if you hate everyone!
Voice vs. Violence.
There are so many examples of insults to the Christian religion where the followers urge people to boycott, protest, write letters.
Not the level of violence or abuse brought on by the pro-Sharia law Muslims. The real issue is those who want to see Sharia law control mankind. Read up on Sayyid Qutb. No other way for man to live peacefully other than under Shria law. If that ever takes over in the US, yes, violence is the response. And I'm okay with that. Until then, vote, petition and counter their efforts
yeah,ah, for you, my friend, uh, a special deal. This really puts a dent in our business plan.
Actually, I think Christianity is every bit as morally bankrupt, worthless and vile as Islam, it's just that most Western societies long ago castrated churches, leaving them largely impotent. On occasion you'll get bands of them a bit more active and politically motivated, but look at how the Republicans are tearing themselves to shreds right now precisely because they sold their souls to a pack of moralizing lunatics to win some elections.
Some day it will happen to Muslims. They'll wake up one morning and realize the mullah they've been listening to is no authority, that his use of political clout is completely improper and counterproductive, and will also realize that he has been in league with politicians to manipulate the populace so as not to have to modernize and liberalize society. On that day, those mullahs better bloody well hope that the revolution is a gradual and peaceful one, and not the violent, bloody kind which they so often preach.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My work here is dung.
God, in order to punish the religious fanatics, doesn't exist
"Islam vs Christianity is like Kris Kringle vs Santa Claus in that strong arguments for either are better left to children and those with the mind of a child."
Thankfully those that do not believe in such folktales still exist.
Kindly go fuck yourself you medieval retards. And if you think I'm being unfair, you have NO idea of my wrath towards the hypocritical bible thumping Xian morons. So, kindly go take your stupid little dipshit religion, step away from the computer, and go home to your burkha clad women and the 11th century where you seem to be happiest And once you're there, please do us all a big favour and stay there and STFU. I'm tired of your whiney ass bullshit.
AC
And who do you suppose created those pictures of the great prophet in the first place? It's ridiculous that some of today's muslims are so wound up in the rhetoric of our era that they conveniently forget that the creation of "graven images" wasn't always prohibited in islamic culture. This is doubly silly since these most inflexible people are generally the same ones who want everyone to go back to living like it's the year 599 where such practices were commonplace.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
entitled "jesus loves mohammad", and featuring such gems and "Jesus and Mohammad holding hands", "Jesus Ass-Fucking Mohammad", and "Mohammad Sucking Jesus' Cock"
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
Maybe the people complaining here should learn how to ignore stuff that offends them. If you're offended by something as banal as a picture, then you're way too sensitive. Its not our responsibility to be sensitive to your beliefs and religion. Sorry, but thats how freedom works.
On a side note, if you're so unsure in your faith that you need people to side-step around it just to comfort you, then you need to do some serious examination of your belief. For people who claim to be following the Ultimate Truth, they sure seem to need a lot of encouragement from us lost sheep. And if your god really gives a shit about printing pictures of a guy that he talked to hundreds of years in the past, then your god is a humongous pussy, and you probably shouldn't be worshiping him anyway. I have a feeling that, if god exists, he doesn't give a shit about what pictures we upload onto a website.
If you're offended by someone badmouthing your religion, then you need to stop being a crybaby.
That is what the question boils down to. Obviously any reasonable person sees that in this case the "freedom of religious belief" can not overrule the "freedom of expression", while those with hard line Islamic beliefs cannot accept that. A page and step by step guide exists specifically to walk people through how to block images on the page if they do not want to view them (or allow their families to view them). What quite a few of the protesters want is nothing to do with that though - they don't want *anyone*, whether Muslim or not, to view them.
I rather fear with a lot of the people so heavily protesting - not only about this, but going to much more extreme lengths in many different spheres of the world today - is that they are being whipped up into a FUD storm. As the NYT piece points out, prior to the 20th century, illustrative depictions of Muhammed were not at all taboo. The folks "protesting" here act like it is the central tenant of their entire religion. We have an entire generation of people, across the Muslim world who are unhappy, they are easy to whip up into a storm of protest over ridiculously inconsequential things (and in a few rare cases seriously consequential things) - it is done at the bequest of "leaders", leaders of religion or country, who use these people as tools. Whip them up into a frenzy so they won't question why they are so poor, disillusioned, powerless or poorly educated themselves - for if they did that the leaders privileged powerful lives would disintegrate.
Let's be clear about something. This cry from the Muslim community is not. It is a cry from a small group of Muslims in comparison to the whole community.
But to direct an example to the small group within the Muslim community, this same group believes that bleeding goats by a poke in the next is "okay". To us, that is animal cruelty where noone cares about the animals welfare. Different views.
Religion has always been about control. Whether it be direct or indirect by making you think about your actions and the repercussions, it is a method of control. A method to institute law and give direction(notice how i did not say fear) by using a "higher power" as the bargaining chip.
Most religious groups that are strict are very scared of what the world is turning into. People are no longer being blind sheep, they are asking questions. Our generation is a bunch of nosey people who believe EVERYONE has the innate right to choose for themselves.
Rights activists are our poster children. This editing of wikipedia is a direct attempt by those scared people to maintain control of a population that is no longer being sheep. The women are asking why they are considered less than men and not taking "Because mohammed said so" as an answer.
It's very interesting times. But please note that just because someone is Religious, it doesn't mean they are an extremist. That's why we have two different words to describe them. The same applies to Muslims. So when you want to attack "them muslims" make sure you clarify who you're attacking instead of using blind hate. That's what they're doing, and it obviously isn't working.
Well they haven't locked the article yet, so things are going better than on most controversial articles.
Oh never mind, i hit refresh and its been protected. just checked it again. Its locked now.
You mad
I'd modd you up, haven't had points in a while.
Its a great pun. I plan on using it later today, and taking full credit for it. Nothing personal, I just don't want to explain how I got that joke from "Inbred Tom".
Thanks!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
1. Print images of Muhammad.
2. ?
3. Prophet!
How is a Muslim supposed to know that they are looking at an image of Muhammad if the religion forbids images of Muhammad? How can they be sure they aren't just looking at an image of someone who just kinda looks like Muhammad? What if a real person ends up looking EXACTLY like Muhammad? ...and he's a Muslim. Yikes!
"Lighten up, Francis."
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Remember the shit that went down when Family Guy did this...
This is another case of a group or person demanding respect instead of earning it.
I think the only case in which you can legitimately complain about this sort of dogmatic bullshit is when people are actively trying to piss you off in a way that's unavoidable, and (thank god) the internet is entirely avoidable. If these same people were outraged by a billboard in Riyadh, or even in NYC, I could understand. That's a legitimate complaint, and it makes sense to compromise on public spaces. But when you choose to go out of your way to watch a video or play a video game that offends you, how could you possibly get any dumber? It's like poking yourself in the eye and complaining about the sting.
What's more amazing about our culture in general is that hundreds of thousands of people complain about a bare breast, and the outcry against maiming and killing hundreds of thousands is paltry in comparison. Similarly, these muslims seem to have no problem sentencing the victim of gangrape to prison for being "defiled," but cannot bear to look at a picture.
I've got an idea: how about we send all the religious Christian nutcases to Iraq (since they care so deeply about freedom) and just watch the fireworks. Maybe fundamentalism is a problem that could solve itself.
Create a sharia-compliant version of the wikipedia. Along with a kosher version of it. And a Vatican 0, Vatican 1.0, Vatican 2.0 version, a King James version, a baptist version.
The content's licence allows such a thing. After all, Wikipedia is one giant pool of knowledge but has a scientific, secular, americano-centrist bias (only my feeling, it is debatable but it has, to some people, some bias) so it is unavoidable that some other pools spawn from the main one.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I invested in rhyming of words for fun and profit. Also, rhyme zone is cool:
http://www.rhymezone.com/r/rhyme.cgi?Word=profit&typeofrhyme=perfect&org1=syl&org2=l
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad
Why don't they include this in the summary?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
There are already NO-GO zones in Britain where if you are NOT Muslim and you go there you are risking being beaten up and/or killed.
that is made up.
Old books have drawings of him. This is a 'recent' view created by whiny zealots who ahve nothing better to do.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
had it occurred to any of the posters of the many "fuck muslim" comments above, that the important element of the wikipedia issue is shared by their very own postings?
chunk up - go meta. the *overall* problem here is unconscious knee-jerk reactivity.
you won't fix the problem with the same thinking that created it. this "problem" will be fixed with calm, creative and compassionate consciousness. reactivity of any sort will just entrench the current high levels of reactive behavior we are seeing in some areas of the muslim community.
let's try again, this time with a little more psychological evolution and a bit less ape, shall we?
signed,
a conscious atheist
I still want to make one of those pin-on buttons that simply consists of a red circle-slash on top of a simple stick figure.
When people ask what it means, I can explain that it's an iconic representation of the idea that there should be no graphical representations of Mohammed.
Some people will be offended because the button promotes censorship, and other people will be offended because the button uses a (poor) representation of Mohammed to do so! Everybody wins!
- AFAIK, according to Quran, Muslims aren't allowed to have images of the prophet. There's no injunction on non-believers.
- It seems to me that the vocal part of the muslim population is effectively using the west's cultural sensitivity against the west, similar to how some groups use wikipedia's openness against it.
-- on wikipedia, this takes the form of over-long or over-graphic photos of phalluses in the name of science / documentation / whatever: the person who uploads this gets to be juvenile and detract from wikipedia's staid tone while being protected by wikipedia's policies around objectivity and openness &c.
-- among the vocal believers, attempts are made to put muslim law into practice in the name of not causing offense: the west must censor itself (with prophet pix), it must let family matters be decided in religious courts (see sharia-law-for-those-who-choose plans in Canada and UK), all in the name of 'not causing offense' and 'upholding liberal values'. Yet of course the effect of these things is to greatly offend liberal sensitivities, and to weaken or remove liberal protections some groups in our society.
Muslims are so pathetic. PATHETIC! They waste so much time looking for the next thing that they feel offends them and so little time trying to make this world a better place. I just love these stories. Bring them on, because the more publicity Islam gets, the worse it looks. Today I read that a married American woman was arrested at a Starbucks for sitting next to a male friend. Are muslim men so insecure with themselves that they can't control themselves in front of women? Don't feed me the BS about them living this way because they honor women. Its all about power, control and domination. Clerics are the most corrupt of the whole group of them. I am just so sick of this stuff. I am Catholic and hardly a day goes by without someone saying or doing something offensive to my religion. Yet, my only reaction is to pray that they one day see the error of their ways. I am not out plotting to blow them up or but their head off. Islam is a false religion created for the single purpose of enslaving people.
These people are obviously insane religious lunatics. Tell them to go to teh hell.
Salut,
Jacques
after all everyone else does...
Including, and most especially, those who work for it. For example. Just another scary example of the lack of ethics at the heart of wikiality.
Or you could chose this further example of its integrity.
Wikipedia is perfect for everyone with an axe to grind or an agenda to push. It's just the best site in the world for fundamentalists. Why should Muslims be exempt from that opportunity?
I have created an online partition to counter the Muslim petition. Please take a minute to support free speech and Wikipedia! http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/fight-islamic-pressure-to-censor-wikipedia/
...so can I have his picture removed from Wikipedia? --No? --Looks like I gotta learn to live with that fact.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
...but, dirka dirka Muhammad jihad!
A local restaurant doesn't serve fish on Fridays during Lent. I go somewhere else.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Somebody braver than me should register Muhammadse.cx and teach these crybabies what disrespectful pictures really look like. Come on, you know you want to.
It's interesting how strongly the muslims are against idolatry. It's understandable that they would like to keep their religious beliefs imageless. In that way you don't externalize the feeling at all, but it grows in you. This difference in faith might explain a lot about the actions some individuals take, and how they feel about it. The overblown idolatry of the western religions tells the same about their followers. The images are unreal, but everyone believes they are true.
There is a movie called The Message http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074896/, which tells about the early days of Islam. Mohammed is not portrayed visually at all, but aurally via a piece of music. When he is present we see world through his eyes, and the music plays in the background. I think this is the sort of sensitivity that many a muslim desires, and it is a beautiful way to portrait the feeling. The movie was released in 1977, and comes from quite a different world...
Yeah, and just look how well that worked out.
HAND.
Technically, the picture isn't "printed" until the user's browser renders it on their screen. So the faithful Muslim who is complaining is actually committing the transgression.
How is a group of Muslims signing an online petition "attempting to censor" Wikipedia? The title makes it sound as if they've engaged in some malicious activity to shutdown Wikipedia.
Fuck Islam.
Fuck Islam.
Dirty, evil, backwards religion that perpetuates a culture of never-ending death and oppression. The existence of Muslims on this planet is holding back the evolution of mankind. Wiping it out would be a blessing to everyone.
... is the only final solution to get rid of all those control-maniac idiots who think their personal feelings are more important than tolerance and understanding of different opinions. Don't get me wrong: That is a message to all censors, whatever faith, believe or ideas they might have. Greetings, Chris
"An operating system must operate."
What's really Ironic is that most peeps willing to spill blood for a cause usually don't know much about that cause. Like someone posted earlier, The image is taboo for believers, and shame on you christians for all your blasphemous Idols of christ!
The Muslims aren't the only ones on record for saying that Graven images of their saviour(s) are no nos...
I could have hoped that by now, 2008, supertition and Ignorance would have been replaced with knowledge and hope, My bad...
End of Line.
I don't think its a hidden agenda, wikipedia does censor ideology the editors support. Thats where wikipedia stops being balanced on issues. There are editors that use wikipedia to support their hobbies and beliefs over a nuteral article. There has been many blog stories about editors routinely deleting articles they dont support. Google for deleted articles.
Its rather disturbing to see wikipedia abused by its editors, but it happens all too much, they cant be taken seriously when personal agendas are so obvious by the comments and deletions.
Another side note, the elderly and older generation have a hard time putting in popular events when the younger editors delete to not being popular. Seems its ok to have futurama broken into 100 articles, listing jokes and etc, but not articles on older subjects.
I'm atheist, I'm offended by any description of any religion as "the truth". Please remove that from all the books and online resources.
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
It is very misleading to say that "Muslim groups attempt to censor Wikipedia".
First of all, we are not talking about Muslim "groups" like CAIR, or the OIC, or the like. The article only mentions a lowly internet petition-- one with just 80,000 signatures, many of them anonymous, most of them probably just kids. Who takes these petitions seriously? This is not even a noteworthy protest, let alone a fearsome act of censorship.
Second, even if you do accept the use of the term "Muslim groups", it should read "*some* Muslim groups". Although many ill-informed Westerners look at every wacky thing that emanates from the Muslim world as being typical of the whole 1.3 billion-strong community, the reality is that there is a heck of a lot of diversity in the Muslim world. 99% of the actual Muslim world thought the whole teddy bear thing was an idiotic fiasco, but people took it as being representative of Muslims generally.
The reality is that there are no established, representative Muslim groups behind this mostly anonymous petition. Neither CAIR, nor the OIC, nor any other major body that legitimately represents a substantial number of Muslims has attempted to censor Wikipedia.
For an idea of what mainstream, traditional Muslim scholars -- the legitimate representatives of the religion -- have to say, read this article by Imam Zaid Shakir or this article by Fareena Alam.
Bahá'ís (a recent religion with origins in 19th century Iran) are encouraged not to keep pictures of their founder, Bahá'u'lláh (there are actually two passport photos and one painting in existence), because such images should be respectfully viewed, and not casually treated. Posting them on the web has generally not been considered to be a terribly reverent presentation. Their leadership, however, made it clear that non-Bahá'í-owned/operated sites are not subject to Bahá'í rules, so Bahá'ís should not generally attempt to coerce such sites to remove the pictures. Wikipedia isn't a Bahá'í site, so while some well-meaning Bahá'ís kept taking the picture down, neutral parties as well as some Bahá'ís who understood the nature of Wikipedia as a neutral site put the picture back and worked out a compromise - don't put the picture front-and-centre. They put it at the bottom of the page, with the equivalent of a "spoiler alert" so that Bahá'ís whose sensibilities would be trampled by an unexpected viewing could simply avoid that part of the page, without having to avoid the whole article.
I think the problem with the attempt to censor mentioned in the article is that members of a religion are attempting to enforce their rules for themselves on others. In this case, it's a prohibition by several Muslim sects. Not all sects do, as pointed out elsewhere - Shi'ah Muslims often revere icons of the Imams much as Catholic or Orthodox Christians keep icons of the Saints. But the rules of a sect or religion don't apply to non-members (no matter how much that group would like it to). So sites that are public are in a different space. Academics have had this sort of difficulty as well with respect to religious, cultural, and other social issues where they need a space to openly examine a cultural taboo, but the members of that cultural group need to not have the taboo busted right in their faces. And it's even harder when people that live in a homogenous society (say, an entirely Muslim or Christian country) start to interact with a global human civilization which is diverse and must handle hundreds of views and practices and taboos.
There are some good examples of... well not really compromise, but rather groups of disagreeing folk examining basic principles and coming up with a solution that takes everyone into account. It could be a compromise in some situations, but often it can result in a more respectful (but not pandering) treatment of a subject. Perhaps the best rule of thumb anyone can use in this increasingly complex global society is, "Do not give or take offence".
i.
i - This sig provided by
"very strict rules that no one but themselves think everyone else must follow."
You have not noticed that the vice laws in the US are based on puritan values and rules?
Read this: http://www.petermcwilliams.org/mirrors/www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/index6.htm
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Am I the only one who is unsure whether to throw up or punch someone in the face, when you read something like "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately."
It is your fucking dogma. I don't care. If you don't like, don't fucking watch it! There are thousands of religions in the world, with even more thousands taboos. If every religion were as whiny as the muslim, we could do nothing, but sit and shit on cave floors in some long forgotten dessert.
Here is a hint for you: Religious tolerance is NOT shutting up about your particular religion - religious tolerance is to accept that people don't care about your particular invisible man.
There have always been similar discussions about the removal of pictures of Uluru/Ayers Rock from Wikipedia. Again, with aboriginal groups citing it as disrespectful and against their religious beliefs.
