The faces of Muhammad

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no comment...

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FFS, open your eyes man!

you gotta love the islamic press

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Respect in the middle east:

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a) Religious persecution of individuals (human rights abuse): This persecution is conducted against individuals because of their religious affiliation. In Saudi Arabia and Iran, for examples, individuals are punished for displaying crosses or stars of David, jailed for praying in public, and in some cases punished by death, for not complying with the religious tenants. In these countries, as well as in Egypt and Sudan, converts to Christianity are sentenced to death.

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converts to Christianity are sentenced to death.

converts to Christianity are sentenced to death.

And no Posty, this isnt a tiny group of extremists.

Quote from Steppenwolf

Look at the islamic states how they are organized, dictatures, national proud, religious proud, hate against everything that is different then themselves. This is very fascist to me.

No, actually that's just a closed state with a fundamentalist power. If you want, call it a Fundamentalist state. There isn't anything fascist in what you've just described other than perhaps nationalism, but that's so intertwined with religion over there that it's not wholly here nor there.

Quote from Steppenwolf

The word fascism must not be used of the context its origin. Everything that has things in common with it can be called fascist if you didnt know that. Even the soviet communism in the former ussr had things in common with fascist ideas.

Stalinist states did have certain aspects of fascism but to be perfectly honest the only real fascist state ever was Italy during WW2. National Socialism differs because of its economic policy and several other factors.

Quote from Steppenwolf

you know little about national socialism. If you didnt know Hitler and especialy Himmler were about to form a new kind of national religion based on old germanic myths etc.

Oh man, you're telling me I don't know anything about NS? Himmler was crazy with the germanic myths and all that weird shit. Hitler tolerated his nuttiness so long as it never opposed his regime. Oddly enough Himmler actually tried to seek peace with the World Jewish Council near the end of the war and Hitler fired him for it, not that it really mattered, they were all pretty much out of a job at that point. The point is that it was never taken seriously at all, ever.

Quote from Steppenwolf

Open your eyes if you dont see similaritys between the islamic world and national socialist/fascist regimes. You argue about word definitions etc but what counts is how people are tretened and how people are treatend who think different :roll:

The Islamics hate Jews because of religious reasons. The Nazis hated Jews for racial and perceived economic reasons. THEORY DESTROYED. :monocle:

Quote from kleinluka

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Yeah, two countries hate each other now because of an insult slung by the first. Does this excuse the actions? No. Does it explain them? Yes.

Quote from RD

Respect in the middle east:

converts to Christianity are sentenced to death.

converts to Christianity are sentenced to death.

And no Posty, this isnt a tiny group of extremists.

Yes it is. What you're saying is tantamount to saying that any citizen of the United States is, by extension, personally responsible, and personally carries out its laws.

Your point is moot. You're attempting an emotional appeal instead of arguing the points reasonably. You're also going off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the topic of discussion.

Do the cartoons that were drawn inspire disgust and anger in anyone of Islamic faith? Yes.

Does free speech protect such drawings? Yes.

Does free speech keep people from being insulted, angered or disgusted by such drawings? No.

Does lowering one's self to the level of antagonism and bigotry of the Fundamentalist Islamic states make us better than them? No.

Does deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states do anything to secure peace or foster understanding between the two cultures? No.

Are the European states deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states by reprinting these cartoons after the facr? Yes.

Is that helping? No.

That's the nuts and bolts of it. Go post some more pictures, though.

Quote from The Postman

Does deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states do anything to secure peace or foster understanding between the two cultures? No.

Its only natural for humans to get used to things that repeat. They'll get used to it.

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converts to Christianity are sentenced to death

Take another look at that tell me your mind isnt warping itself to find excuses. You are basically saying all muslims are apes when you say we should accept this because they are only muslims.

Quote from The Postman

Yes it is. What you're saying is tantamount to saying that any citizen of the United States is, by extension, personally responsible, and personally carries out its laws.

Now you are shoving the blaim to the dictatorship. Which doesnt matter, its the same problem. You just keep finding excuses, "its just a minority of extremists, its just the government". So what, its still a problem. Its not racist to adress it

Quote from RD

Now you are shoving the blaim to the dictatorship. Which doesnt matter, its the same problem. You just keep finding excuses, "its just a minority of extremists, its just the government". So what, its still a problem. Its not racist to adress it

First off: http://www.dictionary.com

Secondly, the blame is on the dictatorship. It's their fault for how their nation's react and how they foster such sentiment. I'm not finding excuses. Unlike you I'm using reasoning to figure out what's the matter before I start jerking my knee.

Quote from RD

Its only natural for humans to get used to things that repeat. They'll get used to it.

You're reaching here and making no point.

Quote from RD

Take another look at that tell me your mind isnt warping itself to find excuses. You are basically saying all muslims are apes when you say we should accept this because they are only muslims.

What the hell are you even trying to say here?

