Board 8 > Politics Topic 85: Is Le Pen Mightier Than Le Sword?

(+) Yeah! (+)

TheRock1525 posted...

Why are so many people scared of Islam in the US? It's literally 1% of the population.

"So 1% of americans are TERRORISTS???", they responded

btw I'm totally okay with hijabs as a female empowerment thing. Hijabs are pretty. they're not burqas

Jakyl25 posted...

Maybe I just can't see the worst of if because I generally agree in principle with the most vocal militant leftists?

Like, I'm really supportive of intersectional feminism and the fight against TERFs. I think it's important that trans issues don't get sacrificed just to make "more progress" on feminist issues. Second-wave feminism is about as awful as being a men's rights activist.

That being said, if I said something that the more radical, militant supporters of my cause took offense to, my response is not to dig my heels in against an unfair assault, it's to try and understand their passionate point of view. And usually, even if I disagree, I can.

that's definitely part of it, yeah. while you go try to understand somebody's passionate views and conform around it, i first question what the passion actually is in the first place and may well come to the conclusion that it's misplaced or an outright lie. if you want some recent examples, take the Huffington Post recently having an article supporting the idea of how removing white people's right to vote could result in a better country. the editors even doubled down on it as the article drew critique, not just supporting the author but also the author's claims. ...then they deleted it because they got tricked, didn't follow their own guidelines to release that, and have been trying to step back from that over the past week.

my reaction to that bit wasn't thinking of this as a passionate individual whom i need to understand, it's thinking them as a person advocating for terrible things. the conclusions themselves are abhorrent, therefore the only value the arguments hold are to see how it was reached. obviously exceptions exist where the argument is mind blowingly good but... well, they're the ones that prove the rule.

another difference between us on this also comes what you said on men's right activists - they do make valid, reasonable points often time. honestly, most arguments from this camp are pretty damn sound, the people... vary. i think that's part of where we split; for both cases i just separate the person from the argument, including their passion or drive - that stuff doesn't matter to me. so if it's a very motivated speech that inspires you or if it's a really cringy guy sperging out, i ultimately won't care a lot for anything but the details.

Jakyl25 posted...

Isn't this what we already do in America? With every religion EXCEPT Christianity

that doesn't seem to happen with a significant chunk of the left. just look the way the argument constantly shifts to the religion and people or the religion and the state. it's almost never just "the religion." when you talk about Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhists, etc you aren't really talking about people or the state most of the time. Islam, for some reason, is rarely treated this way. if you try to argue and narrow these points down, you're often just slapped with a label and are to be dismissed - you're an Islamophobe now!

...because religious ideas/religions themselves should be protected from outsiders?

honest question: what's the equivalent of that label for Christianity or Judaism?
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TheRock1525 posted...

Why are so many people scared of Islam in the US? It's literally 1% of the population.

Post 9/11 branding. You can position them as a threat to american values socially, a threat to the dominant religion here, and a threat to our safety. it's all bullshit of course but you can draw in a lot of people using their fear of at least 1 of those three things.
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Wanglicious posted...

that doesn't seem to happen with a significant chunk of the left. just look the way the argument constantly shifts to the religion and people or the religion and the state. it's almost never just "the religion." when you talk about Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhists, etc you aren't really talking about people or the state most of the time. Islam, for some reason, is rarely treated this way. if you try to argue and narrow these points down, you're often just slapped with a label and are to be dismissed - you're an Islamophobe now!

...because religious ideas/religions themselves should be protected from outsiders?

honest question: what's the equivalent of that label for Christianity or Judaism?

I'm really not following what you're trying to say here at all. Not that I disagree, just that I don't understand.

What "harmful" practices of Islam do we "protect" in the US? Meanwhile harmful practices of Christianity are in actual, enforced laws all over the place. Set aside for the moment that Islam agrees with many of those; it just didn't happen to be the source here in America.
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Also the equivalent of that label for Judaism is "anti-Semite"
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Wanglicious posted...

you say this without fully realizing what you've just admit here.
honor killings are a religious practice. killing gay people is a religious practice. FGM is a religious practice. and so on, none of this is a case of "well the state said so," this is "well the religion said so and the religion controls the state." we had that with Christianity. it didn't work so well. we can admit that. so we also should admit that with Islam. considering the fact that Islam has tied together its religious dogma with legal authority for literally thousands of years, separating that is a massive endeavor that will take multiple generations to fix. much of this will need to come from within, with people who went through these backwards practices speaking out against it, and these people being supported. that last one doesn't seem to be the case with many left wing publications or media - there's no reason Ayaan Hirsi Ali has to fight against the left and there's no reason why a woman telling her "I wish I could take her vagina away" should ever be championed by the left.

