A U.N. resolution seeks to criminalize opinions that differ with the Islamic faith.

[S.A.M.]

So... you speak for all Muslims in the world because someone, somewhere, once discriminated against you?Definition of what? And, again, who is "we?"

Muslims of course. When you're discriminated against for belonging to a group, you could pretty much exchange any other member of the group and expect the same result.

I don't need to be discriminated against several times to represent the group.

And it's not "someone somewhere once".

Islamophobia is real. Just look at the Muslims being "liberated" around the world.

 

[(Q)]

Islamophobia is real. Just look at the Muslims being "liberated" around the world.

It is totally false by definition and is only used to censor criticism of Islam. Most likely, the next step would be to use it to justify acts of violence in defense of Islam.

 

[spidergoat]

Afghanistan was not invaded because we hate Muslims. That bit of propaganda is beneath rational discourse. .

 

[quadraphonics]

Muslims of course. When you're discriminated against for belonging to a group, you could pretty much exchange any other member of the group and expect the same result.

Well yes, tautologically. But that doesn't entitle you to speak for anyone else.

I don't need to be discriminated against several times to represent the group.

Indeed: no amount of instances of discrimination would entitle you to speak for the group. Nothing that any outsider can do can grant you that power. Only the group, collectively, can extend that authority.

And I don't see any evidence that the world's Muslims have collectively decided that you represent them. Did you ask them? Have they taken a vote?

Islamophobia is real.

Yes, I know. But that reality doesn't mean that any particular Muslim is entitled to speak for all of them. And to the extent that bigots are going to (selectively) treat the words or actions of individual Muslims as representing all of them, that is something that you must resist, if you want to also maintain that Islamophobia is a bad thing. If you accept the premise that you are entitled to speak for all Muslims because someone might interpret your words that way, then you are allowing bigots to define you.

The obvious fact is that you want to speak for all Muslims, because you enjoy the pretense of authority that accompanies it. Flaming strangers on SciForums is so much more exciting when you pretend that it represents some kind of clash of civilizations, as opposed to individuals, no? Why else would you embrace such obviously flimsy pretexts for doing so, pretexts which directly contradict your stated ideology?

You can be assured that I do not interpret your speech as representing anything more than the idiocy of a single individual. I have total confidence that if the world's Muslims were asked to read your posts on SciForums and then vote on whether to endorse you as a spokesjackass, they would overwhelmingly disavow you.

 

[S.A.M.]

Yeah clearly we must wait for a collective decision from Muslims resisting bigotry

Which is what the UN resolution is addressing.

And no I see no reason why the Nazis should decide of the Jews feel sufficiently oppressed enough to hold elections and elect a speaker

As a Muslim I'm entitled to have an opinion on being discriminated against for being a Muslim. I don't need anyones permission to have or express that opinion.

And if you hold me responsible for any Muslim anywhere you should be prepared for the eventuality that rather than resisting it, I might embrace it. Be careful what you wish for, they say, for you may get your wish

 

[quadraphonics]

Yeah clearly we must wait for a collective decision from Muslims resisting bigotry

Individuals, Muslim or otherwise, are free to resist bigotry in whatever way they see fit. What you do have to wait for is a collective decision from Muslims appointing you their spokesidiot, if you want to pretend that you are such.

But, again, your behavior doesn't amount to resistance of bigotry. Quite the opposite, actually.

As a Muslim I'm entitled to have an opinion on being discriminated against for being a Muslim. I don't need anyones permission to have or express that opinion.

Certainly. But you DO need the permission of other Muslims if you want to present your opinions as representing theirs.

In that vein, you should strike the "as a Muslim" from the starting of that quoted material: all individuals are entitled to have opinions on any subject they like. What they are not entitled to do is present them as representing any other group of individuals. That requires a collective decision by said group to extend such authority.

So drop the "we." You don't speak for anyone but yourself.

 

[spidergoat]

What's wrong with Muslims? Well, for one thing, they treat women like cattle:

Girls being force-fed for marriage in Mauritania
Aminetou Mint Ely, a women's rights campaigner, said girls as young as five were still being subjected to the tradition of leblouh every year. The practice sees them tortured into swallowing gargantuan amounts of food and liquid - and consuming their vomit if they reject it.

But let's not say anything against Islam because they might get offended...

 

[S.A.M.]

Every Muslim is entitled to express his opinion against the bigotry they face. It matters not if it's one mans opinion.

When it comes to bigotry, you'll find that like any other group it matters very little what individual differences of opinion are. Whether you like being called a nigger or not, it becomes the identity you embrace. It's not rocket science.

 

[(Q)]

Yeah clearly we must wait for a collective decision from Muslims resisting bigotry

They are resisting criticism to the bigotry they preach in Islam and perpetuating a 'culture of victimhood.'

Which is what the UN resolution is addressing.

So, that no one can criticize Islam anymore?

As a Muslim I'm entitled to have an opinion on being discriminated against for being a Muslim. I don't need anyones permission to have or express that opinion.

Yet, you wouldn't allow anyone to have an opinion on Islam, or do you just want to grant your permission, as you see fit?

 

[(Q)]

Every Muslim is entitled to express his opinion against the bigotry they face.

Yet, we are not entitled to express our opinions against the bigotry of Islam?

Whether you like being called a nigger or not, it becomes the identity you embrace. It's not rocket science.

Being black isn't the same as being Muslim. That isn't rocket science, either.

