It's also about the moderate Muslims who silently oppose all that stuff but can't speak out for fear of the same punishment. I don't think liberals are doing those people any kind of favor by sweeping the problems of modern Islam under the rug.

Sure, criticize the warmongers. I don't condone the actions of Al-Qaeda, nor do I agree with their viewpoints. But I think there's a pretty equal if not greater % of warmongers among the cult of 'Murica than there are among the Muslim community. That's the basis of my argument ITT. There's a rampant group of irrational, angry, hateful people whose leadership has access to the most devastating weapons the world has ever known... And that group is the American people.

As far as point number 3 goes, you can point out all kinds of issues with middle eastern nations, but you can do the same thing with the US. A law enforcement run amok with power, a heavily corrupt political system, a War on Drugs that has torn apart countless families and communities, the highest incarceration rate in the world... I mean, yeah, life is probably a lot more restrictive in Riyadh than it is in New Hampshire. But let's not act like the rest of the world is doing things perfectly.

So if we just give them what they want, they'll totally go away?

They're just humanitarians, looking out for their fellow man?

That OBL, he made his case so clear, we shoulda just listened to him?...



" Americans want to wipe Islam off the face of the earth as a result."

Is this real life? Can we talk about other countries and people like this, or just Americans?

Please stop the strawmanning and whataboutism. I am perfectly capable of having two or more critical opinions at the same time.

This will go well

http://bridge.georgetown.edu/in-ariz...ide-of-mosque/

I'd like to see the Muslims at the mosque head outside and burn about 5,000 american flags while these morons are "protesting". Let's see who gets violent then.

Because you want Muslims to be killed? You want bikers to be killed? Bystanders? Cops? It's all good as long as people die?

Not at all. I'm just a simple 'merican who loves my #FREESPEECH. Should my hypothetical flag burning happen, you'd think those bikers would have to join the Muslims in expressing their mutual love of the first amendment, right?

I don't think the bikers would join the Muslims, but I don't think the Muslims in Arizona, by and large, want to burn American flags and seriously doubt they will. It is far more likely they will be waving American flags if flags come into this at all.

Of course they won't burn any flags, and of course the bikers wouldn't join them if they did. I wasn't trying to insinuate either as a realistic possibility.

All I'm saying is that I think it's highly likely that if they did burn some flags, the bikers would shut down that expression of free speech with force ASAP. Which of course would prove that they're a bunch of hypocritical morons who are essentially acting like a 5 year old teasing his brother by putting his hands an inch from his face and repeatedly saying, "i'm not touching you, i'm not touching you, i'm not touching you".

I mean this is obvious to anyone with a brain, but their "protest" has literally nothing to do with free speech.

Ok. You're right imo.

I don't think you're allowed to cite things you made up as evidence.

Since when is presenting a hypothetical scenario and saying "I think it's highly likely" taken as offering evidence of anything?

wow.

This thread is strange. Mostly non-Muslims calling other non-Muslims bigots against Muslims with nearly all of them displaying varying degrees of ignorance with regards to Islam.

The fact that people are attempting to rationalize or even defend a planned mass murder as a result of unfavorable cartoons is baffling. Bonus points to the 'whataboutisms' regarding piss Jesus and **** Mary.

Can someone link me to some news stories about all the shootings and beheadings piss Jesus spawned? My google must not be working cause I can't find them.

I'd also love for anyone in this thread tossing around the term Islamophobia to give me a run down on the Sunni/Shia conflict in the Middle East and Pakistan from both sociological and theological perspectives off the top of their head but I suspect the vast majority have no clue.

Islam is absolutely a violent religion and pretending it is not shows nothing more than that you've never actually read the Quran and are very out of touch with the preachings of some of the most popular Imams today.

Proceed to call me a 'racist' and Islamophobe as you like, but if anyone wants to have an actual discussion on the goals of IS, PKK, the FSA, JaN, SAA or the Peace Companies it would probably make a good thread.

There's a legit religious war happening right now all over Syria, Iraq and to a lesser extent Libya but people jump to call it anything but an expected effect of Islam.

Nobody sits around today and pretends theology wasn't a driving factor in the Crusades so I'm at a loss for why contemporary Islam gets a pass.

Please quote someone defending mass murder.

Well said, and I don't think anyone could infer that you are hateful, violent, or want to see harm done to any random Muslim(s) because of your views.

Of course, we can expect that kind of assumption to be taken by certain readers of this thread. In order to deflect, or ignore worldwide realities, they need to paint you as a bigot- and therefore your premise without grounds, based in ignorance. Which leads us to-

Good one Wookie. Of course, we all know no one presented a direct defense of mass murderers.

That would just be silly to post. Who is that dumb and wants to get ban-hammered so easily? No one. So its a question with no weight, what you should really be asking is: Who here are more mad at people have a drawing contest , than at the people who were already prepared to do Jihad, and used this as their excuse to kill innocents.

