In terms of their ubiquity in modern marketing, QR Codes are a slightly annoying solution in search of a problem; but as an engineering approach to the sort of problem the OP described, they're fantastic. There are many free and open source QR Code generation utilities and libraries, and the QR Code spec itself was patented, but freely licensed for public use by the Toyota subsidiary that invented it.
QR codes include error correction, and can encode binary data on the order of a hundred times the density of a regular bar code.
Bill Clinton was let off the hook by the Senate, which apparently viewed it as OK for him to perjure himself, reasoning that the same law shouldn't apply to [a liberal Democratic] President as applies to other people. Remember Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame affair? Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence, but Libby lost his career, paid a huge fine, and remains a felon today. But that doesn't apply to liberal democrats. This unhealthy phenomenon is back in spades today, when nobody wants to rock the boat for the Obama administration. (Probably because they would be called racist for doing so?) So we have things like the Fast and Furious scandal, Obama's war in Libya without Congressional approval (most likely an impeachable offense right there), the Benghazi abandonment of our people and rather absurd subsequent cover-up, the Secretary of HHS doing illegal campaigning, etc.
Probably the Obama administration has been bemused at how much they've gotten away with, and of course each step emboldens them to go even further. At some point they may go too far (maybe they already have), and a lot of people are going to be unhappy with the fallout.
Marriage gives you certain benefits - taxes, insurance rates, access rights, etc - that no other 'grouping' does.
You're never going to get government out of all of the things that marriage gives benefits to.
Rights are given by the government. If marriage gives you extra rights, then the government says what those are.
Your phrasing was clumsy, e.g. in the American system government is only supposed to defend your inherent natural rights, so it's not like the government is giving you new rights out of the goodness of its heart. However, your meaning was spot on. There are many areas of life such as adoption, child custody disputes, and the others you reference that are profoundly affected by marriage, which the legislatures and courts must necessarily arbitrate in some fashion.
And I join you in disagreeing with @ganjadude saying "Let the churches deal with marriage" also for the following reason: In the Christian Bible, marriage was a civil matter. There is no verse anywhere that says anything about a church or pastor officiating marriages, which were organized by families in Bible times. Church marriages were a relatively modern invention of the catholic churches which declared marriage a sacrament and thus tried to assert inappropriate control over the whole of society. It's kind of funny that there are Protestants today who realize as an abstract idea that the catholic sacrament of marriage is bunk, but who superstitiously still think that their wedding has to be performed by a minister. Here's a real Bible wedding ceremony for you: "Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."
All you have to do is look at predictions from 10 and 20 years ago to see what a disaster would befall us even right now in 2013. That the predictions turned out to be overblown and wrong is missing the point. Now, how can we redistribute some of that carbon-associated wealth?
That's too strong. I hope I don't hate Muslims as people. In fact, those Muslims I personally know I'm actually rather fond of... (which I know, and I'll save you the trouble: "some of my best friends are black people" yada yada"...)
You are smart enough to avoid the spittle spewing crazy rhetoric but you still use the same arguments that trivialize the vast majority of muslims who aren't crazy and put the blame for the ones who are crazy on their religion.
But.. but... it is their religion. Again, there are many Muslims whose extremism is derived directly from their revered religious texts and reinforced by the preaching of their religious clerics. To say it's not from their religion is disingenuous. To say it's not from their religion because there happen to be nice Muslims who reject those religious teachings, is merely playing with words. To say that there is only one true Islam, which is the peaceful one, seems arrogant and is clearly debatable, since millions of Muslims disagree with that.
Every once in a while you let your own crazy slip out - like how your apologia for daniel pipes brushed over the entire issue - that what the fundies think matters. When the SPLC calls the guy out, the argument is pretty much over.
The SPLC has become sort of a joke, as even many liberals know. It does some good things, but the main purpose for its existence for a long time now has been to raise funds for itself. I am in the habit of double-checking things they say, and slapping their name in this conversation is no substitute for clarifying exactly what Daniel Pipes wrote that's objectionable.
No not "foisted," [snip your various interesting thoughts which I appreciate you thinking through and typing out...]
Furthermore, I've noticed that you have strong objections to certain facts, and seem to prefer that people simply pretend those facts don't exist.
No, I have a strong objection to your mis-characterization of certain facts. Numbers without context are meaningless - your context is that of ignorance of and is biased towards bigotry. You've never been to a mosque and you get your information from guys like Daniel Pipes a hater and a war-monger.
Sorry, but if the percentage of people in Egypt who believe apostates should be executed is anywhere close to 80%, that's not a meaningless number. And I disagree with your characterization of Daniel Pipes, at least from what I've read.
I strongly agree with everything you said in the last paragraph.
