Make no mistake, I'm an atheist who curries no favor for any branch of the ill-begotten Abrahamic religions, and who thinks that all religions are the motherlode of bad ideas, but
you guys are all wrong about Islam because you all base your conclusions on the rot sold by non-Islamic religions and you bought it, suckers. With the crap that you bought into, Bill and Sam, you're no different than Christians.
Really.
Islamophobia is the result of believing the rot that the other two Abrahamic branches preach about it.Sure, it's true that ISIS isn't helping in that regard, but it's also true that ISIS isn't Islamic and anybody who says that it is doesn't know squat about Islam either. Nice of you guys to opine about something you guys clearly don't know anything about outside of propaganda, but quite frankly, you're also believing the crap that ISIS is selling you, too, and that makes you a believer in ISIS as well as what makes you Christian.
Suckers.
Actual Muslims know better than you guys for a change. They know if the Allah they believe in really willed there to be a Califate Empire, we'd still have the first one. We don't, do we. As far as actual Muslims are concerned, there is no Califate Empire because it's God's will, and those attempting to establish one are not insha'allah.
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Oh dear--I just heard Chris Hayes make sense and then go off the rails. He said he was in Afflek's corner but then said that one should listen to a member of "the faith" as if it was monolithic. Christianity isn't monolithic either, despite what I may have inferred when I said that Christianity sells one story about Islam (all flavors of Christianity do and it dates back to when Christianity was nearly all Orthodox). Sorry, Chris, but a monolithic Islam is not true.
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What is wrong with this picture?
What's wrong with this picture is not that the caption is written in Arabic, nor that the apparent Muslim thinks that this is how a proper woman (hen) is expected to serve her man (rooster) because that's how much she loves him. What's wrong with this picture is that for centuries, this was what western men believed as a rule, and what abusive western men still believe.
There are Muslims that don't believe this way and there are Christians who do, and NO woman should offer such a thing as this as a token of love...and NO man should expect it, either. Ever. Bill Maher, it was YOU who complained about "the wussification of America". It's the non-wuss males that are this kind of problem in every religion, and even among atheist men like yourself. FAIL
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UPDATE, Reza Aslan/Sam Harris Edition:
Boy, that Real Time story keeps generating a lot of high-level-pundit discussion, and I suppose that's a good thing, but it remains a topic on which purely dispassionate analysis is a rare to find, and only when you get lucky, with Reza Aslan weighing in now. As I said before, Aslan is a Sufi apologist. while the remainder, regardless of faith of persuasion, simply believe stuff that other religions preach about Islam without going through the trouble of establishing factual facts first. Aslan makes the very accurate point that both sides lack sophistication.
The westerners invariably regard the Quran like it was a Bible even in its translation into English when it is not and never was. Westerners regard the Sunni-Shiite divide as "sectarian" when it isn't, and regard sharia law as uniformly more strict throughout "the Muslim world" when it varies from tribe to tribe, nevermind the variations that occur between Sunnis and Shiites, and all westerners of all western faiths invariably believe the rot about how the 7th century saw Islam spread by the sword when that's not true either.
On The Last Word, Sam Harris kept referring to singular beliefs but according to him, believed in by "the Muslim world" when that's not true. Sophistication is a prerequisite for any meaningful, factual discussion of Islam in the entire range of its varying spectrum while recognizing that the Quran is just a pillar of a wide range of Islamic beliefs that find more foundation among the Hadiths and, in the case of Sunnis, the Sunnah, and find that these things are merely foundations supported by the pillars, and upon that foundation rests the myriad of disparate sharia laws dependent on the myriad of different tribes that profess to be Muslim.
To paint Islam with a single tone is wrong; to paint Islam with only two tones is just as wrong, too. In Aslan's case, to minimize the fact that the Sunni-Shiite divide is something to be glossed over and sugar coated is just as wrong too.
Fast-forward to Sunday, and a Fareed Zacharia GPS UPDATE: Zacharia prefaced his program by weighing in on the Maher spat and proclaimed that Maher was some sort of legit intellectual pundit, forgetting entirely that he's a comedian. FAIL
Fareed made only one accurate comment, and that is that the matter is complex. More on this later.
A very late Tuesday UPDATE:
Lots of stuff going on this Tuesday, from City study session, Commission meeting, and the Tops In Blue concert. Prior to that, though, was the antique small engine exposition near the fairgrounds, too. I tried to upload a small engine primer video that I made with some of the footage from that last event, and Blogger decided it didn't like that, so we're back to the same ole video problems Google pushed on Blogger that was experienced earlier; error message claims that there's a 100MB limit now. I'm going to have to make an iPhone version before Blogger will take it---AGAIN. Google, get yer frikkin act together already. This is bollocks.
Ah. Here we go. iPhone size works. Eff U, Google & Blogger! FAIL!!
(Later in the day I tried to view the vid full screen for desktop and the captions are very very very muddled. But it's all that Blogger permits at this time. Meh and a half)
