Just in case you care about free speech...

[kev ferrara]

"Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reports from certain corners of the British media that could directly lead to the harm of some of our staff, Liveleak.com has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.
This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people, from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.
Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.
We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high."

[Atlantis]

"Those who are easily offended should be. And often." -G. Barnett

[Hyskoa]

Fear and violence work while ideals don't. Who would've guessed.

[NoSeRider]

http://www.3d.com

I'm just wondering why it defaults to that URL when I type in:

h t t p : / / w w w . g n o m o n 3 d . com ?

Freedom of speech?

[aesir]

ummmm, wanna give us some backstory so I know wtf youre talking about?

[Jabo]

aesir: It's about a video platform like YouTube or something, where you could until lately watch a dutch movie called Fitna, which is – from what I have read – a very controversial because downright provoking movie about interpretations of the Koran by Islamic fundamentalists (i.E. side-by-side quoting of Koran Suras and pictures of Taliban, Al-Qaeda outrages and the like).

[wassermelone]

Because of this the Dutch guy who made Fitna (crappy anti muslim propoganda) gets a lot more publicity than he ever would have otherwise.

I'm all for it being able to be seen... but its still shite.

[kev ferrara]

wassermelone, since you haven't seen it, whose opinion are you repeating here?

Unless of course you can't actually tell the difference between being anti-muslim and being anti-muslim extremist.

[BuckWeisel]

I smell another 5+ page thread. I don't think freedom of speech isn't in any harm by the removal of this video. Out of the thousands of videos taken down on youtube a day theres not much outrage but someone takes down a controversial video and the internet justice league of free speech jump on it. Freedom of speech is in no more harm right now than it is any other day. This is another "The sky is falling" threads.

The guy who made the movie's freedoms are not worth the possible loss of life of others. If you want to put your neck on the line and poke a bunch of religious extremist fine, host your views/media yourself don't put other people at risk.

[kingshaj]

it depends on how banned it is
is it merely off Liveleak.com? ,it is in their F.A.Q. , that any media potentially damaging to the site will be removed... giving them a pretty wide latitude.

a national ban, however, is another thing altogether. and i think i just found it online.

[kev ferrara]

Buck Weisel, what you don't understand about freedom could fill a library. A girl who wears sexy clothes does not deserve to be raped. When you say something against a religion, you should not "deserve what you get". That's bullshit and you need to get your head out of your ass and demand protection for unpopular speech, speech you hate even.

I don't even give a damn about the film. The issue is that they were threatened. And they were sufficiently worried to remove the film from their server. If the government cannot protect the free speech of its citizens against thugs, there is no free speech. That means thugs get to be the censors for what you and I hear, and thus what thoughts we are allowed to think. You want the Muslim Brotherhood or Saudi Arabian Wahhabiists calling the shots in this world, let's all keep up the chicken shit behavior and pretend nothing's wrong.

[BuckWeisel]

Buck Weisel, what you don't understand about freedom could fill a library. A girl who wears sexy clothes does not deserve to be raped. When you say something against a religion, you should not "deserve what you get". That's bullshit and you need to get your head out of your ass and demand protection for unpopular speech, speech you hate even.

I don't even give a damn about the film. The issue is that they were threatened. And they were sufficiently worried to remove the film from their server. If the government cannot protect the free speech of its citizens against thugs, there is no free speech. That means thugs get to be the censors for what you and I hear, and thus what thoughts we are allowed to think. You want the Muslim Brotherhood or Saudi Arabian Wahhabiists calling the shots in this world, let's all keep up the chicken shit behavior and pretend nothing's wrong.

BuckWeisel is one word. "Im not taking a bullet for your views, opinions, videos or cartoons. Therefore im not hosting your shit." A pretty simple concept to grasp. My point is you shouldn't put other people in harms way for your views. And if your main idea was that the government should protect people so that they don't feel threatened for posting these kind of things, then maybe you should make that clear from the first post instead of posting some random paragraph and jumping down everyone's throat for asking questions. You take responsibility for your words and opinions. Don't cop out and hide behind a flag or a website. You want to say something sound off like you got a pair and deal with it yourself. My tax dollars would be better spent doing something useful than protecting a bunch of loud mouthed "intellectuals" who think that people care what they think.

Usually you're pretty level-headed when talking about things, but you need to lay off the coffee or go get some sleep because I had to double check your user name, thought it might have said "light"

I have no problem with the video, maybe you should read what the fuck I said before you go all righteous on me you pretentious prick. Im all for saying what you want. "Art should cause arguments, not settle them" Im very supportive of that idea. Please, everyone go paint your views and post them no matter who it pisses off.

And if it sounds like I contradicted myself anywhere in this post, you're stupid (lol freedom of speech)

[bhanu]

what the fuck just happened....lets keep it civil ladies....
or maybe not ....
Man yknow , freedom of speech clearly goes hand in hand with respecting other peoples opinion....Atleast I think so..thats clearly not happening here.....
About the site taking off the video .....I think they did right...in a way taht why should they come in harms way for someone elses doing....but yeah governments should step and do something about this.. you just cant allow these fucking terrorists to make the rules......
oh wait but why should they step in, who wants their asses getting burnt in other peoples fire ..only a fucking ediot would do that.
Its the other way round here in India if you go against something thats remotely hindu, an extremist hindu groups take you to ask and the government stays a silent watcher.....
And on standing for freedom .....what about about standing up for people in Tibet.....I am clearly going off topic here but hey wtf...
(oh btw I think the governments these days are from the people , vy the peple,for themselves)

Even if one is ready to die for freedom, but what change would that make?

[Blue]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3369102968312745410

google still has it for those interested. It is definitely NSFW.

[E.Silva]

Man yknow , freedom of speech clearly goes hand in hand with respecting other peoples opinion....Atleast I think so..thats clearly not happening here.....


Surely this should not happen at the expense of you own opinions though? Not arguing, on any subject, simply because it is not 'respectable' to question some authority or person is something that should not happen. Any religion or subject or group or whatever that cannot stand up to open criticism without resorting to violence or threat of is not one worthy of belief.

I think they were right to take the video off when they did, but the important thing is that they shouldn't have had to. There must always be some form of opposition towards any power, lest it get 'carried away' with itself. Something is wrong with a religion when rather than just providing a counter-argument to any opposition, it deems it necessary to to get rid of it outright through the use of violence and threats.

[Atlantis]

The fact that Liveleak felt forced to remove the video due to threats of violence speaks volumes about its validity. In other news, Youtube has been disgracefully removing trailers for the film as well.

'No, we're not murderous fanatics, and we'll kill you if you say we are!'

You can look at the holy books for any of the Abrahamic religions and find exhortations to atrocities, but we in the West have come to cherry-pick our religions these days (to some extent), keeping what we like and ignoring the rest. Much of the Islamic world is rather more hardcore, but, by their very nature of being fundamentalists, they're spot-on as to their interpretations of those texts. It's delusional to write off the fanatics as fringe elements; they may or may not be a minority, but there are over a billion Muslims in the world and that supposed minority apparently is not small.

[NoSeRider]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht

Basically, when you encourage intolerance you let the thugs run the world, but then again you have to be intolerant of thugs.

Every time a society gets dominated by authoritarianism it explodes into radicalism. Bolshevik Revolt, French Revolution even the counter culture of the 1960's.

Now we seem to be in a day in age that seems to say, my point of view is right, and if you disagree I'll kill you or ruin your life.....what the fuck is that?....but the thing is we seem to be swinging towards Authoritarianism....not Radicalism.

1960's was about if you disagree with me, why kill me or ruin my life?
People seem to be getting less and less altruistic and more militant in their views?

[kev ferrara]

My point is you shouldn't put other people in harms way for your views.

This is exactly what I'm talking about... this is a recipe for tyranny. You should be able to hold any view you want without having to pick up a gun. That's called a civilization. The reason you deserve to be barked at is because of what happened to the Armenians and the Jews and "enemies of the people" in the Soviet Union, dissidents in Cuba, and Civil Rights advocates in the last century. If you think that can't happen again, or that history, in fact, isn't repeating itself right now, like in the Sudan for instance, I would recommend, a la Clockwork Orange, that you open your eyes.

My tax dollars would be better spent doing something useful than protecting a bunch of loud mouthed "intellectuals" who think that people care what they think.

If people didn't care what they thought, there wouldn't be death threats against them. You might want to pay attention to people who get murdered for their views. It's a pretty good indication that something's up in the world. Your disinterest in protecting dissent says a lot about you.

The rest of your insults aren't worth responding to. We live in an age of Google after all. The purpose of this thread is quite plain.

And I am deeply sorry that I separated your name.

[wassermelone]

wassermelone, since you haven't seen it, whose opinion are you repeating here?

Unless of course you can't actually tell the difference between being anti-muslim and being anti-muslim extremist.

What the fuck?

He doesn't agree with the film, he CAN'T have seen it! I can't roll my eyes hard enough.

No, I know the difference between anti-muslim extremists and anti-muslim. The film makes no such distinction.

[Goog]

Appeasement...Last time this was popular in Europe Hitler was in power. If I remember correctly, it also didn't work too well. But hey, you can't blame someone for wanting to live.

[Serpian]

I don't get it. I understand that 'normal' muslims, as opposed to extremist muslims would react to such a movie as it demonizes their entire religion. But the extremist muslims, that read the hateful verses and act upon them, and are proud of their deeds, they get all upset and murderous about a movie showcasing their succes in terrorizing the planet!

Something is definately up in the world.

But I understand LiveLeak. I would've done the same.

[kev ferrara]

Wassermelone,

My assumption was, anybody who would see the film would understand what is implicit. That extremists are the ones that take holy books at the letter. The whole movie is about what happens when the letter of the Koran is followed. It is not about Muslims in general, which would include those who are secularized or moderate, (except insofar as their holy book is a slippery slope that beckons toward totalitarianism). Given this point, your post berating the film as Shite seemed a tad too pat. So I assumed you were pre-disposed to dismiss it, rather than see it. My apologies for assuming the latter.

Regarding your implicit claim that the film is pure propaganda, I would say that there are certain facts that must have faces shoved toward them again and again in order to generate political force. Racism is one. Religious Extremism is another. If facts have propagandistic value, so be it.

