Jun
9
I note with a mixture of interest, amusement and horror that a new charity has been set up in London to 'tackle people's negative views of Islam.'
The Exploring Islam Foundation commissioned a YouGov poll to assess public opinion of a few very weighted questions about Islam. Apparently 58% of respondents equated Islam with extremism, 50% with terrorism, only 13% agreed that Islam was a religion of peace, and 19% thought that Islam had a positive impact on British society.
Really? 19%? That's a bit high isn't it?
It's OK though - as one report reveals, more than 57% of these respondents admitted to only getting their information about Islam through media outlets such as newspapers and television, which are obviously hostile to the religion of peace. Doubtless had they learned about Islam from their local Imam, they would have formed a much more positive opinion of it.
The Charity has commissioned what amounts to a PR campaign, to promote a better understanding of the positive side of Islam, and have produced a series of posters including prominent British Muslims pictured with heart-warming slogans.
OK, so I know I'm a total cynic, but a comic could not have asked for a better set of slogans to rip the piss out of. In fact a good comic probably wrote them. The slogans read:
“I believe in social justice. So did Muhammad.”
“I believe in women’s rights. So did Muhammad.”
“I believe in protecting the environment. So did Muhammad.”
Ideas about what constitutes social justice have (thankfully) changed a little in the last 1400 years - at least outside the middle east - and no longer include eye-for-an-eye style punishments. On a more positive note, they may be referring to the charitable provisions enshrined in Islamic law, whereby men must give up a percentage of their income as charity, to be distributed amongst the poor. Why proponents of Islam can't see the difference between wanting to help the poor (voluntarily giving up your earnings) and being forced to do so on pain of eternal damnation is beyond me.
So too have Women's rights - again outside the middle east. It is no longer acceptable to beat the shit out of any of your wives, buy a wife, marry a nine year old girl, sell your daughter off to your cousin for a few goats, or have your daughter's external genitalia cut off with a sharpened stone, in order to preserve her purity and dignity. Of course, I'm being a little unfair - none of these things happen in Britain today, right? Any thug of any religion or none is capable of beating his wife, it just happens that in the Koran and Hadith you have instructions telling you when and how it is acceptable to beat your wife. Little girls get sent abroad to have their labia cut off, we wouldn't dream of allowing that kind of thing here. And goats are no longer in fashion.
What Muhammad knew about the environment could be written down on the back of a postage stamp. Any suggestion that an illiterate merchant who died 1400 years ago had ideas to save our planet in today's world are beyond laughable.
If I had enough funds, a large security force and could be guaranteed immunity from prosecution under the laws pertaining to causing religious offence, I might be tempted to run a counter-campaign thusly:
"I believe in murderous conquest and forced conversion of the infidels. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
"I believe in marrying nine year old girls and raping them whenever I choose. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
"I believe my wives and daughters are my property. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
Offensive? Probably. True? Read your Koran. Read the Hadith, then tell me I'm wrong.
The point of the Exploring Islam Foundation campaign is to prevent hostility toward British Muslims. What they either don't see, or prefer to fudge for political advantage, is that it is not people that are disliked - generally speaking - but the ideas and beliefs they stand for, uphold, and insist are the only acceptable ideas around.
How could anyone not brought up from his/her mothers knee to believe that Islam is true possibly look at Islam and say 'hmm, now there's a system of peace, justice and respect for humanity and the environment I could really buy into'?
Viewed even half-way objectively, Islam is a truly horrifying prospect.
We often hear and read the phrase 'Islamophobic' used pejoratively against the mindless cretins who deface mosques, assualt Muslims or otherwise make total dicks of themselves in the name of ignorance. This word is generally bandied about by people who have some advantage in drawing genuine criticism away from themselves by branding all potential critics - reasonable or otherwise - as basically motivated by the same prejudice. The use of this word and others like it bear a striking similarity to such words as 'anti-semitic' so beloved of that small minority of messianic bulldozer-friendly Jews.
The argument is a simple one, which is probably why it is so popular in religious circles, and goes a bit like this:
"I cannot be doing anything wrong, because you are prejudiced and just hate me. Therefore anything I do must be right, because you are a nasty bigot. Anyone who agrees with you in any particular is therefore also a nasty bigot, so their opinion must be discounted too. Ergo, I'm right, anyone who disagrees is an evil hate-filled bigot."
The original meaning of the suffix -phobe is fear, not hatred. By all means call me an Islamophobe if you mean it in the sense 'scared of Islam' - I am terrified of it. But don't just write off anybody who can't see Islam's divine truth as an Islamophobe, for the word becomes meaningless.
The Exploring Islam Foundation commissioned a YouGov poll to assess public opinion of a few very weighted questions about Islam. Apparently 58% of respondents equated Islam with extremism, 50% with terrorism, only 13% agreed that Islam was a religion of peace, and 19% thought that Islam had a positive impact on British society.
Really? 19%? That's a bit high isn't it?
It's OK though - as one report reveals, more than 57% of these respondents admitted to only getting their information about Islam through media outlets such as newspapers and television, which are obviously hostile to the religion of peace. Doubtless had they learned about Islam from their local Imam, they would have formed a much more positive opinion of it.
The Charity has commissioned what amounts to a PR campaign, to promote a better understanding of the positive side of Islam, and have produced a series of posters including prominent British Muslims pictured with heart-warming slogans.
OK, so I know I'm a total cynic, but a comic could not have asked for a better set of slogans to rip the piss out of. In fact a good comic probably wrote them. The slogans read:
“I believe in social justice. So did Muhammad.”
“I believe in women’s rights. So did Muhammad.”
“I believe in protecting the environment. So did Muhammad.”