I don't give damn if it's insensitive to Muslims. The last time I checked, no body gives a damn about being insensitive to anyone much less offending any other religious group besides Muslims, why should they get special treatment because they act like childern and uncivilized heathens when they get "offended?"
If you don't like something printed or said: turn the channel, visit another site, stop buying that particular paper, but don't try to hinder OUR right to free speech!
And if this "offends" you, stop reading slashdot and log-off the internet immediately. Life is about being offended, so if you can't get used that that notion you just need to seal off the rest of the world and never emerge from your "safe bubble." If none one is being offended, then we are all just sheep in the cosmic continuum.
"Based on whose morals?"
What's a moral?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I remember my schoolbook had some pictures of him.
I've never thought less or bad about him because there where draws in the book or elsewhere.
I don't even know why it's forbidden to show images of him, wasn't him the one that said images from God where bad? Or did he listed himself in the list of forbidden to draw people?
I'm an American Muslim who was born and raised here. While I choose to reserve my opinion over the images of the Prophet I do find a lot of the comments on Slashdot to be disappointing. I've been a part of this community since its very inception and have done my best to contribute my expertise to relevant topics. However, its troubling to see that whenever anything Islam-related is posted, there are endless tirades painting my faith with a broad brush of extremism and ignorance.
As I've seen in the past, this sort of post always garners responses such as: "well if you're so level-headed then why aren't you changing the Muslim world?" Unfortunately, all 1+ billion of us are treated as if we're one big happy family. I have no more power to change the world of Islam than I do my own country's domestic and foreign policy beyond the established routes (i.e. voting, debates, etc). We make small but significant gains in our own ways but none of possess earth shattering abilities to make miracles happen. If we--as westerners--are really bastions of knowledge and free thinking then I'd do far more to educated the masses about my religion instead of having it hijacked by both non-Muslim Islamophobes and international extremists.
I will say that discussions littered with such ignorance and hate don't help people like me when we try to open up dialog with members of our religion. As much as people here may call the anti-portraitists relics of the past its very difficult to defend enlightenment and modernism when its laced with veiled Islamophobia [1]. Its even more difficult when people outside of the religion have the audacity to tell Muslims what is and isn't antiquated or kosher. Defining our religion for us wreaks of orientalism and causes even the most moderate to stop listening. I certainly hope I don't get modded or flamed into oblivion because this discussion needs to start somewhere.
[1]: Lets not beat around the bush and call it what it is when 15 century old stereotypes are thrown back in our collective faces even though they may have been debunked already. It even offends me.
The difference being with Christians is that it's only figuratively speaking when you say 'up in arms'.
Yeah, save the NINE "official" crusades (aka wars) and the ten or so un-numbered ones. Most of which were to stamp out other religious groups.
Let's keep a little bit of historical perspective, please. Most religions that has been around long enough has been responsible for intolerance, persecution, repression, death, and destruction.
Please help metamoderate.
America has Freedom of Press. Scew'em!
How can one gain ground of any sort, if his opponent believes that, not only is he right, but, furthermore, for him to even entertain the fact that he might be wrong, is in fact a deadly sin? How can anything these people say be taken seriously? Oh yeah, suicide bombers....wait a minute!? We should ALL be making and posting/wearing images of Muhammed in as many places as possible!
Seriously, it's important that we realize that religion makes people nuts.
Obviously, they're all nuts. Because you don't agree with their views. How 'Tolerant' of you.
Of course, there are degrees of nuttiness, and certainly marching around in front of Women's Health Clinics and screaming at young women going in to get a pap smear and throwing lamb's blood at them
You do realize, there are people who don't practice any religion who are against abortion, right? As for marching and screaming in front of a abortion clinic, is that as crazy as marching outside of a military recruiting office?
isn't quite as bad as strapping a bomb to yourself and blowing folks up, but crazy is crazy. I think we really have to try our best to encourage people to keep their religious insanity to themselves and to their own little groups. The early Christians had the right idea, meeting in secret in caves. If only we could get the contemporary ones to follow their lead. Judging from the results of the recent presidential primaries, it looks like the wave of militant religious has finally crested and is now starting to recede. It can only make life better for the rest of us. As always, the best tool is ridicule. Whether Tom Cruise or Mormons or Ted Haggard or "evangelicals" or fanatic muslims, ridicule is the key. Somehow, it seems like all forms of political correctness have been beaten back except when it comes to religion. For religion, you are absolute required to be politically correct, especially if you're talking about a rich, white, religious person. How silly.
Actually, there is no political correctness when it comes to religion. If your above statements were made about any racial group, it would be considered bigoted. If they were made about certain religions (ie Jews) people would call you a Nazi. Your simply swimming with popular opinion here on slashdot which is why it's ok. The reality is, you're a prejudice hypocrite who judges people based on their religion.
Religion may have been the inspiration, or excuse for bad behavior in the past. That doesn't make you any less of an asshole for associating every person who practices religion with being 'nuts'.
PS- I don't even go to church or practice any religion. I just find the double standards sickening and intellectually void.
How did that episode of Southpark conclude? Really, our lives could be at stake!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Well, technically, Christians aren't allowed to make images of Jesus/God either. The original text of the commandment in Exodus about graven images is:
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
Before I get jumped, "idol" means something to be worshiped. This means, in it's strictest sense, no paintings of Jesus/God to worship ANYWHERE. Why anyone would have paintings or sculptures of Jesus/God in a church without intending them to be worshiped is beyond me. And it seems hard to believe that no one has ever prayed in the Sistine Chapel after looking at the ceiling.
This commandment has obviously been rewritten over the years and I'm sure some Christian will reply and make a defense about how I've taken things out of context. I'll never understand some things, such as this commandment can be open to interpretation, while "women should never wear mens clothing" means that it's a sin for women to wear pants to some far out fundamentalists.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
"It's totally unacceptable to crash airplanes into buildings and commit suicide bombings," Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards innocent people and should be openly condemned by all Muslims immediately."'"
Karma be damned. Most people would post this as an AC, but I am totally sick of the bullshit. They've RIOTED AND KILLED PEOPLE over posting images of their Prophet already. I'm tired of seeing people kowtow to this so called 'Religion of Peace' out of fear of 'offending' them. I applaud Wikipedia for their stand on this.
Unless someone told you that those were images of Mohammed, would you have known who was depicted? What value do these images add to a piece on him (Him)? The images should be found in a discussion of iconography or religious art, but they provide no insight into, or connection to, the wikipedia article itself. They are tacked on because nobody likes to use text exclusively anymore. Take the pictures out not because having them is insensitive, but because they are inaccurate.
;)
Also, please replace all the pictures of Jesus with ones showing distinctly Arabic features in his face.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
if i had mod points i'd mod you up. not only is your post insightful but it provides a counterpoint to negative tone of this discussion.
It's very hard to fight that thinking in Islam. The thinking resurges over and over. It makes since. There is go guarantee of salvation in Islam. Your hope is rested on being enough good to overcome the bad you have done. That is hard to do considering the strict laws in Islam. So when some guy comes along and says you can martyr yourself and guarantee salvation, you'd jump at the chance.
Christians look at things much differently. They assume total depravity of man. The whole checks and balances idea of US government is founded on this idea. People are not to be trusted. People need to be kept in check otherwise power will corrupt them. In Christianity salvation is guaranteed because there is nothing you can do to overcome your violation of the laws of God. The law condemns all of mankind. Instead a Christian's salvation is trusting that Jesus paid our fine for us. This is totally opposite of every religion. Religion has sacrifices to gods, but in Christianity, God sacrificed Himself. Thus both natures are are not denied. His nature of perfect justice and perfect love.
So how do you overcome something that it deeply integrated into a belief system? Some people think that Islam will have a reformation like Christianity did. Some think that what were are seeing *is* the reformation in Islam.
From the Dickbag know as MightyMartian who is quoted below
In reference to the quoted post below...
Why just Christianity
Why just Republicans
Why is this interesting to Slahdot Moderation
Why?
Because your all fucking assholes thats why...
And if it wasn't for "Christianity" and not Judaism, Buddhism or any other religion you can think of...You would be on your knees to Mecca right now with the Minisitry Of Vice's biggest cock up your ass!
And if I and you were there...I would have thrown you overboard or used your body as a shield you dumb fucker
Slashdot Idiocy at its finest...
"Re:Excuses in 3. . . 2. . 1. . (Score:4, Interesting)
by MightyMartian (840721) on Thursday February 07, @01:40PM (#22337276) Journal
Actually, I think Christianity is every bit as morally bankrupt, worthless and vile as Islam, it's just that most Western societies long ago castrated churches, leaving them largely impotent. On occasion you'll get bands of them a bit more active and politically motivated, but look at how the Republicans are tearing themselves to shreds right now precisely because they sold their souls to a pack of moralizing lunatics to win some elections.
Some day it will happen to Muslims. They'll wake up one morning and realize the mullah they've been listening to is no authority, that his use of political clout is completely improper and counterproductive, and will also realize that he has been in league with politicians to manipulate the populace so as not to have to modernize and liberalize society. On that day, those mullahs better bloody well hope that the revolution is a gradual and peaceful one, and not the violent, bloody kind which they so often preach."
At the Christian churches I've attended (three different denominations) the focus *is* on the individual -- developing oneself to be closer to the ideal and serving as a role model for others while pursuing a closer relationship with God. At our bible study classes, during sermons, and during casual conversation there is disdain and disgust for a lot of what is present in society, and it's not uncommon to have conversations about ways to influence others, but I've never once heard a sermon or conversation that speaks of controlling or forcing others to bend to our will. Obviously, we won't allow ourselves to be doormats or victims of crime, but we realize and accept that each person's life must be their own and we expect the same in return. In fact, that would run contrary to the very basic idea of my religion -- that religion is the relationship between the individual and God and the foundation of that is forgiveness for our sins and an offer of salvation that must be PERSONALLY accepted, and cannot happen any other way. Life is one of constant struggle against temptation and self-development.
I do not know why you hold your anti-religious bias, but I hope that with greater life experience you will someday change your mind.
It's kind of like the Christian, errr, I mean, "Family Values" groups that petition the FCC. I am sick of religious people.
I think atheism is more properly defined as a belief in the non-existence of god or gods.
Agnosticism is closer to not having any beliefs pro or con to the existence of god(s).
It never occurred to me before, but this new story has, in my mind at least, connected Islam with the beliefs of various aboriginals. There are a few aboriginal people who believe that taking a photograph steals a person's soul, or that viewing photographs of the dead is taboo. Does Wikipedia make allowances for these kind of religious beliefs?
Now that I think of it, Islam and aboriginals seem to share other things in common, such as distrust of the modern world and a proclivity to violence when their beliefs or ways of life are threatened. Interesting. But I'd likely get into trouble if I explore too far into the concept of radical moslems as the aboriginal people of the middle east...
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Am I the only one who thinks the article is worthless without pictures?
If they allow this, shouldn't they also allow X-rated photos on wikipedia pages for porn stars?
:(
pda post @ lunchtime = short post w/o links
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
Mohamad had a beard.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
"Being unable to use either computers or electricity hath made our task quite trying", said Brother John.
With the help of the entire community, the were able to build a server entirely of wood and mud, but attempts to connect it to the secular internet have so far been unsuccessful.
"Getting our horses to carry packets was quite easy, but teaching them to shake hands with each other has proven nearly impossible", the Elder continued.
"At this point, we're considering scrapping the whole horse protocol and using dogs instead, as shaking hands is something they do quite well. The problem is were not 100% if it's the Muslim's who hate dogs, or us, or both. We'd look it up on Wikipedia, but..."
In light of set-backs, another Amish community farther north has taken different approach. So far, they've managed to forge no less than 87 cast-iron "token rings", and are getting quite good at passing them around.
"Once we figure why exactly we we're doing this, we should be well ahead of our brothers to the South with their fancy-schmancy wooden server", lead researcher Brother John (no relation, yet) commented.
"But", he continued, "if Muslims can figure out who's publishing pictures of their prophet, when by definition they'd not have an original picture to compare it to - I'm sure we can figure out what we're doing too".
It is insensitive to print a picture of Mohammed? It's insensitive to suicide bomb people as well.
subject is tongue-in-cheek.
/lnks/ in motherfucking English; fucked up variants exist[1]) is a goddamn Unix-like computer operating system. Linux is one da motherfuckin' bomb when it comes to free software and open source development: typically all underlying source code can be freely modified, used, and redistributed by any motherfucker with half a clue.[2]
Perhaps Wikipedia perfectly allows profanity in a subject that deals with, say, Profanity ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profanity ) ?
I quote:
"For example, "fuck", a common (often considered strong) profanity in English, is a verb for the act of sexual intercourse and may be used literally in this sense ("I fucked her all night long.")or ("Fuck you bitch")."
And that is just a tiny quote of that page. I swear I'll have to wash my eyes with soap later!
Perhaps they have a policy on not allowing profanity in subjects that do not call for it; or at least trying to keep it to a minimum.
E.g. what is the added value of the profanity in this:
--
Linux
--
Over the non-profane description that is there already?
However - let's say an article deals with Muhammad, either the very topic or reasonably tangentially - then the added value, certainly in the former, of graphical depictions of the guy is, at least to me, quite clear.
Similarly, however, I wouldn't expect pictures of Muhammad to appear in subjects that have little to nothing to do with him - but not because I feel it would unnecessarily potentially offend islamists visiting that page not having expected to see the picture and seeing it anyway, but because the subject wouldn't call for such the picture in the first place.
That, at least to me, is the difference between your Muhammad vs Profanity and how Wikipedia handles it example.
ok, here's my 2 cents.
Why not take that picture off ? I am not muslim and i can see how this annoys them.
If wikipedia is concerned about keeping the facts straight, they should be concerned by the fact that muslims like to keep mohamet as somekind of ideology, he represents every single muslim out there but is no one at the same time. He is what every muslim should be, but its not a person.
That's the way i understand it anyway. But even if im wrong, why not take it off ?
A representative group from the muslim religion thinks that picture does not reflect well what their religion is, so why not take it off ? If what is important are facts, then it should be important to be known that mahomet should not have a face. its really that simple.
Finally, in this day and age where religious topic are more dangerous than political one, why not just avoid the war and take that picture off. There really is nothing to be gained by refusing.
If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel. - Will Kommen
Attacks against The Enlightenment (see also: Age of Enlightenment) say for example, upon the idea of freedom of speech, in the name of one religion or another (let's just stick with this one religion for now) have been ongoing since reason began to displace superstition.
More recently, you may remember the cartoon controversy? This faded from the collective consciousness after "they" (people whose minds are captive to superstition of the islamic brand) repeatedly threatened, and then killed Dutch Filmmaker Theo van Gogh , great grandson of the brother (also named Theo) of the famous painter, Vincent. Contemporary Theo was guilty in the eyes of islam of making a film which was critical of the treatment of women under islam.
The great clash between Islam (unwittingly and unstably allied, by the way, with fundamentalist Christian radicals who are working within the western democracies to undermine the same feared Enlightenment values and institutions in favor of their own brand of superstition) on the one side, against the cultures and nations descended from The Enlightenment on the other, is coming to a head in Europe. The demographic trends, and the inability of the European cultures to assimilate their immigrant Muslim populations (alternatively, those populations are disinterested in assimilating), cause concern that Europe's democratic institutions will be subverted as instruments in the religious colonization of those European countries that gave birth to the Enlightenment by Islam, and their eventual conversion to theocracies in fact, if not in name.
March 2006:
"If Europe continues as it is now, the rising Muslim tide will, one at a time, transform the members of the European Union into Islamic Republics under Islamic Shari'a law as Muslims become the majority population."
February 2008:
The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".
It has been suggested that this problem is exacerbated by limited economic opportunity for young people in these countries.
An Economist Considers the Riots in France (from 2005, there were more riots last spring, March 2007)
The non-political nature of the riots in France
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
So......how many photographers have been murdered by Christians because of Andreas Serrano's "Piss Christ"?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Any morals that promote life. Xians would have us believe that we're all these miserably horrible people cursed to eternal damnation and torture (based upon something that happened 6,000 years ago that no living human had any control over) unless we accept that some Jewish eccentric was the son of God and died because we were all horrible people (one thing I don't get about "blood libel", it's some horrible wrong to suggest one ethicity was responsible for Jesus's death. but it's perfectly acceptable to blame ALL of humanity?). The only way to find true happiness is to accept that we can never be happy in this world, abstain from smoking, drinking, fucking (unless with a legally married, gender-appropriate partner and only to produce children), or anything else we might take pleasure in, and ask God to forgive us for being horrible, horrible people. Granted, not all Christians will tell you this to your face, because most of them are stuck in this contradiction that their values are compatible with, or even the source of, secular Western values.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
It was in relation to the silly Danish Muhammed drawings. There was a debate aired on TV and the moderator asked the Muslim woman to tell us exactly how bad they looked at these images, because we didn't have a good reference in typical Western culture. She then compared it to be a bit like child pornography! Yes, the image of a religious "icon" depicted even in a neutral non-sexual way is like children being abused sexually. This was also not a Muslim extremist; she was calm and well reasoning and all that in general, and lived peacefully in our country.
I then remembered why I'll never understand some religions...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I don't really understand how Wikipedia is actually "printing" Mohammed's pictures. Isn't it so that the visitors of the page are printing the images themselves on their screens? So why don't the Islamic group just add cencorship to their Internet browsers against such kind of images that they don't want to see? Some other people might still want to see the images even if Islamic visitors are against them. Thus the problem shouldn't be really a concer to Wikipedia, but more like the concer of the visitors of the page.
:) Thus servers and web-browsers would be the cooks and users could just pick up whatever food they ever want and be picky also!
Today it seems to be with the Internet so that you get whatever you want, but you can restrict what you get, and because you have the freedom of choose -- just like in a top-class restaurant -- restricting the content of the Internet is in my opinion the responsibility of the user, not just the responsibility of the server offering what you get. Most users don't understand this responsibility they have and they are just complaining of the website.
Perhaps we should start to build websites similarly to a restaurant and make good "menus" available for the visitors and to the browsers (filttering), so that you can select exactly whatever you want according to your taste.
Abraham was/is the father of both Christianity (Issac) and the Muslim Religions (Ishmael).