[bhanu]

that read the hateful verses and act upon them

there are no hateful verses.... just hateful people


This is exactly what I'm talking about... this is a recipe for tyranny. You should be able to hold any view you want without having to pick up a gun. That's called a civilization. The reason you deserve to be barked at is because of what happened to the Armenians and the Jews and "enemies of the people" in the Soviet Union, dissidents in Cuba, and Civil Rights advocates in the last century. If you think that can't happen again, or that history, in fact, isn't repeating itself right now, like in the Sudan for instance, I would recommend, a la Clockwork Orange, that you open your eyes.

Hmm quite true..... but
You should be able to hold any view you want without having to pick up a gun
tell that to those terrorists....

how do yo stop them??? it is a fact that there are countries sponsoring them and the masses in those and other countries support them....

[Dave_]

I don't know what everyones so worked up about. it merely showed news-footage, newspaper reports and stuff from the Koran.

But the stuff from the koran is ripped out of the context, wich was about a battle against the jews. but than again, lot of Muslims still think that any unbeleaver should be burned, and slaughtered like a pig.

One thing i'm worried about now is the Dutch society. This movie can work as a splitter between 'The Dutch' and 'The Muslims'. We already have that, but that will make it much worse.

The Movie is generalising. Maybe everyone's like that in the Middle east (who knows) but here in Holland, you have those kind of people. but there are still Respectfull and hard working, etc. Muslims here. But i think many ppl will fail to see that point, because they are just cattle and will just generalise it.


on a side note, the Maker of the movie (Geert wilders) is the leader of a political party, wich is named 'Party for Freedom'. But they wanted to bann the Koran from Holland. Pretty hypocritical rly.

http://www.commentaarophetnieuws.nl/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/geert-wilders.jpg

[NoSeRider]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/bushswar/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

I'd watch PBS Frontline. They go over this ad nauseam.

You'll even see vindictive behavior in the White House.

I just think people are over rated chimpanzees.

a15KgyXBX24

[kev ferrara]

there are no hateful verses.... just hateful people

This is a different situation than guns. Ideology, especially fundamentalist ideology, can change people because it can warp their minds. Fundamentalist ideology causes both hatred and self-hatred and fosters martyrdom fantasies... and thus normalizes unspeakable existential acts. Words can cause hatred and insanity. Indoctrination is a serious problem. Guns don't change people.


how do you stop them??? it is a fact that there are countries sponsoring them and the masses in those and other countries support them....

Denial is the first hurdle to be overcome. Denial is the opiate of the masses. People want to be ignorant of threats because living in fear is scary and doing something about it is even scarier. That's why they attack the messenger. People don't like to be woken up from their warm slumber.

[kev ferrara]

I don't know what everyones so worked up about. it merely showed news-footage, newspaper reports and stuff from the Koran.

I'm worked up about the fact that dissent against a religion is being silenced by threats of violence. This is a fundamental offense against hundreds of years of western enlightenment thought which I hold essential to the continuation of our civilization.

[Dave_]

I'm worked up about the fact that dissent against a religion is being silenced by threats of violence. This is a fundamental offense against hundreds of years of western enlightenment thought which I hold essential to the continuation of our civilization.

with everyone i ment 'those who QQ about the film being there'.

It is disturbing that people dont talk because they are afraid of the consecuenses. if we are ruled by fear, there will be no hope.

(ps, sorry for my horrible spelling).

[D.Labruyere]

I expected a bit more of the fitna movie after all the media hype that happened over here. It's quite a turndown actually :(

*me puts away the popcorn again*

edit: on the freedom of speech part, an islamic tv-show actually offered to broadcast the movie for wilders and have a discussion with him before and after the movie but he turned that down. So I think it is wrong to just blame a whole religion because a small percentage is offended by such a thing.

[jadefoodog]

kev your a smart guy and your hearts in the right place but real freedom isnt about the rules allowing you to do what you want, real freedom is about doing what you want anyways.

[BuckWeisel]

This is exactly what I'm talking about... this is a recipe for tyranny. You should be able to hold any view you want without having to pick up a gun. That's called a civilization. The reason you deserve to be barked at is because of what happened to the Armenians and the Jewsand "enemies of the people" in the Soviet Union, dissidents in Cuba, and Civil Rights advocates in the last century. If you think that can't happen again, or that history, in fact, isn't repeating itself right now, like in the Sudan for instance, I would recommend, a la Clockwork Orange, that you open your eyes.

Apparently I am being extremely unclear. I agree that you should be able to say what you want without worrying about someone hurting you. Ok? I like free speech. I am not some nationalist sheep. However, we are not in the proper environment to do that. The world is not safe. Of course we should be protected by our government so we can express our views without physical retaliation. However I, and probably the people at Liveleak, do not feel the government provides that protection. Thats a shame. So given the circumstances, I personally, would not want to endanger anyone else's life by hosting my views unless they choose to do so at their own risk. Which again, I agree isn't how it should be, but it is. Righty right.

Life isn't what it should be, only what it is. What it can be, is up to you. You're spreading awareness, which is good but simply pontificating about how things should be, will not suffice. We all need to bring this to the attention of government officials and get things situated where anyone inside the United Sates can actively support these kinds of videos safely. What things should change in order to make that happen? Im not even going to touch that.

If people didn't care what they thought, there wouldn't be death threats against them. You might want to pay attention to people who get murdered for their views. It's a pretty good indication that something's up in the world. Your disinterest in protecting dissent says a lot about you.

The only insult you respond to, don't read too much into it.

The rest of your insults aren't worth responding to. We live in an age of Google after all. The purpose of this thread is quite plain.

Yes, I find it quite plain.

And I am deeply sorry that I separated your name.

Apology Accepted. You are forgiven.

[Goog]

... real freedom isnt about the rules allowing you to do what you want, real freedom is about doing what you want anyways.

um...What?

Please explain, this is an ideology I have yet to be exposed to.

[jadefoodog]

you have the freedom to do whatever you want . but if you get caught enjoying some of these freedoms your gonna get in trouble. just because theres a law against something doesn't mean you don't have the freedom it just means theres consequences if you get caught.

now that said i dont go around enjoying the freedom of mass murder because its morally and ethically wrong

however i do enjoy the freedom of enjoying a little cannabis now and then (probably less than once a month) . however if i got caught enjoying my freedom i would goto jail.

but for people who say " i cant do that because theres a law against that (without any logical moral , ethical, or medical reason) then they simply forfeit their freedom.

freedom is always there but just like everythign else in life theres concequenses. just like theres concequences for just about everything you can do thats deemed "legal"

beh i feel like im rambling now but im sure you get the idea

[kev ferrara]

edit: on the freedom of speech part, an islamic tv-show actually offered to broadcast the movie for wilders and have a discussion with him before and after the movie but he turned that down. So I think it is wrong to just blame a whole religion because a small percentage is offended by such a thing.

Number one, until you get the film-maker's side of that offer, I wouldn't put much stock in it. Political offers tend to be made to be declined, so that a Public Relations coup could be had. So people will drop by threads like this and repeat the "fact" that an offer was made and declined and thus what we have here is an Islamophobe. This is politics 101 and goes on all the time.

I really don't think anybody is "blaming the whole religion". That is CAIR's public relations line. Though, let's be real, the political nature of Islam itself is a problem, in that they do not believe in the separation of mosque and state. As Muslim populations surge throughout Europe, this political aspect of Islam will result in significant conflict, given the radical preaching already tolerated in those countries.

And the problem isn't the tolerant Muslims who are willing to debate dissent.

Check that, maybe they are part of the problem. Why aren't the tolerant Muslims dealing directly with the people who perpetrate the acts shown in Fitna? Rather than debating some hysterical film-maker?

If a group doesn't actually represent the thugs, they can't really speak for them. So why bother debating the tolerant Muslims? To foster the illusion that there is no problem? In my opinion, that's the very thing that should be avoided. This can't be an either-or proposition, that either all Muslims are bad or all Muslims are good. The dangers and the ideology must be exposed along with the good and the generous. This requires the Muslims who won't debate to be in the spotlight to answer questions, preferably interrogated by the tolerant Muslims.

However, I won't hold my breath for thoroughly westernized scholars such as Reza Aslan to stick their necks out in defense of Western Values. I really don't see him giving up his lucrative speaker fees and academic prestige in order to get killed by radicals. This goes back, again, to the problem of terrorism and its goal of intimidating dissent.

[Jabo]

Kev, you're making it really hard to believe or hope that you are not a narrow-minded Islam hater. Maybe that's the problem these guys are having with the discussion. Maybe think about that.

[kev ferrara]

you have the freedom to do whatever you want . but if you get caught enjoying some of these freedoms your gonna get in trouble. just because theres a law against something doesn't mean you don't have the freedom it just means theres consequences if you get caught.

"Caught" is an interesting word to use. As if criticizing a radical religion is somehow wrong and one must expect consequences if the "law" is to be flouted. Not sure if your analogy applies too well unless you really want to be governed by violent religious fanatics.

Unless you simply wanted to post about weed, which you have stated you only do less than once a month, less than once a month, less than once a month. :party:

[kev ferrara]

Kev, you're making it really hard to believe or hope that you are not a narrow-minded Islam hater. Maybe that's the problem these guys are having with the discussion. Maybe think about that.

Congratulations Jabo, you win the politically correct "let's shut down the conversation by calling him an Islamophobe" sweepstakes.

Since I have Muslim friends, I would call bullshit on that right away.

So I challenge you either to point out where I have lied or propagated propaganda against Muslims, or I kindly ask that you retract your statement.

[Jabo]

I know you're not a Islamophobe. But it's hard to believe you're not because the whole discussion revolves about you overreacting to an action (or reaction) that was absolutely predictable. The whole topic has nothing to do with freedom of speech, seeing that the movie is too provoking that any person in one's right mind knows that the Islamic world would be offended. They took it down because they were threated physically. But the video will be online in the future, if not on their site. That was their personal decision. Of course they did only provoke indirectly by hosting the video. The real catalyst was the director. The video is highly provocative. And I think you know that very well. Of course any Muslim, not just the terrorists and whole-world-number-one nemesis, is offended by someone comparing their religion to terror and atrocity, side-by-side, especially if it's the Islam, which has not been secularized the way the Western world has. I would be offended, if I was a Muslim.

Maybe the video's goal was somewhat higher than what I think. But seeing that a big part of viewers think it isn't, I can only assume that the whole thing backfired.

[light]

grey? what grey, i only see black and white

[jadefoodog]

"Caught" is an interesting word to use. As if criticizing a radical religion is somehow wrong and one must expect consequences if the "law" is to be flouted. Not sure if your analogy applies too well unless you really want to be governed by violent religious fanatics.

