How do you get 'the majority' of Muslims, anyway? I suppose you heard it from someone who heard it from Fox news.
Or I've been studying the subject for several years on a daily basis.
I would assume that the majority *actually* are upset at the US (at least the government), not for religious reasons, but because we treat them like dirt.
And what about all those Muslims who are engaged in Jihad against non-American infidels in conflicts not influenced by the US? What about Jihad before America was even discovered? What about the Jihad in Europe?
They are furious at Isreal, not for being Jewish...
That's actually precisely the reason they're furious at them.
... but for displacing people through force or the threat of force and taking their land, occupying the land that they fled to, then treating a whole population like filth and keeping them virtually imprisoned and without representation for a large chunk of the 20th century.
I suppose that's one version of what happened.
Isreal punishes the peaceful and the radical Palestinians as one group.
How is anyone supposed to tell the difference, especially when those "peaceful" Palestinians voted Hamas into power? It's not even possible to reliably distinguish between "moderate" and "extremist" Muslims, until they do something crazy.
I'm not sure if you are just playing an idiot for fun, or you really don't know about the Irish blowing up random people.
Sure I do, but I don't see what it has to do with Christianity.
A good debate technique is to put words in the mouth of your opponent. You claim I am trying to prove all Muslims are peaceful. That is not the case, but it shows how black and white you see the world, filling in all sorts of details in your mind when presented with very little evidence.
You're nitpicking because you know you made a mistake. Obviously talking to a couple of moderates or supposed moderates is meaningless when confronted with thousands or millions of extremists.
You would not think for a moment that those Muslims I spoke to actually spoke to other Muslims or had an informed opinion on their culture. Such a thought is beyond your creativity.
What does an informed opinion mean, and how do their informed opinions stack up against other informed but less moderate opinions in the Islamic world? Since so-called moderate Muslims are at the very least a de facto minority, I would think that their opinions are less informed than those of the extremists.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to lump you into the same template of person in my mind that makes up an extremist or a Muslim extremist, or someone who giggles when something big gets blown up or a woman gets raped and the perps get away with it. You just happen to have been born a Christian, but I think you'd make a fine Jihadist.
Please point out where I advocated genocide, violence or slavery. While you're at it, could you also tell me if the Olympic Games advocate genocide because they rank people in order of superiority?
From your tenor, I suspect you've never talked to any Muslims but have formed your own opinion and feel you can speak with authority over that billion people.
Thought experiment: person A attempts to prove that Muslims are all peaceful by talking to a few peaceful acquintances or perhaps co-workers of his. Person B attempts to prove the opposite by pointing out that 100,000 Muslims recently demonstrated in favor of sharia law (or something similiar). How, exactly, do you propose that person A has the upper hand in this experiment?
Do I really have to remind you of the Northern Ireland conflict?
What about it?
Have you forgotten the terrorism committed by Christians?
Since Christian terrorism is virtually non-existent, it's quite easy to forget.
I'm sorry. Not superior. Just human. Oh darn.
By the same logic an average person cannot be superior to a mass murderer or child rapist because he has unpaid parking tickets or something.
As someone who lived in Britain from 1971 to 1998, I have to say you have no idea what you're talking about.
The IRA was not a Christian terrorist organization.
And that's just the obvious example. The KKK considers itself a Christian organization, and many of the groups involved in violent attacks on everyone from Jews to gays do to.
You do realize that the KKK is absolutely insignificant, and has no support from anyone? Right?
You probably don't consider them Christian (and neither do I), but then what do you think your average Muslim thinks of Osama Bin Laden? How "Holy" do you think the Muslim guy down the street thinks a man who murders 3,000 people in cold blood is?
Osama and people like him have a lot of support. Muslims are not bothered if terrorists kill people, but you can rest assured that they will be literally up in arms if someone makes fun of or "disrespects" their religion, such as by characterizing Muslims as violent.
Mainstream Christianity in most places is non-violent, but the same is true of Judaism and Islam.
It's not true of Islam. That's the entire point.
This is not about moral equivalence, it's about the fact that you cannot judge an entire group of people on the basis of a bunch of extremists.
I'm not. I'm judging them on the basis of how the majority of them behave.
You choose to do so for one group and turn a blind eye to others. That is why you fail.
Christians seem to pick and choose what they want to follow out of the Old Testament. "God Hates Fags" but "Oh, the Slavery stuff is over" comes to mind.
And?
Are Christian Extremists morally equivalent to Islamic Extremists? Why not?