"honor killing type s***" isn't an issue of "other countries."
it's an issue of Islam itself. the religion itself. going "yeah but" is trying to circle around that to defend various parts which are indefensible. that shouldn't be pushed off to the side, that's the main crux of people on the left and

The quote got butchered on mobile, but I think you just undermined your own point.

All the horrible shit the religion of Islam does in the Middle East is literally stuff Christianity did until Western values won out.

Hell, (conveniently, except for the anti-gay stuff), an entire Testament was basically thrown out by most Christians.

Are the shitty parts of Islam prevalent in America? Because as far as the statistics show, when they live in the US, Muslims integrate just as well as any other culture.
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On a lighter note

https://twitter.com/chasemit/status/855054012806176769
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anti-semite is for the Jewish people, not the religion. like the charicatures and propaganda weren't really about the Jewish faith, but its people as a race. they're backstabbers, they'll poison you/the children/the well, they're the real communists, etc. even the word "Semite" is about people, not religion.

Islamaphobe has the religion right in the name and it's used against people who criticize the religion specifically. like... do we not have a word for this for other religions?

>_> is that not the clearest giveaway that something is wrong here?


Jakyl25 posted...

I'm really not following what you're trying to say here at all. Not that I disagree, just that I don't understand.

What "harmful" practices of Islam do we "protect" in the US?

i think you're confused because i'm not even talking about the US really. what you're doing here - specifically coupling Islam with the US - is literally what i said keeps being done to try to defend it. like i'm specifically saying to decouple this to just Islam, the religion. that's basically the beliefs it has.

after that you get into what is supported and to what degree this support exists. this can be broken down by region if need be.

tied to that you get into how Islam and the state always connect. this is mostly to settle in what expectations people would have and what they would do.


migration can be tied to all that but my statement was that any issues of migration here are largely due to the left's inability to rationally deal with identity politics, Islam in particular. the focus is not migration here, it's the left's irrational protection of a religion.
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Wanglicious posted...

tied to that you get into how Islam and the state always connect. this is mostly to settle in what expectations people would have and what they would do.

What do you mean by this?
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

The quote got butchered on mobile, but I think you just undermined your own point.

All the horrible shit the religion of Islam does in the Middle East is literally stuff Christianity did until Western values won out.

my point is that the left needs to uphold the same values it hold to literally every other belief system where it's traditionally been willing to attack, criticize, even demonize various aspects of it until it's broken down. and this will take a long, long time, span multiple generations, because it's literally reprogramming thousands of years of tradition.

many on the left aren't doing that, they reject people who do that, they support people who do the opposite of all that, and dismiss/attack people for doing that.

...and seriously, "Western Values," what. we're talking Christianity here. that's totally the wrong phrase. liberal values? if so then sure, i agree with that. and that's what i'd like applied to Islam too. the irony here is that for some reason it's the conservatives who often point these things out... because, well, Islam has the most conservative principles in it and it makes the right wing look like bleeding hearts.


for the record, it's not just the middle east. for as secular as Indonesia may be, 1 in 5 support honor killings. stuff like killing the gays is more popular than that, bit lazy now to look it up again. all it really means that Islam has many shitty practices that need actual discussion and analysis, not handwaved with a "yeah but..." or "Islam and ___" type of couplings.
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Wanglicious posted...

Islamaphobe has the religion right in the name and it's used against people who criticize the religion specifically. like... do we not have a word for this for other religions?

Also I disagree with this. The word may be about the religion, but the label "Islamophobe" tends to be levied against people who are biased specifically against Muslims.

Like, Trump wanted a "Muslim Ban." That's about the people themselves, but it's called an Islamophobic policy.
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KamikazePotato posted...

scarletspeed7 posted...

KamikazePotato posted...

The left is far from perfect but I think the whole 'both sides are bad!' thing is a false equivalence by now. It's okay to make a stand and say that the right is acting much shittier than the left - because they are.

Saying one is shittier than the other doesn't mean I support one over the other. Both sides suck and it's only by degrees that the right is worse.