Unless you simply wanted to post about weed, which you have stated you only do less than once a month, less than once a month, less than once a month. :party:

haha now your just trying to get me to argue with you like you do everyone else .

all your really doing is just bitching and shit stirring, i somehow doubt you even really care about any of this. Its more likely you saw that artical and said "wow this looks controversial i bet i could take this and start 500 arguments just like i do in all my other post"

well good luck on that looks like your succeeding but i simply dont care enough to continue so please continue your sob story.

[Mr.Delicious]

hey guys, lets all take a break... go outside, and get some fresh air. I for one think they should take 2 girls one cup down...Thats WAY worse and is hurting millions :(.

But seriously, freedom of speech has like... never been free? everything you already here is just heard because of the money behind it so who cares? GO LIVE and have FUN! You'll all be dead soon!

(waiting for somebody to correct my misspelling of 'Hear' when they make fun of me)

[BuckWeisel]

hey guys, lets all take a break... go outside, and get some fresh air. I for one think they should take 2 girls one cup down...Thats WAY worse and is hurting millions :(.

But seriously, freedom of speech has like... never been free? everything you already here is just heard because of the money behind it so who cares? GO LIVE and have FUN! You'll all be dead soon!

(waiting for somebody to correct my misspelling of 'Hear' when they make fun of me)

if you dont take this seriously they win...THE TERRORISTS WIN.

[kev ferrara]

Jabo... as far as I can tell the point of the movie is to get people like you and I to talk.

Question: Are the videos offensive to the 100 million muslims (estimated) who are radicalized? Are the videos offensive to those that perpetrated the crimes or others like them?

Answer: Obviously not, or else they would not commit the acts in the first place.

Question: Do tolerant Muslims threaten to kill you if you insult their religion?

Answer: Would you consider them to be tolerant Muslims if they did? I wouldn't. Therefore it is not the tolerant Muslims who attempt to scare critics into silence.

So, can we not assume that the website that hosted the movie was threatened not because some Muslims were offended, but because some Muslims do not want the truth told?

But wait, radical Muslims broadcast their killings all the time on websites and on television in their home countries.

So why was the site threatened?

The answer, I think, is *to control the discourse*.

These snuff films are to be used to terrify infidels and apostates, not to criticize Radical Islam. That is the strategy. Anybody who doesn't obey, gets "reprimanded."

A further point is that those most subject to the cruelty of radical Islam are other Muslims in the middle east who are kept in a state of constant fear and obediance. This is the story we rarely hear about.

[Mr.Delicious]

haha, seriously. I dont get it, why waste time trying to convince some people on a forum about shit. JUST GO MAKE A SHIT TON MONEY and do SOMETHING(easier than you probably think). money is influence and power, and if you the good guys got it then youre gold. drinkin my coffee with some lunch, but otherwise I spend most of my time making money and trying to establish my own means of income through business and networking. Thats the only way to make a big difference in my eyes anyways.

KILL THE FAT CATS!!! RAAHHH!!!!

[D.Labruyere]

Though, let's be real, the political nature of Islam itself is a problem, in that they do not believe in the separation of mosque and state.


Don't forget that there are also a lot of western civillisations where state and religion isn't seperated. The ruling religion in a country will always have an influence on the government simply because it is a majority group. Why should that be a bad thing?

What worries me more is not the islamic people who are offended by this but western civilisations who try to force there values and rules onto other countries. We are so proud of our "freedom" but have a problem with respecting other peoples freedom, rules and values. I'm more scared of a person like Geert Wilders, then of a few Islamic terrorists.

[kev ferrara]

if you dont take this seriously they win...THE TERRORISTS WIN.

BuckWeisel, why not withdraw from the conversation?

[kev ferrara]

Don't forget that there are also a lot of western civillisations where state and religion isn't seperated. The ruling religion in a country will always have an influence on the government simply because it is a majority group. Why should that be a bad thing?

Google "Sudan"

What worries me more is not the islamic people who are offended by this but western civilisations who try to force there values and rules onto other countries. We are so proud of our "freedom" but have a problem with respecting other peoples freedom, rules and values. I'm more scared of a person like Geert Wilders, then of a few Islamic terrorists.

If you don't believe in Enlightenment values, I recommend living outside the crib of western civilization. Then when the next outspoken apostate or critic ends up dead in the streets of your country, you will have a less programmed response.

[BuckWeisel]

BuckWeisel, why not withdraw from the conversation?

Because im an ass.

[kev ferrara]

Because im an ass.

And here I thought you were an elephant that could paint.

[BuckWeisel]

And here I thought you were an elephant that could paint.

Im not that talented.

[arttorney]

"My assumption was, anybody who would see the film would understand what is implicit. That extremists are the ones that take holy books at the letter."

For the record, I understand that the Koran expressly prohibits violent jihad against "non-combatants" (meaning women, children, and the disabled). Some letters apparently get heeded more than others by those people who use extreme means such as bombs.

I think people bring life experience baggage along when they interpret a holy book. Some interpret it from a standpoint of love, some from a standpoint of hatred. People of all religions pretend not to notice the parts of a holy book that are inconvenient to their agenda.

I hope this thread can be a civil dialog.

[kev ferrara]

For the record, I understand that the Koran expressly prohibits violent jihad against "non-combatants" (meaning women, children, and the disabled). Some letters apparently get heeded more than others by those people who use extreme means such as bombs.

Challenge: Name one Jihad event that conformed to this belief. I haven't been able to find one. So my momentary conclusion about that passage is that it is simply ignored. Those who are aroused to Jihad discard it, and those that are moderate have no need to invoke it.

I think people bring life experience baggage along when they interpret a holy book. Some interpret it from a standpoint of love, some from a standpoint of hatred. People of all religions pretend not to notice the parts of a holy book that are inconvenient to their agenda.

The following is only my understanding based on my reading: The lack of literacy among Middle Eastern Muslims is a significant problem. And most literate Muslims are only allowed to read the Koran. This over-emphasis on the Koran makes Hardcore Islam a closed system. Which is to say, the teachings of Islam are a substitute for life experience. The baggage then is "received wisdom" so to speak. Which is why historical grievances are passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years in Islam. Which is why certain dates are chosen for attacks... because of their historic "meaning". Which is why a button cute 3 year old girl can spout the most vile anti-semitic remarks imaginable. This absolute control of experience, intellectual context and perception is a grave problem in breaking the cycle of violence in that part of the world. The media and the libraries are controlled as well.

All to say, the interpretation of the Koran is not really open to interpretation among those who are indoctrinated into the hardcore version of that religion.

I hope this thread can be a civil dialog.

I do as well, and I apologize for my lack of civility where it was felt to have surfaced.

[aesir]

i hear a lot of muslims have positive feelings toward this video because it casts all of islam as a single group. They like being treated as though they are unified for once, and if you screw with one of them, all of islam will jihad your asses.


Islam will only change once a majority gets sick of the retards in their culture and does something about it.

[arttorney]

"Challenge: Name one Jihad event that conformed to this belief. I haven't been able to find one. So my momentary conclusion about that passage is that it is simply ignored. Those who are aroused to Jihad discard it, and those that are moderate have no need to invoke it."

This shows me that we are probably in agreement about my point, (that it is not so much about ideas or beliefs as about certain types of people). Free speech may be all well and good but one should think twice before telling a triad guy, a crip, or a bader meinhof guy that his momma is a ho. The governments more or less try to keep peace in a society but there are limits to what they can do.

[Blue]

kev your a smart guy and your hearts in the right place but real freedom isnt about the rules allowing you to do what you want, real freedom is about doing what you want anyways.

Aha, an anarchist. bare in mind though, freedom as used in context is a state where the most possible people are able to do as much as they want as possible without preventing others from doing what they want.

[Peter Coene]

I smell another 5+ page thread. I don't think freedom of speech isn't in any harm by the removal of this video. Out of the thousands of videos taken down on youtube a day theres not much outrage but someone takes down a controversial video and the internet justice league of free speech jump on it. Freedom of speech is in no more harm right now than it is any other day. This is another "The sky is falling" threads.

The guy who made the movie's freedoms are not worth the possible loss of life of others. If you want to put your neck on the line and poke a bunch of religious extremist fine, host your views/media yourself don't put other people at risk.

I prefer to think allong the lines of a quote attributed to Voltaire:
"I detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I, personally, have nothing against middle-easterners, in fact I'v found that when it comes to most islamic cultures I like the guys. (other than that whack jobs that blow things up in my country.) However, if someone chooses to lambaste them then they should be able to go for it without someone else pulling their work down in fear it will throw the world into jihad.

And no, this is not just about some dutch guy. Episodes of South Park have been pulled off the air and censored for pissing off certain religions, news reporters have been harassed, anime sales in Britain have been seriously effected for freedome of expression related reasons, and a whole slough of other offences have taken place. These things add up.

I'm guessing someone is going to go "oh, heres the nutjob from the gun thread." Yeah, here I am. I'm not the type to see any part of the Bill of Rights abused. Its not just guns, not just speech, its the whole thing.

[Peter Coene]

kev your a smart guy and your hearts in the right place but real freedom isnt about the rules allowing you to do what you want, real freedom is about doing what you want anyways.
"There are two freedoms - the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought."
~Charles Kingsley

[BuckWeisel]

I prefer to think allong the lines of a quote attributed to Voltaire:
"I detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

I think that decision is up to each individual to decide. Some people have too much to lose and wouldn't be willing to jump in the line of fire for others, and with good reason. If I were this guy who made the video, I would feel terrible if some one else got hurt because of what I made, and I wouldn't want that to happen. I would tell people not to host the video, if anything, link to my own site where I hosted the thing. Like I said before, its a shame that it has to be that way, and I think it shouldn't.

[alesoun]

Sorry, I read in the paper lately that the rape of a woman by three men was posted on youtube and it took them 3 days to take it down.

Politics and death threats v ordinary human decency?

What's your opinion?

[Peter Coene]

Sorry, I read in the paper lately that the rape of a woman by three men was posted on youtube and it took them 3 days to take it down.

Politics and death threats v ordinary human decency?

What's your opinion?

Leave it all up, who knows, maybe it will help track down the rapists.

[Undertow]

Huh, interesting video. Ultimately everything that has transpired in this thread and elsewhere in the world doesn't change who I am as a person. I'm still me and everyone else in here is still themselves as well. I'm confused as to why so many people are making such a big deal out of someone voicing their opinions. Our individual opinions our only our own. So really, what's the point of arguing?