Christian terrorism and violence is practically non-existent. Christian extremists just tend to be annoying, whereas Muslim extremists are actually very dangerous (or support people who are), not to mention that, unlike Christians, they enjoy broad support and approval in the Islamic world. They aren't really even "extremists," they're just religious.
You are saying that Christians are superior to others.
They are obviously superior to Muslims. Everyone is.
Do Muslims tend to be extremist? Having met and had long philosophical discussions with both Christians and Muslims, I honestly don't sense a superiority of one over the other.
Oh wow, it's this argument again. You're telling me you talked to a couple of Muslims and now you feel you are in a position to talk about a population of over one billion people spread out all over the planet?
I love how multiculturalists always go for the moral equivalence angle. Apparently anything Muslims do is a-okay as long as you can establish that theoretically Christians might do the same, at least according to the multiculturalist's own interpretation of things, which tends to be wildly incorrect. You may or may not be aware of this, but Christians tend to follow the New Testament, not the Old Testament.
In any case it doesn't matter, since Christians do not actually follow the passages you're quoting. Are you arguing that they're still morally equal to Islamic extremists? Is this some kind of pre-thought crime nonsense?
Jihad has existed for as long as Islam has, so I don't think not pissing off the world is going to change anything. Muslims are engaged in perpetual warfare against infidels in every corner of the world. You just don't hear about most of it.
But... but... they hate our freedoms!!! Right?!?!? Right?!?!?
Yes, that's correct. You might have noticed that the kind of freedoms we take for granted here in the West are violently frowned upon in Islamic societies, whether those societies are countries or just immigrant communities in the West.
There's no fricking practical need in the world to throw that "Islamic" adjective on there.
Islamic terrorism is distinctive enough to warrant the use of the term. Muslim terrorists and other "extremists" around the world are driven by the same ideology.
It sounds great because there's some implied racism associated with Muslims and Islam but it really rubs me the wrong way.
Muslims were not, are not and never will be a race.
How about we focus on terrorism in general? How about we make it hard for ANYONE to perpetrate terror attacks on our country?
You want to make anti-terrorism inefficient just for the sake of political correctness?
Yes, and adventure games are still being released too, but they've lost their mainstream appeal. I think the last mainstream adventure game was Dreamfall, and since it included some action elements it wasn't even a pure adventure game. The glory years of Sierra and Lucasarts are unlikely to return.
I see linear game play is an attempt by creators, fundamentally uncomfortable with the loss of control inherent in the new media, to shoehorn old story telling conventions into a new form. Creators want to be Gods, not mere guides. But the future of video games is most certainly closer to the art of improv than it is to the art of writing.
There's still so much more that could be done through traditional methods of storytelling, like those found in adventure games. The technology and talent are there for a truly exceptional game, but nobody has yet managed to bring them all together. As a medium, games have several advantages over film and literature, such as dialogue choices. In Mass Effect there's a pretty impressive amount of dialogue you can have with people, even with very minor characters. There's also a staggering amount of background information and detail in the game which you can read or ignore as you see fit. In a film there are time and pacing constraints, but a game naturally moves at your pace and without a time limit, allowing you to investigate people, objects and places as much or as little as you want to.
There's so much potential there, but it seems we've already moved on.
If you have a story to tell that needs to be told interactively, a game is a great medium to do it in. If you have a story to tell where the audience is supposed to mainly watch and listen, make a movie. If you have an indepth story with deep characters, a huge plotline, where no interaction is really necessary - write a novel. And if you have NONE of the above, reconsider what you're making story-wise. Your medium is your message after all.
Even if you're making a game that doesn't have a lot of interaction, like an adventure game, the medium still has advantages that books and movies do not. You can have multiple dialogue choices that allow you to gain as much or as little information as you want, your player character can comment on objects and environmental details, and you can wander around freely at your own pace and decide what you want to do (within limits). Grim Fandango is a good example.
By downloading you mean going to a site, downloading a movie and watching it on your PC? Doesn't sound like something the average consumer is interested in.
I didn't buy an HD-DVD player. I will not be buying a Blu-Ray player. I will not be buying a this thing. Technology is moving way too fast for me to keep replacing my hardware. As soon as I commit to buying one of these things, a new technology will have emerged, making my spanking new purchase obsolete before the year is out. I am not a sucker.
I think I started watching DVDs in 2001 or so, and it'll likely be a year or two before I'll buy a Blu-ray drive. Gosh, technology sure moves fast.
I'm assuming you never bought a DVD drive or player either. Surely you must have foreseen that DVDs would eventually be replaced?
