h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ok K, here's a more suitable place.

You think it's racist to have a go at Islam. Why's that then? In case you hadn't noticed, there have been white Islamist wannabe terrorists too. And I have no doubt there will increasingly be more. It's the ideology I despise, based on the blatant lies and utterly laughable fabrications in the Koran, tied in with the Stalin-esque sunnah.


In Britain, we have a long tradition of making jokes about anything and everything. I heard the first joke about Piper Alpha before I saw the news. The jokes were flying about 9/11 before the dust had settled. The Glasgow attack has spawned hundreds of jokes. And it's great. One week has almost entirely changed how people view Islamist terrorists in this country. The fear factor has dissipated a bit. People now see them as incompetent jokes, to be pitied rather than feared. No doubt that will change with the next lethal attack, but it's a welcome breathing space.

I have no doubt your experience of Muslims in Java is different from mine in Scotland. An 80% majority makes for an entirely different society. I worked amongst Muslims for years and I know that for most of them, Islam is not what defines them. They never chose their religion - they were born into it and inherited it like the colour of their eyes. It's less a religion than a social & business network. But, whereas the fanatics in an 80% majority are an irrelevance in Indonesia, the fanatics amongst a 4% minority in the UK are causing a lot of grief.

I see you arguing about visible Christian symbols in another thread, (as have I). Where's the difference between them and visible Muslim symbols? One's only a ring and the other is only a headscarf. I've opposed both, you've supported one.

Who's the hypocrite?

*waits and watches *

1) I apologised for calling you a racist. You're not. The word I should have used was "bigot".

2) I supported both. I made it clear everywhere I have posted that I find any religious symbol silly, even repugnant. I also made it clear that I find that freedom of expression is a higher value than my dissatisfaction with what I consider to be the idiocy of religion.

You know this and yet you deliberately misrepresent what I said and by implication what I stand for. Who's the hypocrite?

Incidentally, your statement that "the fanatics in an 80% majority are an irrelevance in Indonesia" is unbelievabley offensive to those of us who saw friends maimed or killed in a terrorist attack. I understand that the death or mutilation of people of different skin colour is irrelevant to you, but it isn't to me and my family and most civilised people.

So don't misrepresent me and save your bigotry for your friends who no doubt find it amusing.

First up, I apologise for a poor turn of phrase in saying religious fanaticism in Indonesia is an irrelevance. I certainly did not mean to cause offence. What I intended to convey was that fanaticism is more tolerable when a sizeable minority share some of the views of the extremists. I believe almost 18% of Muslims in Indonesia support violence as a means to an Islamic State.

<>. You don't understand much, do you? Where have I said this?

As to bigot, I don't believe my views are unreasonable in the least. Viewing Islam as violent, mysogynistic and intolerant is well-founded both in history and in current events. Opposing Islam is the equivalent to opposing Nazism. There are a great many similarities.

As an uneducated son of a Roman Catholic plumber, I get confused with bigot and spigot.

So then, because I have opened my own eyes and questioned some of this or that, I should readily scorn and despise my parents, siblings and relations that still hold some pretty devout Catholicism? Assuming that they are ignorant fools? Or should I simply disreguard labels and tags, ... not call myself christian, agnostic or atheist (upper or lower-case 'C') Because in the end, during my average day, I meet neither religio-maniacs foisting their notions on me or my neighbors, nor idiotic and rabid (upper-case-)Atheists who feel they must educated into the RIGHT way of thinking ...

This post has been removed.

*awaits the un-masking of the previous post ... *

I stand by every word of my post. Yikes it if you will. Protect a bigot from being called on it, but permit bigotry? Very politically correct.

Look at the title of this conversation, for crying out loud!

Okay, the title of the thread is restored.

So then, I don't know what post you speak of, ... Unless it was the one d. If that's the case, you are welcome to e-mail me the meat of it. I have an address on my PS.

There is one thing that I have never understood though. Some appear here and proselytize, either as "Christian" or the furthest opposition, a Capital-A Atheist. Either extreme are to be ignored, in my books. Someone who holds their own beliefs close to them, that is their business. It may be wood-nymphs, He-that-walks-on-water, or Dawkins (close to the previous, apparently). In any case, is there really a need to despise, detest and very meanly belittle, the vast majoprity who hold their own ideas of 'truth' quietly?