And lets be clear, this was not a hate rally, this wasn't the violent riots in germany by thousands of muslims screaming "gas the jews!" surrounding a synagogue, this was a drawing contest where people brought their kids. They drew a man, a dead man. Sometimes they drew a piece of cake, or something silly, and called it that man's name. This wasn't the holocaust-denial cartoon contest in Iran.

Do people honestly not see the difference?

Do people not see that individuals like Phill, and Allthecookies, have a problem with drawings first, and expect them to be the ones to change in this situation, and not the people who are would-be murderers of children?

And yes- there were children there, and you'd be a fool not to think they are the first targets whenever possible. Thank your collective deities that those cops were such good shots.

It wasn't a Nazi rally, but come on not a lot of nuance when it's organized by Geller

Nah, it was a hate rally. Hateful cartoons from the rally were posted in this thread already.

I'm just not that interested in the motivations behind Gellar or whomever is attending these events. I think the religion bears ridiculing, and I'm generally for organized ridicule of organized religion, even if the ridiculing people are religious themselves or harbor prejudices. The end (desired) result is the same: ridicule of islam's absurd sensitivity about images of the prophet. If the bigots were holding rallies where they captured muslims and beat them up, then I would make a thread about that, but these rallies aren't hurting anyone.

I get that there's an argument that the so-called "hate-speech" could foment violence against muslims or promote the ostracism of muslims from American society, but I have a couple of counter arguments. One, people decide to do violence and own the culpability of their violent acts. The hate rallies are blameless. I think this can only be truly argued in cases where specific people are baited, i.e. "Tiller the baby killer", but honestly I'm not even all that convinced that O'Reilly should bear any blame for Tiller's death. Wherever you fall on that argument though, it should be agreeable that its another level of instigation from what Gellar and co. are doing.

Second, the social ostracism is a natural part of the war of ideas, and its probably healthy for society as a whole. Christians in America are already experiencing this effect to a degree. Even in relatively religious red states like my home state of Tennessee, its starting to become socially awkward to be "too christian" or a "holy roller." U.S. is still a vast majority christian nation and yet one has to pay a social cost to be an outspoken christian. I have to imagine the amount of ridicule christianity gets in the media and on the internet on a daily basis is responsible for much of this effect.

I think the confusion is that you're thinking people are saying this rally is causative when people are saying it's representative. I think crazy people who hurt Muslims are responsible for themselves and their actions and the secondary causation caused by a rally would be hazy at best. BUT I do think these rallies are representative of a unnaunced, hyperbolic and reductive movement that paints the world in very basic colors and that movement is a problem regardless of their defense of free speech.

They have every right to do their thing, but it's not going to change my mind about what they represent.

These guys are having another cartoon contest. Can we get someone to enter and draw a picture of Muhammad pissing on a US flag or something else that might rile up the rally participants?

Suppose there was a group that did muhammad drawing contests in front of mosques. And I mean literally that was their entire ethos, purpose, creed, whatever. They did that entirely in a vacuum, and you had no way of knowing what was in their hearts, and no history of other behaviors.

Would you find the same faults with this movement as with Gellar's?

This was part of what I was alluding to in my previous scattered post.

There are certain aspects of Shia Islam (notably the reverance of Ali, but there are many more) that are interpreted by many Sunni Muslim scholars to be just as haram if not more than drawing the image of the prophet. This is why if you ever read any IS, Wahabbi, or other Sunni Islamist propaganda you will often see them refer to Shiites as "polytheists, heretics, idolaters" etc.

Would it be reasonable to tell Shiites that they must stop following Shia Imams and praying because simply by virtue of in doing so they are antagonizing another religion?

It's obvious some people in this thread put religion on some special pedestal that other belief systems or hobbies needn't adhere to. The feelings of the pious don't deserve any more or less sympathy than the feelings of anyone else.

What's more unsettling is that I think a lot of people try to look progressive by defending Muslims who behave like this or trying to shift blame for their activities to someone else.

If another Christian nutbag bombed an abortion center in your town, would your reaction be that the abortion clinic had it coming for providing abortions knowing it upsets some people?

I have two general issues with the liberal/progressive/sjw/whatever backlash. First, it's islam apologism which I just disagree with on a really basic level, but more than that it's actually insulting to Islam in a way. It's basically thinking "of course if you have a drawing contest some muslims are OBVIOUSLY going to storm the event with guns, what did you expect?" which is a pretty damn cynical view toward the group you're defending.

Second, I just feel like it's taken as an opportunity to republican-bash. I find it highly improbable that there would even be a thread if the hosts of this event weren't members of a group that most of this forum is politically antagonistic toward. I should add that I'm not a republican, I don't like republicans, and I'm not white-knighting for republicans. I just find the backlash to be disingenuous in context.