 

[quadraphonics]

Every Muslim is entitled to express his opinion against the bigotry they face. It matters not if it's one mans opinion.

Every individual is entitled to express their opinion about anything, even if it offends others. No individual is entitled to pretend that they speak for any group without the approval of that group. And no group is entitled to silence any individual because they find that individual's opinions offensive.

Whether you like being called a nigger or not, it becomes the identity you embrace.

Only if you want to allow the bigots to define you, and so prevail over you. If you embrace such an imposed identity, then what are you complaining about in the first place? Do you really not see how circular your "reasoning" is here?

By the way, you do understand that refusing to rent someone a place because of their religion has been against US Federal Law since the 1960's, right? And that we have an extensive federal agency tasked with following up on complaints of such discrimination, at no cost to the complainant?

A lot of this discussion is completely unmoored from reality: the West is about the only place in the world that already has anti-discrimination laws of the type that the Resolution calls for, while the sponsors of the Resolution are amongst the world's most blatant official practicioners of religious discrimination. The only parts of the Resolution that are being objected to here are the calls for limiting freedom of speech, and the conflation of ethnic profiling with religious discrimination. As far as everything else in there goes, my response is: "yeah, I already know those are good ideas. My country adopted them decades ago. Too bad more of the countries sponsoring this Resolution have yet to do the same."

 

[S.A.M.]

And Nazi Germany was a nation of Nobel Prize winners

The "west" as you speak for it, is the only place today that makes life intolerable for those it exploits around the world. It's not the average Muslim in the street who is the problem, it's the dictators and kings armed and funded by the "west" that you'd speak for.

So when you tell us about how enlightened the "west" you presume to speak for is, don't forget that you're also actively destroying other societies.

 

[spidergoat]

Description of Red Herring
A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form:


Topic A is under discussion.
Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).
Topic A is abandoned.
This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim.

 

[S.A.M.]

Red herring?

How many of iraqs best and brightest still live there? How many of Afghanistans?

You bemoan the force feeding of five year olds while defending the starvation of a million and a half.

You can't reduce a society to it's lowest common denominator by excessive unrestrained violence and oppression and then blame the vixtimsfor their conditions.

 

[spidergoat]

This has nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, or Israel!

 

[S.A.M.]

It has to do with bigotry against Muslims and geopolitics plays a very large role in this. It took your country 200 years of stable society to go from a President who burned down native American villages to a black President with a Muslim name.

And yet you somehow expect that toppling democratically elected governments, supporting oppressive regimes, bombing people for decades and incarcerating the innocent and torturing them will somehow lead to a stable and progressive society.

So you demonize the people you massacre and expect them to get enlightened from it. It doesn't work like that.

 

[quadraphonics]

The "west" as you speak for it,.

Not "for:" "about." I don't need to presume to speak for anyone in order to relate facts about what laws are on the books.

It's only if I want to say "the West thinks you're a douchebag" or "on behalf of the West, I declare war on so-and-so" that I need some extra sanction.

It's not the average Muslim in the street who is the problem, it's the dictators and kings armed and funded by the "west" that you'd speak for.

I haven't spoken for anyone but myself. I have spoken about the West, but that's a very different matter.

And I fail to see how America does anything to prevent said governments from adopting anti-discrimination laws. Quite the opposite, in fact. Why would America want them to preserve laws that discriminate against most Americans? If anything, shouldn't the Evil Americans be pushing their lackey dictators to allow in Christian missionaries and Western media so as to better undermine these societies?

Let's also note that it was exactly these dictators and kings that sponsored this Resolution.

So when you tell us about how enlightened the "west" you presume to speak for is, don't forget that you're also actively destroying other societies.

I don't speak for anyone but myself, and I'm not actively destroying anything. And the point was not that the West is more enlightened, but rather that the Resolution seems to refer to some kind of fantasy world, which is exactly what raises suspicions about the motives for it. If the countries pushing this Resolution think that stronger non-discrimination laws are the key to fixing relations, then why don't they enact them themselves? Why, instead, do they go and demand action from the countries that already have such laws? This disconnect from the facts raises serious questions about what the motives are here.

If you want to reverse my criticisms on me, you need to find an instance in which they actually apply to me. Just insisting they do, while calling me a Nazi, is pathetic. The experience of interacting with you is, frankly, pretty demeaning.

 

[S.A.M.]

In your fantasy world destabilized societies should be harbingers of social progress.

How absurd.

 

[spidergoat]

It has to do with bigotry against Muslims and geopolitics plays a very large role in this. It took your country 200 years of stable society to go from a President who burned down native American villages to a black President with a Muslim name.

And yet you somehow expect that toppling democratically elected governments, supporting oppressive regimes, bombing people for decades and incarcerating the innocent and torturing them will somehow lead to a stable and progressive society.

So you demonize the people you massacre and expect them to get enlightened from it. It doesn't work like that.

Another red herring. Why shouldn't a person, let's say a Muslim, not be able to voice their criticisms of Islam?

Why do you wrongly assume that only the US or western nations care about freedom of expression?

Would outlawing the voicing of such concerns lead to greater understanding between peoples? What would it accomplish?

 

[S.A.M.]

Another red herring. Why shouldn't a person, let's say a Muslim, not be able to voice their criticisms of Islam?

Why do you wrongly assume that only the US or western nations care about freedom of expression?

I don't, I just recognize the ludicrousness of expecting social prigesssiveness in a society that you are actively undermining politically.

I have yet to see any society in the world where social stability preceded political autonomy.