Of course, Abraham, kicked Ishmael out of his tent and maybe that's where the animosity comes from.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
There is the a added bonus in refusing to comply with this: the idiot is likely to detonate himself in a mosque in some IRAQ city on beahalf of his hurt feelings, possibly taking another dozen muslins with him.
NOTE: I know Pakistani terrorists are all over England andprobably this one terrorist is writing from there. But sincerely England is asking for another attack. Why? Because the fellas over there are very political correct and like to bend over to any offended islamist, just like the spanish and the rotten belgian - hearth of the European Casba. Time will tell.
Ok, muslims...time to get with the 21st century.
While this is about Muslims, it is not about Muslims as a whole. It is about a certain percentage of extremists forcing their view on everyone else. This is no different from extreme Christians forcing Creationism and Intelligent Design on people or other extreme views.
While generally you can show insensivity to certain religions, that are always factions that will condem people for this insensitivity. At the same time I believe you should show respect for everyones beliefs, but also make a point that there is only so far you can go before it is censorship of opinion.
Please, just because a percentage of any population feels a certain way, does not automatically make that true for everyone.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You remove everything in the Koran that the extremist population uses as propaganda to kill innocents (of any race/religion/nationality). Sounds like a fair trade to me.
>>And, taking that further, since they think images of people are wrong, they should ban TV.
I know you say that in jest, but in classrooms across Europe, art teachers are instructed not to draw pictures of ANY persons (not just mohammed) so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of the ultra-radical Muslim students who may or may not be in the classroom. Obviously this affects all students. And textbook publishers are busy stripping out images of people from their textbooks to make them more "acceptable" to the small, minority radical population.
As for the greater question of television, simply look at the Taliban (translates to "the students" or "study"): they prohibited all music, television, dancing, playing cards, etc. and used violence frequently to enforce their will. It's the same argument used to keep the population ignorant and illiterate. Let the Imams (religious teachers, analogous to preachers) do the reading and the thinking and let them tell the ignorant masses what to think. It's the reason there's always a spike in violence on Fridays across the middle-east -- right after Friday prayers when everyone's had their dose of the Two-Minute-Hate, sans telescreen, of course.
Now you have the Archbishop of Canterbury saying that Sha'ria (Islamic law) is "inevitable" and the West must simply accept it. It's called regression, the slow, gentle, backwards slide of a civilization wherein progress and freedom is surrendered. It's happening now under the guise of "multiculturalism" and will continue until the West stands up to this barbaric nonsense.
Seriously, that's about as significant as the fruity variety of post-moderns who think that all discussion/argumentation/philosophy is coercive and power-based.
But, of course, you were wryly dissing religion, so you get a pass around here.
I'm offended by martyrs. They must stop immediately.
Move all sig!
Ya. Sadly there are people who call them self a 'Christian' when they really aren't. They give Christians a bad name. There are basically two different types of Christians. 1. Those who ignore/skip/are ignorant of parts of the Bible. 2. Those who take the Bible as truth for its entirety. In the first group you have 'Christians' such as the KKK and most people who call them self a 'Christian'. They only differ in the parts that they ignore/skip/are ignorant of. The second group is what I am working on being in(I'm not perfect). The Bible actually does not say to meet in a building and give them your tithe (among other things).
-Echo
How is this "Score:5, Insightful" ?
The handful of Muslims involved in terrorist activity is both extremely small and non-representative of the religion as a whole. No major Islamic organization is represented by terrorists, and most such organizations officially condemn terrorism as a whole. I doubt you responded to the Oklahoma City Bombing by saying "Dear Christians, I'm offended by members of your religion ..."
I can't interpret your post (and its moderators) as exhibiting anything but discrimination against Islam, including a rather large helping of ignorance.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
But putting a picture of the Almighty doesn't offend Islam? Look up "Sistine Chapel" and he is right there, with Adam. But then, He is just the Creator, and has an entire Commandment against that sort of thing (two, if you count not taking His name in vain).
... so why don't they use Lynx?
@:#>>>
Okay Muslims! Come after me! And no, his head isn't drawn "side-ways" it's removed from his body and laid on the floor.
Religion is a choice. The choices people make are always subject to criticism. It never has, never will and never should require that anyone else be sensitive to another person's choice. You are either strong enough to deal with it or you're a weak fool and cannot withstand criticism. There isn't much in between.
That took the piss out of Jesus Christ, how many people were killed over it? How many embassies attacked?
In most countries we have moved on, religion is considered something that some may choose to follow, a bit, when it is convenient, but it is no longer allowed to rule everyones life.
And then the world changes, it has become a lot smaller and we are finding that large parts of the world don't exactly agree with our way of dealing with religion. Worse, these people are no longer staying put, but increasingly moving to those more liberal countries only to then go ultra-conservative.
In the series Fawlty Towers, you see some people claim that Manuel is a slur on italians. They forget that Basil is a far greater slur on brits themselves. If Italy has no pride in having everyone see Italians as being Manuel, the brits probably don't want to be seen as the rest of the cast.
In the "western" countries we know we all forced to leave together and have had to accept that precious little is holy anymore. Now all of sudden we have to deal with a religion that has come in close contact with us, whose followers are not always in agreement with the western worlds view of "life and let life".
The problem isn't with the muslim religion itself, other religions have had similar extremes in the past. The problem is that the view nolonger fits in the western world. It would be fine if fundementalist muslims and westeners were segregated but that is no longer the case.
Just as a anti-abortion person must learn to accept that if he wants to life in the west then abortion is mostly legal, so religious people will have accept that not they can no longer enforce their world views on the rest of the world.
And it ain't just muslims, Israel has orthodox jews who go around enforcing the sabbat in areas they control. In my home town in the Netherlands you got some raised eyebrows if you washed the car on sunday, and they succesfully blocked the showing of movies in the local theather on christian significant days and tried multple times to limit the opening ours of the city pool.
I have seen the fight in holland about sunday openings for shops and slowly the christians have had to accept that they cannot tell the rest how to live their lives. It then comes at a bit of a shock to find you suddenly have to deal with a "new" religion in your culture who thinks not just that they have a right to dictate their views on everyone else but that violence is the way to do it.
Simple put, our western culture no longer expects this, we find it hard to re-act to it. I am not a christian, find the whole point of religion stupid BUT I will keep my mouth shut if dining with christians during they talking to a non-existant beard in the sky.
Note that this is very complex social behaviour on BOTH sides. I do not interfere with something I think is silly. They do not object to my not taking part in their religion. We each accept we are different and adjust to be able to live together. Similarly, if I want to wash my car on a sunday, so be it.
It may not be perfect but it prevents holy wars. We can all to easily see what happens if people don't follow this basic rules. They are still mopping up the pieces in Northern Ireland, Basken land has been in the news for decades.
As a world we have seen what happens when you allow a relgion (or dogma) to rule, no thanks, never again. It ain't anything special against Islam, ALL religions have had to adjust and keep learn to keep to themselves. Few have problems with Amish rather strict codes because they don't even think of enforcing them on anyone else and life their lifes as part of the country they have chosen as their home.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
for standing up to the whole "people's feelings are more important than facts" crowd.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I respectfully refer him to http://www.somethingawful.com/ to gain an understanding of why this assumption is fundamentally flawed.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
If you think someone coming at you with a suicide vest is comparable to someone coming after a portion of your education with lawyers and votes, you've lost all connection with reality. For me, I consider my right not have violence directed at me a lot more sacred than my right to learn about evolution. I'm happy to have both, but if I had to choose, it's not much of a decision.
And by the way, it's not like fundamentalist Islam is fine with evolution and abortions. Fundamentalist Islam's complaints are generally fundamentalist Christianity's complaints, plus a bunch of other stuff. AND they pursue those goals in a far more violent manner. Different ends, different means. What they do have in common is a distaste for certain types of liberty, but if your thinking ends there, you are being intellectually lazy and ignorant.
Christianity has modernized. One hopes Islam will eventually do the same, and that people in Iran will one day be lucky enough to have their greatest complaint about their overly religious brethren be their attempts through lobbying and (Gasp!) voting to force them to teach Creationism along side evolution.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
While I agree with you that he didn't want anyone to worship him since only God serves worship, his prohibition was on idolatry, not actual pictures.
Money, video games, statuses of Zeus, movies about Moses, and songs about Jesus are all okay as long as you don't worship *them* instead of the only thing that has any permanence, i.e. God.
It's a teaching that's common to all inspired religions and a form of it even exists for secular humanists.
Ironically, by prohibiting any and all pictures of Muhammad, people are violating the idolatry, commandment by making the obsession with pictures of a prophet more important that God.
Christian terrorists act violently in spite of their religion which tells them not to.
Muslim terrorists act violently in accordance with their religion which tells them to.
Christian "morals" of course.
Yeah...that's a *really* good idea...
Let's start banning all insensitive and offensive material from the internet! That's a wonderful idea!
When will society stop being hypersensitive about everything?! Nowadays, everybody wants an apology from everybody for everything they say/do/think/believe.
The thinking has become: "It's O.K. to stop someone's free speech and harass/ridicule them into apologizing to you because they said something you didn't like!"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Maybe you forgot about this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
or this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism
I'm not affiliated with any religion and I can't see how anyone can justify shoving their viewpoints down somebody else's throat. Being a neutral observer I don't see how either side is better (more right) than the other. I don't see the extremist Christians in the US as any better than the extremist Muslims in the Middle East.
Quoting President Dale, "Why can't we all just get along?"
Christian humility is clearly based on the idea that we are all in the same boat. Condemned because we violated God's laws. The humility comes in to play when we understand that and that we cannot do anything about it but trust in God's sacrifice, not our sacrifice. No one is greater than any other. We are all equal under God's law.
So, please separate what you might know of the Roman Catholic church and look what the Bible itself says. That's what the reformers did and it changed Western culture forever.
I am a Moslem and I've lived in the west for long enough to see both points of view, and I can see how the ignorant on both sides easily claims knowledge and goes on the offensive.
First no one ever talks about why do Moslem's say you shouldn't draw the prophet, and the reason was very simple, back in the old days (when idol worshiping was "hip") it was forbidden to make statues of any prominent figure so people don't go back to worshiping inanimate. Moslem's believe that Mohammed (PBUH) was just a regular man, with faults and a gift of a message. He didn't split no sea, heal the sick, or perform any miracles, his miracle was his message, and thus should not be worshiped since he is not the son of god, or divine as Jesus (PBUH) is considered.
Extremists have hi-jacked the religion and have used it to wage warfare, what the west isn't aware of, is that the war is largely fought outside and has nothing to do with "Our Freedoms". The war is being mainly fought between the Moslems and their rulers/occupiers, and since most of the rulers are backed by western influence (Mubarak of Egypt, Musharaf of Pakistan, Royal Family of Saudi, etc..) the west becomes automatically a target in the fight (the friend of my enemy is my enemy), Osama and his followers enjoy a lot of support in Pakistan and Afghanistan not because of their charisma, but mostly because they fall under the category - the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Rulers in the Moslem dominated countries have oppressed their people for quite some time (close to 100 yrs now), and they kidnap and kill all the moderates, and only "curb" the extremists in their attempt to show the "west" that if support stops, the western countries will have to deal with the Osama's of the world.
The images don't offend the true moderate Moslem, he/she just sees them as crude, and that is where it stops. The moderate true believer never thinks that faith needs to be defended against those that bad mouth it.
Probably the reason Muslims detest images of their idol, is because in reality, he didn't exist.
Neither did Jesus
Just an old way to tax people, and keep them under the illusion of stupifying grandeur that is their god.
Sorry, worship whatever false idols you want on your own time, but don't pull a Mark Twain.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Thus, perhaps paradoxically, the solution to (some) Muslims getting upset about all this is to do it more and more, publish such images widely and frequently. Do it until they are desensitized, do it until they lose the energy to make a big deal out of it every time it happens.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
As for the sensitivity bullshit, all I can say is: how sensitive is a religion that MURDERS innocent women and children? Hm? How dare you attempt to use pathetic political correct when you're murdering people.
Shame on you. Shame on your entire religion.
I'm not posting this AC. I refuse to be intimidated.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
I think I am going to go do some google searches and eat a pork sandwich and drink myself into oblivion!!! http://images.google.com/images?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=pictures+of+Muhammad&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
"My immediate reaction is "WTF? What kind of moron doesn't make things 64-bit safe to begin with?" Linus
Heh, I think most folks are missing the point. Should Wikipedia, a neutral party as far as religion and politics are concerned, change a page because one group decides it's insulting? Free speech is free speech whether or not you like what the speaker is saying. This is, of course, tempered by various laws against slander/libel and hate speech. Does posting an image of Muhammad constitute a "hate crime"?
Of course, it is said that "One who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones". There are many examples of various christian and catholic personalities being mocked and threatened in cartoons, done by muslim (and other religious) newspapers. You'd think that if muslims considered images of Muhammad insulting, that it would be an equal insult to show and mock images of Jesus, Saint Peter, and so forth. It's also considered an insult to burn an effigy of someone, or to burn a country's flag, yet you can see that happening, world round, on a weekly basis.
How is it not ok for us to print a satirical cartoon of Muhammad, but it is ok for people to print a satirical cartoon of Jesus?
More to the point, why is it not ok to post a historical image of Muhammad on a generally neutral encyclopedic website?
Julie Moult is an idiot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad/images#Arguments_for_Removal
Actually reading the talk page, it seems like people are having a lot of fun mocking the religion of Islam and antagonizing anyone who tries to make their feelings be heard. It becomes very obvious that the picture is up there in defiance, and anyone who comes forward with a calm argument simply asking it to be removed is singled out and mocked by what looks to be the elite of the site acting out like 14 year olds.
I'm not religious, but I hate to see blatant discrimination like this. The official stance by the editors is 'we leave the image up, because we can'.
A perfect case of censorship on Wikipedia: Go look at the Wikipedia history for the term "gunt". It is a portmanteau of the words gut and cunt, and has a cited soure from Wiktionary. Now you tell me: Is Wiktionary not a reputable source of information? If not, then I am afraid that Wikipedia shouldn't be considered reputable either. I do find it amazing that Google results mention nothing about the river in Tajikistan on the first page. Hmmmm, by the way, what is the most popular search result in reference to?
Now, if I looked up the word ostrich in a (supposedly) reputable encyclopedia, I would expect to see an article about ostriches, and perhaps a nice, big, fat picture of one. But why is it, if I look up the word gunt, there is no mention of it in the context that Google is telling me is the most frequently used!! Not even a big, fat, picture of one!!
The reason is because one user has taken it upon himself to censor the article. Why? I guess that person is offended by the word. Well, I'm not offended by it, and I don't give a shit about that persons opinion, I care about the fact that it is a word, which is what an encyclopedia represents: unbiased FACTS.
I'm surprised that person has allowed this page to exist.
http://www.teddybearmuhammad.com/
Some other web-pages:
Check this book for Muslims - very informative about how some Muslims see future of this planet:
http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/to_be_a_muslim/index.htm
Have nice reading.
The main problem is that the your leaders refuse to standup and refute the minority in your religion that are using it as a justification for 'terrorist acts' and the prevension of social development of your culture. If you want to have the stigma of being a munch of 'fenatics who use mentally retarded people as human guided bombs' removed, then it is up to your leadership to denounce these acts loudly and 'everytime' the happen.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
This sort of thing makes me laugh (and break my otherwise highly voyeuristic use of /.).
How can ANYTHING be more insulting to a religious population/individual fanatic than "those b@stards next door" not believing in your religion?
These dudes/dudettes are humble before god and the prophet etc etc. They're pious, respectful and observant. Whilst over the fence sit some heretical scum, spewing forth the vile premise that the whole religous shebang has been made up from day one; and by extension, you the believer are either a witless fool or a victim of child abuse i.e. the forced religious indoctrination of minors.
If you're going to get stoppy, why not focus on a real issue (an issue to you the-witless-fool that is) - not the fact that someone put up some (pretty good!!) pictures. What ever happened to "any advertising is good advertising"....or was it the infidels who came up with that one too?
Have some balls - start a crusade.
Excuse me, i need to go wipe the rabid foam from my mouthparts.
You can't give one example of any religion in America trampling the rights of any individual or organization to say or do what they want within confines of the law.
You may think that's happened but that's only because you can't fucking think for yourself.
For those who suggest religion is the greatest scourge to ever inflict mankind, perhaps we need to take you back just one century for some proper perspective? The two most maniacal and genocidal regimes of all the 20th century were the Nazis and the Soviet Empire of Lenin and Stalin - both of which were completely GODLESS regimes! So you only have to go back one century to realize how bunk it is when people try to lay all the problems of history at the doorstep of religion.
Regarding the insanity of Islam, Christians should check themselves if they start getting all high and mighty about how warped Islam is as a religion. You go back through the ages and it was many a time when burning witches and inquisitions and forcing the natives to subscribe were the norm for Christianity. If you're a Christian, it's just good for you to keep that perspective, for surely we do live in a time where it's the Muslim faith that's infected with an insanity that pervades the most radical fundamentals, but there have been many times when it was Christianity which had a corner on that insanity, so every time you see one of those Muslim idiots blowing themselves up and slaughtering innocent people, don't go thinking it makes you a believer in a superior faith.
o /|\
/ \
This stick figure is a depiction of Muhammad! Even worse, Slashdot won't render him properly! Gentlemen, start your ululululating!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
See National "security" letters for a start.
More here
... not simply ignore Wikipedia? Knowledge is not anything that is compatible with believing in fairy tales anyways. They could just create their own wiki and be happy about filling it with crap and no pictures of mohammed at all.
And that goes for all the religious nutheads, be they muslims, christians, yews or hindu, or whatever kind of fairy tale they prefer. Predominantly those whose fairy tales have their origin in some oriental cameleer tribes though, because those are the worst and most dangerous it seems.
Muslims seem hell bent on catching up to Jews in forcing everyone to be "sensitive to their feelings"...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Does religion automatically deserve to be respected?
What if a religion promotes violence to ensure it's establishment?
What if a religion requires death for attempting to leave?
What if a religion clearly stated women were inferior?
What if a religion reduced humanity to mere animals in submission to Allah?
