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Thousands of Muslims Protest 'Age of Mockery' At Google's London Headquarters
cold fjord writes "A large protest planned by as many as 800 imams was held today at Google's London headquarters to protest the video, 'The Innocence of Muslims,' which is available on Google's subsidiary YouTube. There may have been as many as 10,000 protesters in what is said to be the first of several planned protests. From the story: 'Speeches by more than a dozen imams . . . urged Muslims to honor the name of the Prophet and not to back down in the face of Google's continuing reluctance to act, and were met with passionate cries of "God is Great" and "Mohammad is the Prophet of God" in Arabic. . . One of the speakers. . . told The Daily Telegraph: "Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorized 1.6 billion people." A YouTube spokesperson said: "We work hard to create a community everyone can enjoy and which also enables people to express different opinions. "This can be a challenge because what's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere. This video — which is widely available on the Web — is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube."'"
I appreciate google's for their stance in not taking down this video. I won't be watching it, heard enough about it to know it's dumb. Muslims are upset? Like other religious people have had to learn, not everyone in life believes what they believe. They need to get past their upsetness over the video, it's just one angry guy's creation. Protest all you want in non -violent, non-hurtful ways, we should all have that right.
Actually, it is. This whole thing only kicked off because an Egyptian satellite channel broadcast excerpts from the video (thier motives should be as much in question as the producers of the video, IMO). Do you really think such a poorly produced, pointless video would ever have gone viral without some mainstream media help?
Then you will be more than happy to set the example by going back to your ancestral homelands to deal with all of the imams who preach hate and violence.
And to my fellow Americans, if you make any attempt to form a moral equivocation between what they preach about religious minorities (terms that are lifted often literally out of Nazi propaganda) and preaching against gay marriage and other weak sauce like that, then you are rightly regarded as a fellow traveler with these censorious cretins by every liberty-loving American.
Maybe I missed it but I don't recall 800 imams congregating in London to protest about the shooting of a fourteen-year old girl by Taleban psychopaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai
Protest videos of "unbelievers" being beheaded?
Yep, the "terrorists" wanted to bully the world with that videotaped beheading. It didn't work, most people were not 'terrorized'. Revolted, saddened at the cruelness, yes. The bullies lost on that one, because we weren't scared. A terrorist is like a tiny little dog who constantly barks and nips at a much larger dog.
When people claim to be a representative of god we don't hold them to the norms of the day - they should be showing us the true morality of their god. In the words of Stephen Fry (on a different religion and about slavery, but it's the same point): "what is the point of the Catholic Church if it says we couldn't know better because nobody else did, then what are you for?" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGFS_hkHfCc
Sure if he's just an average man for his time we can't really expect him to do anything but what is normal for his time. However, that also means he has no special claim on morality or wisdom so we have no reason to accept any of his religious and moral claims.
I have a brother who is living in the middle east. This is profoundly true. The number of Muslims who drink and use prostitutes is incredibly shocking. What my brother learned while living there is that lying and hypocrisy are central tenets of Islam.
Of course, its no accident the middle east is widely considered the center of human trafficking and the sex trades.
They'll have a legitimate argument when they spend as much time standing up against real terrorists who rape and murder women and children. Or even stand up against suicide bombing. The fact is, they all say they are against it, but passively support all of this shit. Seemingly its only bad when their own terrorism comes home to murder their own people. It was a great fucking experiment so long as they were only murdering westerners.
Someone, somewhere, every day, protests somewhere in London about something.
Every Wednesday for years, motorcyclists gathered by the thousands on London streets to protest about the parking facilities for them in Central London (an inherently over-populated and over-crowded place where you will NEVER park sensibly). Nobody really cared.
This might have made the telegraph but I've seen no mention of it in any other media. Hell, the BBC has next-to-no news on it today and it's not on their website.
And, literally, every single day some group will protest in London. Hell, we have areas of London parks SET ASIDE for people to soap-box from and protest, it's that common. What did make the news today? Two girls handcuffing themselves in St Paul's Cathedral at protest of the churches support for the banks that brought the economic crisis.
Any mention of Muslim protest? None.
It's a non-story. Really. And, more importantly, 99% of the Muslim people in the capital (let alone the country or the world) might be condemning such protests for all I know.