[Jabo]

Jabo... as far as I can tell the point of the movie is to get people like you and I to talk.

Question: Are the videos offensive to the 100 million muslims (estimated) who are radicalized? Are the videos offensive to those that perpetrated the crimes or others like them?

Answer: Obviously not, or else they would not commit the acts in the first place.

Question: Do tolerant Muslims threaten to kill you if you insult their religion?

Answer: Would you consider them to be tolerant Muslims if they did? I wouldn't. Therefore it is not the tolerant Muslims who attempt to scare critics into silence.

So, can we not assume that the website that hosted the movie was threatened not because some Muslims were offended, but because some Muslims do not want the truth told?

But wait, radical Muslims broadcast their killings all the time on websites and on television in their home countries.

So why was the site threatened?

The answer, I think, is *to control the discourse*.

These snuff films are to be used to terrify infidels and apostates, not to criticize Radical Islam. That is the strategy. Anybody who doesn't obey, gets "reprimanded."

A further point is that those most subject to the cruelty of radical Islam are other Muslims in the middle east who are kept in a state of constant fear and obediance. This is the story we rarely hear about.

I don't know who threated LiveLeak, but actually I don't think they put it down due to terrorist or fundamentalist threats, but because some dumb ass wrote a blackmail letter or bombed them with insults from a phone booth. If anyone can disprove this, I'm willing to reconsider the following.

Knowing quite a lot of Muslims, some of which I've known for almost 20 years, I can tell you that Muslim folks aren't better nor worse than Christians, Jews or Hindus or whatever. But all these religions are different from another more than people want to admit. I wrote about secularization in my last post and I think this is a very important point. Islam overall is in a state that Christianity was in about 300 years ago, if not more. That includes fundamentalists and modern Muslims alike. The interpretation of the Bible has changed dramatically over the last centuries, if not decades. The Koran's interpretation in eastern countries is still in a more... serious state. It's more part of every day life than the Bible is in western countries.

However, there are fundamentalists on both sides and THOSE are all the same. They take what's written in their book and make it their "weapon of truth". I admit I'm not so much informed about Christian fundamentalism in modern times, but I know there is such thing and it's done bad as well. What is different though is that in a world so secularized as ours, those people are more likely to be ignored in order to live the life we all want to live. In the Islamic world however, things look different. The belief is stronger there and people really care about their religion, unlike in our world, where no one gives a shit because belief is just a gimmick nowadays.

Stomping into a world like the Muslim world with a video showcasing what everybody in the modern world hates about Islam and putting it side-by-side with the holiest phrases of that world's belief isn't the way to make friends. It's that simple. And even if you're a London-based Muslim who has been exposed to western "civilisation" for years, that video will offend you, insult you. So I don't think that this is such a big thing you're talking about in your first post and what the title of this thread is telling me as a viewer and it certainly has nothing to do with freedom of speech. What LiveLeak has experienced is a reaction from someone who thinks (well) that the video is insulting what he holds in highest regard in his life. And adding to that the amount of hatred that has come from an incited Western "civilisation" against their Muslim migrant neighbors for the past 7 years, I think this was a predictable reaction and yes, I think it was intended by the director. To spit in someones face to get hit and prove you're right is an easy thing.

[N D Hill]

I can only come away from all this thinking that it reflects poorly on human nature in its entirety. As long as we have 6 billion homo sapiens who believe in the infallibility of their own ideologies and in the inherent inferiority of the outsider, than there's no point to limiting your criticisms to Islam. Its like watching a bacterial culture in a petri dish where you have an array of contending strains all trying to assimilate each other. The statement at the end of the film where it argued that the hateful and inflammatory rhetoric be removed from the koran seemed pretty futile and hypocritical. As long as you're making that argument however, I would extend that same argument to the Bible and the Torah and whatever other assimilationist or spiritually/racially elitist dogmas out there. As if it would do any good and that we wouldn't just keep coming up with new ways to be superior to our peers. That hideous steamrolling monster we once naively called "manifest destiny" is still alive and well and present in too many minds.

And I agree with Kev that the removal of this content from Liveleak is an absolute tragedy. Not that I think the film itself was particularly compelling or insightful (without simply accomplishing the same brand of fear and resentment), but because our right to speak and criticize freely against any given dogma is the only real defense any of us have. The second any one belief system becomes off-limits and doesn't have to simply live with the fact that others may criticize them, objectivity and reason die. Freedom from speech is much more heinous and damaging than free speech will ever be.

[Blue]

However I would extend that same argument to the Bible...

A lot of it has. The King James version (i think) is much less doom, gloom and wrath of god then how the bible was a few hundred years ago. Now a days there are only stagnant remnants of such gospel in the bible.

I'm buddhist, personally, so if my theology is way off, all apologies.

[D.Labruyere]

your theology is way off blue ;) the bible has always been copied litteraly or atleast as litteraly as possible since it has been established in the form it currently excist which was somewhere between the years 300-400 for the new testament and 250-100 b.c for the old testament . I happen to know that here in holland there are still a lot of churches who use the exact same translation (staten vertaling) which has been created in 1637.

You do however see a change in the way the bible is interpretated and how people see god over the years.

well, just a sidenote heh :)

[kev ferrara]

I don't know who threated LiveLeak, but actually I don't think they put it down due to terrorist or fundamentalist threats, but because some dumb ass wrote a blackmail letter or bombed them with insults from a phone booth. If anyone can disprove this, I'm willing to reconsider the following.

The benefit of the doubt you offer in your first paragraph defies belief. The reason they didn't "put it down" to terrorist or fundamentalist threats is BECAUSE THEY ARE AFRAID. If it was not Islamists you would not only know who gave the threat, the threat would not have worked. Thus the video would still be available.

Oh and judging Islam based on your Muslim friends is just as inaccurate as judging Islam by its most violent practitioners.

there are fundamentalists on both sides and THOSE are all the same. They take what's written in their book and make it their "weapon of truth". I admit I'm not so much informed about Christian fundamentalism in modern times, but I know there is such thing and it's done bad as well.

To paraphrase you: I admit I don't know, but I know.

Allow me to correct you. You don't know. Period. I've looked into the whole Christian Extremists vs. Muslim extremists. There is simply no comparison in modern times, from the Armenian Genocide to the Sudanese genocide, radical Islam wins the prize. (Of course Soviet Russia, Maoist China and Nazi Germany were far worse in the 20th century, but these were ideology based states, rather than religious)

The belief is stronger there and people really care about their religion, unlike in our world, where no one gives a shit because belief is just a gimmick nowadays.

Wow, you make it sound wonderful to be so full of belief. Sounds like you have given up on Enlightenment values. I advise you to go live in Pakistan where people "care" about religion really deeply.

Stomping into a world like the Muslim world with a video showcasing what everybody in the modern world hates about Islam and putting it side-by-side with the holiest phrases of that world's belief isn't the way to make friends.

Am I supposed to respect a holy phrase that exhorts murder? Tolerance for murder is good, eh, as long as it's holy? Multiculturalism is wonderful isn't it?

And even if you're a London-based Muslim who has been exposed to western "civilisation" for years, that video will offend you, insult you.

Freedom of speech means tolerance for speech you hate. There is no compromise on that point. If Muslims don't accept that their religion can be ridiculed, spit at, mocked, parodied, etc. then what is to be done? Do we obey them?

Jabo, do we obey them? Do we put Islamic censors in the offices of the daily show and all the major newscasts preventing any word against Islam to be spoken?

Germany 1939. Get the picture?

Oh, and don't put civilization is scare quotes. (western "civilization") If this conversation isn't civility incarnate, if the fact that you can go to school without somebody robbing you, that you have books available to you, a roof over your head, a language to speak... if all that stuff isn't "civilization" than the word should be ripped out of the dictionary. If you plan to live in Western Civilization and accrue all its benefits, then respect it for the gift it is. Otherwise, you paint yourself as an ingrate.

So I don't think that this is such a big thing you're talking about in your first post and what the title of this thread is telling me as a viewer and it certainly has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

This is a hardcore denial of reality. Let me see if I understand you correctly: In your world Freedom of Speech is being able to say only what is allowed by people who intimidate you?

Possibly you have confused Freedom of Speech with Fascism? There is a difference, you know.

What LiveLeak has experienced is a reaction from someone who thinks (well) that the video is insulting what he holds in highest regard in his life.

So if I hold Modern Art to be the most important thing in my life, if you insult it I can threaten to kill you? These are stunning thoughts. My advice: Empty your mind of everything you ever learned about politics, and start over by reading everything you were every told not to read.

And adding to that the amount of hatred that has come from an incited Western "civilisation" against their Muslim migrant neighbors for the past 7 years, I think this was a predictable reaction and yes, I think it was intended by the director. To spit in someones face to get hit and prove you're right is an easy thing.

The Ottoman caliphate 300 years ago decreed, essentially, that most of its populace would not be encouraged to be literate. Thus the entire region began its slide back into the Middle Ages and lost its place in the world as Western Enlightenment brought forth modern science, technology and industry. The westernizing reform movements that took hold here and there in the Middle East throughout the 20th century were attempts to correct the long civilizational slide. Attaturk for instance, Nasser in some ways, The House of Saud, Shah of Iran, India, etc.. Naturally, the hardcore faithful has sought to destroy all attempts to westernize which would disempower the elements of religious control. This struggle continues to this day. Since "shame" is a very powerful emotion in that part of the world, the faltering of their civilization has caused a great deal of self-hatred among the devout, which tends to express itself outwardly as blame and hatred for their "oppressors". The imposition of illiteracy for the purposes of religious control is not allowed to be considered part of the problem. The fact that the "victim/oppressor" ideological simplification has ready-made adherents across western culture makes this line both internally and externally effective.

The world didn't start 7 years ago.

And I'm sorry to say it, but you are speaking the exact politically correct line. Which is to say, your thoughts have been handed to you as dogma.

[N D Hill]

Am I supposed to respect a holy phrase that exhorts murder? Tolerance for murder is good, eh, as long as it's holy?

Exactly. If the faithful believe a text or icon to be sacred, than THEY should not criticize it. If I however believe it to be written by a very fallible human being and the product of a material origin than I will criticize it as I see fit. This should be the bottom line in regards to any discussion of faith. This is just a simple foundation for objective discourse.

