Hey its just another friendly bombing from the peaceful islamic people

I wont necessarily argue against your experiences, but I will say that others have had the same experiences with any of a variety of labels: racist, anti-semitic, feminist, misogynistic, (take your pick).

And to be fair, there is an arena within which those sentiments are very real, where people are, deep down inside, expressing nothing but racist sentiments, or anti semitic feelings. In that regard, I'm sure you can understand how some people become sensitive (and in some cases, hypersensitive) to even passing critiques that can be interpreted as singling out a specific group.

Couple that with our modern climate, and it's pretty clear that anti-Islamic/anti-Muslim sentiment far outnumbers any of the aforementioned manifestations of bigotry today. If you look at it statistically, the amount of hate crimes targeted and conducted against Muslims is quite significant...and anti-Muslim sentiment continues to grow.

So when a thread is started filled with cheap cynicism, dont be surprised if it never turns into a 'serious discussion.' And hopefully we can move beyond that....

 

Yes - your personal attacks don't come across as awkard at all? You don't think people feel embarrassed for you when you write this kind of stuff??? Funny guy.

Look, piece of advice to you - worry about yourself and ask yourself why you are really here? Is it to bash others who don't agree with you - is it to get your frustrations out in a passive aggressive sort of way? All of those are legitimately fine - but cmon, be honest.

If you want to discuss, then discuss, put this crap behind and let's have intelligent respectful conversation.

But do stop it with these childish attacks. Trust me, people will take what you have to say more seriously if you can do it without name-calling.

 

If you can't blame him for provoking the same old routine, why are you blaming others for following it?

A better thought might be for everybody to own up to and take responsibility for their own actions. OddsOn can take the responsibility for an OP that diverts discussions before they begin. People who label and pile on without contributing to discussions can take responsibility for that. If some want to point out those mistakes, then let them do it. But instead of getting defensive in response, we should focus on doing something next time that will improve the situation rather than making it worse in retaliation.

In your case, instead of complaining about the discussion being diverted, why not continue it and ignore the rest of the stuff. Good discussions happen all the time with bs flaming going on around them. By engaging in the bs you are the one avoiding the discussion. And if you're concerned about being labeled an Islam hater for simply wanting to discuss these issues seriously, have you considered that maybe that's not actually why you're labeled an Islam hater? Maybe there's some other aspect to your behavior that leads to that charge?

Ok, let's discuss. Do you acknowledge that if you expand the scope of your statement a few centuries or millennia, then instead of Islam you could put other religions into the statement to be accurate? If so, wouldn't that mean that any issues aren't with Islam itself, but rather with Islam as it is practiced today by certain groups of people?

 

I see them as responsible for us having a very unbalanced composition of the D&D crowd. The angry, holier-than-thou leftists have driven a lot of people from the other side away who made for good debate and discussion.

Fair question, actually a very good question. I used to think it is just with Islam as it is practiced today by certain groups of people, and still tend to think that. However, when someone has cancer, do we know if he had a genetic pre-disposition to get it or if external factors during his lifetime caused it, or both? As to Islam, as with many other religions, a lot depends on your interpretation of the teachings, and unfortunately, the ones with money within Islam propagate the more radical interpretation of the original teachings.

As to expanding the scope to a few centuries or millennia, yes, historically you are right, but I prefer to look at the present and the future. Maybe looking at history and how other religions overcame their dark ages can be a helpful guideline to how to "fix" Islam - maybe, maybe no? What do others think about this?

 

I haven't been around long enough or paying close enough attention to comment on whether that is true or not, but I believe the best response either way is still to make good decisions on your own. If one's post can be criticized on its own, then it deserves the criticism regardless of whether it is retaliation or response to different or worse behavior. In this case, OddsOn was the one criticized for the inflammatory thread title and lack of insight. Any perceived poor behavior of others should be a separate subject. This would apply equally if someone wanted to point out a specific reply in the thread for criticism.

Looking at the present and future is fine, but not when trying to answer the question of whether the problem is rooted in the tenets of the religion itself or not. Answering that question requires that you not ignore past history, and past history plus a little bit of logic makes it clear that the violence is no more endemic to Islam than it is to several other religions.

If you can accept that premise, even grudgingly, it helps the discussion a lot. (The most important help being that people aren't so easily sidetracked by whether you're anti-Islam, bigoted or whatever.) Now the question becomes, what is different about modern violent Muslims who kill in the name of their faith, and how can those issues be addressed to prevent them from killing or prevent them from existing.

 

Good question, do you have a starting point for an answer?

 

Not really. I haven't studied the situation very closely.

It could be related to things like the economic development of primarily Muslim countries compared to the rest of the world, or the dearth of democracies in countries with Muslim majorities compared to other religions (which could be more of an explanation of why incidents of violence from other religions has diminished). It could be just coincidence based on a couple of bad apples starting a trend, or it could just be a normal cycle with reasons that are too complex to boil down in a simple discussion. It could be none of those (if those ideas are even accurate). I honestly don't know, my knowledge on the subject just isn't terribly deep.

 

w/o endeavoring too hard to answer this question (and there are probably many answers to such a fundamentally dysfunctional "question"), perhaps we could focus on a solution.

if i were muslim, and wanted to "work to to prevent them from killing" i might look within first, and stop blaming the modern world, and the foremost exponents thereof, for all the problems inherent in my society.

look within, i'm certain there's both an answer, and a "god," there.

 

While I agree with this sentiment, it is not terribly helpful if we're not Muslim and a part of a society that condones or supports this behavior.

In fact, not only is it not helpful, I'd go so far as to say it is detrimental if given on its own in lieu of any other input because it seeks to place blame rather than find solutions. And again, I do agree with the sentiment.

But since I'm pretty sure neither you, nor I, nor most of the others posting in this forum are in that position, I'd suggest endeavoring to answer the question and find understanding from our own perspective would be a more productive decision.

 

Hitler, is that you???