Slashdot Mirror
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."'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
The difference being with Christians is that it's only figuratively speaking when you say 'up in arms'.
Not so sure about that. Or at least the 'up in arms' bit is only a figure of speech.
Say what you like about Christians (and I frequently do) but they do seem to take criticism and mockery a hell of a lot better than Muslims.
Can you imagine if Monty Python had set 'The Life of Brian' around Mohammed?
Someone would get killed.
This sig all sigs devours
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.
"Less liberty"? The last time I checked you can still stand up and oppose Christianity in the United States or Europe. Try flying to the Middle East and speaking out against Islam in the city square and let me know how that works out for you.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
the KKK was also a Christian organisation. and they didn't stop their bullying and murder because we showed respect for their beliefs, they stopped because decent people got together and demanded they stop.
appeasement does not work. see WW2 for details.
You see the difference between murdering filmmakers and trying to change science curriculum as one of...greater sophistication? What a fascinating moral philosophy!
Or were you implying that Christians involved with trying to affect science curriculum would murder the science teachers if they thought they could get away with it?
Where do people get this stuff? And how are there even two people out there that think it's "insightful"?
Yeah, and just look how well that worked out.
HAND.
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.
Unneccessary, since the Wikipedia database contents are already available for download for all interested parties. See this page for details.
That said, I don't think that this is offtopic. 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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
PS, I bet you've never been to a 3rd world catholic country - lots of angry violent mobs in those places too. It has more to do with being a 3rd world country - or living in 3rd world conditions - than it does with being catholic, or muslim. We've got a few million muslims in the US and you don't see them forming up violent mobs - certainly nothing like we get here after some big sporting events...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And so it begins. "Don't talk about muslims; look at what the christians are doing !"
Yes, look at me rather than your own strawmen. I pointed out that the parent post - which said it might be wise to make a backup of the Wikipedia database just in case - was not offtopic (as it had been moderated at the time), and backed up the neccessity of this operation by pointing out that protests coming from the muslim world have a tendency to become death threats.
As I specifically stated that I don't know Islam well enough to know whether it actually condones such behavior from its followers, your accusation about "slamming an entire religion" is false.
If you are referring to Catholic Church's semi-official policy of protecting practicing pedophiles and ensuring them a steady supply of new victims, you are again incorrect. I find said policy to be a very good argument against such massive religious organizations in general and Catholic Church in particular.
And the only thing I've said about Islam is that it certainly seems to draw a lot of bloodthirsty nutcases nowadays.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I mean, sure, christianity has its share of nuts, but for the most part those nuts are rather lame. Only occasionally does somebody try to kill an abortion doctor or some such nastiness. And when they're caught at it (and they usually are), then they're arrested and put in a small room and looked at for the rest of their lives.
Whereas the nuts in Islam seem to be the ones in charge. When you have women getting arrested and charged for sitting with another man in a Starbucks, then you have some serious issues that need to be resolved. When you have women being stoned to death for... well, does it really fucking matter what it's for? It's barbaric and ridiculous. Even the nutty suicide bombers seem to have really poor aim, in that they are blowing up random people. At least the anti-abortion-nutjob can aim a rifle at the abortion doctor in specific instead of blowing up cafes in the same town.
Sure, you can claim that these nuts are not "true muslims" or what have you, but that doesn't change the fact that they claim they are and so me, being an outsider, will judge them as such and judge the religion as a whole based on their actions. I'm no christian either, but even I can see that its crazy people are far less crazy (and far less dangerous) than those of the islamic faith(s).
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You raise some interesting points... unfortunately, they're all simply rhetoric. You imply that someone who has a religious belief automatically abandons their faculty of reason--a ridiculous claim, especially considering the huge range of religions and beliefs; they're don't all say 'we must do what this holy book says without question', nor do they all say that people shouldn't think for themselves and question things. If religious people don't automatically lose reason, I think it's safe to say they don't lose their ability to negotiate, either; but putting that aside for the moment, let's look at your claim that they would need to use force if they can't rely on negotiation (and reason). You're assuming that every single religion in the world has nonnegotiable goals that requires them to kill and coerce when negotiation fails, and that just isn't the case. Some don't even seek new followers.
Now, you may not like religion--and that's fine--but failing to use reason when criticizing people for being unreasonable doesn't seem exactly productive.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
And why, I ask you, are the christian nuts locked up? Because our countries and laws were set up by secularists, deists, and atheists. Freethinking people who knew that the end result of letting your book o' myths dictate your laws was a sure way to end up with people getting burned, stoned, beheaded, drowned, tortured, generally abused for no good reason. It is ONLY the secular, rational influence of the scientific enlightenment that prevents our society from acting exactly as muslim societies do now.
The real difference is that there aren't as many true believers among christians as there are among muslims (thank goodness). If christians believed as strongly as muslims do, then we would've had a crusade that would've killed hundreds of millions of people by now.
Or have you only comfort...that stealthy thing that enters the house and guest then becomes host, then master - KG
>>Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.
.....and you must stone such one with stones and such one must die."
>Neither does the Quran.
I'm no biblical scholar, but a quick Google shows me (which is probably about as deep as many Christians read their Bibles)...
Deuteronomy 13:6-9 "If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying: Let us go and worship other gods (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other, or gods of other religions), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people."
Deuteronomy 17:3-5 "And he should go and worship other gods and bow down to them or to the sun or the moon or all the army of the heavens,
2 Chronicles 15:13 "All who would not seek the LORD, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman."
And for the "It's only the old Testament" folks:
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law (the Old Testament) or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke or a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law (the Old Testament) until everything is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)"
Of course it can all be taken out of context, like anything else, and I don't personally care to put the effort in to find the appropriate context, but the Bible, on its face, seems to preach the "death to infidels" thing as well as the Koran, on the face of it.
If you truly believe that religious belief necessarily implies a willingness or tendency to do violence, then you, sir, are the one who has abandoned your faculty of reason. Not the religious people.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The problem is that religion is inherently *irrational*. There are crazy, stupid, irrational atheists, no one would dispute that.
But if you follow and believe in (almost) any religion, it means you believe things that are by definition unprovable, irrational, and supernatural. A person who is ready to believe such things might be more ready to believe other irrational things than someone who bases his thoughts on rational explanations.
The other problem is that in logic, if you allow a contradiction or paradox, you can prove about anything you want. Positing the existence of an omnipotent, sentient, all-powerful being as an axiom of any system of logic and thought will necessarily result in a system that can be used to prove anything whatsoever. So even though most believers might be considered "moderate", religion can always be used as an excuse for about any crazy thought you have.
Skeptics and atheists, on the other hand, will usually require more rational logic, facts and proof before believing you.
Unless they're lunatics/crazy, in which case your religious beliefs (or absence thereof) will not change the results much.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.