[James Kei]

Kev, you must be the most contradictory person in existence.
What you say in one thread completely contradicts your viewpoints in another. Therefore, you must take some joy in arguing for the sake of arguing.
I think you need to step off of your pedestal and get some fresh air.
Or maybe I should just ban you from the Lounge. :hatsoff:

[kev ferrara]

James, I take no joy in arguing for the sake of arguing. I do take pride in my clarity of thought however. And I do have principles that I believe are worth discussing. The fact that you perceive my writing as "self-contradictory", does not make it so. All you have demonstrated so far is that you do not understand my arguments. If that's grounds for banning me, ban me.

[kev ferrara]

Exactly. If the faithful believe a text or icon to be sacred, than THEY should not criticize it. If I however believe it to be written by a very fallible human being and the product of a material origin than I will criticize it as I see fit. This should be the bottom line in regards to any discussion of faith. This is just a simple foundation for objective discourse.

So you are in agreement with me. I am pleased to hear it.

[James Kei]

James, I take no joy in arguing for the sake of arguing. I do take pride in my clarity of thought however. And I do have principles that I believe are worth discussing. The fact that you perceive my writing as "self-contradictory", does not make it so. All you have demonstrated so far is that you do not understand my arguments. If that's grounds for banning me, ban me.


I don't think anyone understands your arguments. :blahblah:

[Jabo]

Kev, I was willing to discuss this as long as you stayed polite. Your last post however did nothing but add impoliteness and insult to the enormous amount of, pardon me, bullshit you have posted already. You're twisting my words again and ignore those you feel uncomfortable with. Putting civilisation in quotes is totally adequate when you put it in context with the torrent of hatred that been coming out of your fingers since you started this thread. Sticking to your ideals is fine, but you should also consider the possibility that you are wrong. It's also nice to see that you take me for a 14 year old student that I am not, but I guess that makes me younger, so thank you.

[James Kei]

Kev, I thought your were going to refrain from these types of discussions on the lounge? What happened to that notion?
These threads have a tendency to divide this little community of ours, and cause animosity between members. I wouldn't give a shit if I didn't think you start these threads for the sake of creating an opportunity to push your own viewpoints (however inconsistent) upon others.
I suppose thats fine, as this is a public forum, and "anything goes". But it just wreaks of self-indulgence.

[kev ferrara]

James, I began this thread because, and I can't believe I have to explain this to any fellow artist, the defense of free speech, even speech we disagree with, is essential to a free society. And a free society is essential to the arts and the culture. Thus, every person in this community is being effected by this story.

I did not begin this thread through some need to boringly explain the effects of the a 300 year old decree by the Ottoman caliphate upon current day history. I find no fun in that. But politically correct "modes of discourse", frankly, are dangerous. I am indeed sorry I have drifted from my pledge to refrain from politics in the lounge. But there is a nexus where what we do meets up with the political realm. Shall we never touch that third rail in order that the overly sensitive not faint straight away?


As a side note, your claim that "nobody understands what I am talking about" is a senseless insult. I've been a professional writer for ten years in a whole bunch of media and I do think I can put a sentence or two together in a logical fashion. One may entertain the possibility that a substantial portion of the confusion related to what I have written is not the fault of the text itself.

As far as self-indulgence goes, I would not call responding to Jabo's cries of "islamophobia" an indulgence. I assure you I take zero pleasure in responding to him/her. In fact I'll just leave his last post unanswered as I depart this thread.

I do take your point about political conversations being divisive. So maybe in future we shouldn't discuss any impingement of free speech at all. After all, artists who speak out deserve what they get.

[Infinit]

There is a simple recipe for tyranny:
-give a large bunch of ppl the feeling that they are better than all the others
-give them a target to hate
-tell them to kill because the others are inferior anyways

Humans behave quite somple in large masses.
They love to follow rules that give them advancments over others and as long as you can make them feel good about themselfes (for example by telling them that they are the best there is) they will most propably do whatever you tell them.
Haveing a target to hate instead of yourself just makes things so easy.

it's a sad thing...
It happened before and it will happen again and it is happening atm in regions we just don't think about too often.

[D.Labruyere]

kev, you have to realise that this movie was created by a dutch politician named Geert Wilders who's soul purpose is to bash the Islamic world.

He wanted to give a few examples change the constitution of our country so that non-western people weren't allowed to immigrate into holland, make the koran an illegal book just like hitler's mein kampf and ban islamic schools and mosque's for the nest 5 years. Besides that he thought it was a good idea that foreign islamic imams weren't allowed to preach anymore in holland and if a imam wasn't foreign he was only allowed to speak dutch. Just to name a few of his ideas.

With freedom of speech also comes responsibility over your words. If you'd call me an asshole I'd hit you in the face. That has nothing to do with free speech but just with the other person saying stupid things. Same goes for this movie.

[enrigo]

He wanted to give a few examples change the constitution of our country so that non-western people weren't allowed to immigrate into holland, make the koran an illegal book just like hitler's mein kampf and ban islamic schools and mosque's for the nest 5 years. Besides that he thought it was a good idea that foreign islamic imams weren't allowed to preach anymore in holland and if a imam wasn't foreign he was only allowed to speak dutch. Just to name a few of his ideas.


That guy sure is nuts, probably the worst person to stand for freedom of speech. :S

[Atlantis]

The same people that are in the 2nd Amendment thread calling Americans violent and paranoid for owning guns are over here in this thread sanctioning violence on the part of Muslims when they feel their religion is being insulted?

[kev ferrara]

kev, you have to realise that this movie was created by a dutch politician named Geert Wilders who's soul purpose is to bash the Islamic world.

Here's a bit of clarity for you. What is "truth telling" to one person is "bashing" to another. This is a question of perspective. Therefore your judgement upon Mr. Wilders' "sole purpose" is based on your perspective and shouldn't be assumed to be absolute truth.

Clearly there are limits to free speech. Shouting fire in a crowded theater is one of them.

Shouting fire in a crowded theater *that is actually on fire*, however, is exactly the reason free speech exists. Taking the example further, it is quite possible that from some seats the fire in the theater will not be visible (or will seem tame and thus unremarkable) and thus the "fire crier" will seem out of his tree. However, being deemed "mad" is often a momentary judgment. Possibly the seats have been presoaked in gasoline. Possibly the theater is made of very old and dry wood that might catch quite quickly.

Then again, maybe the fire is in fact an unremarkable occurrence, and a small fire extinguisher is all that was needed to put out the blaze.

But the only way to be sure is look right into the fire.

All to say, perspective comes from exposure to information. The more information the better the likelihood that a clear picture of reality will emerge. To remove certain information from consideration for the purposes of congeniality is to pre-ordain a biased perspective at the end of the examination. The unspeakable should not be omitted from evidence.

This works both ways, of course. Fitna may be guilty of bias by omission of the good. But my guess is that is purposeful as a bracing antidote to the more wide-eyed multiculturalist nonjudgmentalism that one finds rife in "polite" discussion.

The only way forward in a matter of such existential bearing as Islamic expansion into Western Society is uncowed intellectual thoroughness. Anything that disturbs this process, in my opinion, is in "contempt of court."

Okay, I think I've said what I wanted to say on the matter. Best wishes to everybody.

kev

[alesoun]

Leave it all up, who knows, maybe it will help track down the rapists.


Well, actually, I was asking the politics v caring about people question.

I don't see how being raped twice (once in reality, once on Youtube) would be a massive help to any victim.

Maybe Youtube could have passed on the info...

[emily g]

He wanted to give a few examples change the constitution of our country so that non-western people weren't allowed to immigrate into holland, make the koran an illegal book just like hitler's mein kampf and ban islamic schools and mosque's for the nest 5 years. Besides that he thought it was a good idea that foreign islamic imams weren't allowed to preach anymore in holland and if a imam wasn't foreign he was only allowed to speak dutch. Just to name a few of his ideas.

That guy sure is nuts, probably the worst person to stand for freedom of speech. :S
People who say things that we think are bad or wrong still deserve to have freedom of speech. In fact, their right to freedom of speech needs to be especially protected because they are the ones most likely to have their freedom of speech taken away.

In a society where you want to be guaranteed free speech yourself, it is in your best interest to ensure that everyone else is guaranteed it too. What if one day things change in your society and suddenly the things you want to say are the things that are considered bad or unpopular? If you think this can't happen, look at history.

The answer to speech that you don't like is not to shut the other person up. The answer to speech you don't like is more speech. Meaning that you let the other person have their say, and then you stand up and say, "I disagree and here's why."

The other reason you should want people with ideas you don't like to be guaranteed their freedom of speech is that you want to know who these people are. If you know who they are, you can do something to combat what they say through your own speech. If you take away their free speech, they and their supporters will go underground. There they will fester like a boil until something bad happens and you won't have seen it coming.

These are the reasons free speech advocates refer to the quote,“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

[D.Labruyere]

Emily, I'm not about restricting someone's free speech. I totally agree with you on that. I think everybody should be able to say whatever he wants. However, I don't think everybody should say whatever he wants. There is a difference between the two.

And to say that the removal from a movie made by a guy who tries to restrict the freedoms from a minority group in our country is the end of freedom of speech just doesn't work for me.

[Atlantis]

And to say that the removal from a movie made by a guy who tries to restrict the freedoms from a minority group in our country is the end of freedom of speech just doesn't work for me.

Except it wasn't removed because of the writer's own political stance; it was removed due to threats of violence. Threats of violence that have to be taken seriously because the groups that make them have killed over offenses to their religion before, brutally and repeatedly. When this 'minority' group starts imposing censorship with violence or threats of violence (a.k.a. terrorism), then free speech is in danger, and we need to take notice.

The Koran itself could be accused of 'restricting the freedoms of minority groups.' Are you aware of how women are treated in states that operate under fundamentalist Islamic law as set down in the Koran? But we're not allowed to make any sort of disparaging remark concerning this?

[emily g]

And to say that the removal from a movie made by a guy who tries to restrict the freedoms from a minority group in our country is the end of freedom of speech just doesn't work for me.
I didn't say it was the end of freedom of speech. I said people with unpopular views especially need to be guaranteed their freedom of speech because they are the ones most likely to have it taken away.

The part I bolded in your statement is not relevant. Sure, it is deeply ironic that someone who wants to restrict the rights of others might now be feeling that his own rights are being restricted. But the whole point of freedom of speech is that we do not restrict peoples' speech based on its content. We protect freedom of speech regardless of its content (excluding certain narrow exceptions like fraud and libel.)