Do I really have to respect that religion?
There is no God. There is no Allah. There is no Tetragrammaton.
Religion is the work of the devil.
What is the deal with these Muslims, anyway? They're offended; that's fine. But why is it that they think they have the right to dictate to others what to do or not do? Muslims represent roughtly 30% of the world population, that's not a majority; yet they think they can boss everyone else around. 70% of the world is not Muslim, what about their sensitivites or feelings? Immaterial? Seems to me that the Muslims of the world are just a bumch of whiney cry-babies. Why is it only their opinion matters? As one boss I had once put it: everything is a matter of perspective, but your perspective doesn't matter.
Err ... what does this have to do with religion imposing restrictions on freedom of speech in the united states??
Back on topic - the easy example of religious restriction of free speech in the US are obscenity laws, "blue laws", and often prohibition laws (dry counties, etc.).
Does wikipedia allow the use of vulgarity, racist slurs, and profanity? I don't think so. This is a Catholic telling you images of Mohammad fall into this category.
If you people want to allow gays to be gays and issues like racism to disappear, you have to give Muslims the same respect as any fagget or nigger (words selected to illustrate the point.)
I've got a certain topic I'm going to nominate for the next Photoshop Phriday at Something Awful...
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Deuteronomy 20:10-17
When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.
This plays to a larger question of what the difference is between religious tolerance and religious oppression--that is, oppression by religion. Obviously we would like to make everybody happy by catering to their particular beliefs (e.g. school vaccinations, peyote, polygamy). However at some point it ceases to be respect for religion and starts to be oppression by religion--the religious saying you can't print this, or you can't marry this person, etc. This seems to be why people like Hirsi Ali, and maybe Chris Hitchens, are so contemptuous of religion, because it's more than just a set of beliefs, it's also a set of prescriptions to be imposed upon the world.
If it's not modded up to a 5, the the moderators are truly on crack!
While it's interesting to see the scriptural basis for the prohibition on depicting living beings (I had no idea it encompassed animals as well). I'm sure you recognize the difficulty of getting an international (but western oriented) community like Wikipedia to observe Sharia law on this subject.
Wouldn't a reasonable compromise be to ask the Wikipedia moderators, that since the images are offensive to Muslims, that they should be moved to a linked page, so that believers would not come across them by mistake?
To demand the rest of the world to agree with one religion on the subject of blasphemy is impossible but not really necessary, when asking for a degree of politeness and sensitivity would suffice.
About the same time I started doubting the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
I wonder if these guys still buy into other childhood mythology. Religiosity is a very sad state. It's indicative to resistance to reason and rationality. We should be asking ourselves by what flaw humans are so susceptible to such tripe. It could have wide spread benefit above and beyond these annoying antics.
Muhammad
http://amorphia-apparel.com/design/stick/
people the world over need to take themselves less seriously.
-- Hail Eris
Geronimo wanted the negatives back, and said if the US government did not return them, the US would be stuck in successive quagmire wars a few generations from his death ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
Sadly, any religion that claims to be a religion of peace is lying through its teeth. When people abandon their faculty of reason and start to believe in the imaginary, they lose their means to negotiate with others
Sadly, you're assuming that all religion is irrational and imaginary. If you assume that most people are irrational and live in fantasy land, you've lost your means to communicate with others.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Always remember. The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
...and I keep thinking of "Achmed the dead terrorist"....
SILENCE!... I kill you!
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
and these guys (and its only guys, [by their own rules, the women don't count worth shit,) would take offense.
There is no winning against someone determined to hate you.
(We western devils can do no right. Our very existence is an affront to their sense of what's right and they feel entitled to wipe us out.)
You just have to survive them and try not to become the people they tell us we are...
Its got nothing to do with religion. They just have a hard-on for us.
Its got nothing to do with politics. They just have a hard-on for us.
Its got nothing to do with economics. They just have a hard-on for us.
But they can't even make the weapons they use against us.
Fuck 'em all.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
OMG, a religious war on /. that's actually about... religion!
Severely insulting one billion people is not the same thing as free speech. The US outlaws hate speech, and many western countries outlaw promotion of Nazi-ism, as examples. Wiki and its editors will now remove pornography, threats, copyright violations and libel. Images of Muhammed are every bit as offensive in much of world as those types of material are to western eyes. Wikipedia clearly wants to appeal to as many people on the planet as possible. They say now that the two small images are presented "respectfully, in an historical context," but under current (post 16th century) Islam it is not simply not possible to present any image, "respectfully." There is no need. Wikipedia could simply provide links to those images on a third party site, explaining precisely why they are doing so. (Or more correctly, an editor could do this.)
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Are you insinuating that all muslim are murderers or terrorists? Believe me, I'd be the first to insinuate that were it true. I've fought in Jenin, I've fought in Gaza, I've fought in Lebanon. Most Muslims worldwide hate me more than anyone for the simple fact that I'm Israeli. And you know what? I still respect their religion. I still respect the individual person. And I'm not convinced that all Muslims are murderers.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
These people don't speak for all Muslims, I'm sure.
There is no central Muslim religious structure.
I'm willing to bet these are some fringe groups.
I could say to these fringe groups "these pictures are not disrespectful, you live in the 21st century, get over it and learn some tolerance."
But I won't, because the real reason, I suspect, is for the leaders of these groups to try to gain power ("rally around the flag boys, and in the meantime get pissed off, and listen to me!"). History is rife with some few people who manipulate legitimate religion to try to gain power, Islam is no different.
Hitler had a stylish haircut. Germans do not object to it's appearance on Wikipedia, I presume.
Oh wait :P
(Going to be modded down for this, don't care.)
Wait a second ... no I don't.
get rid of them
I don't know which of you guys did it, but I fell out of my chair. Thank you
I'd like a ruling, but I think that we have a winner, in one level below!
I dunno, I happen to think that a preacher being able to convince the FCC to institute indecency rules because christians apparently aren't able to change the channel counts...
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
these objecting muslims had some faith in their god. If Yagolah is almighty, he will punish the picture-showers to the extent they deserve. If Yagolah doesn't exist, there is no reason to object to the pictures, is there?
Bert
So should I just assume all other forms of censorship in the United States is Christian in origin? What about the recent attack by the Christian right on the Harry Potter novels?
http://atheism.about.com/od/harrypotter/a/censorship.htm
I find it hard to believe that there is so much xenophobia with Muslims. This fear that they will somehow single-handedly erode away our rights and freedoms in the near future is completely nonsensical. What about the Christian Right that is eroding our rights this very second? Why is everyone paying so much attention to the Muslims? All you are doing is distracting yourself from the real problem in this country.
I've never understood what was to be gained by being offended that someone who does not share your beliefs should practice or follow them. If you don't like pork, gays, pictures, meat, American Flag, sushi or whatever, just get on with your life. It's as if some people have no life except to make sure no one else does. What do they gain?
Is Salmon Rusdie still alive? Can't they still hate him?
-AC
Never mind those who are claimed to be fanatics, but I'm more concerned about those who paint Islam as a religion only capable of terror. That only has them in just as bad a spot as the ones they're frothing over at.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Something good to know... he's not talking about legalizing stoning or hand chopping, etc. and lookie here... seems some other religions already have their own operation system for handling civil court matters. === While religious leaders in the UK's Jewish and Muslim communities have not sought to enforce their own versions of criminal law, they have steadily built up their capacity to deal with civil matters within their own religious codes. What's more, they are doing it with the help of English law. The Beth Din is the most formally entrenched of these minority courts. The UK's main Beth Din is based in Finchley, north London. It oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes. The court cannot force anyone to come within its jurisdiction. But once someone agrees to settle a dispute in the Beth Din, he or she is bound in English law to abide by the court's decision. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6190080.stm
Apparently there was _less_ censorship in the _15th_century_ in the muslim community than there is now...
A lot of us on the "religious right" have realized that, although the Republican powers-that-be talk a good talk, they don't actually support any of the things we care about. Neither party is going to do anything about abortion, so that's no longer our one issue test, and we've given the Republicans almost a decade to do something good for this country; now it's time to let the other team take a shot.
The Republicans didn't sell their souls to us, we sold our souls to them. Now we're buying them back.
Thomas Galvin
The worst case of mass murder in Europe in the last sixty years was Christians killing Muslims.
Rwanda is overwhelmingly Christian. A MILLION people were quartered, shot, buried and/or burnt alive--often inside their churches...in one case at least, incited by their own priest.
Granted, we have this minor little problem going on, but it's Muslims killing each other...
Do you even know that Europe is made up of multiple countries?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This goes to show, again, that political correctness is an impossibility. I'm offended that they want to censor things, while they're offended because we don't censor things.
I do find it humorous that the images that offend them were created by islamic artists, and not a Danish editorial cartoonist.
I'm assuming this is the page, although I don't speak Arabic. It has no pictures of Muhammad. It also appears to always use 'peace be upon him' after after mention of Muhammad (at least if the SVG name is names accurately).
As an American atheist, my charity with respect to your faith, and not just anyone of it but everyone of it, is spent. There's just no milk of human kindness left for you. Maybe that makes me prejudice, hell it probably does. To bad. My concern is now that someone trying to kill a muslim doesn't accidentally kill a sikh. That's my last hope for islam, to minimize non-islam related collateral damage. You can blame whatever you want. I used to know muslims, and I even stupidly stood up for one Iranian guy I didn't know when he was taking shit during the first gulf war. But now the well is dry. Completely dry. How many more people like me are there? People who changed so much over not quite a decade. And you tell me a few muslims can't change the world. I find you sell your faith and fellow faithful short.
Like having a graven image, we need some other symbol to represent Muhammed. How about Cornholio? or Oscar the grouch?
Some muslim groups meddling with wikipedia? *Shock* *shock*.
(For clarity, I am atheist/agnostic.)
I've watched since the 80's, as this unfurls. I know my posting will be massively condensed, and will probably come out badly in some people's eyes, but lets try a summary.
The west, is not one entity. Even in the darkest hours of the cold war, it was not one entity. Long before then, politically *incorrect factual* information was *long* available about Islam, its followers, its beliefs, and its activities. Since the 80's, there is a wide group of movements, I probably call them wrongly, but I'll try anyway. Leftists, stalinists, communists, 'social democrats', socialists, 'greens', consensus european politicians, and varying influence from politically adept entities, laywers pushing human rights, and a great deal of it at UN or internationalist levels. This has led to a world where everything is basically a lie. Political correctness trumps the truth. Lies trump reality. Islam is suddenly racial, not religious.
This has led to a situation where a political crime was created. 'Islamophobia'. In Europe and in the UK there was and is massive immigration from Islamic states, even to the extent today, that in the UK, they provide house, social care, and much more for enemies of the state, and a refusal to hand over these 'criminals', because their 'human rights' might be affected. In Europe, and perhaps far beyond, massive immigration is covered up by states and governments, Islamification is a reality, and anyone whom dares raise any form of question about it is lambasted and villified, attacked and mauled. You'll be guilty of Islamophobia before you had time to finish the sentence.
Now, note carefully. When I say this, it may seem I am attacking all Muslims. Probably an error in my verbose comment. Its not an easy thing to look at in short or long examination. What can I say, I know that not every Muslim believes or lives a radical Islamic life, or even has a radical view on anything, But I know many do. When London was hit by the 7/7 bombings, and when it comes to interaction with the Islamic world, the evidence, shows a very different story. A majority of Islamics/Muslims support action, but would probably not commit the crimes themselves. (Data taken by the British Government at the time.)
Now how can one break down the Ummah. Its not easy. For sure, the truth is you can't blame the Ummah for islamic activity. But the Ummah sure comes together in response to anything said about the actions of Islam, or more particuarily its followers. It has no outright leader you can sit down and talk to. It does not have a real council or leadership you can try to work things out with.
Earlier, I alluded to a sort of alliance from many a leftist (partly liberal too?) organisation. Its complex, and I for sure can't fully and intellectually cover the whole thing, But I know its infiltrated government, NGOs, internationalist organisations, and in particular areas like the press (commonly critically labelled MSM main stream media). This alliance has deep roots, post world war, from the old soviet union through the EU and beyond.
This leftist grouping, which like the Ummah can't be really qualified as one single solid entity with leadership, but rather a wider political family, following some basic ideas and political premises. But they have persued aims that attack nations, weakening nation states is one of their primary goals. They have attacked religions in place, and supported virus alike inbound religion that cements their 'multiculturalism', anti racism, and supports the creation of artificial crimes like 'Islamophobia'.
(Not that all the above is a bad thing, some of it is a good idea, but as with all 'idea's they can be extreme and go too far.)
So what is the Islamic threat to the west?
1. Massive investment in aggressive fascist islam. Examples would be Saudi money pouring into mosques in the UK, with available evidence showing the extreme views/support/activity
We`re all equal
If you don't see the difference in scale between "punishable by torture and/or death in most Islamic countries" and "a pro lifer fundamentalist Christian bombs an abortion clinic," well, then you're beyond help. Fact is, the kind of thing mentioned by the GP is true of a majority of Islamic nations. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has logged 167 attacks against abortion clinics over the past 15 years in the US, and acts like these are condemned by an overwhelming majority of those who would wear the "Christian" label. On the flip side, a poll not long ago showed a *majority* of Palestinians believe the Holocaust is a hoax.
So, looking at the big picture while "judging the tree by the fruit that it bears," it really does appear that extremism is more of a defining characteristic of Islam than Christianity.
Easy solution: distribute lynx to all Middle Eastern nations.
Thomas Galvin
it is getting you to obey their words they want.
And that is what the ID faction want too: use to obey their words.
You think Wikipedia's 'neutral point of view' doesn't censor to cator to some group?
Try adding an appropriate picture to the child pornography article. Go ahead.
Seriously, a picture would help people reading understand what the whole deal is. It doesn't have to be explicit, just something for which someone has been convicted of possessing 'child pornography' -- it could be a picture of some kids dancing fully clothed.
Seriously. See whether you're able to keep the picture up. A seventeen year old sucking a cucumber, nothing explicit, shows you what the 'child pornography' controversy is over, and will get you banned from Wikipedia...
Neutral my ass.
*Asking* wikipedia to remove pictures is not censorship, its well "asking", as civilised people do when something offends them. Censorship would be using the law or threats. I note the referenced article doesn't mention censorship.
And why are there no naked pictures of Zonk or his Wife on wikipedia? OMG! CENSORSHIP!
The idea that charity, dignity and science were somehow the product of Protestantism (if that's what you mean by REformed Christianity) is so profoundly untrue, so incredibly historically falsifiable that I can only presume you're either trolling, or a complete idiot.
Science, at the very least, had its origins in Greek thought, of approaching the world in a systematic, categorical fashion. I'm not saying the Greeks had science, that wasn't developed until the Enlightenment, which is populated by thinkers who pretty much rejected Christianity.
As to charity and dignity, hell even Neandertals buried their dead and cared for their sickly. Chimps show altruism.
You need to get your head out of your faery tales and actually learn something about the world, and in particular other cultures and traditions, because what you just said is blindingly ignorant and false that I think you gave me cancer.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Huh? There is no known image of Muhammad. So any picture of him is just subjective. So why do Muslims get so ticked off over a picture of a guy who no one knows what the heck looks like?
Come on people. This is just stupid.
Hey, I have a picture of someone I, and no known human in the world, knows what looks like. Yeah, get pissed and kill people, that will solve the problem.
Yup, getting ticked-off over a picture of someone that NO ONE HAS SEEN is really, really smart.
Man, these people are such rubes.
United States of America != Christianity.
United States of America != Judaism.
United States of America != Buddhism.
United States of America != Islam.
Time for a civics lesson. Congress makes U.S. laws. President enforces U.S. laws. Judges interpret U.S. laws. A minister does not make U.S. law. A rabbi does not make U.S. law. A priest does not make U.S. law.
There is no religious body in the United States of America that restricts free speech. Said religious bodies can moan and whine all they want, but they do not restrict free speech.
Other posts talk about buying liquor, blue laws, blah blah blah. But these actions are not speech. You have no right to alcohol. You have no right to waffles. You have no right to sno-cones. You have no right to cigarettes. These are privileges. You might assume these enjoyments under some other right (maybe speech?), but in of themselves, these are not rights. The Constitution (including the Bill of Rights), strictly speaking, do not have "rights" for the various types of enjoyment.
So, yeah, Wikipedia can do whatever they want within the laws of the countries from which they operate. If they have servers in the U.S., they don't have to comply with any religious group. If Congress passes a law restricting Wikipedia (i.e. Terri Schiavo), that's different. But, religious groups? They can take a long walk off a short pier.
9 year old girls are children.
Adult men having sex with 9 year old girls is just plain sick.
Now to the facts, show us your data.
Show us your proof that it was common for people to get married at 'the age of 11/12'.
Can't do it can you?
So STFU and take your ignorant trolling elsewhere.
thousands of years ago?
Her name's Ruwaidah and she don't dance on the sand
For fear of being killed by stoning in this land
People without some form of empowerment (fake or real) will force them to take more drastic actions like voting, volunteering, funding, protesting, violence, insurgency, self-sacrifice, family sacrifice etc. This also extends to all forms of power, including tools such as free speech, gunpowder, guns etc.
You are comparing a society with high levels of empowerment (or widespread appearance of it) where only a few issues are out of control of nutcases (like abortion.) Also these societies heavily discourage extremism of almost any kind (even the good kinds) in part because the populations are made passive by tons of false solutions to their needs as well as creating new problems for people to worry about. Have you considered what makes a "nutcase?" Is it just person with a position without any empowerment? (well, thats simplified but I think is gist of it.)
Take away the factors that make the Christian nuts "lame" and they wouldn't be any better. That abortion clinic shooter without a gun would use bombs and without enough conflicting emotions would self-sacrifice. The US military promotes strong friendships, guilt, and shame in order to exploit them to get self-sacrifice - you hear many oppose the war but go back to help their friends. In this society it is ok to kill huge numbers of people to safe your buddies/family even if your buddies are in the wrong place for the wrong reasons; that is clearly UNCHRISTIAN. Rather than go to jail for a while for refusing to fight, they go and get seriously injured or killed. Some people could reasonably view that as nutty.