Then why all the focus on islam?
Why not? Are there certain jerks in the world who are off limits to criticism?
Come on man, linking to danielpipes? That's one of the top 5 muslim-hater websites.
After your contributions to this thread, you don't have much credibility to say who is a "muslim-hater" and who isn't.
He's one of those nutjobs who lost his shit claiming Obama was a former muslim with all kinds of massive geo-political implications.
I vaguely recall information on Pipes' website like what you describe, but I don't recall it being a "nutjob" article. My recollection is that Barack Obama Sr. was a Muslim, and therefore according to fundamentalist Islamic law, Obama Jr. was considered a Muslim at birth, and would not be allowed to be of any other religion. Fortunately, Obama was born in the USA, where we let people choose their own religions. It's not clear what you disagree with from that information, and I've never read anything by Daniel Pipes claiming Obama is secretly harboring Muslim beliefs in his heart and waiting to unleash a horrible caliphate coup within America. Was that what you thought Pipes said? (If so, link please.)
country that held to modern Western "hippie Islam"... As you noted, some Muslim majority nations are leaning that way, which is wonderful.
Wow, way to profoundly misunderstand the situation. Countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakstan aren't even remotely close to being westernized there ain't nothing progressive about them.
As you noted elsewhere, even the most Western of Western nations haven't acted so Western even in the last century, so it's a relative term. But nonetheless, almost all nations on earth right now have some key elements of Western civilization, and most are moving in the direction of having more. But it's a vague concept and debatable in many ways, and I don't feel like rabbit trailing on it.
They don't have much religious craziness because the dictators there never needed to cultivate it in the first place,
There it is again: your idea that religious craziness is foisted on people by dictators. I'm not sure that's the case in most instances. My understanding is that Iran is kind of like this, but many other nations haven't fit that mold.
The whole concept of "western hippie islam" is so much arrogance built on ignorance. You keep saying shit like that you are surprised people judge you a bigot?
I don't think anything you could say would surprise me. Furthermore, I've noticed that you have strong objections to certain facts, and seem to prefer that people simply pretend those facts don't exist.
(Ten percent of a nation wanting to kill me for insulting their prophet is still enough to justify my pointing a finger and shrilly screeching about them, though.)
There will always be assholes. You want to point fingers look at Russia - 30% of the country thinks sending Pussy Riot to hard labor camps notorious for frequent and regular rapes was appropriate and only 5% think they shouldn't have been punished at all. If the death penalty was legal in Russia some of those 30% would surely have thought that appropriate too. Until 1856 the death penalty for homosexuality was basically law of the land in the USA. Islam is nothing special when it comes to nasty conservatives.
I strongly agree with everything you said in the last paragraph.
But I didn't make any generalizations about everybody who calls themselves Muslim, but rather specifically about Islamists
And just WTF is an "islamist?" When you hang your hat on stats that imply entire countries are "islamist" then whatever your definition is, it ain't precise enough to be meaningful.
Like most or all words in the English language, it can be used with different shades of meaning, so it's important to clarify how you're using the term. I think the most formal definition would focus on Islamism as simultaneously religious and political movement(s) to promote government systems that makes non-Muslims into second class citizens and institute the old forms of sharia law. I tend to use the term specifically for those who want to see the nasty elements of sharia law enacted (mistreatment of women, gays, non-Muslims; death penalty for people who change religions or non-Abrahamic religious affiliates who refuse to convert; disallowing free speech about politics or religion, and that kind of thing).
Honestly, if I lived in a Muslim majority country that held to modern Western "hippie Islam", that just found ways to reinterpret the teachings of Mohammed into the same good ideas that came from Jesus or Buddha or Thomas Paine or MLK, that actually doesn't sound so bad to me. As you noted, some Muslim majority nations are leaning that way, which is wonderful. (Ten percent of a nation wanting to kill me for insulting their prophet is still enough to justify my pointing a finger and shrilly screeching about them, though.)
Unfortunately, the effort to equally represent women in science usually ends up devaluing the other, more important work that they do... raising a good family. Society has a greater need for mothers than scientists.
Insofar as your meaning is that "society has a greater need for mothers [and fathers] than scientists", I agree. A single income, two parent home is a better ideal than the whole dual income, farm-the-kid-out-to-daycare situation. I personally don't care if it's a housewife or house husband -- nobody cares about your own kids as much as you do -- or as much as you can if you try.
I wonder if part of the anger that your post seems to have triggered among mods is that you specifically said that children need mothers. It seems to be a point of strictly enforced dogma in politically correct discourse these days to say that children doesn't really need women in their lives (see the debate surrounding gay marriage). If you say that it's best for a child to have female mother, then you are generally considered a terrible person. At least that's what I've seen. (I'm a terrible person, by the way.)