Just for the record, I do not see that this guy's freedom of speech has been violated. The website that removed the movie is a private organization and can host or not host whatever they want on their website. The person who made the movie can host it on his own website or any number of other places. I am just trying to explain the concept of freedom of speech.

He just may seem like a random nutcase whose movie got taken down, so who cares right? The issue is that the incident is indicative of a bigger problem. And that problem is that by taking the movie down, the website is sending a message that threatening people with violence works. When people who threaten violence see that their tactic works, then they will keep doing it.

If I got threats of violence, I would be scared too. I might give in to protect myself and my family. But by doing so, I am sending a message that threats of violence work. And by sending that message, that means that people will keep threatening violence to get what they want and even more people could get hurt.

[Blahm]

does a man wearing sexy clothes deserve to get raped?

[BuckWeisel]

Kev, I thought your were going to refrain from these types of discussions on the lounge? What happened to that notion?
These threads have a tendency to divide this little community of ours, and cause animosity between members.

I've always held the notion "What happens in the lounge, stays in the lounge." I don't have a problem with anyone in this thread.

[D.Labruyere]

But I think it is highly relevant. I will put down my arguments later in this post but first I'm going to have to explain some pre and proto history. Which is in short the study on society's and civillisations and how they evolve.

Beforehand I have to say that I'm no expert on this subject and I'm quite certain you will already know a lot of these things.

A very important thing to know about religion is that religion is always a reflection of a society. It isn't religion that makes the human, but it's the human, or in larger masses the society as a whole that makes religion. So to speak, if you have a violent society you will have a violent religion who is dominant. Religion is a poor word since you have to count kev's enlightment value's also under the word religion, but in lack of a better word Ill simply use religion.

To say it differently: the dominant religion is the perspective of the largest mass in a society and there points of view to the world. It is a way to preserve tradition and a certain identity. A dominant religion also has the right of power. They are the biggest, so they are right, so they are allowed to say what you can and cannot do in a society. Which in a longer way gives them the right for inequality.

You have to realise that when you attack a religion and the way they do things you attack a large mass and there points of view. Saying that the koran isn't right is the same as saying that our freedom of speech is wrong. However, since we live in a far less violent society then the societies in the Islamic world (Just look at the last 50 years of history in the middle east) the mass will react differently. For us it is pretty simple to say that threatening someone with death is immoral. Which it is ofcourse, when looking at our morals. They however have grown up in a way different world filled with far more violence, and simply don't know better.

It isn't that there purpose is to attack our freedom of speech. I doubt they have ever heard of that. Which you can see back in the fact that the first thing our country did when the Islamic world asked not to broadcast this movie was explain what freedom of speech actually was, and why we can't forbid Geert Wilders to make or show his movie. It is simply that they are defending there religion, and with that there society, and all where they stand for which they feel is attacked, which afterall is for them just as valuable as our freedom of speech, or as Peter Coene phrased it so beautifull a few posts back:

I prefer to think allong the lines of a quote attributed to Voltaire:
"I detest what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Or in other words: If you touch my freedoms I will "defend them to death" which isn't a lot different from what the Islamic world is saying. However I have to agree ofcourse, that because of there reaction, the first message we will see through that action is that our rights and freedoms are being attacked. Which happens in a way ofcourse, but I doubt that was the goal of the people who threatened the people on that website.

[Nam]

I do take pride in my clarity of thought however.

I laughed. I think you should try for more succinctness with your words/ideas...at least in the context of stupid internet forum debates. That's not meant to be condescending or rude because you're obviously a talented guy, it's just a friendly crit. I say that because I have never really had a concrete notion about what your arguements actually are about or more importantly, about what summational point you're trying to drive home.They just seem like bouts to me, word scrimmages. Like you're going to take side B against side A just to see if you can win, etc, etc.

[kev ferrara]

So to speak, if you have a violent society you will have a violent religion who is dominant. Religion is a poor word since you have to count kev's enlightment value's also under the word religion, but in lack of a better word Ill simply use religion.

Then you'll simply be wrong.

My friend you need to figure out the difference between religion, ideology and values. If you want to lump all these under "religion" I think you will do yourself an intellectual disservice. Yes they are all belief systems, but Religion and Ideology both have as their goals some kind of Utopia and thus have a fantastical element to them. Values are simply rules that help a society to sustain itself. When those rules are enforced through religious means or demonization of dissent that is a different story

But the more important point is that you are taking yourself out of the equation. You have fallen into the seductive trap of "textual objectivity". All "modes" are equal. To the point that you seem to have no values yourself which you are willing to fight for. That is no way to govern yourself or your society in the real world. Judgment is required in life. To suspend judgment is to suspend the use of the intellect for anything but abstraction.

And beyond that *there is no such thing as objectivity*. Objectivity is a word game. It doesn't exist. So one shouldn't pretend to possess it.

Of course we all realize that when we criticize a religion it will insult. But... Do they realize that when they intimidate people into silence that goes against our society that we are insulted? (And I use "our society" loosely, D, because you seem so detached from life in your dreamy intellectual heaven that I cannot tell if you want western society to survive or not)

All to say, if they will not accept and change to conform to our values, which I agree with, why should I accept and change to conform to their values, which I find to be... a tad 7th century for my taste.

I don't care what anyone says, I will not tolerate anyone who thinks women shouldn't be educated. That is a recipe for civilizational disaster.

Nam... I'm not going to dumb it down. Sorry. The world is a complex place.

[Nam]

The world is complex? You're not going to dumb it down? Well, by golly... I'll just have to find new ways to stimulate my feeble brain into figuring out how to sift through the load of contradictory bullshit you ralph onto the forums on a near daily basis. It's not that I don't understand what you're trying to say... it's that I don't understand how you can say one thing and not immediately realize you're wading in your own hypocrisy with the next. Also, applying a little brevity is hardly dumbing it down kev, I could say everything you JUST said and always seem to say in less than a paragraph. Amazing what some editing can accomplish:

''You're right, I'm wrong. You may think you might be right but that conflicts with me being right, a cosmic impossibility.''

Feel free to copy and paste that into your posts from now on. You'll save time and you won't have to whip out your thesaurus and dictionary every few minutes.

[kev ferrara]

Nam, you aren't contributing to the thread. Why not back off.

[Goog]

Its easy to say someone is a hypocrite and not prove it...

Before you call someone out like that at least show quotes proving the fact... And please keep them in context as well.
I'm sure Kev would love to know if he is contradicting himself, for the sake of his own personal development.

[Dan Bird]

A very important thing to know about religion is that religion is always a reflection of a society. It isn't religion that makes the human, but it's the human, or in larger masses the society as a whole that makes religion. So to speak, if you have a violent society you will have a violent religion who is dominant. Religion is a poor word since you have to count kev's enlightment value's also under the word religion, but in lack of a better word Ill simply use religion.

To say it differently: the dominant religion is the perspective of the largest mass in a society and there points of view to the world. It is a way to preserve tradition and a certain identity. A dominant religion also has the right of power. They are the biggest, so they are right, so they are allowed to say what you can and cannot do in a society. Which in a longer way gives them the right for inequality.

You have to realise that when you attack a religion and the way they do things you attack a large mass and there points of view. Saying that the koran isn't right is the same as saying that our freedom of speech is wrong. However, since we live in a far less violent society then the societies in the Islamic world (Just look at the last 50 years of history in the middle east) the mass will react differently. For us it is pretty simple to say that threatening someone with death is immoral. Which it is ofcourse, when looking at our morals. They however have grown up in a way different world filled with far more violence, and simply don't know better.

But I don't live in the middle east, I live in a society that upholds civil liberty, equality to all, I live in a society that gives
me the right to speak freely without censorship, and holds those beliefs above all others, I should be guaranteed to do so under international law.
This is the perspective of the largest mass in our society and our points of view to the world.

Our civil liberties, that are often taken for granted by the average person should be reinforced by everyone, not just by the government, and I'm pretty sure
that the film was posted on a website that is in a part of the world that guarantees freedom of speech under international law.

So what about the large mass of society living in the western world that are offended by the violent reaction to the film, do their Beliefs not count, or is it only
Religions and beliefs from other countries (none of which you live in) that matter.

[serhc]

so, is everyone getting pissed because there's disagreement on whether this is a sign of the apocalypse, or whether it's a sign of the imminent apocalypse?

[D.Labruyere]

Dan, I'm not saying that we aren't allowed to be offended. We've got as much right to be offended as they have. However, I do think both sides get offended a bit to easily.

I don't think one society can simply force there values onto another society when they dissagree. They shouldn't tell us how to do things and neither should we. Both society's show a lack of respect for one and the other. However, despite the huge gap between both society's we can't get around it that we all live on the same planet and have to find a way to overcome our mutual differences. Something that will never going to happen aslong as we or they take to much pride into there or our values. We've already seen what happened when society's are to pride of there own achievements and think they are the only one who do it right during world war 1 and I hope history has learned his lesson.

All I did right now, was trying to show that not only our values were attacked by there reaction, but we attacked there values aswell by creating the movie Fitna. Something I felt was being overlooked when this discussion started.

Edit: ps. Kev I don't feel like doing a discussion with someone who tries to make there arguments more impressive by attacking the other person instead of what he is saying, how beautifull the sentences with your 10 years of proffesional writing skills may be formed or how many 'difficult' words you put into it.

[enrigo]

so, is everyone getting pissed because there's disagreement on whether this is a sign of the apocalypse, or whether it's a sign of the imminent apocalypse?

More like we all know the problem exist but there's not a recent incident relating to it to talk about ?

Reminds me of one South Park episode where there's a Family Guy joke with Muhammad in it that pisses off terrorists. And America have to choose to either fight for free speech for the first time, or bury everybody's head in sand and pretend they didn't see it. ;)

[kev ferrara]

More like it we all know the problem exist but there's not a recent incident relating to it to talk about ?

What just happened actually didn't just happen, eh? There was no threat that led to the film being taken down from the server?

[enrigo]

What just happened actually didn't just happen, eh? There was no threat that led to the film being taken down from the server?

Well I mean the problem did exist for a while, kind of that everybody knows that if there's something new that is similar to the Danish cartoon this is what will happen. So when it did happen people are already prepared to talk about it. Not that it sparks the discussion because there is an imminent apocalypse or anything.

[Flake]

All I did right now, was trying to show that not only our values were attacked by there reaction, but we attacked there values aswell by creating the movie Fitna.

Thing is though, there wasn't much "creating" going on, it was more just editing news footage and god botherers own words..

"They" said everything that you heard, there was no real need for creative editing to make it look disturbing.