Then there's the little-discussed fact that 1/3 of women in the US military are raped.
I seem to remember that that's a myth, and it doesn't make any sense anyway.
Imagine the ways in which we could improve the world, people's lives and reduce the widespread antipathy the US has engendered if only the military were shrunk and kept neatly within its *own* borders.
If the US sat back and did nothing, it would be blamed for being self-centered and indifferent and guilty of assisting genocide by not doing anything about it or whatever.
Forgive me if I don't rah-rah the latest technology that is going to "help" the military. Such technology is only going to "help" increase human misery the world over.
Yeah, I think it would be way better if the US Air Force reverted back to WW2 technology.
A 25 gb disk is woefully inadequate for storing Blu-ray rips, or even standard 1.35 gb rips. A 1 tb Blu-ray disk would be most excellent for backup purposes.
Really? What about those years you spent doing research from sources all over the planet? Isn't that why you are able to discard dissenting opinion, because the person stating that opinion has (according to you) an insufficient pool of knowledge and experience?
I said that in response to a specific argument. I refuted the fallacy that talking to a couple of people is a reliable way of gaining any insight into a billion people spread out all over the planet.
I do not recall asking for such a thing. What I did ask, is for you to provide even one reputable peer-reviewed journal in which acknowledged experts provide justification for your opinion. Given the nature of the opinions you have expressed, I am not the least bit surprised that you are unable to do so.
As I said, the subject is too vast.
What a terribly predictable comment. There is plenty of room in academic circles for research that is controversial, if not utterly wrong. To name but one example, Phillipe Rushton is still a tenured professor at the University of Western Ontario. He is still conducting research with the aim of demonstrating that within the human race, some ethnic groups are genetically superior in terms of intellect and cognitive ability. Furthermore, his work continues to be published in peer-reviewed journals.
So? This doesn't disprove what I said.
I believe that it would be reasonable to state that Rushton's research is far more offensive than your Islamophobia, and yet his research has not been suppressed, he has not been silenced, or driven out of the halls of academia.
Islamophobia does not actually exist, you know. Accusing someone of Islamophobia just makes you look like a dumb multiculturalist drone incapable of rational thinking.
Spoken like a true crackpot!
What? I simply said that peer-reviewed journals are not the arbiters of reality. Jihadists killed some people in Thailand this week, but are you going to argue that this did not happen because it hasn't been confirmed by a peer-reviewed journal? Don't be ridiculous.
It is said that the powerful and the ignorant have one thing in common: both change the facts to suit their opinions, rather than change their opinions to suit the facts.
Where the hell did this come from? Now I'm suddenly changing facts? What facts? What is going on?
And yet you fear that Islam threatens the future of Europe? Why? Presumably because the practitioners of Islam are too different from your accepted norms.
Islamic values are different to the point of being absolutely incompatible with Western values and laws. Furthermore, far too many Muslim immigrants (and citizens) in the West are religious supremacists who believe it is their duty to assimilate infidel cultures into the Ummah. They laugh at the idea of equal co-existence with other religions. We have been more than willing to accomodate them, but they have not reciprocated. On the contrary, they see it as weakness.
Check out a definition of xenophobia and let me know if you recognize anything familiar...
Xenophobia, according to Wikipedia, is "a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people." According to Merriam-Webster, it is "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign."
According to the definition of xenophobia, I am not xenophobic. I do not oppose Islam because it is foreign or unknown.
Proving what?
This isn't maths where one counter-example (even a dubious one) can invalidate an argument. Your interest in other cultures may be admirable, but that does not in any way justify the intolerance you have demonstrated in other posts.
If I were xenophobic, it's higly doubtful that I would be interesting in learning a foreign language, or travelling to other countries or talking to people from other countries or finding about other cultures. After all, the definition of xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown.
BTW - I wonder if there is anything to be learned from the fact that I refer to "other cultures" whereas you refer to "foreign cultures"...
No. It is simply semantics, and you're reading too much into it.
I am not a religious scholar by any means, but even I know that Islam is not a monolithic whole - there are various sects and sub-sects which have different beliefs and practices. No one individual or group speaks on behalf of Islam or all Muslims, although there are a number of mis-guided souls who think that they can, or should.
It's not monolithic, but from an infidel's point of view there is little variation, and from a practical point of view peaceful fringe sects are irrelevant unless they can effect concrete change in the Islamic world.
I am also aware that Islam has been very successful in accomodating local customs and beliefs within a wider framework.