Consider the same poll which found that in Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkey there were 93%, 96% and 89% of the populace, respectively, who opposed the death penalty for leaving islam. How does that fit with your characterization? Poorly, it seems to me.
But I didn't make any generalizations about everybody who calls themselves Muslim, but rather specifically about Islamists, so I'd say it fits my views pretty well. My clarification on that point was sufficient that any misunderstanding on your part is likely intentional. However, _you_ said that Islamists are a tiny minority, and basically just an odd handful of despotic dictators enforcing unwanted religious extremism on the otherwise good folks in their countries. Do you grasp how many millions of people live in Egypt? That's what I was talking about earlier when I said a substantial fraction of humanity. We're not talking ancient history, we're not talking a few hundred. In the immortal words of LBJ, "I'm talkin' P. E. E. P. U. L! I'm talkin' folks!"
Fundamentalist Islam is no less "Islamic" than modern liberal Islam.
Well at least you've dropped the charade that you aren't here to tell muslims you know better than they do about their religion.
The primary answer to that question, as you'll recall is that I'm happy to tell all Muslims that they follow a false religion. And as far as whether fundamentalist Islam or modern hippie Islam is more true to the teachings of Mohammed, I believe I made it clear that it was something that "could be argued", and further "could be argued both ways". You were the one who implied that there is only one true Islam, by which of course you meant the "nice" one, remember? I, on the other hand, acknowledge great and wide diversity in the false religion of Islam.
So why do you give (some of) the imams in let's say Chicago more credit than those in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Egypt? Do you know more than the latter about their religion? Based on some of your words like "co-opted", you seem very confident that fundamentalist Islam is not true Islam. Did you get that idea via a rational process, or is it just what you want to believe?
Consider this Pew Research poll, which found that in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, there were 84%, 86%, and 76% of the populace, respectively, who favored the death penalty for leaving Islam. How does that fit with your characterization? Poorly, it seems to me. Fundamentalist Islam is no less "Islamic" than modern liberal Islam. They are both Islamic religions and can both make very credible-sounding arguments from their religious texts. Recall that Mohammed wasn't above lopping off people's heads for trivial reasons.
A phrase i've not used nor intimated, while you wrote: "the actual core religion"
You are, of course, misquoting me. The rest of that sentence was "actual core religion (not a perversion thereof) of a substantial fraction of humanity", which doesn't contradict my point that there are some people's religions out there help them keep their noses clean, while other people's religion is existentially evil in its effects.
If you either apostatize or insult the so-called prophet in Riyadh or Tehran or many other places, then the local religion says you must be put to death. When the twin towers fell, some Muslims rejoiced all around the world, because of their individual religious beliefs, i.e. their religion. Note that I wasn't talking about the religion of Joe "friends-with-the-local-rabbi" the imam in Chicago. As I said, there are many Islamic religions (if you like), and many of them stink very badly.
So typical of liberals to acknowledge only the parts of the world they want to believe in. Such as that jihad only means a struggle of the inner psyche. The fact that there is diversity in the world is ironically overlooked. But it's a dirty little secret that most of your liberals today actually hate diversity. But that's another can of worms.
And that is the last response you'll get from me in this thread, your brand of crazy is never worth the effort to engage with.
That is a typical liberal response to indisputable facts - turn to ad hominem and hope all the unpleasantness of being contradicted goes away as soon as possible.
P.S. @jay-wren: Notice that it is YOU who are making claims about what is the "one true Islam", or that such a thing even exists. I acknowledge diversity. Why don't you?
Whoop! There it is. The only true muslim is a psycho-muslim. Just like the westboro baptist church are the only true Christians.
Nah, that's not what I said. If you want my real personal opinion, there isn't any "true Islam", because Islam is a false religion. Beyond that, you could argue about which factions of Islam best represent the teachings of Mohammed, but that's a conversation that isn't going to make anybody happy. Suffice it to say that in every Muslim majority nation today, you should be very nervous if you convert away from Islam, because the unambiguous teaching handed down from antiquity is that you should be killed for your infidelity.
My point is that the religion of Mecca and Riyadh is a bad, murderous religion. That Islam is bad. Okay? If the Islam of Denver or New York City is benign, that's wonderful. But there are many Islams. And many or most of them that we find overseas are bad religions in terms of their nasty teachings and social effects.
There is always going to be more work to do, because for one thing, there will always be disaffected young people (of all faiths or lack thereof). With that said, it is good to hear your very positive anecdotes on the matter. Cheers, and thanks for a generally civil discussion.
