I suppose you've never heard of racially coded language. Not everyone who criticizes Islam has racial prejudices, but every now and then people will say something that just happens to sound shockingly in line with other racist crap you've heard a thousand times before. I mean, I don't get it--are you denying that this even exists as a problem? What's your endgame here? Are you just trying to "prove" that I can't read people's minds? Cause I'll concede that to you right now if it makes you feel better. And here's a better picture of what I was trying to depict in the first picture. For some reason the url of that picture suggests that those are Kosovars, but I was dubious of it myself. Muslims?
Please point it out yourself, then. Even your pimp, ATW, came around to agreeing with me once he understood the context of my posts.
This is the thing, if you try to make a point, the ATW circle jerk crew comes into to try to destroy any kind of intellectual conversation.
This is a tangent point. But I'm pretty sure if the type of "Islam" that most Albanians practice was ever practiced by someone living in a radical Muslim country such as Pakistan, it wouldn't end well for the practioner. The fact that a Muslim girl can actually wear a bikini in Albania/Kosovo tells a lot. Also. In your original post, those are Albanian players on the Swiss national team. They're not all Muslim, but I did understand what you were trying to get across.
The "type of 'Islam'" Albanians practice, let alone Kosovars, Bosnians, and so forth, is just as valid as any other Islam in the world. You trying to represent it as something other than that is akin to someone trying to argue that ISIS' Islam isn't a valid Islam either. If Islam has to forever carry its negative baggage, then it has just as much a right to carry its positive baggage. Secondly, my point in that post was not tangential at all. It was directly related to what I have been saying in this thread all along. As a matter of fact, you trying to make this about the variation of Islam practiced in the Balkans is what is tangential.
My point in my post was tangential. That's what I was referring to. I can see why you would be confused on that. I'm not even really disagreeing with you. Secondly, I'm not arguing it is not "valid." But there's something to be said in regards to the progressiveness of those countries and how Islam is perceived over there as a result. Location and environmental differences also affect those perceptions. Also, although much of the population in those countries is Muslim, the degree to which religion matters to them is much lower than in the middle east, south asia, etc. Lastly, everyone in Kosovo is Albanian. Repeating those countries when talking about ethnicity is redundant.
Pimp? Where did I agree with you? All I meant to say is that I can agree with one thing - that some people may say they are against Islam, but that they are also racist. But there should not be any general suspicion that someone is racist just because they criticize Islam.
Oh yes, maybe that guy should be banned or controlled! In the UAE, whose government you chose to work for, the dictatorship would already have put me in jail if they had read my posts!
It confuses you that I'm one of few who does not believe in banning or controlling opinions that I don't agree with, including yours. That much is obvious. It's you and your peers who are control-happy. You're the one who believes people in the Middle East have to vote the way you like in order for them to deserve democracy. You're the one who supports an outright arbitrary ban on face covering for women, even though I - more than you - disagree with the practice of women covering their face for religious reasons. You're the one who believes that in a region dominated by military bases armed with the most deadly weapons completely out of the purview of the population of that region, that those citizens are being whiny when claiming to be victims of colonization. Colonization by people you can vote for, as opposed to your criticism of governments whose citizens can neither vote for nor control, and for which FYI I haven't worked for in a while now. And you knew that. But it just doesn't fit well into your sensationalist narrative so you said, what the heck, who cares, I just have to throw this out there to make my point and drag this conversation into personal attacks. Nay. Be free ATW. Nothing makes me happier than you posting about this stuff all the time. Because if I believe what I believe, then you displaying this xenophobic behavior is the best medicine for curing rising xenophobia.
What is obvious is that you make a living working for a dictatorship that has an atrocious human rights record and is highly racist - and then go on to lecture people about democracy and racism. You don't even understand what democracy is, yet you keep yapping about it - you WORK for a DICTATORSHIP, for ....'s sake. How would you disagree with it more than me? You don't. The ban is not arbitrary. It is justified for safety and security reasons as well as due to the fact that forcing women to walk around in mobile jails violates human rights. We have military bases in Germany. That has not held us back and made us whine about colonization. You are extremely whiny. You get your money from a dictatorship that exploits workers from South Asia in the worst way. You are part of that system of exploitation. And then you whine that you are "dominated by military bases". Xenophobia? We have millions of immigrants in Germany who live a good, free life. I am a product of immigration. I'll tell you what xenophobia is: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html Xenophobia is enslaving foreign workers, like you do in Dubai.