Thursday, August 16, 2012
Saudi writer wants to ban hate speech against Shi-ites
Muslims accuse us of "Islamophobia" if we make any criticism of them but what they say of one-another is much worse. And they actually translate it into action on a large scale. The conflict in Syria, for instance, is basically the majority Sunnis against the Shia-supported Assad government. Muslim on Muslim violence is huge -- and has been for centuries. The guy below is the odd man out -- as he himself says. He has obviously been influenced by Western ideas
“Finally, I returned to Jeddah, where all my friends belong to the Sunni sect. But, alas, the discussion was focused on the same issues. I tried explaining that most ideas about the Shia were myths and propaganda by their haters. ‘You need to read their literature and talk to them, before making such damning judgement,’ I would say. Few listened. Fewer agreed. I felt like it had been ages since I had left home — not just 16 months!”
Before the Arab Summit in Baghdad last March, I published a call to Arab leaders asking them to issue a law that criminalizes hate speech. The world, after losing over 50 million of its inhabitants during World War II, decided to ban and punish hate merchants. Democratic Europe and the US, proud as they are of free speech laws, would not tolerate inciting people against each other on the bases of color, faith, sex orientation or ethnicity. Shariah laws prohibit such incitements on principle. So we are more obliged to make it crystal clear to those dividers and hate speakers that “fetnah” — inciting Muslims to hate each others — is now against the law.
Today, it is not only an ideological debate on satellite TVs, and in sectarian magazines, religious schools and mosques. The issues have filled people with so much anger, distrust and aversion that marriages are broken, family members are estranged from each other, neighbors are fighting among themselves, and whole tribes, villages and towns, which were peaceful and coherent, are now divided along religious lines. Voluntarily or forcefully, districts are being cleansed from followers of opposite faiths.
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14 comments:
Go ahead, let 'em fight it out among themselves. Just keep them the f*ck out of the United States.
According to the Bible, Abraham had two sons. Ishmael was born first to his wife's servant. He's apparently the father of the Arabs. Here's what God promised about him:
The angel of the LORD said to her further,
“Behold, you are with child,
And you will bear a son;
And you shall call his name Ishmael,
Because the LORD has given heed to your affliction.
“He will be a wild donkey of a man,
His hand will be against everyone,
And everyone’s hand will be against him;
And he will live to the east of all his brothers.”
— Genesis 16:11–12
"His brothers" refers to the nation resulting from Abraham's other son, Isaac and his descendents: the nation of Israel. Sure sounds like this prophecy matches the headlines.
Cute story, Luke.
It is religion that is creating such artificial divisions. Some tribal divisions would occur of course but religious divisions have multiplied them hugely and added unnecessarily to human conflict and misery down the centuries. Christian divisions are as notorious as muslim ones.
Religions are specifically based on belief in a god or gods. Communism as in Russia and China etc. was based on a form of political totalitarianism that saw religious institutions as interference, and in that respect they were a-theist or anti-theist, but more accurately anti-religion, but did not pursue their political agendas as the ideology of NOT believing in a god or gods, or having violent internal conflicts over the best way NOT to believe in a given god!
Our foreign policy should consist of one simple rule. Treat others as they treat us. Exactly as they treat us.
Things in the world would be very different, especially if we learned to mind our own business. When America becomes the perfect nation, the perfect society, then, and only then, do we (perhaps) have the "right" to tell others how they should live. And even then, it will not be received well, as it would not be received well if it were we who was being told how to live in our own nation.
Totalitarian governments do not like the competition that religions bring to the table. To gain more power, eliminate the competition. One would think that Luke would be smart enough to realize this.
One would think that you could see the simple point that Atheists have killed more people in the cause of Atheism than all of the religions of the world combined. But since you are Atheists, you don't want to admit to that fact.
4:24, it doesn't matter, bottom line is religion didn't kill those millions, atheistic governments did.
9:22, they hate their own ugliness and aren't intellectually honest enough to admit their past or their true beliefs.
The concept of a “political religion” is well understood. Political religions demand profoundly ideological governments and almost always have a strongman leader who takes on the deity role.
Throughout history, across all cultures, there has always been a substantial part of humanity that craves the structure, dogma, pageantry, unthinking loyalty and authority worship that religion provides. For these people there is an emotional vacuum that must be filled. For many, political religions fill this emotional vacuum every bit as well as theistic religions.
Unsurprisingly political religions are every bit as eager to proselytize and impose their dogmas as are any other religion. However, they seem to always be much more vicious than theistic religions. The hyper-viciousness of political religions is almost certainly due to the psychological makeup of their founding profits and their acolytes.
As is the nature of religions, political religions are generally founded by some sort of profit. However, unlike theistic religions, the founding profits of political religions inevitably are sociopaths interested exclusively in self-aggrandizement. Thus these political religions, reflecting the psychosis of their profits, become sick twisted monstrosities.
It is essential for these political religions to utterly dominate the moral/philosophical playing field. This is a psychological requirement for both the sociopath profit and for his followers who only feel validated if there is no sign of intellectual or moral challenge to their belief system. Thus a prime harbinger of such a political religion is its profound contempt and hostility for existing religions.
When we look back over the past hundred years, several regimes come to mind as classic political religions:
Communist Russia – Lenin as profit, Stalin following as deity.
National Socialist Germany – Hitler as profit/deity.
Maoist China – Mao as profit/deity.
Khmer Rouge Cambodia – Pol Pot as profit/deity
Pan Arabic Socialist Iraq – Saddam Hussein as profit/deity
North Korea – Dear Leader Kim as profit/deity.
There are many commonalities shared among these political religions: Personality cult, dogmatic adherence to group-think, hatred of out-groups; state pomp and ritual; religio-governmental intrusion into all aspects of life, etc.
One of the least noticed but most important commonalities is the very similar psychological makeup of the devout adherents to all these political religions. There is a certain constellation of sociopathic thinking disorders required, without which one seems mostly immune to demented political religions.
Each of these political religions is self-identified as being Socialist in one form or another. This is because only those attracted to Socialism have the sociopathic thinking disorders and totally distorted view reality required to crave Socialism. This constellation of thinking disorders should appropriately be called Socialist Thinking Disorder (STD) and should be considered a serious and dangerous disorder.
Today in America there are huge numbers who are STD prone, waiting only for America’s own Dear Leader. The Occupy Wall Street folks are clearly modern clones of Hitler’s Brown Shirts, searching for a competent leader. They are violent, preaching hate, blaming *strike* Jewish */strike* bankers and are utterly ignorant. -- Brown Shirts in all but shirt color.
Many hoped Obama would fill the bill as America's Dear Leader. Although intellectually suited, Obama is pure Ivory Tower – all noise and incompetence – he is unwilling to publicly step from the Ivory Tower into the gutter.
But America is ripe – Obama might have been the wrong choice, but that won’t make his sycophants sane or less willing to bring their religion busting though your door some midnight.
Religion wrecks everything.
Screw the SHI-ITEHEADS
Atheists as such do not go to war with other atheists over questions of atheistic interpretation.
You're right. But they do tend to attack* threats to their power. And for atheist governments, organized religions are very high on the threat list.
* The numbers I listed were not all war dead. They included members of the nations' own population who were killed for political (power) reasons.
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