I mean...no? The right is not worse than the left by a slight amount. It's actually significantly worse in every way possible. The left, at worst, makes mistakes. The right is actively fucking up the country in a way that may be unprecedented in American history. You should absolutely support the left right now, because supporting the right or staying neutral will allow the country to continue fucking up the country. This is not the time to hedge your bets to look smart no matter what happens.

How about I not hedge my bets because your attitude right here is just as bad as Ulti's and cloaked in the same smug self-superiority.

You want to win me over? Give me numbers.
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Wanglicious posted...

all it really means that Islam has many s***ty practices that need actual discussion and analysis, not handwaved with a "yeah but..." or "Islam and ___" type of couplings.

It's because those criticisms of Islam are so often used as justification to harmfully discriminate against Muslims.
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Jakyl25 posted...

What do you mean by this?

Islam and the state have a history that's gone so long that decoupling them would, to the overwhelming majority, be viewed as an insult. "Islamic law is the law and that's how it should be."

Christianity at its height was similar but did eventually collapse on this belief as the doctrine of free will lends itself to free thinking, so it was always on limited time. Islam doesn't have that and as a result has managed to stay very similarly for much longer. realize that even today, over 70% of Indonesia supports Sharia Law being the law of the state.

when you look at the history there and what people believe even in the most secular parts, you've gotta take a step back and know who and what you're getting. i'd basically tie migration after this step but not before, up to this point all you've really done is try to understand Islam, who supports it, how it's supported, and what enforces it. after that much has been understood, makes sense to talk about migration so you don't end up getting things like shitty slums fully ruling themselves. this would be really helped if there wasn't as much resistance to talking about all of that by the left too, since it'd mean the police would be more open to doing their jobs as they wouldn't be demonized so quickly.
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So you're saying that Islam is, to many practitioners, intrinsically tied to governing?

And you say this isn't as true of Christianity?

I am skeptical
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Well more like CURRENTLY
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Even currently

We just allowed gay marriage two freaking years ago
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Jakyl25 posted...

Also I disagree with this. The word may be about the religion, but the label "Islamophobe" tends to be levied against people who are biased specifically against Muslims.

Like, Trump wanted a "Muslim Ban." That's about the people themselves, but it's called an Islamophobic policy.

well, we've been in this before on Trump, but i'm pretty sure he literally found out that Muslims exist mostly outside the middle east uh.... when Pence talked about it last week, maybe? not that much older, i'm sure. >___>;

but really you've got cases like Bill Maher, who gets called Islamaphobe despite repeatedly saying more or less the same things i have. or if you want someone more controversial, Sam Harris. who has also repeatedly stated that he's going after the religion, not the people. and do you seriously think that a word called Islamaphobe would have people not go "oh, he's against Islam, MUST BE AN ISLAMAPHOBE!"

like what do you think happens, they go "wait but maybe he not against Muslims" or something? hell, the distinction between Islam and Muslims is always stated every time this argument happens because people do not decouple the two that quickly or easily. the term's used for anti-Musim rhetoric sure, though it's used against damn near anything against the religion too. that's quite literally in the word itself.


also i'm assuming the answer is that there really isn't a word for Judaism and Christianity that you can think of. i don't know of one either.
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Jakyl25 posted...

So you're saying that Islam is, to many practitioners, intrinsically tied to governing?

And you say this isn't as true of Christianity?

I am skeptical

look man, if 70% of the most secular Christian nation said that the bible and other major Christian texts should be the law, you'd have a point.

but that's literally Indonesia and Islam.
no, it's not as true of Christianity. not even fucking close.

there is a MASSIVE gap.
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Wanglicious posted...

look man, if 70% of the most secular Christian nation said that the bible and other major Christian texts should be the law, you'd have a point.

I wouldn't think its very far off that number
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Am I imagining all the "We have to put God back into the White House~!" people
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Give me an example of a statement about Islam that is critical of the religion and is something that needs to be said that leftists would try to suppress.
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the difference between 'not being allowed to live' and 'not being allowed to get married' should be painfully obvious. islam is a cancer and I have no idea why anyone would ever try to defend it. I wish I could say all religions are equally bad. granted they are all pretty bad, but as far as I know only one of them has spawned modern day groups which actively enforce the public execution of homosexuals and apostates as well as the enslavement of women. people have literally been killed for drawing pictures of their prophet.

and no I am not particularly concerned about time traveling christians from the dark ages coming after me so 'christians used to x y and z before ____' really has no affect on my opinion whatsoever.