I'm merely trying to promote thought.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Do Muslims ever consider the idea that Mohammed said not to depict him so that the Muslim people would not have a symbol to go to religouse war over? Perhaps to avoid repeating the mistake of a certain group who tend to carry a cross around and kill people over it?
:P
Yet, magically this void of depicting Mohammed is now in itself a symbol to get mad over, thus going against what he was trying to accomplish in the first place, good job people.
Either way, religion is for the ignorant so I am not entirely surprised
Is it that the Muslims don't understand the REASON behind the "no pictures of Muhammad" rule, or are they just trying to be difficult? They aren't supposed to have pictures, because Muhammad is not meant to be worshiped in any way, and it was believed that pictures would encourage him to be worshiped. (As a side note, I'm not bashing Muslims, it's like that for all religions anymore.)
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The views you expressed seem to represent one of the most common reactions from western citizens, "grow up and learn to tolerate those who are different from you". The problem might be deeper than that. One of the philosophical elements of western society is tolerance for different beliefs. Despite imperfections, flaws, racism, sexism, and whatever else may not be just about them, the modern, western institutions (and policymaking practices in them) born in the Enlightenment are based to a much greater extent than any society before on reason, evidence, and science.
Unfortunately, the philosophy of tolerance encounters philosophies of brutal, intolerant domination. Superstition in general, and religion as flavor of it, and Islam as a flavor of religion, have interwoven in their core belief structure a philosophy of intolerance. If you are not a believer, you are not and can never be "one of us" you are and always shall be "one of them" to suffer eternal damnation, and worse, for it being undeniably very real, torture and death at the hands of the believers. They are just doing gods' will, allah akbar and all that.
Although, in general, I agree that tolerance has quite positive attributes, as an organizing principle for society, it's not at all clear that tolerance will hold its own in the long term in clashes against philosophies of intolerance. It's not clear that superstition (of any flavor) should be as easily and completely tolerated as has been the practice in the west. The values and institutions of the Enlightenment brought us out of the long dark ages of subsistence living in the muck and filth where life was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short, (recall the "old man" in this famous Monty Python skit is 37, which happened to be right about the average lifespan in the dark ages) and into an age of rapid progress in technology, health, and standards of living. Do we risk a slide back into a long dark age of intolerance and stagnation, by tolerating a little too much the ideas of superstition? At a minimum, the west should real completely OK with the idea that reading, writing, science, math, and logic must be taught to children. Perhaps tolerant societies can break the cycle of intolerance in a new way, by educating them.
Firstly, my observation is that there are different form of faith and non faith. it varies from 100 (completely utterly faithful without a single shred of doubt and living his faith 100% of the time) to zero (completely convinced there is no god whatsoever). Someone could argue that both extreme are not rational since there is no evidence whatsoever in either direction, but I tend to give a free pass to the 100% atheist, since even if without evidence you can't say if the easter bunny exists or don't exists, it sound more rational to suppose something don't exists until evidence are provided. The nature of the evidence might vary depending on what you are trying to demonstrate exists (it is way easier to demonstrate Mr Bush exists, than , say , the easter bunny). Most of us will hover in between those extrem. YMMV but my experience is that toward the religious 100 side peopel tend to abandon rational and critical thinking for sympathic magic and faith.
/. story. remember the cinema which were burned because they showed "the last temptation of Jesus Christi" ? I certainly do. Abortion clinic bombing ?
And this is where rational thinking and negociation break down. How do you reason with somebody which think you are trying to put down the prophet of its deity ? Sure mosleim which are not enar the 100% scale above will not react like that. But the nearer to 100%, the more one will think showing an image of muhamad is blasphemy. But islam is not alone. I visited some web forum where a christian preacher was accusing anybody wanting to disccuss some religious point of "blasphemy". You see, since it is the bible , it should given a free pass and we should speak of it with utter respect. Well I see no difference whatsoever with the
The bottom line is as soon as you start basing your decision on faith, you are NOT amenable to negociation because most probably your crop of deity will be possibly all powerful, all knowing, always right, or whatever by definition. You can only negociate when you are able to give in concession and get some in return. This is most of the time not really possible with what I would name theistic religion (mono or poly). To concede is to admit you position of faith was wrong.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
You have to abandon your dive to know it yourself.
And to believe with all your heart, you must blind yourself to the words but take it as a whole and forget the use of reason to see what it says and what it means.
So you spiral down lower and lower into brainless belief or break out.
A few lucky ones break out and find their connection with "God" themselves. But when they explain what joy they found, people start believing in THEM rather than look for their own connection.
And it continues.
If we could just get people to stop respecting religions, we might be able to avoid you having to fight.
I'm just sayin'...
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
Just as with the supposed Islamic prohibition on beard trimming this is a point of contention in the Muslim world just as much as the acceptability of depictions of Christ (idol worship!), the right of women to wear pants, the right of people to read the bible, or the acceptability of Jesus Christ Superstar are points of disagreement in the Christian world. In both cases you find adherents on either side of the debate wielding, what they claim, to be the one true word and the weight of "tradition".
The answer really is that no one has the "proof" to back up the others and each group is just arguing that everyone do what they feel comfortable with. This article does take pains to point out that variability. Sadly most articles about religion often fail to note the internal divisions among "Christians", "Muslims", "Jews", etc. that often exceed the external ones.
What authority decides who is a true Christian and who isn't? At what point do we start judging the tree by the fruit that it bear ? I never got a rational answer, except maybe the same as for porn ("I can't define it but recognize it when I see it")
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There's an obvious fix: port Wikipedia religion articles to Slashcode and mod down images so no one sees them anyway: same effect as censorship without the bad publicity. Only Anonymous Cowards would be brave enough to post death-fatwah images, anyway, and nobody reads AC comments. ;P
http://www.shortandhappy.com/images/mohammed.gif
Inquisition. Witch Burning. Saint Bartholemy massacre. Many persecution on minority. justification of taking slave by attributing them "no soul". I could probably dig more with a few minutes.
As for the crusade being used as an excuse, that still does not absolve all Christian having participated to them dosn't it ? Or will you use the usual excuse of "those were not true Christian" ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Science, at the very least, had its origins in Greek thought, of approaching the world in a systematic, categorical fashion. I'm not saying the Greeks had science, that wasn't developed until the Enlightenment, which is populated by thinkers who pretty much rejected Christianity. Hmmm. My understanding is that what we consider modern science had it's roots in the middle of the Middles Ages. You also seem to imply that most rejected the idea of a creator. Many of what we consider great scientist of early science, did indeed believe that there was a creator. As to charity and dignity, hell even Neandertals buried their dead and cared for their sickly. Chimps show altruism. What is the word we use in the English language for where we put our dead? Cemetery? Do you know where that word came from? It came from the earliest Christians putting their dead in "dormitories" because they believed that they would someday be resurrected when the Messiah returned. Our word is based on the Greek word. We all take this for granted. We take for granted a lot of organizational efforts by the church. I find it amusing that people only want to focus on the bad things, but never mention the concerted organized effort the church has put into bettering society. For some reason, that does not count for anything because it seems so obvious. You need to get your head out of your faery tales and actually learn something about the world, and in particular other cultures and traditions, because what you just said is blindingly ignorant and false that I think you gave me cancer. Humans has had charity throughout the ages. I am not arguing against that notion. For example, the Jewish nations of old had funds for widows and orphans. What I am pointing out is the impact of Christian charity on the modern world. Even today, the US is known for it's charity. True charity. Not charity so you can get a better next life, but pure charity with the expectation of nothing in return.
Every one of your posts thus far has reminded me of that episode of Black Adder, where every time someone utters the name MacBeth, the two actors must play patty cake whilst reciting a silly little poem.
So if people just keep repeating "the Prophet", do you have to keep replying with sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam?
So dangerous they had to murder him.
Don't forget that the Japanese terrorists who released sarin gas in the subway in 1995 were Buddhists of a sort. And the mass murderer Pol Pot was a Buddhist. And despite the rise of Islamic terrorism in the 21st century, Christians have still killed far more in Christ's name in the Crusades than Muslim terrorists have killed under the flag of the prophet.
Believing in a creator does not make one a Christian. A number of Enlightenment thinkers were highly critical of Christianity. As to the sources of science, it's very clearly Greek in origin. In fact, a good deal of the philosophical underpinnings of Christianity are really Aristotlean. The scholastics of the Middle Ages were not the idiots that the Enlightenment thinkers would have us believe, but they did not invent science, and to a great extent simply adopted the older philosophical underpinnings of the Aristotlean tradition.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ahem.
9:5: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful."
Note that by repenting and establishing regular prayers and the like, "Pagans" (translated elsewhere as "idolaters" or non-Muslims) have converted to Islam.
9:13-14: "Will ye not fight people who violated their oaths [and failed to convert to Islam as promised, verse 9:7-12], plotted to expel the Messenger, and took the aggressive by being the first (to assult) you? Do ye fear them? Nay, it is Allah Whom ye should more justly fear, if ye believe! Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you (to victory) over them, heal the breasts of Believers,"
9:23-24: "O ye who believe! take not for protectors your fathers and your brothers if they love infidelity above Faith [that is, if they are not believers in Islam]: if any of you do so, they do wrong. Say: If it be that your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your mates, or your kindred; the wealth that ye have gained; the commerce in which ye fiear a decline: or the dwellings in which ye delight -- are dearer to you than Allah, or His Messenger, or the striving [Jihad] in His cause;- then wait until Allah brings about His decision: and Allah guides not the rebellious."
In other words, it's us (the brotherhood of Islam) verses them (the "Pagans" or "infidels"--not believers in Islam)--and if you side with your non-believing family over your fellow followers in faith, you're screwed.
And so now we've set up the sides:
9:29: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
Keep in mind as well that Sura 9 is the last Sura to be dictated by Allah, and so aborigates all other verses to the contrary.
Why, yes: the Quran does indeed say to wage war against the infidels. It says it several times in Sura 9: in the verse of the sword (9:5) and in the passage exhorting war against the non-believers (9:29). Verses 9:5 and 9:29 are oft cited by those who launch bombs at non-believers and those "of the book", and who step onto busses and blow themselves to kingdom-come, along with the children and innocent parents on that bus.
The Quran damned well demands of its believers to overcome the non-believers until they feel subjugated or until they convert, no matter how many aborgated (Meccan) verses of "love" you wish to dig up.
Now whether or not individual Muslims believe this themselves is a completely different matter: I'm not suggesting that those who pick up a Quran and confess that it may have value are about to go hijack a plane and fly it into another skyscraper. Nor does all of this deny how beautiful it is to see the opening lines "God is greatest" of prayer sung in Arabic. But let's not fall into the delusion that there is any moral equivalency between the Bible and the Quran, simply because you either are a believer in the illusion of multiculturalism or think anyone who is religious is axiomatically a nutbar and morally equivalent to the other God-fearing nutbars out there.
The ironic thing is that had these pictures been copyrighted material, Wikipedia would have removed them without any problems whatsoever, and no one would have thought twice about it. But because these demands are coming from a religious group, it becomes a matter of free speech. Not that I care either way, but I just thought that was an interesting comment on our value system.
Durka durka mohammad jihad!
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Well there's a big difference between Christianity and Islam, in that the numerical majority of Christians do not support the stoning of gays or the persecution of women for the crime of being raped. Most of them are very much live-and-let-live whose expressions of dissent on social issues are (1) very mild in terms of their passions, compared to most Muslims, and (2) expressed through the ballot box, not by taking the law into their own hands.
So it works fine to say that we judge Christianity by the numerical majority of Christians.
That doesn't work so well with Islam, where torturing and murdering gays is mainstream among the numerical majority of Muslims.
So if you're a Muslim and you don't think this numerical majority test works, as apparently the grandparent poster didn't, you've got to posit some sort of alternative.
Pick a date. When's the next Mock-it-all Holiday? I'm in.
"What authority decides who is a true Christian and who isn't?"
Jesus.
"At what point do we start judging the tree by the fruit that it bear ?"
you will know a tree by the fruit it bears, you will be judged with the same judgement you mete out. (SPOILER mercy triumphs over judgement)
i'm not sure what you are asking if this doesn't explain it? care to elaborate?
And because so many terrorists use Islam as an excuse there must be something fishy. Yaddayaddayadda.
The Una bomber used the American constitution as an excuse. Is the American constitution fishy?
I am christian. Let me tell you, the bibel has been used as an excuse for so much bad stuff, we can really stand up to you guys in that respect!
What is actually forbidden in Islam is pictorial depictions of any living thing. eg Humans, horses, bumblebees or anything else as it is for god to create these things, not you. The "No depictions of Mohamed" rule is a more recent (historically speaking) tradition. Any Muslim with, cameras, TVs or paintings should be aware of that.
Saadia Bukhari from Pakistan wrote in a message. "It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately.
I will defend your right to practice your religion. That's religious freedom. I will defend my right to document your religion, in both word and picture. That's also religious freedom. In fact, I will defend my right to tell you and the world that I think your prophet was a fraud and a war mongering charlatan. That's also religious freedom. You'll just have to live with it.
You know, the explanation for why the Prophet's image should not be shown (so that the good Muslim doesn't commit some act of idolatry) is made a rather silly lie by basically having to utter phrases when mentioning his name. Not that Muslims are alone in this. Look at the Veneration of the Saints or at Protestants who, for all intents and purposes, actually worship the Bible more than any of the characters in it (Bibliolatry).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Let's see what's on this thread's "threshold 5" sampler plate:
-- You must be new here.
The Soviets didn't respect religions and look how that turned out.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
...should you find yourself gravely offended by something you saw on an Internet website:
DON'T REVISIT THE SITE!!!
Simple enough, eh?
I am a Muslim living in Canada, and I know many Christians who are very much like their Christ, and very interested in the world at large and how to make it a better place. Many of them are very conscious that the Crusades, for instance, were perpetrated by people who called themselves Christian, and most of them will readily admit the Crusades were evil. They are also very conscious that the nation to Canada's south currently crouches its wars and politics in Christian terms as well. They are extremely uncomfortable with that.
I should perhaps spend more time defending my own religion, as I am extremely uncomfortable with the state of Islam in the world. I will only say, however, that one day Muslims will look back on this period of history with the same sort of shame the Christians I know feel about the Crusades.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
Other posts talk about buying liquor, blue laws, blah blah blah. But these actions are not speech.
And obscenity? Just because some prissy supreme court justices decided that the government should have the power to decide ex post facto whether something is obscene or speech doesn't actually make it not speech.
Muslim feelings are more important than non-Muslim feelings? Where is the Muslim sensitivity to non-Muslims?
How much conflict any talk of Islam and Prophets have incited just on this forum.
Just goes to show how concerned we all are about the consequences of religion as we begin to think more and more for ourselves and less about mythical beings who live in the sky.
IMO we should ban it all, look at what it does, it encourages stupidity in entire races of people who kill each other over things that just don't exists and values which have only ever caused problems.
If God was to get angry about us banning religion that kills so many and destroys so many lives, fuck him because he ain't much of a creator or a father. In fact he would be a terrible excuse for a being. If I was the father of the entire human race at the moment I would be nothing but disappointed in my children at the moment.
"So if people just keep repeating "the Prophet", do you have to keep replying with sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam?" :-)
:-)
Yes. I do not know the level of it, how obligatory is it, but for a Muslim it is bad not to do so. And I do not want to know to find out how bad it is by experiments on my soul (I am a theoretical scientist by education, anyway
"Sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam" means "Peace and blessings of Allah be upon him" (you see, it's shorter in Arabic
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It seems to me that the mainstream Muslim religion is at the point right now where Christianity was about 6 hundred years ago. Sure, there is still violence and intolerance caused by secular Christian groups (i.e.: white supremacists) but on no where near the same scale as that of the crusades or the inquisition. Christianity has become whole orders of magnitude more tolerant (if such a thing could be quantified) since the dark ages. Hopefully it won't take the "Muslim Right" another 600 years to mellow out...
There is simply too much glass..
Mmm. Sura 9 is interesting: if you read the very start:
Freedom from obligation (is proclaimed) from Allah and His messenger toward those of the idolaters with whom ye made a treaty.
You see that it refers to a specific group of "idolators" who had (we are told) broken a treaty with the early Muslims - and it's at least arguable that the infamous verse 9:5 is referring specifically to them. 9:13-14 is the same.
I feel 9:29 is more problematic. I don't really see a way out of that one. It does say that at least many non-Muslims are to be subjugated by force.
Grr! Arg!
Dec 6, 2007, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion-related_violence#Arson.2C_bombing.2C_and_property_crime
Though if you want to just include actual bombs being delivered to clinics, you have to go waaaaaaay back to Apr 25th, 2007.
They defused it though, so maybe that doesn't count?
Last abortion-related suicide bombing was Sept. 11, 2006.
If they are offended by Wikipedia, just wait until someone shows them the Uncyclopedia article!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
As I said above, I suspect that the differences you see between extremist Christians who hire lawyers to try and silence somebody and extremist muslims from the middle east who try and silence people with violence has to do more with 'what neighborhood' you come from, around the world.
You take a look at the system of government of countries like Saudi or Syria or Iran, you see brutal and despotic regimes that routinely practice torture. Contrast this with the comparatively mellow Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa.
I'd even go as far as to conjecture that if the majority of the people in Saudi or Egypt or Syria were _atheists_ instead of Muslims, they'd still be more prone to terrorists, because states that routinely practice torture eventually end up with home-grown terrorists.
This should come as no surprise. While I ABSOLUTELY, 100% don't condone attacking civilians, when a government is repressive enough, there is a point where armed revolt is appropriate.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
I wish it were that simple, I really do. It's not the religion that makes them fight. It's the belief in their leaders, who use religion as a tool. Without religion they would use something else. In a country that largely self-identifies as atheist, the leaders use "spread of democracy" as the tool.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Hey, thanks for that link. I was amazed on several levels.
First, the camera setup and the scrolling text at the bottom reminded me of CNN or Fox News, or whatever. I was expecting the content would match my expectations. But, instead of a bunch of people speaking in sound bites and talking over one another, I saw a rational human being giving a reasoned, articulate perspective. Even though that perspective was found to be repulsive by the interviewer (he calls her a heretic and that her opinion does not matter), she was allowed to continue speaking. This would never happen on CNN.