Again, we're talking about the American Muslim community, which doesn't tolerate Wahhabism. I've been to dozens of mosques in a number of states and have yet to see any Wahhabism.
You're an ignorant and bigoted idiot because FBI Director Robert Mueller has credited the American Muslim community with helping catch the bad guys; over 60% of all terrorism arrests since 2001 came about by tips from the Muslim community.
That has happened some, and it's great, but the Boston bombing indicates that there are still too many cases where it doesn't work that way. In those cases, either the mosque attendees need to "rise to the occasion" as I said above, or we need to aggressively wiretap -- to be clear, not wiretap just any mosque, only where we see smoke so to speak.
Wahabi literature isn't "widely available," you obviously haven't been to a single mosque and are just engaging in ignorant fearmongering.
Wait a minute, I thought you said above that there were all these terrorism arrests happening in Muslim communities with the aid of mosque attendees. So are they arresting non-Muslim terrorists who just happen to wander into mosques and be reported?/facepalm
And yes, Wahhabi literature is widely available. You can sit down at a kindergarten in Mecca or Riyadh and hear this stuff. And the Saudis are spending their $$$ to promulgate it widely in the USA. Good grief, do you want me to google it for you?
Yeah, that's totally why american muslims distrust the FBI.
Man, they sure are dummies to think the FBI was spying on them because of pork!
Actually, the FBI was finding and disrupting Islamists who expressed violent intentions, and the mosque surveillance program was terminated for reasons of political correctness despite the fact that it was finding bad guys.
I have a problem with bugging mosques because they are mosques, because that's a problem under the first amendment. However, if radical activity is detected in a mosque (which it has been in many, many mosques in America -- see my point about distribution and discussion of Wahhabi literature), then they become fair game, politically incorrect or not. Same thing for Christian churches where people are talking about engaging in violent criminal acts or talk approvingly of violence. If the investigation goes through all the proper requirements with a judge, then I say wiretap those people.
That is, in fact, the norm rather than the exception.
To some degree, but not enough yet.
No, you just told us that you don't know how liberals think.
My observation is that some liberals, when they encounter a statement against Islamism, respond with knee-jerk defense of "Islam" as this idealized, peaceful religion that is cruelly maligned for no reason whatsoever by mentally deficient redneck American Christians. They can't get it into their minds that the actual core religion (not a perversion thereof) of a substantial fraction of humanity wants to kill us. Case in point: a professor at a local university who regularly travels to Pakistan for international peace-oriented academic conferences. He and I have corresponded at length in letters to the editor and email, and I've been disgusted by his failure to see the obvious, for example a book by a top legal scholar and judge in Pakistan that acknowledges that the only reason Muslim nations shouldn't war against the non-Muslim world is that it isn't practical right now. In other words, al-Qaida is merely foolhardy and jumping the gun, not morally wrong in their objective of militarily defeating the non-Muslim world.
That kind of blindness is pervasive in liberal culture, for reasons I can't really understand. Protecting the feelings of peacefully-intentioned American Muslims is fine, but when I criticize Islamism, I'm not talking about peacefully intentioned Muslims. So it's sort of a red herring fallacy liberals use.
Really glad to hear that it was Jewish Americans who turned the crazies in. Hopefully many of the mosques in America that encounter radical and/or terrorism sympathetic persons will rise to the occasion and do the same when they hear something actionable, instead of waiting for the government to find the bad guys without assistance. And for knee-jerk liberals who are about to pile onto me: yes, Wahhabi and other radical literature is very widely available and promulgated in American Islamic circles. The FBI wasn't spying on mosques to eavesdrop on people agonizing over temptation to eat bacon. And yes: I do personally know some Christian "crazies", and if I ever hear something actionable (i.e. dangerous and illegal) I will also call law enforcement. (Did I dodge the knee jerk liberal piling-on?)
can't people monitor their internet connection and be able to tell when they're being spied on?
I'm not competent enough to do this but I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to record the IP address that unauthorized data is being sent to, along with the nature of the data itself.
A competent hacker can hide his identity by relaying his connection through multiple other servers, so you often can't determine the origin of even black hat spying. The NSA has resources that hackers don't, such as listening filters installed at many of the internet's core communication hubs. So they can spy on basically everybody and nobody (except the big telcos) knows exactly how it's done.
Slashdot Mirror
In terms of their ubiquity in modern marketing, QR Codes are a slightly annoying solution in search of a problem; but as an engineering approach to the sort of problem the OP described, they're fantastic. There are many free and open source QR Code generation utilities and libraries, and the QR Code spec itself was patented, but freely licensed for public use by the Toyota subsidiary that invented it.
QR codes include error correction, and can encode binary data on the order of a hundred times the density of a regular bar code.