If thats were true, this conversation would not be taking place. The fact that Muslims are unwilling to adapt and integrate when they move to an infidel nation, such as Sweden, is the very core of the problem in Europe.
The unfortunate side-effect is that there are a number of unfortunate cultural traditions that have been incorporated into some interpretations of Islam that appear to be quite contrary to the stated principles of the religion.
It doesn't matter what you believe to be the stated principles of the religion. Muslims do what they do and think what they think regardless of how you or I feel about it. You cannot alter reality by proving, at least to yourself, that all those crazy Muslims have simply misunderstood the peaceful message of the Quran.
Perhaps you have read about what _some_ Muslims have done in the name of Islam based on a particular interpretation of that religion. Regrettably, you appear to be unable to contextualize that information and instead choose to view all of Islam through that faulty stereotype.
Appeals to your own authority mean absolutely nothing.
I don't have authority and I'm not appealing to it.
Show me something from a reputable peer-reviewed journal that validates your statements.
There is no single, magical source that proves everything. The subject is too vast.
"Reputable peer-reviewed journals" are probably in short supply since it's extremely taboo to say or suggest anything negative about Islam or Muslims, especially among academia where the "Islam is a Religion of Peace" axiom seems to be accepted by most people without question. Fortunately for us non-academics, reality continues to exist independently of reputable peer-reviewed journals.
If you unable to do so, kindly go away and play with your toys and leave the serious discussion to the adults.
Even if I did do so, you would dismiss it as non-reputable, non-peer-reviewed racist propaganda, regardless of where it came from.
It is ignorance to selectively filter the information you seek on a subject...
How am I selectively filtering information?
... when you are looking to reinforce existing prejudices rather than gain wisdom and insight.
There are no "existing prejudices" to be reinforced.
That's rich, coming from you.
You're the one who suggested it. Not me.
'll try to make this as simple as I can: you reject dissenting opinions on the grounds that the person stating that opinion has an insufficient pool of knowledge and experience.
That's because they do have insufficient knowledge. They are committing a fallacy and I'm simply refuting it through argumentation, and I can't remember anyone ever coming up with a valid counter-argument. So what you're really saying is that whenever I refuse to agree with someone, I'm "rejecting" their opinion for no good reason.
However, when scrutinized, your own opinions appear to be based solely on ignorance and inaccurate stereotypes.
Ok, so years of research using sources from all over the planet = ignorance, but talking to a couple of Muslim co-workers etc. = deep insight. Jesus fucking Christ.
Bigotry is typically based on an insufficient pool of knowledge and experience, hence my comment.
Empty accusations of "bigotry" are the last resort of the intellectually challenged. This is nothing more than an emotional, vapid and pre-conditioned kneejerk response.
Years of information gathered on a daily basis from every corner of the planet without any sort of methodology or study of sources.
I'm not an academic. I'm not doing research or writing a paper. As for sources... well, if you think pretty much every news source on the planet is involved in a nefarious anti-Islamic conspiracy, then I don't know what to say.
Just "impressions" or "feelings."
What?
But you migh be right. It might not be random at all since most news outlets (and bloggers, etc) just recycle the same information over and over - even though the information might be biased and just the product of someones imagination, impressions or feelings (based on "years of information gathered on a daily basis from every corner of the planet").
Oh, so you do believe in an international anti-Islamic conspiracy that has somehow remained completely secret and managed to block out all dissenting information?
And you are allowed to be concerned with whatever you want and in this case your concerns are important and reveal serious issues with many Muslim societies but we were not discussing these issues. So, other than pointing out problems in many (Muslim) societies it is irrelevant to the present discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because there's just an enornmous difference between ACs and everyone else.
Jihadists are caught all the time, and there's no reason to assume that they will stop trying.
I actually don't care, because either way the Palestinians have no moral highground. Quite the opposite.
You're obviously very knowledgeable about the subject if you don't even know that there's more than version of what happened.
How is this relevant, exactly?
Relevance not found.
Or I've been studying the subject for several years on a daily basis.
And what about all those Muslims who are engaged in Jihad against non-American infidels in conflicts not influenced by the US? What about Jihad before America was even discovered? What about the Jihad in Europe?
That's actually precisely the reason they're furious at them.
I suppose that's one version of what happened.
How is anyone supposed to tell the difference, especially when those "peaceful" Palestinians voted Hamas into power? It's not even possible to reliably distinguish between "moderate" and "extremist" Muslims, until they do something crazy.