Second, I was impressed by the amount of knowledge she (and the interviewer) have about things that to most Americans would seem subtle. She talked for a while about a 'clash of civilizations', a term made popular by Huntington's book. (I recommend you look for it if you don't know what I'm talking about). At the end she said something that reminded me of JFK's famous "ask not" quote. She said, "the Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."
...Oh, sorry. Didn't notice the Christians did that first
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Wikipedia is a representation of the modern world. The modern world is mostly civilized, but some groups seem to be anti-civil and fight civilization "http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization"
The less education and more religion these uncivilized people have the more dangerous they are.
The largest Muslim nation is Malaysia "http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia", but you don't see them involved in a lot of terrorism, why? Because they enjoy a more advanced society "http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society".
I hope someday the whole world will be civilized or at least more civil.
The earliest depiction of the prophet on wikipedia was made 700 years after his death by some guy who, obviously, had never met him. For all we know, that image probably bears more of a resemblance to the flying spaghetti monster than it does to Muhammad.
It bears repeating that there is no problem with any group having their own standards. There is a grave problem when one group imposes its standards on another group. If the prohibition against images of Muhammed is valid, then good Muslims should not create or own images of the prophet - and that is as far as it should go.
Also, it bears mentioning that when Christians show the image of the prophet (on Wikipedia, or in cartoons, or elsewhere), they do not do it out of spite or as an insult. Thus, the analogy you made about Muslims desecrating the image of Christ does not hold: willful desecration is clearly an insult. No, a (much) better analogy would be Muslims working on the Christian day of rest, or not fasting during lent, or not following any other religious law that good Christians must follow.
Finally, it's worth mentioning that some interpretations of Islam hold it a sin to create an image of any living thing: thus, the intricate geometric designs on Muslim holy places instead of pictorial representations (don't believe me? look here). It seems absurd for Muslims to expect to impose this prohibition on all other people simply because their religion calls for it. Given this, can you see the absurdity in non-Muslims being asked (or demanded) to not show or make images of Muhammed?
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Perhaps they should sit down in front of their computers, point their browsers to Wikipedia and blow themselves up. In a sign of faith and solidarity. I'm just saying.
^_^
The reason why Mohamed decreed that no likenesses were to be made of him was so that the faithful would focus on the message and not the messenger. And yet, mankind's cleverness has triumphed once again, finding a way to go as far as to become fanatical about the lack of effigy?
Wikipedia is neither a mosque nor a public market, it's a website for information/academic purposes. I don't want to give any ideas to anyone, but a logical extension would be to picket (or worse) every library and university in the western world, because surely there's an image of The Prophet in some history tome there, somewhere.
Is there anything zealotry doesn't get completely wrong?
To be fair, the complainers may just be looking for some sort of personal gain (publicity, status among assholes - maybe they want to be on the Saudi Arabia equivalent to the Howard Stern Show), in the process doing yet another disservice to moderate Muslims the world over. You know, the kind of open and tolerant Islam of a thousand years ago, when truly great mathematical, technical, scientific, philosophical and literary strides were taken, before a minority of zealots took it over and made the culture take a hundred backward steps, a place where they're still in today.
All one has to do is read the accounts of the great academic institutions and libraries of Andalusia to get a substantial whiff of what once was, where Muslim, Jew and Christian lived together in harmony and under kilometers of urban public lighting, designed by Muslims. And still these contemporary asshole demagogues rant and rave about taking the hard line to return to the glory days!
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
Sure, there's no Quaker terrorists. When they were burning witches they were the good guys, and you don't call the good guys terrorists.
Turns out the Wikipedia article on "flag desecration" does start with a nice picture of the American flag being burned. I'd still like to check to make sure it wasn't added 10 minutes ago by the guy who made that post.
And *NO*, I do not feel like hopping over to assist in the broken meta-moderation that is supposed to help the even more broken moderation. I think I want my posts to be moderated as +5 "beyond moderation". I don't want to post anonymously, but I have no desire to be moderated by a fugging AC.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Muhammed? Like he sounds really heavy!
Is he the same scary dood I saw at WickediPedia ??
Man! LOL! Like,... he is one funny dood!
I knew them Danishes sure have great cheesecake! But prophit guys too? Far out!
They must have pinoqachole oozing out of their cartoonist pens! LOL!
Gimme some more ham, Ed!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust
QED
After wading through the shitstorm in a samovar that are the comments from the brain trust of Modern Islam on the wikipedia talk pages, I can only say one thing: Let's hurry up and get the rest of those undersea cables to the Middle East cut!
Like in any religion there have been people who (after long years of monotonous study) come to the conclusion that they know more about the "word of god" then others and create *new* rules, based on the original text (although both, the bible and the quran, actually forbid amendments - but apparently they are just not as perfect and all-encompassing as everyone thought..). Some people decide to follow the new rules, some don't.
Actually the rationale behind not depicting the dude is very sensible and has its root in the old testament (the scene in which Moses scolds his people after they build a huge idol and dance around it, while he was hammering into stone the ten commandments - what they should be studying instead of dancing around) - in fact it IS the second commandment (part of the first one for Catholics and Lutherans)! Depictions of the prophet lend themselves to idolatry, thus many people will start to simply pray to a picture or figurine as an expression of their faith - but faith is supposed to be the interpretation and understanding of the sacred text (the word of god) and living according to it..
So in fact, any depictions of Jesus or Maria etc. are against the ten commandments for this very reason. Yet the church fathers in Europe encouraged it regardless as it would make the transition of the polytheist pagan idol-worshiping Europeans to Christianity much easier.
If images of the Prophet are banned, then how do you know what he looks like? How do you know that the picture on the Wikipedia page is actually a picture of him?
What if I took a picture of a pomegranate, and labelled it "The Prophet." Is this objectionable as well?
Wikipedia doesn't ban profanity because it offends people, it's banned because it's not a part of intelligent works. It's the same reason they don't use "wanna" "cuz" and "X is stupid lol" in the article. It's the same reason that they don't write half the article in Ebonics.
And as a person that curses quite a bit, I would not be dumb enough to include profanity in my term paper, even for the professors that don't have a problem with it, because it's not professional.
Let's face it, nobody has the slightest idea what Mohammed looked like, no more than anyone knows what Jesus looked like.
;-)
So pictures of Mohammed should be removed because they can't possibly be accurate. The only place where it might be appropriate to keep them would be in an article specifically about images of Mohammed.
Similarly for pictures of Jesus and other such ancient characters. Unless we actually have an image created during their lifetime, they have little value in anything claiming to be historically accurate.
OTOH, if it's a history of art, then I suppose anything goes. (Though recently we have had a few problems with museums showing "artistic" images of Jesus.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Wikipedia: you don't need to print Muhammad's picture. He's not coming back.
If we could just get people to stop respecting their leaders...
I posted a more elaborate explanation somewhere further up as AC, can't find it anymore..
Basically the old testament (basis for Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachings) states it is uncool to make idols of anything "from the heavens" - basically anything physical that could be prayed to and worshiped (have a look at the beginning of the ten commandments for that). It's uncool because people will start worshiping the idol as an expression of their faith instead of actually learning and trying to understand the true message.
And I must say, there is a point there - how many self-declared "Christians" are walking around with a crucifix around their neck, but can't actually recite all the ten commandments let alone tell what they mean..
"Actually, I think Atheism is every bit as morally bankrupt, worthless and vile as Christianity, it's just that most Western societies long ago castrated atheists, leaving them largely impotent. On occasion you'll get bands of them a bit more active and politically motivated, but look at how the Democrats are tearing themselves to shreds right now precisely because they sold their souls to a pack of immoral lunatics to win some elections.
"Some day it will happen to Atheists again. They'll wake up one morning and realize the philosopher they've been listening to is no authority, that his use of political clout is completely improper and counterproductive, and will also realize that he has been in league with politicians to manipulate the populace so as to repeat past mistakes and enslave society to government. On that day, those philosophers better bloody well hope that the revolution is a gradual and peaceful one, and not the violent, bloody kind which they so often perpetrate (Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, etc.)."
Think that's small-minded? It's exactly what the atheist bigot just said, with a few words swapped around.
Words like these prove their writers at least as evil as those they criticize.
What really makes me ashamed of being Pakistani is their heads up their a$$$ and half of them listen to everyone with a big beard like they are themselves the prophet. Here is my take.
The prophet himself never even entertained the concept of blasphamy in all his life and protected the same people who threw rocks at him and tried to harm and disrespect him in any possible way, he even responded to Gabriel when he asked if he can have them straightened out, he said "I hope God shows them the right way". Once a lady who used to dump trash on him did not show up in time to do that, so he went to her house to make sure she was OK.
As soon as he died these people became his sole owners and protectors of him because that gives them power over ignorant people, these people are the one who are a disgrace to the prophet. I have only one thing to say, May God (if he is there) guide you.
Please get off of that bandwagon and try to increase you knowledge as your prophet asked you to.
Judaism does not interpret the written Torah (what you call the Old Testament) literally. Instead, one uses the oral Torah (oral tradition passed down through the generations) to interpret it. Wikipedia explains this in greater detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Torah
The main point is that some passages, such as "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" are not meant to be interpreted literally. Also, more importantly, it is nearly impossible to carry out a death sentence in Judaism because you have to:
1) Have two unbiased witnesses that saw a person do something wrong
2) Went up to him and warned him what he is doing is wrong
3) He acknowledged he is aware what he is doing is wrong and acknowledge he is aware of the consequences
4) The witnesses report this to the Sanhedrin (Supreme Court) and if the person is found guilty, the witnesses must be the ones to carry out the sentence -- this made most witnesses reluctant to report.
5) Rabbinic attitudes concerning the death penalty are also reflected in statements such as "a Sanhedrin that effects an execution once in seven years is branded a destructive tribunal." Rabbi Elizer Ben Azariah said "once in seventy years." Source: http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/Death%20Penalty
I could go on. In short, Judaism does not take the attitude you mentioned above.
My understanding is that the main problem of Islam is their attitude towards people of differing religions. Specifically, Jews don't go out of their way to convert non-Jews to their faith nor do they hold non-Jews in some form of disdain. They don't believe that non-Jews go to hell or that they are immoral in any way. Jews believe that they have been assigned extra responsibilities above and beyond other religions -- so Jews are supposed to follow the 613 laws whereas non-Jews are supposed to follow only a subset of those laws (7 to be exact). This is discussed in more detail here: http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm
It is my understanding that Muslims who convert away from the faith (even to securalism) are sentences to death. I find that kind of problematic. It is also my experience that Muslims do not believe the Koran is open to interpretation, and this rigid mentality leads to some problematic results. It's fine and good so long as everyone holds a moderate interpretation of the Koran, but radical Islamists are going around preaching their violent interpretation instead and telling their followers that anyone who interprets it differently is committing Blasphemy and must be killed.
Islam is a very young religion in the grand scheme of things so maybe it just needs to be given time to mature. Hopefully one day it will be more accepting of "the other" and put this conflict to rest. Until that day (which could be thousands of years away) we're going to need to take more proactive measures to defend ourselves. Islam's "silent majority" is either unwilling or unable to crack down on its extremists.
Ever wish you could go back and edit your slashdot posts? :) I posted the wrong subject line above. I guess that teaches me to not post anything late at night!
Anyway, sorry for the typo!
The point is that when a so called Christian murder, rape, put bombs, do terror, incest, child mishandling and so on, the usual excuse from other Christian is that he is "not a true Christian". Since apparently the same Christian don't apply the same rule to Islam, then it becomes quite rapidly an ad-hoc hypocrite explanation.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
As such, I can't wade through over a thousand replies, so heres a question (feel free to mod this as redundant if already asked): but since Mohammed supposedly lived hundreds of years ago, any depictions of him are artists impressions. So, how can Moslems get hostile about an image that doesn't necessarily reflect reality? If I were to post a picture of Santa Claus, George Lucas or any other bearded fellow, and relabel it "Mohammed", would I be charged with crimes against religion?
Paul
--
Pre-order my new ebook on the Titanic disaster here: http://www.paullee.com/book_details.php
My web domain.
I believe Bush was placed in his position to make christianity look bad. It's easy to say the right things (talk is cheap), but a person's actions show his true colors.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
Round seven: Iroquois take back their lands consisting northeastern United States and southern Canada, including New England, upstate New York, Pennsylvania, Ontario, and Quebec.
;)
I hope you get get the point
The IRA is not a single coherent organisation. It split fairly early into "Official IRA" and "Provisional IRA" (aka The Provos). The "Official IRA" gave up violence before the other parts and later dropped the IRA name and became a political party with a mainly socialist agenda. The "Provisional IRA" is the part that adopted the gun in one hand and ballot box in the other strategy.
In the time when the Provisional IRA was running its bombing campaign it did issue bomb warnings but these were intentionally vague about times and places. According to some information that I have heard, the warning about the 1983 bomb planted in a street near Harrods in London suggested that the bomb was in Harrods and so evacuating people from the store into the street would have caused additional casualties. Fortunately the police had learned that the IRA warnings were really intended to placate the consciences of the IRA supporters in the USA rather than to be of any real value in reducing casualties.
When the Provisional IRA became somewhat less violent, splinter groups formed in order to continue the killing of random bystanders. One of these, the so-called "Real IRA" was responsible for the atrocity at Omagh
Do not fool yourself into thinking that terrorists who purport to be Catholic are any less violent and bloodthirsty than terrorists who purport to be Muslim. Some people say that non-violent Muslims should condemn those who claim to be being violent in the name of their religion but why should we expect that when the Pope, the head of the very hierarchical Roman Catholic Church, never excommunicated any members of the IRA for their violence.
The worst thing about the US-led "war on terror" is the undue emphasis on terrorists who purport to be Muslim. If we fail to condemn all terrorism we will fail to condemn any terrorism. One good thing that came out of the 9/11 WTC attack for the rest of the world is that the USA woke up to the fact that being a safe haven from which terrorists can conduct their campaigns is not such a good idea. Remember also that Osama Bin Laden is quite good at corrupting Islam in the cause of his violent political agenda because he was trained by the CIA.
It was until the enlightenment and secular society that these forces were brought under control. And they still rear their ugly heads from time to time, even in the West.
You were going good until this. Secularism merely frosted the cake with a layer of rationalization that largely argued that western European civilization was the pinnacle of social and technological development. It therefore had a clear responsibility to bring the rest of the planet up to its standard. In the meantime , while the standards were being "raised" the benighted heathen could repay the favor by working it off. This is effectively the same logic that justifies both the crusades and jihad: one lot has "the truth" and therefore has a mandate to force it down everyone else's throats. Kipling probably summarized the pathetic fallacies best: "whether the people be lead by the Lord, or lured by the loudest throat; whether it be quicker to die by the sword, or cheaper to die by vote...Holy People however it runs, endeth in wholly slave..."
I would advise the well meaning slashdoters (I am not addressing the Khazars who might attend this forum) to really start looking at both side of the coin. You are being socially engineered to become real antisemites. Let's listen for instance to Ben Freedman speech at the Villars Hotel in 1961 in DC, or Myron Fagan speech on the CFR, you may eventually get it at some point.
Prepare for a tsunami of truth:
http://100777.com/media/Freedman.mp3
http://www.awakeandarise.org/radio/Myron_Fagan.mp3
I notice the turd hit the side of the bowl and slide down leaving a mark.
I was about to flush it away when I notice that it looked a lot like an image of the profit.
Oh no what was I going to do? I had defiled the little room with a blasphemous image!
I immediately rushed of to house of the nearest holy man to get his advice, but when I was half way there I realized that given the turd came from my ass it was my ass that he would like to punish, so I hurried back home without telling a soul.
Then it came to me, the solution, I'll sell the toilet bowl on EBay!
Still, buncha pricks don't realize that their restrictions only apply to subscr... adherents. Ought to fuck off, the lot of them, and find something better to do with their time. Like... study the quran for instance.
Wisdom follows,pay attention!
.357 Magnum all day long, but in reality they are too shy to go outside more than once a week. When a muslim extremists encounters Jimbo Wales and puts a machete through his abdomen, then goes on to saw off his head while repeatedly crying "Allahu Akbar!", then it is too late to regret lack of religious respect.
First of all, muslims put weight behind their words, unlike geeks. A muslim is willing to die to kill you if you defame Muhammed or Allah's blessed name, because nine huri (beautiful magical virgins) wait for him in paradise in reward. On the other hand, I have yet to see a geek who would seriously die to defend their Bittorrent-god. Most geeks are overweight basement-dwellers who talk about Casull and
Secondly, Wikipedia has too big face and too little humility, which makes it impossible to reach their intended aim. If you want to collect all information related to mankind and its achievements, you have to have respect. Without muslims we couldn't count or design anything, which involves geometry. In an earlier age they contributed very much to preserving mankind's knowledge.
Thirdly, Wikipedia should make adult or possibly offensive texual, visual and audio content available via a "I confirm, that I am above 18 years of age and not easily offended" captcha. It is currently not possible to let kids access wikipedia in elementary school, because they may run into a photo of an erect, ejaculating penis or bondage scene without prior warning. This makes the school legally and morally responsible, thus it is easier to block wikipedia as a whole. A method to cover offensive material against accidental (ran-into) views would do much good to silence both puritain and religious devout critics and not hurt on-purpose visitors a bit.
If the muslims don't like that we non-muslims show pictures of their pedophile prophet, just STOP LOOKING AT THEM and mind your own business!!!
Thats interesting because many "enlightened thinkers" were also professing Christians and they believed the exact opposite of what you claim. Isacc Newton comes to mind instantly. There are many more.
Fact is, the western world which is now the bedrock of democracy and freedom of speech had its foundations in Christianity.
Name one other place in the world which has this same level of freedom (apart from Japan) which didn't have a Christian foundation?