Bill Clinton was let off the hook by the Senate, which apparently viewed it as OK for him to perjure himself, reasoning that the same law shouldn't apply to [a liberal Democratic] President as applies to other people. Remember Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame affair? Bush commuted Libby's prison sentence, but Libby lost his career, paid a huge fine, and remains a felon today. But that doesn't apply to liberal democrats. This unhealthy phenomenon is back in spades today, when nobody wants to rock the boat for the Obama administration. (Probably because they would be called racist for doing so?) So we have things like the Fast and Furious scandal, Obama's war in Libya without Congressional approval (most likely an impeachable offense right there), the Benghazi abandonment of our people and rather absurd subsequent cover-up, the Secretary of HHS doing illegal campaigning, etc.
Probably the Obama administration has been bemused at how much they've gotten away with, and of course each step emboldens them to go even further. At some point they may go too far (maybe they already have), and a lot of people are going to be unhappy with the fallout.
Marriage gives you certain benefits - taxes, insurance rates, access rights, etc - that no other 'grouping' does.
You're never going to get government out of all of the things that marriage gives benefits to.
Rights are given by the government. If marriage gives you extra rights, then the government says what those are.
Your phrasing was clumsy, e.g. in the American system government is only supposed to defend your inherent natural rights, so it's not like the government is giving you new rights out of the goodness of its heart. However, your meaning was spot on. There are many areas of life such as adoption, child custody disputes, and the others you reference that are profoundly affected by marriage, which the legislatures and courts must necessarily arbitrate in some fashion.
And I join you in disagreeing with @ganjadude saying "Let the churches deal with marriage" also for the following reason: In the Christian Bible, marriage was a civil matter. There is no verse anywhere that says anything about a church or pastor officiating marriages, which were organized by families in Bible times. Church marriages were a relatively modern invention of the catholic churches which declared marriage a sacrament and thus tried to assert inappropriate control over the whole of society. It's kind of funny that there are Protestants today who realize as an abstract idea that the catholic sacrament of marriage is bunk, but who superstitiously still think that their wedding has to be performed by a minister. Here's a real Bible wedding ceremony for you: "Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he married Rebekah. So she became his wife, and he loved her; and Isaac was comforted after his mother's death."
All you have to do is look at predictions from 10 and 20 years ago to see what a disaster would befall us even right now in 2013. That the predictions turned out to be overblown and wrong is missing the point. Now, how can we redistribute some of that carbon-associated wealth?
Ouch. This is going to leave a mark. (Not that I'm unhappy about it.)
Enjoyed the exchange. We probably have less real disagreement than either of us would be willing to admit. Cheers, dude!
I say YOU are a muslim hater.
That's too strong. I hope I don't hate Muslims as people. In fact, those Muslims I personally know I'm actually rather fond of... (which I know, and I'll save you the trouble: "some of my best friends are black people" yada yada"...)
You are smart enough to avoid the spittle spewing crazy rhetoric but you still use the same arguments that trivialize the vast majority of muslims who aren't crazy and put the blame for the ones who are crazy on their religion.
But.. but... it is their religion. Again, there are many Muslims whose extremism is derived directly from their revered religious texts and reinforced by the preaching of their religious clerics. To say it's not from their religion is disingenuous. To say it's not from their religion because there happen to be nice Muslims who reject those religious teachings, is merely playing with words. To say that there is only one true Islam, which is the peaceful one, seems arrogant and is clearly debatable, since millions of Muslims disagree with that.
Every once in a while you let your own crazy slip out - like how your apologia for daniel pipes brushed over the entire issue - that what the fundies think matters. When the SPLC calls the guy out, the argument is pretty much over.
The SPLC has become sort of a joke, as even many liberals know. It does some good things, but the main purpose for its existence for a long time now has been to raise funds for itself. I am in the habit of double-checking things they say, and slapping their name in this conversation is no substitute for clarifying exactly what Daniel Pipes wrote that's objectionable.
No not "foisted," [snip your various interesting thoughts which I appreciate you thinking through and typing out...]
Furthermore, I've noticed that you have strong objections to certain facts, and seem to prefer that people simply pretend those facts don't exist.
No, I have a strong objection to your mis-characterization of certain facts. Numbers without context are meaningless - your context is that of ignorance of and is biased towards bigotry. You've never been to a mosque and you get your information from guys like Daniel Pipes a hater and a war-monger.
Sorry, but if the percentage of people in Egypt who believe apostates should be executed is anywhere close to 80%, that's not a meaningless number. And I disagree with your characterization of Daniel Pipes, at least from what I've read.
I strongly agree with everything you said in the last paragraph.
Then why all the focus on islam?