Sure I do, but I don't see what it has to do with Christianity.
You're nitpicking because you know you made a mistake. Obviously talking to a couple of moderates or supposed moderates is meaningless when confronted with thousands or millions of extremists.
What does an informed opinion mean, and how do their informed opinions stack up against other informed but less moderate opinions in the Islamic world? Since so-called moderate Muslims are at the very least a de facto minority, I would think that their opinions are less informed than those of the extremists.
Haha, what?
Please point out where I advocated genocide, violence or slavery. While you're at it, could you also tell me if the Olympic Games advocate genocide because they rank people in order of superiority?
Thought experiment: person A attempts to prove that Muslims are all peaceful by talking to a few peaceful acquintances or perhaps co-workers of his. Person B attempts to prove the opposite by pointing out that 100,000 Muslims recently demonstrated in favor of sharia law (or something similiar). How, exactly, do you propose that person A has the upper hand in this experiment?
What about it?
Since Christian terrorism is virtually non-existent, it's quite easy to forget.
By the same logic an average person cannot be superior to a mass murderer or child rapist because he has unpaid parking tickets or something.
The IRA was not a Christian terrorist organization.
You do realize that the KKK is absolutely insignificant, and has no support from anyone? Right?
Osama and people like him have a lot of support. Muslims are not bothered if terrorists kill people, but you can rest assured that they will be literally up in arms if someone makes fun of or "disrespects" their religion, such as by characterizing Muslims as violent.
It's not true of Islam. That's the entire point.
I'm not. I'm judging them on the basis of how the majority of them behave.
There's nothing to turn a blind eye to.
And?
Christian terrorism and violence is practically non-existent. Christian extremists just tend to be annoying, whereas Muslim extremists are actually very dangerous (or support people who are), not to mention that, unlike Christians, they enjoy broad support and approval in the Islamic world. They aren't really even "extremists," they're just religious.
They are obviously superior to Muslims. Everyone is.
Oh wow, it's this argument again. You're telling me you talked to a couple of Muslims and now you feel you are in a position to talk about a population of over one billion people spread out all over the planet?
I love how multiculturalists always go for the moral equivalence angle. Apparently anything Muslims do is a-okay as long as you can establish that theoretically Christians might do the same, at least according to the multiculturalist's own interpretation of things, which tends to be wildly incorrect. You may or may not be aware of this, but Christians tend to follow the New Testament, not the Old Testament.
In any case it doesn't matter, since Christians do not actually follow the passages you're quoting. Are you arguing that they're still morally equal to Islamic extremists? Is this some kind of pre-thought crime nonsense?
Jihad has existed for as long as Islam has, so I don't think not pissing off the world is going to change anything. Muslims are engaged in perpetual warfare against infidels in every corner of the world. You just don't hear about most of it.
Yes, that's correct. You might have noticed that the kind of freedoms we take for granted here in the West are violently frowned upon in Islamic societies, whether those societies are countries or just immigrant communities in the West.
Islamic terrorism is distinctive enough to warrant the use of the term. Muslim terrorists and other "extremists" around the world are driven by the same ideology.
Muslims were not, are not and never will be a race.
You want to make anti-terrorism inefficient just for the sake of political correctness?
Yes, and adventure games are still being released too, but they've lost their mainstream appeal. I think the last mainstream adventure game was Dreamfall, and since it included some action elements it wasn't even a pure adventure game. The glory years of Sierra and Lucasarts are unlikely to return.
There's still so much more that could be done through traditional methods of storytelling, like those found in adventure games. The technology and talent are there for a truly exceptional game, but nobody has yet managed to bring them all together. As a medium, games have several advantages over film and literature, such as dialogue choices. In Mass Effect there's a pretty impressive amount of dialogue you can have with people, even with very minor characters. There's also a staggering amount of background information and detail in the game which you can read or ignore as you see fit. In a film there are time and pacing constraints, but a game naturally moves at your pace and without a time limit, allowing you to investigate people, objects and places as much or as little as you want to.
There's so much potential there, but it seems we've already moved on.
Even if you're making a game that doesn't have a lot of interaction, like an adventure game, the medium still has advantages that books and movies do not. You can have multiple dialogue choices that allow you to gain as much or as little information as you want, your player character can comment on objects and environmental details, and you can wander around freely at your own pace and decide what you want to do (within limits). Grim Fandango is a good example.
By downloading you mean going to a site, downloading a movie and watching it on your PC? Doesn't sound like something the average consumer is interested in.