I cannot come up with a car analogy, but a sex analogy is not too far off. You don't tell your 14 year old daughter to only have sex with a condom. You do the best of your ability to ban sex outright. A condom would solve 98% of the problems you are trying to prevent, but you don't trust her to make the right decision as to what sex is, or even what a condom is! That's why 14 year old kids who put it in "just a little" or "with her panties still on" get themselves pregnant or sick. I'm not kidding, save me the work and google it. You ban sex outright, and there is no longer any doubt to be had. To finish up the analogy, should the world collective have been more respectful in its depictions of Muhammad, then those dear to that faith would not have a problem with the respectful depiction of their prophet. However, the artists and publishers acted irresponsibly, and are asked to stop outright. Can't uncrash the car, but you can revoke the license from the guilty (Yes! Car analogy finally!).
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
What I want to know is....if they are supposed to make no pictures of the man, how do they know what he looks like? I mean really, do they actually know? Or is any picture someone claims to be of Mohammad good enough to cause angst?
I find it interesting that I'm responding to an article modded +5 insightful and I feel like I'm feeding the trolls. Oh well, here goes nothing.
This being Islam we're talking about, it propably won't take too long before death threats start flying, and it's always possible some lunatic will decide to carry them out, or take less drastic action, such as a cyber-attack against the Wikipedia servers. Making sure that the database is safe from any such attacks is only common sense; and the easiest way to accomplish that is to back it up and spread the copies to as many places as possible.
Cue a hundred replies claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance; and maybe it is - I wouldn't know, since I haven't read their holy book. All I know is that it certainly seems attract lots of bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature.
Wow. Um, have you actually met any Muslims? Apparently not. I can tell you've been watching a lot of American news and political speeches, though.
Every religion attracts bloodthirsty lunatics who use their religion as an excuse to live up to their murderous nature. Christianity is historically and currently the worst offender by far as far as that one goes.
That said, 99.9% of both Muslims and Christians are actually polite, peaceful, mostly tolerant people. Don't let a few extremists ruin your opinion of an entire culture!
If you must direct your anger somewhere, direct it at the concept of organized religion in general, not individual religions. (Now I'm sure to be modded flamebait!)
Knowledge != Intelligence
I find almost all religions personally objectionable. They all codified "laws" and expected the faithful to follow to the letter, times have changed but still the fanatics still follow, more closely than ever before. Personally my parents, hardly any interest in religion, brought me up to respect everyone, they taught me correctly that I must first listen, learn then I can discuss. They taught me to be tolerant of others opinions. I and many others don't need someone reading a ancient book of fairy-tales telling me that need to respect my fellow man or that I should respect their opinions and possessions, as if they were my own. If you feel the faith in your religion helps you get through your day, defeat your demons, then great, I respect that you need that crutch to help you. Personally I find that if I'm not shitty to all around me, respect the planet and nature, we all tend to get a long a little better, that's simple ingrained care and respect, nothing to do with religious indoctrination. I will teach my children honest simple to respect those around them and themselves, if they feel they need the crutch of a religion, then so be it, they are individuals. When they are older I hope I will have given them enough common sense to make choices based on consideration of facts, not blind obedience to an unseen force or idea. Unless of course they decide to become Jedi's, then they really will be in trouble! I was technically "born a christian" and if I'm wrong, well I will certainly have a lot of company with all the other shitty people and other non-believers, if I do end-up down "there"!
Windows guys please stop pissing on everyone and the Linux guys stop pissing in the wind, hoping to hit Windows guys!
What is left is a meaningless question mark in the dark, something so completely orthogonal to any human hope, expectation, or understanding, so utterly alien, that it is colder than the void of space. This is not the God that any religion believes in.
Personally I think this is spot on, but the religious types (which includes myself) would remain completely unconvinced that you've said anything useful. Well, I think you have, so there must be a bridge somewhere.
Perhaps the problem is that too many people are concerned with what God is or isn't. The question should be not what God is, but what is the function of belief in God. Instead of asking "why", it seems more useful to investigate "what" and "how". What am I part of? What am I? How does "this-all" work? Answers to those questions are more reachable.
That brings me to the point - people are interested in religion, fundamentally, because they are seeking some sort of truth in their life. The irony is not lost on me. But at the same time, it most cases it works, and in some cases it makes a tremendously positive difference in peoples lives.
The benchmark for religious "success" could be: kindness, wisdom, open mindedness, trust in oneself, genuineness and selflessness. These qualities embody the divine within, but if you don't like that term, then think of it as basic human nature. Our nature when we're not confused, frightened or bewildered.
So paradoxically, people seek truth in some sort of delusion. We are all already deluded to some degree. It's subconscious, ingrained and almost impossible to "see". Perhaps the only real spiritual path is stepping out of delusion. How someone does that is believe in an entirely fictitious sacred world which might act as a cure for the fictitious world that they currently believe in.
I think that's the core of it. It's not a question of what is God, but how does a belief in this mental formation function in helping someone see past themselves and find some sort of happiness and equanimity in life. If you can do that without belief in God, then good for you. And write a book too, because other no-believers need to know.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Cruelty in the Quran -
These are the first 10, there are 500 more after these
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html
Those who disbelieve will be gathered unto hell.--8:36
Don't bother to warn the disbelievers. Allah has blinded them. Theirs will be an awful doom. 2:6
Allah has sickened their hearts. A painful doom is theirs because they lie. 2:10
A fire has been prepared for the disbelievers, whose fuel is men and stones. 2:24
Disbelievers will be burned with fire. 2:39, 90
"Whosoever hath done evil and his sin surroundeth him; such are rightful owners of the Fire." 2:81
If you believe in only part of the Scripture, you will suffer in this life and go to hell in the next. 2:85
Jews are the greediest of all humankind. They'd like to live 1000 years. But they are going to hell. 2:96
For disbelievers is a painful doom. 2:104
For unbelievers: ignominy in this world, an awful doom in the next. 2:114
"And thou wilt not be asked about the owners of hell-fire." (They are the non-muslims.) 2:119
Science is the Real TRUTH!
Who cares what the Jews think? Their religion is probably a bastard offspring of Amenhotep IV's Aten cult. For all we know, Moses was a priest of Akhenaten who escaped the purges after Akhenaten's death and found fertile ground for his brand of bullshit.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
instead of looking at a handful of muslims.... I hope we are rational enough that we can not conclude about a religion based on actions of people, If billions o muslim are living together in peace, and doing charitable good deeds, and helping the mankind (muslims and non muslims) Do you think that will make media headlines? So if some drastic thing makes headlines, does that mean that is enough for you to know what Islam is? Why not go and read what Quran says? and not just copy pasting the verses, but understand them, Is not htis a serious enough matter to devote some time of yours? Take a look at what Allah The AlMighty says in Quran: 60:8 Allah does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes - from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly. 60:9 Allah only forbids you from those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion - [forbids] that you make allies of them. And whoever makes allies of them, then it is those who are the wrongdoers Now if someone was to look at chapter 60 verse 9 and ignore verse 8, ofcourse he can take things out of context. I think this clearly explains Islams position about others, to do good and be hust, infact you will tons of places in Quran to not ONLY BE JUST BUT BE GOOD DOERS, THAT IS doing more than just, being extra kind! --- I would like to just say this, how much time do we spend before buying a computer, a car and likewise many other things, is it than a wise thing to do to not spend even a few hours before deciding on which religion to follow, Should we not then try to get the message of Islam or (look at or compare to the message of other religions as well)? Here are few things that might help us all to see that how there are signs all around us of the truth of Islam, so manay scientists and doctors were convinced of the truth of Islam by seeing the scietfic explanations in Quran that were given 1400 years ago in the Book revealed by Allah Subhanao -- The Quran -- about which "Allah" the lord of the worlds say, "there is no doubt in book". I encourage you my dear fellow geeksor people of rationale please spend time and find out for yourself! The Messenger of Allah, may peace be upon him, informed us that Allah said: O My Servants, indeed I have prohibited injustice for myself, and I have prohibited it amongst you." The noble scholar; 'Abdul 'Azeez Aal Ash Shaykh comments:This is general to all mankind, whether they are Muslim or not, it is not permissible for any one person to oppress another even if they were enemies or harbored hatred for one another. Enmity and hatred do not authorize anyone in the legislation of Islam to be unjust or practice oppression. For more visit: http://www.islaam.ca/misconceptions/orthodox-pure-islam-vs.-terrorism/justice-to-all-mankind-even-those-who-make-an-enemy-of-2.html Scientists Comments on Scientific Miracles in the Quran watch videos --> http://www.scienceislam.com/scientists_quran.php Are there scientifically proven "miracles" in the Quran? - Find out what many professors and scientists actually say... Quran Miracles --> http://www.scienceislam.com/quran_miracles.php http://www.shareislam.com/# Islam and Signgs -- No Brainer --> Listen audio: http://www.scienceislam.com/audio/no_brainer.html And Guidance is only from the Lord of the worlds, so I ask you all my fellow geeks atleast sincerely ask the Lord -- "O Lord of the worlds guide me to the straight path"
instead of looking at a handful of muslims....
I hope we are rational enough that we can not conclude about a religion based on actions of people, If billions o muslim are living together in peace, and doing charitable good deeds, and helping the mankind (muslims and non muslims)
Do you think that will make media headlines? So if some drastic thing makes headlines, does that mean that is enough for you to know what Islam is? Why not go and read what Quran says? a nd not just copy pasting the verses, but understand them, Is not this a serious enough matter to devote some time of yours?
Take a look at what Allah The AlMighty says in Quran:
60:8 Allah does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes - from being righteous (kind, good) toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly.
60:9 Allah only forbids you from those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion - [forbids] that you make allies of them. And whoever makes allies of them, then it is those who are the wrongdoers
Now if someone was to look at chapter 60 verse 9 and ignore verse 8, ofcourse he can take things out of context. I think this clearly explains Islams position about others, to do good and be hust, infact you will tons of places in Quran
to not ONLY BE JUST BUT BE GOOD DOERS, THAT IS doing more than just, being extra kind! ---
I would like to just say this, how much time do we spend before buying a computer, a car and likewise many other things, is it than a wise thing to do to not spend even a few hours before deciding on which religion to follow, Should we not then try to get the message of Islam or (look at or compare to the message of other religions as well)?
Here are few things that might help us all to see that how there are signs all around us of the truth of Islam, so manay scientists and doctors were convinced of the truth of Islam by seeing the scietfic explanations in Quran that were given 1400 years ago in the Book revealed by Allah Subhanao -- The Quran -- about which "Allah" the lord of the worlds say, "there is no doubt in book".
I encourage you my dear fellow geeksor people of rationale please spend time and find out for yourself! The Messenger of Allah, may peace be upon him, informed us that Allah said: O My Servants, indeed I have prohibited injustice for myself, and I have prohibited it amongst you." The noble scholar; 'Abdul 'Azeez Aal Ash Shaykh comments:This is general to all mankind, whether they are Muslim or not, it is not permissible for any one person to oppress another even if they were enemies or harbored hatred for one another. Enmity and hatred do not authorize anyone in the legislation of Islam to be unjust or practice oppression. For more visit:
http://www.islaam.ca/misconceptions/orthodox-pure-islam-vs.-terrorism/justice-to-all-mankind-even-those-who-make-an-enemy-of-2.html [islaam.ca] S
Scientists Comments on Scientific Miracles in the Quran watch videos --> http://www.scienceislam.com/scientists_quran.php [scienceislam.com] Are there scientifically proven "miracles" in the Quran? - Find out what many professors and scientists actually say...
Quran Miracles --> http://www.scienceislam.com/quran_miracles.php [scienceislam.com] http://www.shareislam.com/# [shareislam.com]
Islam and Signs -- No Brainer --> Listen audio: http://www.scienceislam.com/audio/no_brainer.html [scienceislam.com]
And Guidance is only from the Lord of the worlds, so I ask you all my fellow geeks atleast sincerely ask the Lord -- "O Lord of the worlds guide me to the straight path"
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Imagine the excitement when I got an email from slashdot no less announcing that someone had replied to my post.
...only to find that not even me can distinguish the reply from spam :-)
When "that newspaper" ran "those comics" with the Prophet jokingly illustrated and publicly lampooned, people received death threats and the like. So far, I have heard no such stirring of violence on the behalf of the offended Muslims. They're sending emails and signing online petitions, and in my estimation, that's a pretty mature and democratic way to handle your concerns. Kudos, keep it up. Muslims may not get their way, but they are taking the correct approach on this issue so far, and that is to be commended.
Resistance is NOT futile, it is Voltage divided by Current.
The should stop acting like if someone said "Jehova"...
Even the arabic versions has the pictures in it:
look here
Whe should sign a petition to give them the "Age of Enlightment".
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
"The worst case of mass murder in Europe in the last sixty years was Christians killing Muslims."
Tribe on tribe violence, not related to religion.
"Rwanda is overwhelmingly Christian. A MILLION people were quartered, shot, buried and/or burnt alive--often inside their churches...in one case at least, incited by their own priest."
More tribe on tribe violence, unrelated to religion.
It's nice that you tried so hard, but you failed. Badly. And looked like an ignorant twat in the process.
It's the persian .. nervermind. ....
So the muslims should invade Iran for that blasphemy
There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't.
"It shows insensitivity towards Muslim feelings and should be removed immediately."
Because Muslims are so concerned with the feelings of everyone else, right?
Today it's Muslims that seem to be the most violent people, yesterday it was the Americans that revolted against the British (1776 ad) or the peasants against the aristocrats (1789 ad), or that it was the enslaved Greeks, Slavians and Albanians against the Ottomans (1821 ad), or before that the slaves vs the Roman Empire (120 bc) etc...and it all these cases, the revolted were called terrorists.
Ahh yes...
This and many other reasons are why Islam is not compatible with the rest of the world. What I am still wondering is why we are even doing business with countries that participate in some of the barbaric things in favor of their sharia law. I just don't get it. I am in America and we are very tolerant of the Muslim people that are here. And; to my knowledge, they are tolerant of those of us that are Christian here. I've known several Muslim men who have never ever thought of me as an infidel.
People like the intolerant Taliban need to be exterminated. From what I hear, they are not even on the right path with the Quran and have skewed things over to some fundamentalist's bent thinking. This can't be that far apart from Bin-Ladin's motives either.
And now the church in England wants the government to honor Sharia law in addition to Christian law. The two are mutually incompatible. I wonder what they were thinking???
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
If a muslim is educated, you will notice that they shy away from half of what they are supposed to believe in. If you wait long enough, eventually they either become Christian and realize how fucked up they are- or they become agnostic, and forget the whole thing. But most of the people in the world are stupid, and that includes muslims. Many of which haven't discovered jack shit since their inception. The number zero. The end. Thank you ... dumbass.
These people are the Scientologists of 800 years ago. A arab general started a religion so he could kill more Christians and Jews and take their land. He beheaded 700 Jews personally. He stuck his dick and a 9 year old girl and watched her bleed. And he killed all those who opposed him, like any good Klingon- including his family. He made the sick lame, and the lame blind. He made the sand-niggers the dumbest motherfuckers on Earth, just as they are now. Muslims are not from Jersusalem. The Jews are. Yet the muslims own it. Bethlehem is also owned by Muslims, yet Jesus was born there. Why is this? Because they are fucking Nazis that need to be killed. It's that simple.
In short, there's no live and let live with roaches. God will not violate free will. But these scumbags think they can impose this on others. Muslims are the enemy of all humanity. I'm hoping to join the new Crusade soon so I can burn their countries to ash. Thank you for your time. Have a nice day.
I believe the majority of Muslims have no problems with the Cartoons or the so called images of Muhammad. Those whining few who are trying to make life difficult for the rest of us with their pitty actions should get a life. Fereydoun http://www.hereticmuslims.com/
It's Muhammaday! Post some fscking Muhammads!
Having mod points today, I was torn over whether to mod you down or tell you directly that you're wrong. (I don't know if you realize this or not, but your half-baked one-liner managed to find its way onto Slashdot's front page via their new 'post the top rated comments on the index page' experiment.)
Bush is a born again Christian; arguably one of the most insane types of Christian available since the the decision to abandon rational thinking takes place in adulthood when one ought to know better. (You can more easily forgive a child brought up in a Christian family and force fed church doctrine, brain-wash victims being what they are).
I would also like to point out that Bush's cabinet is well stocked with Christians. --And collectively, they are responsible for the deaths of far more brown people than brown people are for the killings of white Americans. --And we needn't refer back to old crusades and the like. All we need to do is pick up a newspaper. --I would further argue that the faith of the American leadership is inextricably linked to their political decisions with regard to Middle Eastern affairs. They've crossed every other line, and the one dividing church and state is barely even there as it is, so it's not very likely that Bush and crew have chosen this particular issue to exercise their meager scraps of personal integrity and restraint. --And this thinking is not restricted to the current presidency. There is a reason the U.S. gives Israel billions of dollars every year in military support, and there is no other reason at all except the looming religious one.
--There are several prominent theories about this, not the least of which is that many Christians believe that contributing to a war which brings about the fall of Babylon (A.K.A. Iraq) will speed along Christ's return. (According to the bible, Babylon needs to fall before the Apocalypse can reach fulfillment). --And simply because they happen to have the luxury of commanding brain-washed 18 year-olds into battle, (and into buying a good portion of their own equipment), and because they have the luxury of hiring people like Erik Prince (Christian fundamentalist and owner of Blackwater), rather than having to resort to discount methods of killing people themselves, shouldn't obscure from you the fact that Christians are not only capable of being a bloodthirsty lot, but that a lot of them are indeed bloodthirsty, or as you put it, 'up in arms'.
Even putting aside Bush and the various figures in the Whitehouse, it is a poignant fact that the various armed agencies from the military to so-called 'contractors' (mercenaries) like Blackwater are also crammed with soldiers who have probably read such blockbuster hits as the Left Behind series, which plays heavily on a variety of Christian fear fantasies. These people are carrying automatic weapons around the Middle East.
To suggest that only Muslims are religious killers is evidence of the amazing, frightening ability of those in the West to sleepwalk through their lives without realizing that they are armed to the teeth and totally disconnected and unaware of the powerful forces which drive them. Sleepwalkers with machine guns. I think John Carmack wrote some code which points out the results of this in more visceral tems.
-FL
"Ever heard of the crusades?"