Quote from The Postman

Now you are shoving the blaim to the dictatorship. Which doesnt matter, its the same problem. You just keep finding excuses, "its just a minority of extremists, its just the government". So what, its still a problem. Its not racist to adress it

First off: http://www.dictionary.com

Secondly, the blame is on the dictatorship. It's their fault for how their nation's react and how they foster such sentiment. I'm not finding excuses. Unlike you I'm using reasoning to figure out what's the matter before I start jerking my knee.

So finally you agree there is no need to apologize because the blame is at their side

and OT: point me to my spelling error

Whoa RD that's insane. *Especially* because the Koran mentions that Christians and Sabians that believe in God and in the last day also just go to 'heaven'. Islam used to be very tolerant (freedom of religion), in the Middle Ages some Christian groups even preferred to be under control by Muslim government than by the Holy Roman Empire. I'm really curious how it's come this far, does your source say since when those laws have been in effect and why they were instated?

Quote from RD

So finally you agree there is no need to apologize because the blame is in fact at their side?

Read, comprehend, post. I was saying that the blame for the state of fundamentalism in the Middle East rests solely on the shoulders of their governments and how wound up they are with the state-fostered religion.

There is a need to apologize (which has already happened, but it should've happened sooner) because the west should be above letting a cartoon by one country's newspapers disintegrate international relations by antagonizing them further and then acting self-righteous about it.

My point is this: The Islamic states have a right to be insulted, disgusted and angered at this cartoon. You seem to think they're over-reacting because of their own screwed up world view. Those two things don't even correlate. They have a screwed up world view because they're so fundamentalist about their religion. Antagonizing that and then expecting them to act rationally and not realize any sort of hypocrisy is just fucking blind.

I'd like to ask why you're not addressing any of the other points I made previously that go against many of your arguments with fairly clear logic.

Quote from RD

OT: point me to my spelling error.

"blaim" and others throughout this and other threads.

Quote from DaanO

Whoa RD that's insane. *Especially* because the Koran mentions that Christians and Sabians that believe in God and in the last day also just go to 'heaven'. Islam used to be very tolerant (freedom of religion), in the Middle Ages some Christian groups even preferred to be under control by Muslim government than by the Holy Roman Empire. I'm really curious how it's come this far, does your source say since when those laws have been in effect and why they were instated?

racial and religious differences were fostered during European colonialism!

Quote from DaanO

Whoa RD that's insane. *Especially* because the Koran mentions that Christians and Sabians that believe in God and in the last day also just go to 'heaven'. Islam used to be very tolerant (freedom of religion), in the Middle Ages some Christian groups even preferred to be under control by Muslim government than by the Holy Roman Empire. I'm really curious how it's come this far, does your source say since when those laws have been in effect and why they were instated?

Are you talking about the death sentence thing? Its sharia law.

Its not done evrywhere, but converting is considered treason and definitely not acceptable.

Then what about Christians already living in the country or immigrating, visiting, diplomats?

Theyre not converts and theyre not visibly christian outside their churches. Its not just christians btw, converting to any other religion, even atheism is treason

Quote from RD

Theyre not converts and theyre not visibly christian outside their churches. Its not just christians btw, converting to any other religion, even atheism is treason

I suggest you make a thread on fundamentalism in general if you'd like to pursue this further. You're getting this entire thread off-topic enough as it is.

Why not let a discussion go where it goes as long as it's a decent discussion and it's related to the topic? Which, it is. Anyway, i can see your point about convertion, but what about Christians that have always been Christians? Since when has this law been in effect, what cause, what reason? If it's sharia law, do you know which part of the Koran describes it, i have one here so i could look it up.

Quote from DaanO

Why not let a discussion go where it goes as long as it's a decent discussion and it's related to the topic? Which, it is. Anyway, i can see your point about convertion, but what about Christians that have always been Christians? Since when has this law been in effect, what cause, what reason? If it's sharia law, do you know which part of the Koran describes it, i have one here so i could look it up.

Suit yourselves. I just find it better to argue specific points when there aren't tangents that don't exactly deal directly with the main point.

Posty, they have as much control over their government as we have over our press and artists.

And Daan0 I was talking about muslims that convert to other religions or become atheist. Read 3:5 , 3:85 , 16:106. The koran also says to live like Muhammed and he said to kill converts.

Remember Salman Rushdie? Ask any muslim what should happen to him. You too Posty, if you actually know any muslims. Youll find a hidden chamber of secrets in their mind that you didnt believe existed.

Btw here is a secret story of a muslim that converted to christianity.

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Has no one ever wondered why we rarely if ever publicly hear of Muslims converting to other religions, given the sheer numbers of Muslims in the world?