if I'm wrong about this then feel free to inform me because I would be glad to denounce any ideology that advocates and for murder and has a large number of followers who enforce these values. bill maher is 100% correct in his criticisms of islam. I find it odd that this of all things is the point people would disagree with him on.

to Para:
whether you think the hijab or the burka is "cute" is not the point. it is literally used as a tool to enslave women and/or strip them of power and agency. actively. right now. in parts of the world. this is not a symbol of female empowerment.
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What's that religion or sect in America that denies women the right to wear pants?
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The Sisterhood of the Mandatory Skirts

I feel like, and I could be mistaken here, that there are predominantly Christian African nations that enforce dogmatic Christian law. Like Zambia, which is 87% Christian, still has sodomy laws. So it's not "Christians used to do X, Y, Z" so much as it is "Christians still do X, Y, Z, unless they're educated better" and there's a reason for that across the US. Hence why I see no point in singling out Islam because most of it has to do with how nations educate and operate than anything. It's also why when people of Islamic faith move to the US, even carrying those prejudices, are likely to see then wane with further generations not-unlike what's already happened with Christianity in this country.

So rather than obsessing with criticizing individual religions and trying to figure out which one is the worst, we should continue on the path of both normalizing things they're critical of and let nature take it's course. Islam will never have the same foothold Christianity has in the US, so I don't see how it'll ever have any chance of affecting our laws.
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I mean even in the US there's Christian groups (such as Mormon's and Evangelicals) who support gay marriage at a far far far lesser rate (26% and 28%) than Muslims (42%).
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Uganda: 84% Christian, possible life in prison for homosexual acts.
Tanzania: 61% Christian, possible life in prison for homosexual acts.
Sudan: 60% Christian, possible death sentences for homosexual acts.

Those are just a few I found off wikipedia.
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Wang for someone who agrees with para you spend a lot of time arguing for the other side of those arguments.
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Wanglicious posted...

Islam and the state have a history that's gone so long that decoupling them would, to the overwhelming majority, be viewed as an insult. "Islamic law is the law and that's how it should be."

The country with the largest Islamic population in the world has six official recognized religions, so...?

And also we literally have Republicans in this country who publicly say "The US should be a Christian nation" so maybe it's not so specific to islam?


Wanglicious posted...

my point is that the left needs to uphold the same values it hold to literally every other belief system where it's traditionally been willing to attack, criticize, even demonize various aspects of it until it's broken down. and this will take a long, long time, span multiple generations, because it's literally reprogramming thousands of years of tradition.

many on the left aren't doing that, they reject people who do that, they support people who do the opposite of all that, and dismiss/attack people for doing that.

You keep not answering this question: Is there a statistically relevant number of Muslims coming to America and not safely integrating?

...and seriously, "Western Values," what. we're talking Christianity here. that's totally the wrong phrase. liberal values? if so then sure, i agree with that. and that's what i'd like applied to Islam too. the irony here is that for some reason it's the conservatives who often point these things out... because, well, Islam has the most conservative principles in it and it makes the right wing look like bleeding hearts.

What American Muslim principles make Right Wingers look like bleeding hearts?
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Wanglicious posted...

it's not the people, it's the religion.

this "i don't have a problem with muslims, i have a problem with islam!" thing is the stupidest logical fallacy ever.

spoilers: without muslims, islam doesn't exist.
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more generally speaking, the SJW crazies are a small minority of the left and wang's insistence that their behavior is a huge problem with "the left" in general is extremely annoying.

i'm not sure why we would assume these people are generally part of "the left," even. there's plenty of hardcore feminists/people who make a big deal about racism on the right too.
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I don't get the whole "Islamophobe and anti-semite aren't the same thing" argument. You're intentionally trying to draw lines where there are none to try and make some point of "There's no other word like Islamophobe so it must be bad/wrong!" They are both used to describe somebody who blatantly opposes the people of those religions. There is nobody who just "hates the religion" without hating the people who practice is it. I highly doubt anybody is enough of a saint to maintain that distinction.
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saying "i don't hate muslims, i just hate islam!" is like saying "i don't hate rock bands, i just hate the rock music genre!" it's fucking stupid.
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I don't hate country music, i just hate everyone that likes it. Kill them all
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Peace___Frog posted...

I don't hate country music, i just hate everyone that likes it. Kill them all

if anything it would be the opposite of this. it's like saying "I don't enjoy country music but I don't dislike people who enjoy it." which... actually makes perfect sense to say! unless you for some reason hate anyone who has a different opinion than you?

although to be fair this isn't what I'm saying either. might be what wang is arguing, I have no idea what he is saying half the time. just wanted to point out the bad logic of your bad joke.

