Syria

[NJS 3978]

No, not stoked by atheist writers, stoked by any writers or people who repeat the mantra common among the new atheists that islam is uniquely evil, dangerous and savage.

It sits atop of the dung heap of all religions for me but I'd use "more" rather than "uniquely".

[Park Life 70]

It sits atop of the dung heap of all religions for me but I'd use "more" rather than "uniquely".

Expand.

[Park Life 70]

You should read up on Hitchens before quoting him. Good article here on how his position changed and he became bedfellows with the Neo-Con Wolfowitz.

 

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/hitchens-and-iraq

 

 

If, as Hitchens once said, hatred was what got him up in the morning, the first three decades of his career were motivated more than anything by a contempt for American foreign policy and the hypocrites and evil characters who carried it out. As late as 1998, Hitchens hated Bill Clinton much more than Osama bin Laden. When Clinton ordered Cruise missile strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan after Al Qaeda bombed the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Hitchens wrote a series of columns dissecting the American retaliation: he concluded that Clinton had chosen to kill innocent people (primarily Sudanese) in order to distract attention from Monica Lewinsky. Wag the dog, not Islamofascism, was the cardinal sin, the scandal that got Hitchens to the keyboard."

Edited December 1, 2015 by Park Life

[Happy Face 29]

I'm not going to get involved in this conversation any more but why not just refer to those people as bigots HF rather than islamaphobes?

 

Plenty of bigotry on both sides of the argument even if some people are strikingly unaware of their own prejudices.

 

Happy to call them bigots, don't see the name as important. That Hitchens quote (not actually his, he took it from Andrew Cummins) that Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.” says nothing about the argument whatsoever.

 

If "Islamophobia" doesn't exist, and we can't have new words that build upon, reflect and re-purpose existing words in order to reflect a position, then that's not an argument I'm interested in. I think the semantic argument is daft. The fact that anti muslim bigotry not only exists, but is what ISIS crave and is what fuels the fires of radicalistation is inarguable imo.

 

That's not to say islam cannot be criticised, obviously. Violence, speech limitations, sexism, homophobia and all the other heinous aspects of that religion, other religions, cults, nations and policies should always be called out, but directly, not with the broad brushstroke that takes Harris from pointing at a muslim terrorist to then insisting all muslims should be profiled.

[toonotl 2415]

 

Not getting into this waste of time again.

[Park Life 70]

That's a relief.

[Dr Gloom 19825]

That argument was so last week

[Park Life 70]

Not on my watch Ringo. Every last one of you that have erred will be hunted down and erased by Parkenstein.

[Happy Face 29]

I don't think people who do that know who Harris is tbh.

 

You're right there, Harris isn't bringing along the rednecks who are already pretty right wing. Trump, Cruz, Fox News and all the flat out bigots we liberals hate already have them sewn up.

 

The bigotry of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Maher and co is more nuanced and needs to be if it's going to convince the liberal class to keep applauding the global war as a noble act.

[toonotl 2415]

[Park Life 70]

 

You're right there, Harris isn't bringing along the rednecks who are already pretty right wing. Trump, Cruz, Fox News and all the flat out bigots we liberals hate already have them sewn up.

 

The bigotry of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Maher and co is more nuanced and needs to be if it's going to convince the liberal class to keep applauding the global war as a noble act.

Now that's what I call a target rich environment.

[Renton 17780]

 

You're right there, Harris isn't bringing along the rednecks who are already pretty right wing. Trump, Cruz, Fox News and all the flat out bigots we liberals hate already have them sewn up.

 

The bigotry of Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, Maher and co is more nuanced and needs to be if it's going to convince the liberal class to keep applauding the global war as a noble act.

I honestly don't know enough about Harris to comment, but would you care to elaborate on Dawkins role in this global war? Because your posts are increasingly sounding like gibberish to me.