People will literally protest about anything in London (and even come to London to protest, not realising that it makes your issue seem small in comparison to all the other protests that commuters have to walk through every day), from the devolution of Scotland to the petrol prices to the way that someone looked at them last Thursday. It means nothing.
You want my attention to this issue that offends you? Start negotiating, not dictating.
Perhaps that's equally important -- those demonstrations are made by individuals using their own moral compasses and NOT being told what to do by their Islamic leaders.
Coming down on Malala's side isn't exactly brain surgery, but if this is any sign of a Pakistani surge in secularism and thinking for one's own self, I'll take it!!!
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
It seems Muslims, like a lot of Americans, don't understand what terrorism is. Terrorism isn't hurting someone's feelings. It isn't some lone gunman going on a rampage. Terrorism is an organized violent movement, targeting civilians, in order to intimidate the population into affecting desired policies.
There's a lot of moral equivalency being thrown around. Those assholes have a lot of audacity taking to the streets in protest considering that Malala Yousafzai was shot for speaking out against extremists. They can't bitch about hurt feelings or the even West in that case. That was a Pakistani girl speaking up about local problems. But then I suppose they'll blame "liberal" Western influences.
I'm reminded of how a lot of these guys keep dredging up ancient history, the Crusades, to justify their aggression towards the West. What relevancy does that have to anyone? Europeans have long since moved on. The West can't be blamed for violence that occurred 800 years. Nevermind that both sides in the Crusades were equally belligerent and it could be argued that Muslims started it all. Middle East had profoundly influential centers of learning until Muslim aggressors showed up and decimated it all, no thanks to evil Europeans.
By all standards we have more to be upset about than they do.
He is a revered figure in Tamil Nadu. He is credited with bringing printing press to the region, compiling the first dictionary, the first thesaurus, first compedium of numbered collections (like four directions, four seasons, seven notes, five senses, etc), and the rhyming dictionary. He also wrote hymns in Tamil. Wrote extensively about the mores and customs of the land to help the other missionaries who would follow him.
Whatever happened to the satire of Hindu swamis? It lives on. Still very much in the circulation. I heard most of those stories from my grandma as bed time stories. A culture that is so self assured and so self confident it was able to laugh at a good joke. It is not a surprise, despite his great literary achievements and reverence, in his core mission of religious conversion, he hardly made a dent. Less than 1% of the Tamils converted to Christianity in his times. Even now Christian population is just 2 or 3 % in Tamil Nadu.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Europe is very much an area of great political ignorance.
They bet on the Euro... thinking you could have a monetary union without a common fiscal or political union. Well, anyone with half a brain could have told you that wasn't going to work. But they want and did it anyways... and now they're finding out maybe you do need a common fiscal and political union if you plan on being in a monetary union. Hey. maybe that was the plan of some European bureau/technocrats anyways.
In the area of 'multiculturalism'... Europe showed more great ignorance. Perhaps even more ignorant than their choice in the Euro. They bought into the idea that you don't need any common cultural policy to have a common political policy. Basically, just throw welfare money at people, and you can let people believe and do whatever they want. Just make sure they don't kill people.
It hasn't worked out very well and it is poised to get worse. Ghettoized communities. Imaams and religious leaders who have no allegiance to Western values or the nation.
Forget about putting people on trial for treason or anything along those lines... just bloody well teaching people the values of your society is not even done in Europe. Schools don't teach what it means to be British. A reason why many British youth aren't even British any more. But it's worse when you have an organized group (Islamic religious leaders) who to 'teach' the youth their values and your society does nothing to push your values.
There used to be a time that to be considered a citizen of a country, you have to subscribe to the values of that country within a degree. At least, the values of that society were pushed heavily in the schools and society.
Just like you can't run a monetary union without some common fiscal/political union... you can't run a national union without some common cultural/values.
Europe will be brought back to reality in one way or another. Not that North America doesn't suffer from similar issues... it's just not as bad and delusional as Europe.
Unless you saw the initial release you've been robbed of about 20 seconds of python hilarity.
Specifically the end of the first Jewish suicide squad scene. I've got the script book (somewhere) that I bought when the film was first released. It includes the missing seconds, so I know I'm not just imagining them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'