I think I started watching DVDs in 2001 or so, and it'll likely be a year or two before I'll buy a Blu-ray drive. Gosh, technology sure moves fast.
I'm assuming you never bought a DVD drive or player either. Surely you must have foreseen that DVDs would eventually be replaced?
How is that relevant?
I seem to remember that that's a myth, and it doesn't make any sense anyway.
If the US sat back and did nothing, it would be blamed for being self-centered and indifferent and guilty of assisting genocide by not doing anything about it or whatever.
Yeah, I think it would be way better if the US Air Force reverted back to WW2 technology.
A 25 gb disk is woefully inadequate for storing Blu-ray rips, or even standard 1.35 gb rips. A 1 tb Blu-ray disk would be most excellent for backup purposes.
I said that in response to a specific argument. I refuted the fallacy that talking to a couple of people is a reliable way of gaining any insight into a billion people spread out all over the planet.
As I said, the subject is too vast.
So? This doesn't disprove what I said.
Islamophobia does not actually exist, you know. Accusing someone of Islamophobia just makes you look like a dumb multiculturalist drone incapable of rational thinking.
What? I simply said that peer-reviewed journals are not the arbiters of reality. Jihadists killed some people in Thailand this week, but are you going to argue that this did not happen because it hasn't been confirmed by a peer-reviewed journal? Don't be ridiculous.
Where the hell did this come from? Now I'm suddenly changing facts? What facts? What is going on?
What irony are you referring to?
Islamic values are different to the point of being absolutely incompatible with Western values and laws. Furthermore, far too many Muslim immigrants (and citizens) in the West are religious supremacists who believe it is their duty to assimilate infidel cultures into the Ummah. They laugh at the idea of equal co-existence with other religions. We have been more than willing to accomodate them, but they have not reciprocated. On the contrary, they see it as weakness.
Xenophobia, according to Wikipedia, is "a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown, especially of strangers or foreign people." According to Merriam-Webster, it is "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign."
According to the definition of xenophobia, I am not xenophobic. I do not oppose Islam because it is foreign or unknown.
If I were xenophobic, it's higly doubtful that I would be interesting in learning a foreign language, or travelling to other countries or talking to people from other countries or finding about other cultures. After all, the definition of xenophobia is a fear or contempt of that which is foreign or unknown.
No. It is simply semantics, and you're reading too much into it.
It's not monolithic, but from an infidel's point of view there is little variation, and from a practical point of view peaceful fringe sects are irrelevant unless they can effect concrete change in the Islamic world.
If thats were true, this conversation would not be taking place. The fact that Muslims are unwilling to adapt and integrate when they move to an infidel nation, such as Sweden, is the very core of the problem in Europe.
It doesn't matter what you believe to be the stated principles of the religion. Muslims do what they do and think what they think regardless of how you or I feel about it. You cannot alter reality by proving, at least to yourself, that all those crazy Muslims have simply misunderstood the peaceful message of the Quran.
I've read about what the de facto
I don't have authority and I'm not appealing to it.
There is no single, magical source that proves everything. The subject is too vast.
"Reputable peer-reviewed journals" are probably in short supply since it's extremely taboo to say or suggest anything negative about Islam or Muslims, especially among academia where the "Islam is a Religion of Peace" axiom seems to be accepted by most people without question. Fortunately for us non-academics, reality continues to exist independently of reputable peer-reviewed journals.
Even if I did do so, you would dismiss it as non-reputable, non-peer-reviewed racist propaganda, regardless of where it came from.
How am I selectively filtering information?
There are no "existing prejudices" to be reinforced.
You're the one who suggested it. Not me.
That's because they do have insufficient knowledge. They are committing a fallacy and I'm simply refuting it through argumentation, and I can't remember anyone ever coming up with a valid counter-argument. So what you're really saying is that whenever I refuse to agree with someone, I'm "rejecting" their opinion for no good reason.
Ok, so years of research using sources from all over the planet = ignorance, but talking to a couple of Muslim co-workers etc. = deep insight. Jesus fucking Christ.
Empty accusations of "bigotry" are the last resort of the intellectually challenged. This is nothing more than an emotional, vapid and pre-conditioned kneejerk response.
I'm not an academic. I'm not doing research or writing a paper. As for sources... well, if you think pretty much every news source on the planet is involved in a nefarious anti-Islamic conspiracy, then I don't know what to say.
What?
Oh, so you do believe in an international anti-Islamic conspiracy that has somehow remained completely secret and managed to block out all dissenting information?
You think it's irrelevant.