And yes, I did find it offensive, can we ban all films dealing with such ideas in the EU thanks..?

No...?

[kev ferrara]

Edit: ps. Kev I don't feel like doing a discussion with someone who tries to make there arguments more impressive by attacking the other person instead of what he is saying, how beautifull the sentences with your 10 years of proffesional writing skills may be formed or how many 'difficult' words you put into it.

I assure you I don't go out of my way to use difficult words in order to improve my argument in some way. Nor do I think it is possible. I hope it is clear that I am not pretending to be making sense. I am actually striving to make sense, which would require the stripping away of falsity, rather than the addition of it. For people who are accustomed to more informal English (or another language entirely) this might lead to problems. Part of the reason for the formality of the language is to circumvent emotionalism. That is, I try to avoid "trigger words" that might cause tightly strung individuals to erupt at the mere mention of the word. I also try to write around phrases or ways of thinking that have been "charged" through common political discourse with emotionalism. In these kinds of forums, if I were to write the way I talk, there would be endless debates and flame wars caused by misinterpretation. So I am being careful, possibly to a fault, about how I characterize my thoughts. I am sorry if this causes excess work in order to read what I think. But this is a free forum and anyone who chooses to read what I say, is equally welcome not to read it, thereby circumnavigating possible offense.

As far as some personal attack directed toward you, I am sorry if I offended. I assume the insult was in regard to my attempt to confront your non-judgmental stance toward radical Islam. I admit I was indeed trying to shake you up a bit. It is true your positions make me wonder about you on a personal level. Whether you see reality as simply some distant abstraction that you have no stake in.... that bothersome place where you eat food and pay bills... which leads you not to concern yourself with such mundane matters as the defense of freedom. I could not help but wonder whether you really are unwilling to even consider the possibility that the expansion of Islam might pose any challenge at all to artistic, journalistic and political expression in Western society.

Anyhow, I think these are valid questions to ask of you. You chose to be insulted rather than answer. Why not try the reverse?

[Jabo]

I'm rejoining the discussion after reading through some info about the maker of the movie, Geert Wilders. To most people here, my points of view will seem to be kinda biased and it might look as if I'm against freedom of speech myself, simply because I'm living in a country that cuts those rights to a certain, historical extent.

Living in Germany is like living with a big taboo hanging over everyone's head. That is, the taboo of National Socialism, also known as Nazism, or nowadays, Neo-Nazism. Your right of free speech is heavily cut in those areas. You're not allowed to spread hatred against ethnic groups (see Volksverhetzung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung)), deny the Holocaust publicly and you're not allowed to wear swastikas, just to name a few restraints. Violation of these restraints can be punished with imprisonment for up to 5 years or more. This is something I've heard a lot of people complain about, most of them from America. "Why do you tolerate having your right to speak freely cut?", "It's your most important right!", etc…

The answer is, as hard as it is to admit it, that freedom of speech can in some cases be a weapon of mass destruction that is more powerful than anything else in the world. Never forget that by the right to speak freely about any group of people you want, the NSDAP, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party) Hitlers party, won the elections. They came in a time of crisis, they had highly charismatic leading characters and they had an answer to the most important question at that time: Who was responsible for the bad conditions? Due to these facts, they were seen as underdogs by the people and made themselves and those who later voted for them the apparent victims of a Zionist agenda.

So after the Holocaust and the following world war, a series of restraints were made to the freedom of speech, always keeping at the back of one's mind that a thing like that shall never happen again. At the moment however, there's a party called NPD, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany) the factually direct successor to the NSDAP, that is doing the exact same thing as it's source party did in the 1920s. They are trying very hard and horrifyingly, they succeed more and more every year. Their target audience is the same as well. They address themselves to low-paid or unemployed people in the current crisis concerning low education standards, high unemployment rates and a general unhappiness with the political decisions. Their main ideology however is almost identical to that of the NSDAP. NPD leaders have been known for denial of the Holocaust, calling it an American, Zionist or Communist complot. There have been attempts to ban the party, which ultimately failed due to idiocy of politicians (read Wikipedia). They currently have delegates in different parliaments and are winning more at an enourmous rate, mostly in areas where unemployment is very high, that is East Germany/former GDR.

I'm referring to this not so much due to a possible connection to the Fitna ban. Even though Geert Wilders shares some major points of view with the aforementioned parties, just targeted at Islam, not Judaism, I think he is basically just liking to bash people and I think his movie is neither politically or socially relevant, apart from pointing to his assholeness. I want to point to a serious issue with people defending their rights over the fact that they first need to think about their duties – which is an alarmingly high amount of people, contributing to this and other threads regarding " their rights". In all cases, the countries we are luckily able to live in today have established those rights to make sure everyone can live in them with dignity. Surely, this includes the right of free speech. But as soon as it comes to the aforementioned "Volksverhetzung", which is a German loan word for obvious reasons, cutting those rights is as important as the right itself. Think about how we all, to a certain extent, are not the usual Joe walking the streets. We're better informed than the big part of our perspective fellow citizens, have a higher level of education and generally have a more critical reception of things crossing our way. A lot of us have even read a book from start to finish at some point of our lives. People like Wilders and other political/religious/economic aggressors however don't target us, but those who are less well-fed with critical reception. Getting them to side with you is not as difficult as it seems and it is more dangerous than most want to admit.

[D.Labruyere]

Kev, you could have just asked instead of saying that I am detached from life living in a dreamy intellectual heaven.

it is not that I think radical Islam is a good thing. As a matter of fact I think all radicalism leads to nowhere. However in a discussion like this I do think it is important to know all sides of the stories as good as possible. And that includes also the side of the radical Islam. Radicalism doesn't show up out of nowhere therefore I think it is very important to know where this radicalism comes from, so that we can 'fight' those points instead of the radicalism itself.

It is true, nobody will ever be able to go totally un-biased into a discussion, since we will always have a history of where we come from and how we do things. However, I don't think it is a bad thing to try and be as un-biased as possible before going into a discussion like this. Try to look at all sides of the story before making a conclusion or a judgement how difficult this may be sometimes. And that goes for both sides, what triggers Geert Wilders to make a movie like this, and what triggers the 'Islamic world' to make such a response. If that leads to a non-judgmental stance I am very sorry.

[emily g]

cutting those rights is as important as the right itself.
I find this statement of yours rather shocking....Jabo, do you not see that if these groups you are so afraid of actually gain power, they will use this idea to block any criticism of themselves? How in the world will you be able to fight back then?

This has happened time and time again throughout history, and that is why we MUST guarantee freedom of speech despite its inherant risks.

I want to share this quote from A Man for All Seasons:
William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

"Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

[Jabo]

As I said, I'm as biased on that side of the divide as kev and others seem to be on the other. Knowing what WW2 and Holocaust was like from someone who actually survived it (and not with a rifle in hand, but nothing but their stained clothes on their body, if at all) is something that will not leave your mind unscarred. My grandmother, born 1914, was in the generation highly influenced by Hitler's ideologies and it became clear to me that this kind of brainwash was so overly successful when I came to know that my grandmother once told my mother that some old friends of hers in the 20s "where jewish folks, you know" (kind of like that). A whole generation of normal people was made anti-Semitic by some people who knew exactly what freedom of speech CAN be. As much as I'd love to believe that there is a universal YES/NO conclusion to freedom of speech, THERE IS NO SUCH THING. You have to decide, but it's an utterly difficult if at all possible thing to decide. Seeing how fast things can change when the wrong people reach the majority of the people is as terrifying as it gets. When I was 15, the NPD was a small group of idiots, essentially some dumb skinheads with baseball bats. Nowadays, the party is lead by fricking devils in disguise, unable to be stopped because they hide behind their rights. These guys used to burn homes for asylum seekers, damnit, killed people. They're high criminals who fight the country from the inside.

[kev ferrara]

Note: The following post is meant to be somewhat confrontational. Please don't read it if you get insulted easily.

I think all radicalism leads to nowhere. However in a discussion like this I do think it is important to know all sides of the stories as good as possible. And that includes also the side of the radical Islam. Radicalism doesn't show up out of nowhere therefore I think it is very important to know where this radicalism comes from, so that we can 'fight' those points instead of the radicalism itself.

It is true, nobody will ever be able to go totally un-biased into a discussion, since we will always have a history of where we come from and how we do things. However, I don't think it is a bad thing to try and be as un-biased as possible before going into a discussion like this. Try to look at all sides of the story before making a conclusion or a judgement how difficult this may be sometimes. And that goes for both sides, what triggers Geert Wilders to make a movie like this, and what triggers the 'Islamic world' to make such a response. If that leads to a non-judgmental stance I am very sorry.

You have made a false assumption here. That is, you seem to think you are the only one who has considered all sides of the argument, which is an absurd viewpoint to hold and frankly insulting. Wilders is just one person playing one role in a much larger drama. To fixate on him is to court myopia. There are more than two sides here to consider, despite what the media says.

Furthermore, while you say it is good to try to be as unbiased (objective) as possible going into a discussion of this sort, I see no evidence that you have tried to do anything but set yourself up as "objective" on this thread... as if "objectivity" were the end of the discussion, rather than the beginning. I don't think it's either, it's nothing. Which is why I am trying to push you off that plastic pedestal you perch on. Life cannot be lived without making distinctions, choices, judgments, and acting upon those conclusions and living with the consequences.

It does seem to me that you like to bask in the stasis and safety of "non-judgmentalism" in order to avoid the much harder moral choices involved in actively maintaining a free society. Amorality of that sort is very difficult to respect. It forces others to make the hard choices that would benefit you, without you even giving the moral support of political consensus to give confidence to their efforts. Why are you forcing others to make moral choices for you?

Oh, and radicalism can lead somewhere pretty dark and scary.

Jabo, please stop trying to place me on one side or another of some imaginary fence of bias. That is political bullshit and you aren't qualified to be the referee here. And don't try to set yourself up as some authority on repression because of your Grandmother's experience. I assure you the stories I can tell about my grandparents in Europe during WWII would make your toes curl. So please stop pretending to be morally superior. And the idea that it's only the skinheads that cause the trouble with radical Islam is also absurd. And your equation of the Jews of prewar Germany with Radical Islam is also insulting and absurd. Just because you found some article online does not make you automatically an expert on repression. Possibly you don't realize how insulting your claims are.

[Jabo]

Yeah. Possibly... Kev, think about it.