Why not? Are there certain jerks in the world who are off limits to criticism?
Come on man, linking to danielpipes? That's one of the top 5 muslim-hater websites.
After your contributions to this thread, you don't have much credibility to say who is a "muslim-hater" and who isn't.
He's one of those nutjobs who lost his shit claiming Obama was a former muslim with all kinds of massive geo-political implications.
I vaguely recall information on Pipes' website like what you describe, but I don't recall it being a "nutjob" article. My recollection is that Barack Obama Sr. was a Muslim, and therefore according to fundamentalist Islamic law, Obama Jr. was considered a Muslim at birth, and would not be allowed to be of any other religion. Fortunately, Obama was born in the USA, where we let people choose their own religions. It's not clear what you disagree with from that information, and I've never read anything by Daniel Pipes claiming Obama is secretly harboring Muslim beliefs in his heart and waiting to unleash a horrible caliphate coup within America. Was that what you thought Pipes said? (If so, link please.)
country that held to modern Western "hippie Islam" ... As you noted, some Muslim majority nations are leaning that way, which is wonderful.
Wow, way to profoundly misunderstand the situation. Countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakstan aren't even remotely close to being westernized there ain't nothing progressive about them.
As you noted elsewhere, even the most Western of Western nations haven't acted so Western even in the last century, so it's a relative term. But nonetheless, almost all nations on earth right now have some key elements of Western civilization, and most are moving in the direction of having more. But it's a vague concept and debatable in many ways, and I don't feel like rabbit trailing on it.
They don't have much religious craziness because the dictators there never needed to cultivate it in the first place,
There it is again: your idea that religious craziness is foisted on people by dictators. I'm not sure that's the case in most instances. My understanding is that Iran is kind of like this, but many other nations haven't fit that mold.
The whole concept of "western hippie islam" is so much arrogance built on ignorance. You keep saying shit like that you are surprised people judge you a bigot?
I don't think anything you could say would surprise me. Furthermore, I've noticed that you have strong objections to certain facts, and seem to prefer that people simply pretend those facts don't exist.
(Ten percent of a nation wanting to kill me for insulting their prophet is still enough to justify my pointing a finger and shrilly screeching about them, though.)
There will always be assholes. You want to point fingers look at Russia - 30% of the country thinks sending Pussy Riot to hard labor camps notorious for frequent and regular rapes was appropriate and only 5% think they shouldn't have been punished at all. If the death penalty was legal in Russia some of those 30% would surely have thought that appropriate too. Until 1856 the death penalty for homosexuality was basically law of the land in the USA. Islam is nothing special when it comes to nasty conservatives.
I strongly agree with everything you said in the last paragraph.
But I didn't make any generalizations about everybody who calls themselves Muslim, but rather specifically about Islamists
And just WTF is an "islamist?" When you hang your hat on stats that imply entire countries are "islamist" then whatever your definition is, it ain't precise enough to be meaningful.
Like most or all words in the English language, it can be used with different shades of meaning, so it's important to clarify how you're using the term. I think the most formal definition would focus on Islamism as simultaneously religious and political movement(s) to promote government systems that makes non-Muslims into second class citizens and institute the old forms of sharia law. I tend to use the term specifically for those who want to see the nasty elements of sharia law enacted (mistreatment of women, gays, non-Muslims; death penalty for people who change religions or non-Abrahamic religious affiliates who refuse to convert; disallowing free speech about politics or religion, and that kind of thing).
Honestly, if I lived in a Muslim majority country that held to modern Western "hippie Islam", that just found ways to reinterpret the teachings of Mohammed into the same good ideas that came from Jesus or Buddha or Thomas Paine or MLK, that actually doesn't sound so bad to me. As you noted, some Muslim majority nations are leaning that way, which is wonderful. (Ten percent of a nation wanting to kill me for insulting their prophet is still enough to justify my pointing a finger and shrilly screeching about them, though.)
Unfortunately, the effort to equally represent women in science usually ends up devaluing the other, more important work that they do... raising a good family. Society has a greater need for mothers than scientists.
Insofar as your meaning is that "society has a greater need for mothers [and fathers] than scientists", I agree. A single income, two parent home is a better ideal than the whole dual income, farm-the-kid-out-to-daycare situation. I personally don't care if it's a housewife or house husband -- nobody cares about your own kids as much as you do -- or as much as you can if you try.
I wonder if part of the anger that your post seems to have triggered among mods is that you specifically said that children need mothers. It seems to be a point of strictly enforced dogma in politically correct discourse these days to say that children doesn't really need women in their lives (see the debate surrounding gay marriage). If you say that it's best for a child to have female mother, then you are generally considered a terrible person. At least that's what I've seen. (I'm a terrible person, by the way.)
but when I criticize Islamism, I'm not talking about peacefully intentioned Muslims.