TheRock1525 posted...

So rather than obsessing with criticizing individual religions

nobody is doing that. I am criticizing ALL RELIGION and I am well within my rights to be most critical of the religion that is most enthusiastic at KILLING PEOPLE WHO ARE CRITICAL OF RELIGION. important parts in bold so that my very simple argument is easy to understand, since apparently this is difficult to get.

TheRock1525 posted...

Uganda: 84% Christian, possible life in prison for homosexual acts.
Tanzania: 61% Christian, possible life in prison for homosexual acts.
Sudan: 60% Christian, possible death sentences for homosexual acts.

Those are just a few I found off wikipedia.

cool, so I denounce those people. so what's the issue? amazing how having consistent beliefs can simply be applied to different cultures with the same backwards practices and it becomes immediately and incredibly obvious that I'm not "singling out" or "obsessing" over a single religion!

TheRock1525 posted...

I mean even in the US there's Christian groups (such as Mormon's and Evangelicals) who support gay marriage at a far far far lesser rate (26% and 28%) than Muslims (42%).

not being allowed to marry is not the same thing as not being allowed to live

there is an enormous gap between these two things

one of them involves

being

murdered
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Peace___Frog posted...

I don't hate country music, i just hate everyone that likes it. Kill them all

=(

it wouldn't make sense to say "country music is a cancer that's destroying the world but i have no problem with people who enjoy country music," though.
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MariaTaylor posted...

I am well within my rights to be most critical of the religion that is most enthusiastic at KILLING PEOPLE WHO ARE CRITICAL OF RELIGION.

a religion doesn't have consciousness or the ability to be enthusiastic about anything. your problem is with muslims who kill people, not islam.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

it wouldn't make sense to say "country music is a cancer that's destroying the world but i have no problem with people who enjoy country music," though.

you're right, it wouldn't. I already covered that because I very clearly stated the metaphor did not fit what I was saying. his logic was just so bad that I had to point out it was actually completely backwards of the point he was trying to make.

my stance is very firmly against any ideology that encourages its followers to murder people, and has a significant number of followers who follow through on those beliefs. so yes if there was a bunch of country music songs that advocated killing and many fans who actually went out and killed people I would dislike country music just as much as I dislike the islamic faith.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

a religion doesn't have consciousness or the ability to be enthusiastic about anything. your problem is with muslims who kill people, not islam.

my problem is with both, because they all got the idea from the same book
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a more fitting metaphor for my stance is something like this;

in order to sign up for a Sam's Club membership you have to sign a contract which advocates for the stoning to death of people with red hair. everyone reads the contract and knowingly signs it under these conditions (or they are coerced into signing it against their will under penalty of death). there are actually people who go out and enforce these values and people with red hair are being killed by Sam's Club members who are doing it to fulfill their contractual obligations.

1. if you tell me you are a Sam's Club member I am probably not going to like you very much

2. that's a really stupid and dangerous contract which I dislike

see, both are bad!
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MariaTaylor posted...

cool, so I denounce those people.

We do, we just don't turn around and say "BAN ALL CHRISTIANS" in the way the right seems to feel about Muslims.
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that metaphor works if there are also good things about the sam's club and tons of sam's club members never kill people with red hair and are members of the club because they like the good things about it, sure.
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TheRock1525 posted...

We do, we just don't turn around and say "BAN ALL CHRISTIANS" in the way the right seems to feel about Muslims.

so your issue is that you believe Christianity should be banned as well?
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Tbh i just wanted to get off my chest that country music is an abomination
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Peace___Frog posted...

Tbh i just wanted to get off my chest that country music is an abomination

^5
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MariaTaylor posted...

TheRock1525 posted...

We do, we just don't turn around and say "BAN ALL CHRISTIANS" in the way the right seems to feel about Muslims.

so your issue is that you believe Christianity should be banned as well?

No, I don't want to ban any religion since that's what this country is founded on. Freedom of Religion. But when Christians do horrible things, we pass it off on horrible people being horrible. Same with Muslims, Jews, etc.

The right seems to be dead-set on Muslims being strictly evil and other groups being fine.
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I think the metaphor Maria is going for us that Islam is to religion as Republicanism is to politics. Not inherently bad, but vocal, violent, hateful assholes make the whole group look terrible.
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