[Happy Face 29]

I honestly don't know enough about Harris to comment, but would you care to elaborate on Dawkins role in this global war? Because your posts are increasingly sounding like gibberish to me.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/25/richard-dawkins-links-isis-child-who-beheaded-man-and-clock-boy-ahmed-mohamed

[NJS 3978]

I disagree with Harris on a number of topics but as I said above Dawkins was right about the clock boy- it was engineered completely - probably by his dad.

[Gemmill 34464]

I read Harris's book Waking Up which was interesting. No mention of Muslims though.

[Renton 17780]

 

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/nov/25/richard-dawkins-links-isis-child-who-beheaded-man-and-clock-boy-ahmed-mohamed

.

 

That link really doesn't help me understand where you're coming from though, the headline is as misleading as one of the Sun's, for starters. Seems like certain members of the liberal left live giving Dawkins a kicking recently. They rarely come across well. Take that article you posted before on "New Atheism". It was embarrassingly bad tbh.

[Renton 17780]

The guardian's been kicking Dawkins for months or years recently. Could almost describe their behaviour as bigoted. Actually, no almost about it when you consider the language they employ. The shameful bullies.

[Gemmill 34464]

Tbf Dawkins has been behaving like a mad bellend for a while now.

[Happy Face 29]

 

Where I'm coming from is that it's irresponsible to say that a mischevious kid who takes the inside out of a clock and tells his teachers it makes him a scientist should be compared to a radicalised butcher.

[Renton 17780]

 

">

 

Where I'm coming from is that it's irresponsible to say that a mischevious kid who takes the inside out of a clock and tells his teachers it makes him a scientist should be compared to a radicalised butcher.

You're (wilfully?) taking the comparison out of context though.

[Renton 17780]

Tbf Dawkins has been behaving like a mad bellend for a while now.

Not really, he's not really got the hang of Twitter though.

[NJS 3978]

 

Where I'm coming from is that it's irresponsible to say that a mischevious kid who takes the inside out of a clock and tells his teachers it makes him a scientist should be compared to a radicalised butcher.

The phrase under discussion was "just a kid" being used as an excuse. He later said he should have used the Bulger murderers as a better example which though completely over the top in pure comparison terms, shows he was making a point unrelated to the kid being Muslim.

[Renton 17780]

You've got to really want to be outraged to take offence at that like.

[Happy Face 29]

You're (wilfully?) taking the comparison out of context though.

 

I think he retrospectively justified it with comparisons to the Bulger case, but if it was just the first of many comparisons he could have made, I think it was most unfortunate his first thought happened to compare the muslim clock boy to the muslim executioner boy.

 

To be fair, Dawkins is not as bad as Harris from what I've read. His overt criticism doesn't go as far as suggesting we should profile muslims. The thing that annoys me about him is the straw man he concocts to suggest that liberals shut down ANY criticism of Islam. It most exasperated me recently on Real Time, because I despise almost everything about the religion...

 

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/02/bill-maher-richard-dawkins-denounce-regressive-leftists-for-granting-free-pass-to-islam/

 

Criticism of all the bad ideas within all religions are encouraged and have made him his fortune, It's what I appreciate about him. In fact, muslims being off the table for criticism is the opposite of the truth. US journalists are routinely fired or forced to resign for criticism of Israel or support for boycotts, complete support for Israel is a requirement and those offering actual balance are instantly labelled anti-semites and out on their ear.

 

There is complete impunity for any criticism of Islam though, you'll struggle to find any examples of anyone punished for anti islamic sentiment. When Dawkins pushes for more criticism of one faith to further shift the imbalance he caters to the right wing bigots.

 

I understand there are nutjobs who will kill for cartoons, their aim is to shut down conversations, but these aren't the people Dawkins and Maher are referring to here, they're complaining about other liberals, because to criticise the actual monstrous fucks who do that shit wouldn't be edgy enough to sell their books or their TV show, it would just be common sense.

[Happy Face 29]

You've got to really want to be outraged to take offence at that like.

 

I wasn't offended. I just thought it was a stupid thing to do and catered to anti muslim bigotry.