Then maybe you should fix the problem and stop using overgeneralized terminology?
If you would pay more careful attention to what you are reading, then there wouldn't be a problem. Now run along now, my aggrieved little AC.
Consider the same poll which found that in Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and Turkey there were 93%, 96% and 89% of the populace, respectively, who opposed the death penalty for leaving islam. How does that fit with your characterization? Poorly, it seems to me.
But I didn't make any generalizations about everybody who calls themselves Muslim, but rather specifically about Islamists, so I'd say it fits my views pretty well. My clarification on that point was sufficient that any misunderstanding on your part is likely intentional. However, _you_ said that Islamists are a tiny minority, and basically just an odd handful of despotic dictators enforcing unwanted religious extremism on the otherwise good folks in their countries. Do you grasp how many millions of people live in Egypt? That's what I was talking about earlier when I said a substantial fraction of humanity. We're not talking ancient history, we're not talking a few hundred. In the immortal words of LBJ, "I'm talkin' P. E. E. P. U. L! I'm talkin' folks!"
Fundamentalist Islam is no less "Islamic" than modern liberal Islam.
Well at least you've dropped the charade that you aren't here to tell muslims you know better than they do about their religion.
The primary answer to that question, as you'll recall is that I'm happy to tell all Muslims that they follow a false religion. And as far as whether fundamentalist Islam or modern hippie Islam is more true to the teachings of Mohammed, I believe I made it clear that it was something that "could be argued", and further "could be argued both ways". You were the one who implied that there is only one true Islam, by which of course you meant the "nice" one, remember? I, on the other hand, acknowledge great and wide diversity in the false religion of Islam.
So why do you give (some of) the imams in let's say Chicago more credit than those in Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Egypt? Do you know more than the latter about their religion? Based on some of your words like "co-opted", you seem very confident that fundamentalist Islam is not true Islam. Did you get that idea via a rational process, or is it just what you want to believe?
Consider this Pew Research poll, which found that in Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan, there were 84%, 86%, and 76% of the populace, respectively, who favored the death penalty for leaving Islam. How does that fit with your characterization? Poorly, it seems to me. Fundamentalist Islam is no less "Islamic" than modern liberal Islam. They are both Islamic religions and can both make very credible-sounding arguments from their religious texts. Recall that Mohammed wasn't above lopping off people's heads for trivial reasons.
A phrase i've not used nor intimated, while you wrote: "the actual core religion"
You are, of course, misquoting me. The rest of that sentence was "actual core religion (not a perversion thereof) of a substantial fraction of humanity", which doesn't contradict my point that there are some people's religions out there help them keep their noses clean, while other people's religion is existentially evil in its effects.
If you either apostatize or insult the so-called prophet in Riyadh or Tehran or many other places, then the local religion says you must be put to death. When the twin towers fell, some Muslims rejoiced all around the world, because of their individual religious beliefs, i.e. their religion. Note that I wasn't talking about the religion of Joe "friends-with-the-local-rabbi" the imam in Chicago. As I said, there are many Islamic religions (if you like), and many of them stink very badly.
So typical of liberals to acknowledge only the parts of the world they want to believe in. Such as that jihad only means a struggle of the inner psyche. The fact that there is diversity in the world is ironically overlooked. But it's a dirty little secret that most of your liberals today actually hate diversity. But that's another can of worms.
And that is the last response you'll get from me in this thread, your brand of crazy is never worth the effort to engage with.
That is a typical liberal response to indisputable facts - turn to ad hominem and hope all the unpleasantness of being contradicted goes away as soon as possible.
P.S. @jay-wren: Notice that it is YOU who are making claims about what is the "one true Islam", or that such a thing even exists. I acknowledge diversity. Why don't you?
Whoop! There it is. The only true muslim is a psycho-muslim. Just like the westboro baptist church are the only true Christians.
Nah, that's not what I said. If you want my real personal opinion, there isn't any "true Islam", because Islam is a false religion. Beyond that, you could argue about which factions of Islam best represent the teachings of Mohammed, but that's a conversation that isn't going to make anybody happy. Suffice it to say that in every Muslim majority nation today, you should be very nervous if you convert away from Islam, because the unambiguous teaching handed down from antiquity is that you should be killed for your infidelity.
My point is that the religion of Mecca and Riyadh is a bad, murderous religion. That Islam is bad. Okay? If the Islam of Denver or New York City is benign, that's wonderful. But there are many Islams. And many or most of them that we find overseas are bad religions in terms of their nasty teachings and social effects.