I live in a Western country and every Ramadan there are programmes on television, profiling Western converts to Islam. Their faces and names appear on television and they openly discuss the reasons for their conversion. How often, though, do we hear of converts from Islam to other religions, to Christianity, for example, even here in the West? Muslims to whom I have put this question in the anonymity of chat sessions on the internet, express incredulity at the idea that a Muslim should ever want to convert to another religion – “are there any [converts from Islam to Christianity]?” was the response of a recent, Western convert to Islam! When I declared my own, “apostate” status, after the initial disbelief the response of the majority of the Muslims on line, all living in the West, was that I “deserved to die”. An American Muslim explained it as “treason” – and, after all, “treason incurs the death penalty in America”!

I was a Muslim and I converted to Christianity. Mine was not a dramatic conversion. I was exposed to both religions within my family. Yet, under Islamic law, which applies in my native country, I could face a death sentence for exercising a choice that Muslim converts in the West exercise in freedom and in safety. Even though the death penalty in my native country is not enforced by the state, it stays on the books to deter potential converts. In practice, a family member or friend may do away with the apostate and the police will be sympathetic. Converts to Christianity, that great, rival missionary religion, are, together with “heretics”, the chief targets in the Muslim world today, as they have been since the earliest days of Islam (which is paradoxical when you consider Muslim disbelief that anyone could abandon Islam). Much is made today of the subjugation of women in Islam, yet no mention is made in the Western media of the persecution of religious minorities under Islamic law – and especially of the apostate.

Those who renounce Islam like myself, even in the West, are too afraid to allow their conversion/apostasy to be publicly known, for we live under a kind of permanent fatwa, for Muhammad himself, as recorded in the Hadith (Traditions), explicitly decreed that we be killed. If I appeared on television to talk about my reasons for converting to Christianity, with my face and name appearing for all to see, I would never know if or when I might be attacked, who my attacker might be or when the attack might come – here, in the West. This sort of thing is incomprehensible to most Westerners, yet it is a feature of life for us even in the West, a life Westerners know little about. And what about members of my family still in my native country? Would they be safe if my identity were made known, albeit in a Western country?

I recently attended a public, interfaith dialogue meeting between Christians and Muslims (very popular here in the West since September 11th – but not so popular where Muslims are in a majority!), where, though I did not give my name and did not reveal that I was a Muslim convert to Christianity, I was critical of Islam and quoted from the Quran and the Hadith to make my point. On the way back I changed my transportation even though I would not usually do so. When I got home a family member drew my attention to the fact that I was wearing a brightly coloured, easily recognisable garment. I will not wear it again.

It is rare to hear publicly of Muslims who renounce Islam, not because it doesn’t occur – it occurs despite persecution – but because we are afraid, for ourselves and for our families. Tolerance in Islam is a one-way street.

I have Muslim family members and have had wonderful Muslim friends in the past. Individuals always defy patterns. Yet the pattern is real, it exists and it remains largely unchallenged.

Sehr (Not my real name)

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Quote from The Postman

Do the cartoons that were drawn inspire disgust and anger in anyone of Islamic faith? Yes.

Does free speech protect such drawings? Yes.

Does free speech keep people from being insulted, angered or disgusted by such drawings? No.

Does lowering one's self to the level of antagonism and bigotry of the Fundamentalist Islamic states make us better than them? No.

Does deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states do anything to secure peace or foster understanding between the two cultures? No.

Are the European states deliberately antagonizing the Fundamentalist Islamic states by reprinting these cartoons after the facr? Yes.

Is that helping? No.

That's the nuts and bolts of it. Go post some more pictures, though.

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That is pretty much my exact stance on the matter. There is a huge gap between what legal rights and what the 'right' thing to do is. The papers can print this stuff all day long. It's freedom of the press in the finest sense of the word. To a certain degree, I think their hearts are int he right place standing by their fellow journalists.

That being said, it's an incredibly dumbfuck thing to do. In fact, I 'm actually going to quote George W. Bush without any sense of irony. "They hate our freedoms." In the western-democratic world, we abide by the freedome of the press. In the eatern-Islamic world, the concept just isn't on the table for discussion. It's not that they disagree with the concept. But in their world, freedom of the press isn't a moral priority. Religion is #1 and the government is an arm of the religion. You don't question religion, therefore you don't question government, therefore you don't need freedom of the press. That whole mentality went without saying for a long time, and this just brought it to the forefront. It's like trying to putt two positively charged magnets next to each other. They ain't sticking.

I wish the media in Europe would have had a bit more sincerity when doing this. For once, I think the American media is being very respectful of the issue (then again, I don't watch Fox News, so I have no frame of reference for what they're talking about). I think part of that is an unconscious attempt to let the extremists go after Europe for a while instead of America, but I digress.

The overall point is, that the media has the legal right to do this. Just like the KKK has the legal right to march through Harlem. Just like Fred Phelps has the legal right to hold signs that say "God Hates Soldiers" outside military funerals. Freedom of speech is a two way street. But just because you're legally in the right, doesn't make you a good person, or a nice person. You've still got a mroal responsibility unto yourself, and I think a lot of editors screwed up.