<>

Really? Why wasn't this done in 1933? Why did it take five years before Britain started to prepare for a war of defence? Actually Germany launched a war of aggression which was opposed by European countries and, belatedly, the US. It was nine years after the rise of Nazism and two years into a bloody war before the US suddenly felt the need for Nazism "to be wiped off the earth." But for the bloody mindedness of Churchill, it is entirely possible that we would quite happily be living today with Nazism alive & well.

If Islam restricted itself to Muslim countries, nobody would say 'boo'. But it doesn't. It exports fear and violence worldwide. The fascist ideology at the heart of Islam makes it utterly incompatible with liberal democracy. Either Islam changes or liberal democracies do.

You can point to peaceful Muslims all you like. What about the ones who behead schoolgirls? How many Christian churches are allowed to be built in Indonesia? How many riots have there been over Christians praying in their own homes? Or is my even mentioning that "hatemongering"?

People are people worldwide. Good people will find the good in any religion and will live their lives by it. Not because of the religion, but because they are inherently good in themselves. Your old Islamic Scholar would most likely be an old Catholic Priest were he in Spain. The 85 year old neighbour would have done the same were she a Hindu in Calcutta.

But where a religion has hatred and intolerance woven throughout its fabric and is violently opposed to any criticism or suggestion of change, evil men will find a ready excuse.

There is no blood on my hands. Those who refuse to stand up to Islamist fanaticism and tolerate the intolerable - they are the ones who should consider their actions.

"is there really a need to despise, detest and very meanly belittle, the vast majoprity who hold their own ideas of 'truth' quietly?"

If there was anything quiet about the approbation served up by the bigot who invited me to have my say, that question might make sense.

Many of my friends and a great number of my family are Muslim. ALL are peaceful. ALL want the same things everyone else does...peace, the happiness and welfare of their children, freedom from bigotry, etc. NOT ONE deserves to be called a Nazi. My nieces and nephews go to school holding hands and singing about their favourite things...family, and birthdays, and their new kitten. They are not Nazis.

Their father is a police intelligence officer; in fact he's actually the guy who slapped the cuffs on the leader of the terrorist cell who bombed a nightclub in Bali. He's Muslim and he despises murderers; but he doesn't despise all Westerners or even Christians, despite the bigotry displayed by halfwits and hatemongers like the host of this thread. Nevertheless, that resident, oh so white bigot has his say and I get yikesed.

But that's okay with the BBC, apparently. My objection to my family being called Nazis gets censored, on the other hand.

Oh, I see.

"There is no blood on my hands. Those who refuse to stand up to Islamist fanaticism..."

White Christian Jihad?

Islam and Islamic fanaticism have no distinction in your mind?

For decades, China was avowedly communist. Would anyone insinuate that the average peasant was an active part of a despicable creed? Of course not. But it only took a surprisingly few Chinese Communists to kill up to 100 million people.

The peasant was a Communist, but not a practitioner of Communism.
Ordinary people may be Muslims, but not practitioners of Islamism.

I oppose Islam as the root source of Islamism.

"Ordinary people may be Muslims, but not practitioners of Islamism.

I oppose Islam as the root source of Islamism."

That has to be the most profoundly stupid thing I have heard in any discussion, conversation or even rant on this or any other subject. Seek medical help.

I expect that I ought to step aside then. I see the term "Islamist", as used here and elsewhere on h2g2, as referring to those extremists who try to use select interpretations of the Qu'ran to bolster their causes. NOT to define Muslims, who seem to understand the 'word' as it seems to have been intended (as I interpret it).

I am perhaps a moron to be pitied and despises. Because I sdee and work with folks of many beliefs and absence-of-beliefs, as simply people and neighbors. No one to hate because of this or that, just folks that see stuff different to the way that I see stuff. If we disagree, we talk it out, shout it out, maybe hasve a slugfest of fisticuffs. But none of us would decide that the way to make a point is to blow up a school or a plane-full of people that neither of us have ever met.

Where do you think Islamists find their inspiration then, if not from the Koran?

Take your meds. You've already embarrassed yourself enough for one night.

I'm not embarassed at all. I'm not the one who has refused to answer points and has resorted to insults and abuse.

I'll get up tomorrow and Islamists will be shooting, beheading and bombing away as normal and people like you will continue to be saying "SShhh, don't criticise"

OK children, cool down, now.

Kelapabesar, be fair - where *do* Islamists find their inspiration?

A good question. I've not fully read my English translation of the Koran, but the parts of it that I have read don't seem to demand hatred and violence. And an amazing number of Muslims around the world who HAVE absorbed that tome don't seem to have seen those bits either.