There is always going to be more work to do, because for one thing, there will always be disaffected young people (of all faiths or lack thereof). With that said, it is good to hear your very positive anecdotes on the matter. Cheers, and thanks for a generally civil discussion.
Again, we're talking about the American Muslim community, which doesn't tolerate Wahhabism. I've been to dozens of mosques in a number of states and have yet to see any Wahhabism.
Maybe you just don't read or speak Arabic?
You're an ignorant and bigoted idiot because FBI Director Robert Mueller has credited the American Muslim community with helping catch the bad guys; over 60% of all terrorism arrests since 2001 came about by tips from the Muslim community.
That has happened some, and it's great, but the Boston bombing indicates that there are still too many cases where it doesn't work that way. In those cases, either the mosque attendees need to "rise to the occasion" as I said above, or we need to aggressively wiretap -- to be clear, not wiretap just any mosque, only where we see smoke so to speak.
Wahabi literature isn't "widely available," you obviously haven't been to a single mosque and are just engaging in ignorant fearmongering.
Wait a minute, I thought you said above that there were all these terrorism arrests happening in Muslim communities with the aid of mosque attendees. So are they arresting non-Muslim terrorists who just happen to wander into mosques and be reported? /facepalm
And yes, Wahhabi literature is widely available. You can sit down at a kindergarten in Mecca or Riyadh and hear this stuff. And the Saudis are spending their $$$ to promulgate it widely in the USA. Good grief, do you want me to google it for you?
Yeah, that's totally why american muslims distrust the FBI. Man, they sure are dummies to think the FBI was spying on them because of pork!
Actually, the FBI was finding and disrupting Islamists who expressed violent intentions, and the mosque surveillance program was terminated for reasons of political correctness despite the fact that it was finding bad guys.
I have a problem with bugging mosques because they are mosques, because that's a problem under the first amendment. However, if radical activity is detected in a mosque (which it has been in many, many mosques in America -- see my point about distribution and discussion of Wahhabi literature), then they become fair game, politically incorrect or not. Same thing for Christian churches where people are talking about engaging in violent criminal acts or talk approvingly of violence. If the investigation goes through all the proper requirements with a judge, then I say wiretap those people.
That is, in fact, the norm rather than the exception.
To some degree, but not enough yet.
No, you just told us that you don't know how liberals think.
My observation is that some liberals, when they encounter a statement against Islamism, respond with knee-jerk defense of "Islam" as this idealized, peaceful religion that is cruelly maligned for no reason whatsoever by mentally deficient redneck American Christians. They can't get it into their minds that the actual core religion (not a perversion thereof) of a substantial fraction of humanity wants to kill us. Case in point: a professor at a local university who regularly travels to Pakistan for international peace-oriented academic conferences. He and I have corresponded at length in letters to the editor and email, and I've been disgusted by his failure to see the obvious, for example a book by a top legal scholar and judge in Pakistan that acknowledges that the only reason Muslim nations shouldn't war against the non-Muslim world is that it isn't practical right now. In other words, al-Qaida is merely foolhardy and jumping the gun, not morally wrong in their objective of militarily defeating the non-Muslim world.
That kind of blindness is pervasive in liberal culture, for reasons I can't really understand. Protecting the feelings of peacefully-intentioned American Muslims is fine, but when I criticize Islamism, I'm not talking about peacefully intentioned Muslims. So it's sort of a red herring fallacy liberals use.
Really glad to hear that it was Jewish Americans who turned the crazies in. Hopefully many of the mosques in America that encounter radical and/or terrorism sympathetic persons will rise to the occasion and do the same when they hear something actionable, instead of waiting for the government to find the bad guys without assistance. And for knee-jerk liberals who are about to pile onto me: yes, Wahhabi and other radical literature is very widely available and promulgated in American Islamic circles. The FBI wasn't spying on mosques to eavesdrop on people agonizing over temptation to eat bacon. And yes: I do personally know some Christian "crazies", and if I ever hear something actionable (i.e. dangerous and illegal) I will also call law enforcement. (Did I dodge the knee jerk liberal piling-on?)
Them brigands'll filch your victuals and abscond apace from your ken.
Apparently you haven't rubbed shoulders with typical legislators and bureaucrats.
can't people monitor their internet connection and be able to tell when they're being spied on? I'm not competent enough to do this but I'd be surprised if there wasn't a way to record the IP address that unauthorized data is being sent to, along with the nature of the data itself.
A competent hacker can hide his identity by relaying his connection through multiple other servers, so you often can't determine the origin of even black hat spying. The NSA has resources that hackers don't, such as listening filters installed at many of the internet's core communication hubs. So they can spy on basically everybody and nobody (except the big telcos) knows exactly how it's done.