Ideas about what constitutes social justice have (thankfully) changed a little in the last 1400 years - at least outside the middle east - and no longer include eye-for-an-eye style punishments. On a more positive note, they may be referring to the charitable provisions enshrined in Islamic law, whereby men must give up a percentage of their income as charity, to be distributed amongst the poor. Why proponents of Islam can't see the difference between wanting to help the poor (voluntarily giving up your earnings) and being forced to do so on pain of eternal damnation is beyond me.
So too have Women's rights - again outside the middle east. It is no longer acceptable to beat the shit out of any of your wives, buy a wife, marry a nine year old girl, sell your daughter off to your cousin for a few goats, or have your daughter's external genitalia cut off with a sharpened stone, in order to preserve her purity and dignity. Of course, I'm being a little unfair - none of these things happen in Britain today, right? Any thug of any religion or none is capable of beating his wife, it just happens that in the Koran and Hadith you have instructions telling you when and how it is acceptable to beat your wife. Little girls get sent abroad to have their labia cut off, we wouldn't dream of allowing that kind of thing here. And goats are no longer in fashion.
What Muhammad knew about the environment could be written down on the back of a postage stamp. Any suggestion that an illiterate merchant who died 1400 years ago had ideas to save our planet in today's world are beyond laughable.
If I had enough funds, a large security force and could be guaranteed immunity from prosecution under the laws pertaining to causing religious offence, I might be tempted to run a counter-campaign thusly:
"I believe in murderous conquest and forced conversion of the infidels. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
"I believe in marrying nine year old girls and raping them whenever I choose. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
"I believe my wives and daughters are my property. So did Muhammad (peace be upon him)."
Offensive? Probably. True? Read your Koran. Read the Hadith, then tell me I'm wrong.
The point of the Exploring Islam Foundation campaign is to prevent hostility toward British Muslims. What they either don't see, or prefer to fudge for political advantage, is that it is not people that are disliked - generally speaking - but the ideas and beliefs they stand for, uphold, and insist are the only acceptable ideas around.
How could anyone not brought up from his/her mothers knee to believe that Islam is true possibly look at Islam and say 'hmm, now there's a system of peace, justice and respect for humanity and the environment I could really buy into'?
Viewed even half-way objectively, Islam is a truly horrifying prospect.
We often hear and read the phrase 'Islamophobic' used pejoratively against the mindless cretins who deface mosques, assualt Muslims or otherwise make total dicks of themselves in the name of ignorance. This word is generally bandied about by people who have some advantage in drawing genuine criticism away from themselves by branding all potential critics - reasonable or otherwise - as basically motivated by the same prejudice. The use of this word and others like it bear a striking similarity to such words as 'anti-semitic' so beloved of that small minority of messianic bulldozer-friendly Jews.
The argument is a simple one, which is probably why it is so popular in religious circles, and goes a bit like this:
"I cannot be doing anything wrong, because you are prejudiced and just hate me. Therefore anything I do must be right, because you are a nasty bigot. Anyone who agrees with you in any particular is therefore also a nasty bigot, so their opinion must be discounted too. Ergo, I'm right, anyone who disagrees is an evil hate-filled bigot."
The original meaning of the suffix -phobe is fear, not hatred. By all means call me an Islamophobe if you mean it in the sense 'scared of Islam' - I am terrified of it. But don't just write off anybody who can't see Islam's divine truth as an Islamophobe, for the word becomes meaningless.
Jun
3
Alright, let's take a quick look at what's happened with this Israeli flotilla attack. I'm going to be honest with you all, here and admit something a lot of opinion bloggers aren't admitting. I don't know what happened. I mean, I read enough articles to know what's being said. I even found a first hand account. So I can't really talk about the actual event, but I think there's an important lesson to be learned in the media/blogger response to the articles.
Of course, everyone picked the familiar sides, the right believes Israel can do no wrong ever in any situation, even in light of an American's death. The left, on the other hand, fully accept reports that the ship in question was on a completely humanitarian mission and that the big bully of Israel just decided that they needed to stir up trouble.
Here's what I know. Some of those people defending Israel are saying that any opposition is anti-Semitic. I wish I could find you a link, but you're just gonna have to trust that I'm 'pretty sure' I heard Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say that people on board the ship were 'chanting anti-Semitic slogans.'
And of course, in the opposite corner, there are those saying that Muslims in Gaza are in a constant state of persecution and that that is what is, in fact, behind all this.
And this calls into question what it means to make an anti-Semitic statement. It's easy to look at neo-nazi's or '5 Jew banker' conspiracy theorists and say 'anti-Semitism,' but it's a little more difficult to make the argument that a statement like 'Israel is an illegitimate nation," is anti-Semitic. To call Israel illegitimate or a threat or dangerous is definitely not support, but it's not really hostile toward Jewish people. It's not an attack on the heritage or the religion. But, there, we have the issue. Israel, as a religious state, is easily able to conflate all actions by the government or the military with religious issues. So if Jews are going to claim part of their religion is that the nation of Israel exists and we all have to respect their religion, we therefore all have to respect their country — no matter what. So, while all countries have their detractors and all governments have their protesters, only a government wrapped up in a religion can make any dissenting views seem like a religious attack, thereby rallying support from those who may not agree with the military action or the political action.
Can you see the thought-termination here? People's anger over what's being called anti-Semitic is distracting them from reaching a political conclusion.
Alternatively, if it's the case that the flotilla was secretly involved in some attempt to attack Israel the Muslim persecution card will always rally those who support who choose to side with the afflicted.
I'm not saying that if there were no religions that conflicts like this wouldn't occur, of course they would. But imagine how much more honest and productive the world's response would be if there weren't religious outrage fueling the flames.
And imagine how much worse off America would be if we did consider it a nation for one particular religion?
There's the harm right there.