Yes. They were Christian Europe's response to Islamic aggression, when Muslim armies started conquering Christian countries in the Near East. The First Crusade was called as a retaliatory and rescue measure. Syria, Egypt and North Africa, and much of Turkey were all Christian Kingdoms until Islamic forces invaded and conquered them. St. Augustine, perhaps foremost of the early Catholic thinkers was the Bishop of Hippo...which is in modern day Algeria.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Between "Insensitivity" and "Sensitivity" towards Islam (or any other creed)? According to many Muslim clerics, any number of things count as "insensitive" toward their religion:
- allowing women to show their hair/face in public
- allowing Israel to exist as a state
- allowing non-believers to live
Can't we all just get along?
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
.. in fact most of them were .. (n/t)
...have problems either reading or comprehending English language?
Either that, or you live under a bridge somewhere.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"So why not just check it then and admit you're wrong? "
Why don't you stop being a hypocrite? I proved you were a liar and wrong right here
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=432182&cid=22234998
And you have yet to admit it. You ran and hid like a bitch.
So save the holier-than-thou, you fucking twat.
Shouldn't that be the benchmark for personal "success"?
Yes it should. Except it would be impossible to set out to be more kind/genuine/wise/selfless with a goal of "personal" success. It's very paradoxical. The truth can't be pinned down so easily. The "truth" as you think it, is a mental formation - that's almost certianly entangled with your heart-fealt sense of self. Perhaps in this discussion you feel that you're right about something. Perfectly natural. Perhaps there's also a background pervasive feeling that something isn't quite right. Also perfectly natural. Both are aspects of you heart-felt sense of self.
In fact if you can do this without help from a belief in a false god then aren't you better off?
Why yes you would. But if you did succeed, then belief/nonbelief in god would be incidental. Whatever works for you. Belief in god is so pervasive because we need to believe in something bigger than ourselves to move past our mental entaglement with the heart-felt sense of self.
Consider the following aspiration:
To relase myself from harm, and to free all others from suffering, let me give myself away and love others as I love myself.
A person with absolutely no doubt in themselves could do that. 99.999% of us need to believe in something first, and the benefit of that belief is that it will direct us in a practical sense.
Perhaps it's obvious to you that god doesn't exist. Perhaps you believe therefore, that you don't need belief in god. Great. Now, how are you going to achieve this personal success? I wonder if you'll just brush that practical aspect off, but still fail to commit to the personal/spiritual growth that would bring "glad to be alive" into every moment of your life. Perhaps you've already achieved "success" without belief in god (as Buddha did).
I'm not saying that there is only one way. There are as many ways as there are people on the planet. But I would say that everybody needs to pay close attention to their life - really connect with it honestly - and move beyong anything untrue or harmful. That is the path quality of spirituality, and for those who find their way without belief in god, then great.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
As off-topic and obviously point-dodging as this pathetic post is, you're really not very good at reading your own sources. "Up regulation" is not equivalent to organ damage, which is what you claimed in that thread that you're still obsessing over. Up regulation is a physiological explanation of cocaine's addictiveness, and in no way supports your claims from that thread. Please try and move on; I did, which is why I didn't reply to your (silly and ignorant) reply that came two days after my post.
Now, back to this thread -- wiki has a pic of a burning flag, it was not added 10 minutes ago (could you find the "history" link to verify?) so your (silly and ignorant) post in this thread has now been shown to be as nonsensical as the one in the other. At least you're consistent.
(Note that replies with irrelevant links to google searches 2 days from now will likely be ignored. Just FYI. Try to not be too disappointed.)
everything in moderation
"'Up regulation'" is not equivalent to organ damage"
You are obviously dumber than you appear from your posts.
"Up regulation" is a permanent change in the functioning of your brain (which is an ORGAN) you fucking moron. The change causes your neurotransmitters to function incorrectly (which is damage) you fucking imbecile.
"Up regulation is a physiological explanation of cocaine's addictiveness"
NO YOU FUCKING TWAT. Up regulation is a permanent change in the way your body processes neurotransmitters, and is NOT IN ANY WAY an explanation of its addictiveness. It is used to describe your body's adaptation to a foreign substance, and occurs with some substances WHICH ARE NOT ADDICTIVE IN ANY WAY. So you explanation of why you aren't wrong is a lie too.
You were wrong and you know it.
"Note that replies with irrelevant links to google searches 2 days from now will likely be ignored."
Good thing I gave you a completely relevant link to a relevant search that showed you were a liar. I know you didn't red any of the RESEARCH PAPERS because if you had, your only reply would be "yes you were right and I was not".
You were right about one thing though, you WILL ignore it. That's what bitches like you do when they're shown to be liars.
God, what the fuck is wrong with you? Is your life so empty and meaningless that lying about cocaine, then insisting you are right even after being unequivocally proven wrong seems like a good idea? How much coke have you snorted to damage your brain (WHICH IS AN ORGAN YOU FUCKING IMBECILE)?
I read your link. It was Zionist apologia of the most cowardly and disgusting variety, the argument being that because other people have committed war crimes in the past that it is somehow forgivable to commit your own, (especially when one couches one's thoughts in the comforting falsehood that one's situation is somehow 'different' and 'special' and therefor deserving of sympathy. It should be noted that it is typical for the psychopathic abuser to blame the victim for his/her crimes.). --Further, nothing in that article offered anything of substance which demonstrated that my ideas are 'seriously skewed'. --Or even a little bit skewed; my main point being that I strongly disagreed with the parent poster's position that Christians somehow restrict their violence to bland metaphors rather than engage in actual blood letting. If you read my post again carefully, you should be able to recognize this.
-FL
From one of my links (which you didn;t read, you fucking liar)
"Chronic cocaine intake causes...a loss of vesicular monoamine transporters, neurofilament proteins, and other morphological changes that indicate a long term damage of dopamine neurons."
I caught you lying again, you might want to look into that compulsive lying/sociopathic/narcissistic personality disorder thin you have. I can't see any othe rexplanation for someone who would lie, get caught, make up a new lie, get caught and proven wrong again, and then CONTINUE TO LIE after getting proven wrong again.
You lose bitch.
I just went there and did a search for the word fuck. They had an entire article discussing its origins. It's just that profanity has no place in most articles. Profanity tends to be a substitute for expressing your views. Wikipedia clearly has a slant towards clear articles which effectively state factual information in an organized form. For most articles, profanity has no place, but the article on profanity, for example, contains the words cock, shit, fuck, and many other profane words. I'm not saying widipedia doesn't exercise some censorship, but profanity is not a good example. The primary form of censorship they employ is to make sure articles represent as closely as possible a scholarly work. Take a look at the article on BDSM. There clearly could be a great deal of pornography on such an article, but that is not the intent. The intent is to inform. In the arena of information, wikipedia is very lax with respect to censorship.
I know it sounds like a joke, but Superman was quite instrumental in destroying the clan.
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.02.98/comics-9826.html
Going back to the grandparents point about ridicule, when KKK members saw thier sons playing superman vs. the Klan in the back yard with the Klan always being the evil side, they started to rethink thier ways. I'm sure they still held many of thier views, but they became less likely to share them, and eventually they died. An interesting piece of American history of which I only recently became aware.
"while the Bible makes it clear that to love God *and* our neighbor are the greatest commandments, "
It assumes your neighbor believes in the same god.
The Bible Old and New, clearly say you are to kill non-believers. So don't give me any of the horseshit.
I ahve actually read the bible, front to back, and studied it, and it's history. Have you?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Time for a civics lesson. Congress makes U.S. laws. President enforces U.S. laws. Judges interpret U.S. laws. A minister does not make U.S. law. A rabbi does not make U.S. law. A priest does not make U.S. law.
I don't know what part of the country you're from, but it's time for a fucking reality lesson. What really happens and what really gets said and what really gets done in this country doesn't have fuck-all to do with the laws, the Congress, the President, or the judges. That minister's "pissing and moaning," that conservative small-town mayor's opinions on what should and should not be taught in that small town's school or what books should or should not be in that small town's library, the PTA, the editor of the rural newspaper, those people dictate how this country really works. Those people really run shit, one town at a time, one county at a time, or sometimes the state of Kansas or South Dakota at a time.
And one main driving force behind that wave of public opinion is the religious community that you so glibly dismiss. These people fucking run the country. From a small-town preacher all the way up to Billy Graham. You don't think these people have power? You don't think these people have muscle to push their agenda, whether that's within or around or above the law? Like I said, I don't know where you live, but wherever it is, you should get out of it more often.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Only in secular societies do you see the worst violations of human interaction, when there is no punishment when life is all you have, who gives a shit if I shoot your head off? you probably deserved it.
So, basically, you're telling us that when you're religious, you do the right thing not because you're a moral person, but because you're afraid of punishment. You know what? You're probably right. Atheists, on the other hand don't fear eternal damnation. When they act, they act because of their values and principles. Yet, they commit no more crimes or atrocities than religious people.
You're so steeped in your own lack of morality that you can't even conceive that other human beings do the right thing, not because they fear punishment, but because they are actually intrinsically moral. That tells us a great deal about what kind of person you are.
I know it's still distressingly trendy to demonize Islam or Muslims as the major source of evil, violence, && hatred... but it's largely bogus && shouldn't be swallowed at face-value.
... Oh, yeah? Well... well I'd bet any amount of money that a significant percentage of people would denounce idiocy if they could accurately detect it. I'd bet any amount of money that a significant percentage only go through the motions of fearing Muslims, when in their hearts they don't actually believe the mouthed prayers or the hateful words being preached from their churches && forums, because they're too mentally ill-equipped to grasp the truth that they may not have a perfectly black-or-white enemy, no clearly delineated gender, national identity, religious body, or other means of distinction to blame && target. They might have to look in a mirror && couldn't
Denouncing the entire religion, supposedly because the followers of that religion haven't denounced the evil that is perpetuated in the name of Islam. Ahem. Yeah, well everyone has their own assumptions that underlie any statement like that. I could denounce the entirety of neo-conservativism because followers haven't denounced evil perpetuated in the name of Bush or Jesus or America or freedom or capitalism or democracy. That feels easily more appropriate && accurate a blanket-statement against "evil" for me to make than anything about the entire religion of Islam.
My observation is that the typical response to a group of Westerners getting blown up is *not* dancing in the streets, *nor* is it a protest against violence. There are over a billion Muslims, so as far as a few anecdotes or selective observations can be extrapolated to anything considered "typical" response-wise, I'd say most Muslims are emphatically distressed by violence && despise hearing of anyone "getting blown up". Therefore, I must conclude that people who still hold so unshakably to the simplistic view that "the majority of the followers of Islam actively support evil", these people must still be afraid to believe anything they hear from a source other than the U.S. government or one of the old entrenched news organizations. There are occasional protests against bombing, but these people will never choose to see or hear or believe, && thus they only pretend that they'll reconsider their stance (or they'll claim the protests weren't "massive" enough, etc.).
A laundry list of recent attacks by people claiming to be followers of X, believers of Y, citizens of Z, etc. is just not the same as X, Y, or Z conducting attacks... but this point is lost on those who are governed by their fear. They point to the former, even acknowledging the tremendous minority of outliers that aggressors represent, then keep falling back on their familiar scapegoat of "(About 20 attacks by your-so called "religion" of peace in a single month)".
These people get their facts backwards. They don't know any Muslims, don't know the first things about Islam, the Qur'an, or the Prophet Muhammad (S.A.V.). Islam does *not* have any automatic death penalty for conversion. Everyone is to be left free && unmolested to believe as they choose. Conversions are to happen without force or duress (certainly never by-the-sword, under some convert-or-die scenario). To claim Islam is the only religion that has an automatic death penalty for changing your religion is just horribly ill-informed. You need not wonder how many people would remain Muslim if they had a choice... because there are over a billion who *know* that they consciously choose.
This guy says he'd bet any amount of money that a significant percentage of people would denounce Islam if they wouldn't be killed for it. He'd bet any amount of money that a significant percentage only go through the motions of being Muslim, when in their hearts they don't actually believe the prayers they are mouthing or the words of hate being preached from the mosques.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned, that would be a perfect use for the 'evil bit'! :)
Make up a laundry list of any other group performing violent attacks against innocent people for religious reasons. You won't have much success making a list. You might be able to find an isolated incident on a rare occasion, but you certainly won't be able to make a list. Islam, on the other hand, has a long list of violent attacks for religious reasons. I just listed a single month and I purposely omitted Iran and Afghanistan. How about I post the attacks for all of last year? Let's compare that to the list for ALL OTHER RELIGIONS COMBINED. The difference is night and day.
If these terrorists don't represent the beliefs of the mainstream, why hasn't the Council of Imams denounced them? The terrorists use pronouncements from that council as justification for their murderous attacks. In fact, the council (the main body of religious leaders for Islam), won't denounce them because they support what the terrorists are doing. The council may not control Islam, but they have enough influence to make a major difference.
I didn't come to the conclusion that Islam is a corrupt and evil religion because of a few isolated incidents. I came to that conclusion because of multiple daily attacks against anyone who disagrees with them, or for the tiniest of perceived insults. I came to that conclusion because these terrorists consider killing babies as perfectly acceptable actions. And the muslim world itself sealed my belief by staying silent and allowing a small percentage of their people to decide the direction of their religion.
A few hundred years ago the Catholic church was going in a direction many people couldn't accept. They didn't remain silent, however. They spoke up, they argued. First they tried to reform the church, then they broke away rather than remain part of something they considered wrong. The Catholic church eventually discontinued their slide towards evil. No one today would say it is same organization that it was in the days of the inquisition.
Islam needs its own "Reformation".
-- Will program for bandwidth
Provoking people to do *more* of this stuff purposely perpetuates the cycle of polarisation and divisiveness; they get to vilify the West even more, thereby destabilising society further and dragging it towards a state of war --- the final conflict to eliminate their enemies (victory assured by their God) will then be underway. You don't achieve that by *not* complaining; in fact if destabilisation is your goal, then of course this is just one of the strategic tools in your toolbox, and by being the driver of it you get to frame the rhetoric.
First of all, your link didn't do anything but illustrate that you didn't understand the post of mine you were objecting to. --Secondly, my post contained three links all placed in an effort to help put my points within, (what I had hoped was), easy grasp. But I am getting the impression that you're not actually reading what I write.
And now you are saying my most recent post needs to be backed with further examples. The problem is that I would in fact have used the very link you provided, or one a lot like it, to offer an example of exactly the kind of apologist behavior I was describing. So maybe you should read your own link once more, but rather than simply nodding along with that particular blogger's opinion, use instead some of your own rational abilities to measure what he was saying. --To help with this, I suppose I could link to the writings of some respected journalist who explains why killing lots of people is bad and that it does not deserve sympathy regardless of the nasty things other unrelated nations were doing back in the 1940's. --But you know, there are some fundamental concepts of human decency I expect people to have figured out for themselves without the need for further supporting evidence. Your kindergarten teacher probably summed it up thusly: "If little Jimmy jumped over a cliff, would you do it also?"
--Or was it my comment about psychopaths which you want corroboration on via a few "href"'s? Very well. Here and here.
-FL
So what is your opinion on the images then? It makes me wonder why you felt a need to "reserve" it.
Sure, these people look for justification in their religion - but it is justification, not guidance. They've already made up their mind they want to fight, they just need an excuse so they can feel justified in taking by force.
PS - Buddhist monks are not all as peaceful as you make them out to be. They are not the same thing as western monks just with slanty eyes - for one thing, the monasteries are often places of last resort for troublemakers -- kind of like the kids who are sent to military school by their parents in the west. Many of the monks are just teenagers and boys in their early 20s - with just as much testosterone pumping their veins as any other group of young men. Sure, there are plenty of reserved and peaceful old men in the monasteries too, but by no means are all monks like that.
"There is no good form of extremism"
Extremist positions you may not be aware of:
Free Speech
"Self Evident Truths"
Being law abiding
Against child molestation
No killing
Turning the other cheek
Opposition of Iraq War
Telling the Truth
Logic & Math
Anti World Government, etc
Truth as a basis for proper reasoning
Hard Science (ex: evolution, gravity, etc.)
Honor
Self Sacrifice
All (universal statements) are (extreme)
Self Defensive action
"Reality *always* lies in the middle ground." is an extreme position.
That is not to say that hypocrisies are not common for humans regardless of what positions they adopt. Just because you have the position doesn't make it any less extreme.
-
"A nutcase is somebody who feels that their opinions should be everybody else's facts." You can't sell everybody but the next best thing is to impose opinions upon them; using government is just one method.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Sorry for the delay in getting back: this has been an interesting discussion.
After thinking about this problem some more, I came to much the same conclusion as you: the cartoons of Muhammed are the source of the current move to ban images. However, I still think that the cartoons were not intended to insult Islam or Muhammed - the cartoons were made in the tradition of editorial cartoons, which often exaggerates the truth in order to make a point. While a reader of a paper in Belgium might see the bomb-in-beard cartoon as referring to the use of religion to justify acts of violence, others might see it as an insinuation that Muhammed was a murderer.
(Keep in mind, too, that the initial misinterpretation of the intent of the cartoons was compounded when their actual content was misrepresented to those who hadn't seen them: as I recall, many were told that the cartoons were vile, bald-faced insults (e.g. humiliating sexual positions).)
In the end, I think the problem has simply been one of misinterpretation. This is a very old problem, especially in the context of West-Near East cultures. They have a right to be respected; we have a right to uphold our own values. What to do? Stop anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism; listen to those with an understanding of other cultures when we perceive a threat; and explain ourselves as best we can when others perceive a threat. If we do this, we can at least have a clear conscience.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I am in total agreement with you. Many of those angered by the images had not come to their own conclusions. They were told that the images were meant to insult the prophet with the specific intention of igniting them. It certainly is fact bending, though I'm sure both the east and the west manipulate their subjects in such a manner. This week: war on Eurasia!
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
It's such bad fiction that it'll go away anyway.
Wow. Such a big man for an internet post. If only you had a clue...
A) the Dark Ages are not a religious issue. The label refers to art, literature, architecture and SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT.
B) Christianity and Islam are WINNING. Their numbers are growing not diminishing.
C) I get to express my opinion. Just as you get to express your ignorance.
Now you know your ABCs. You've been schooled. Now go work on your hate issues.