EDIT: No, actually I think that was not your usual senseless approach to ignore something you don't like, I think it was just rude. But hey, you're King so who cares.

[Vhan Juju]

there would be endless debates and flame wars caused by misinterpretation.

=vhan puts up his keyborad, and adops a "mouse only" pact with this thread.=
(lol, interesting discussion, i'm haveing fun following along...don't think I'll get involved this time around...)

[kev ferrara]

Yeah. Possibly... Kev, think about it.

EDIT: No, actually I think that was not your usual senseless approach to ignore something you don't like, I think it was just rude. But hey, you're King so who cares.

Jabo, the following are attempts to shut down a discussion, rather than engage in one...

Islamophobe!

Nazi! Skinhead!

Meany!

Rude!

Arrogant! You think you're king!

Biased! Xenophobe! Racist!

Etcetera. etcetera etcetera...

If you think I have missed some salient point you have made, why not reiterate it.

[Jabo]

Oh, I surely wasn't trying to link the term Nazi or Skinhead to you in my last post. But if you try some more, maybe I really was! Picking words out of a post and pointing them to yourself is really a way to engage in a discussion. So instead of ignoring everything I have written and calling me a uninformed kid, why don't you try to discuss? Why do you think I come back just to be confronted again with something that has been called witless by almost every single person in this thread? It's because this topic is as important to me as it is to you. Just because I try to arrange an opposition doesn't mean I'm against everything anyone has ever said, and it certainly doesn't mean I don't want to discuss, you know. I think you've trapped yourself again and now you're lashing about. Have the guts to stand for it.

[Duq]

How can you expect goverments to protect your freedom of speech rights from foreign organisations, if they cant even protect your rights from organisations or people within their own borders. Speak your mind about the islam, and you get shot by a fundamentalist. Speak your mind about Scientology and your life will be destroyed legally.

As long as there is someone with either more money or more firepower, your freedom of speech will always be in danger.

[D.Labruyere]

I never said that you or any other person just looked to one side of the arguments. However I did say, that there was a tendency to express only one side of the argument and overlook the other side, wether this happened because everybody already had drawn a conclusion (in which case there is no use for an argument at all, or your goal has to be to force your opinion into somebody else his throat), a person accidentaly overlooked it, a person actually didn't think about the other sides, or someone is simply to ignorant to view a point of view only with his own glasses doesn't really matter.

Furthermore you state that I as a person am unable to make "harder moral choices". I hoped that I was clear enough in my posts about my moral stance on the subject, but since this is the message you get from me I'm not and I will try to explain them as clearly and as good as possible now.

I am absolutely for freedom of speech. In my opinion everybody should be able to say whatever they want. However what I value even more highly then being able to shout whatever I want, is respect towards another person simply as a human being no matter what he has done in the past, what his beliefs are or what he says. Just some respect simply because he or she is human. I believe that respect for the other human being stands above our freedom of speech or there beliefs.

Ofcourse there is a line, though I believe that respect for the other human being is very important, I don't have to agree with what he is saying or what he is believing. For example I absolutely don't agree with the fact that there are still a lot of islamic people are saying that woman aren't allowed to be educated. Even so I don't agree with what Geert Wilders is saying. Though in the end despite what these people have done or said they will always remain human, no more and no less then we are and thus they should be treated like that.

I don't think Geert Wilders should have made the movie in the first place. I don't think the people who were insulted by it should have reacted in such a agressive manner, and I dont think we should put ourself into the victims role so easily because of there reaction.

[kev ferrara]

D.Labruyere,

I think you have articulated your position clearly. Thank you. But it seems to me you still have only reached the beginning of the difficulties, not the end. Hitler was a human being after all. Pol Pot was a human being. Charles Manson is a human being. And frankly, their lives were worth less than the free speech they sought to restrict. In other words, all human beings aren't equal. Just offhand, I would say the more a human being attempts to restrict free expression by force, the less human that human being has become. And therefore the less humanely that person should be treated. "Let the punishment fit the crime" is how it is often articulated in U.S. law. So to say, "we are all human" is to be in denial of inhumanity and how inhumanity subjugates. All to say, there is a big difference between social judgment and actual physical subjugation. I think it is immoral to withhold judgment if it leads to the allowance of subjugation.

Jabo, again, you spend your entire post in complaint mode. If you were misunderstood, make an effort to be understood. If you are arguing 'devil's advocate" positions, don't bother... there isn't anybody on this thread who doesn't already know the devil's advocate position. Try saying what you really believe without filtering it through the pretense of objectivity.

[Jabo]

Alright, so I'm making a statement too, and I try to be as direct as possible:

First of all, I don't think that the movie has anything to do with a debate about Freedom of Speech because the internet as it's platform (regarding that Wilders didn't find a TV-station willing to broadcast it) has already copied the movie a thousand times and it will remain public forever. That was were I thought you were already making a wrong statement in the title of your thread and that was the initial thing I wanted to point out.

Next is my belief in personal responsibility over personal rights. Where rights are a base that has been established in the past, duty is the part that matters more when you look at the future. Of course I am thankful for my rights, but I am willing, personally, to give them up partially in order to act as a responsible person. That includes that I don't talk about things that I'd like to, and it has showed me in the past that it can be a good thing to just sit and think about it. If that's where our experience divides, I'm sorry to be so subjective. I know that a lot of people treat their rights as more valuable than their own responsibility and even though I don't agree with it, I respect other people's rights simply because without the rights, there would be no way to act responsible.

I hope that clears it up. Feel free do disagree.

[Duq]

Kev: Maybe its just me, but what is your actual standing on this. All I see is you arguing about why the standings of others are incorrect, but I'm not sure where you stand? Should I just put all your reactions together and piece it together? Could you formulate your standing for me, or link me the post where it should be?

Thanks :)

[kev ferrara]

Jabo, thank you.

Just to be clear, I do not consider it an impingement of free speech that nobody would broadcast Fitna on television. The problem was the threat to the website that caused the film to be taken down. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that many people made copies of the film to decentralize the location of the film to prevent its further supression (through threats, government intervention, or what have you.)

It is the threat alone that caused me to begin this thread. It is the "threat that works" that is the problem. See Emily G's posts earlier in the thread for more explanation.

Your second paragraph on personal rights and personal responsibility: There is always a trade-off between personal rights and personal responsibility, true. However part of personal responsibility is to take a stand when important rights are being abrogated by violent thugs. "Sitting and thinking about it" doesn't generate the political force necessary to get goverments to act to protect its citizens' rights to free speech. Sometimes "sitting and thinking about it" is an immoral act. What's that old quote, "all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Edit: Does this post explain it Duq?

[Jabo]

I'm kinda growing old on this, so I'm making this shorter from now on. But thanks anyway.

1. Sure, taking the film and moving it to another place is not the perfect way to have one's right. But it's 100% responsibility to save that right. Of course, the threat worked. But from now on, it can't, because the thing is in the circle of data. The moment someone took the damn thing and copied it, he was acting responsible, maybe without even thinking of his rights. But I see what you want to say, yes.

2. I wasn't actually talking about good things I might have said and haven't. I was talking about bad things I could have said but hesitated to and eventually let them die somewhere in a corner of my mind. That might seem like a tragedy, but it helps to overcome a shock. As a human, my believe is that you and I are not so far away from our club-toting ancestors. And I'm really sorry to draw that connection to the weapons-thread, here again my argument is fear. Fear often results in violent behavior. We're not as civilized as we would like to believe we are. So keeping something to oneself (again, responsibility) can be a beautiful weapon of peace compared to the weapon of war that a right and the right to have a right can be.

[emily g]

Of course I am thankful for my rights, but I am willing, personally, to give them up partially in order to act as a responsible person. That includes that I don't talk about things that I'd like to, and it has showed me in the past that it can be a good thing to just sit and think about it.
Jabo, let me see if I understand this clearly. You would personally give up some of your rights in order to act as a responsible person. By giving up some of your rights, do you mean you are voluntarily willing to do this as an individual? Or do you mean that you are willing to accept the government making this decision and forcing it on everyone else as well?

I think there might be some confusion with your terminology. Freedom of speech includes the right to speak or NOT to speak. So if you are voluntarily remaining silent on something, you are actually exercising your right to free speech.

If this doesn't make sense, think of governments that have required loyalty oaths of their citizens, forcing them to pledge to an ideology or a person that they do not agree with. Freedom of speech also means not being forced to say things that you don't want to say.

Edit: Your last post clarifies things for me a bit.

[Duq]

thanks kev. :)

Its funny that you mentioned this quote

"all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Isnt this the reason why the threat was made?

edit: Also I dont think I will participate in this discussion. The topic, causes, cultural gaps, etc is to big of an issue to be discussed in small forum posts.

[Jabo]

Emily G: Of course that is a personal decision that would not affect others. But that's how life goes, I think that my plan works better than that of others. Being a friendly person, I respect other's needs even if I don't think they actually are needs, but built-in/acquired principles. So speaking for others is not an option here, no government, no people. It's a personal belief that I trust in and that has served me well in my life. Of course, the perfect situation would be to have everybody think this way, because there would be no need to depend on rights if everyone acted responsible. But there's the club-toting connection again, so screw that. They way things look, I can't (or want) to persuade others to act like I do, leave them their rights, but I will not quit my responsibilities, because they are to me the highest form of living with each other.

As you said, freedom of speech also includes the right not to speak. The question is, is it good to let people harm other people by giving them this right? I don't think so. But you're totally right, there is no one who could judge who may speak or who may not. So maybe my conclusion is that the right to speak free itself is imperfect.

[Peter Coene]

kev, you have to realise that this movie was created by a dutch politician named Geert Wilders who's soul purpose is to bash the Islamic world.

He wanted to give a few examples change the constitution of our country so that non-western people weren't allowed to immigrate into holland, make the koran an illegal book just like hitler's mein kampf and ban islamic schools and mosque's for the nest 5 years. Besides that he thought it was a good idea that foreign islamic imams weren't allowed to preach anymore in holland and if a imam wasn't foreign he was only allowed to speak dutch. Just to name a few of his ideas.
I don't agree with making the Quran illegal, nor do I agree with making Mein Kampf illegal, nor do I agree with making your politician's video illegal. You are saying that it is wrong of him to limit the speech of others, however your reaction is to limit his freedom of speech?

Thats like saying you are free to say whatever you want, so long as I agree with it.

With freedom of speech also comes responsibility over your words. If you'd call me an asshole I'd hit you in the face. That has nothing to do with free speech but just with the other person saying stupid things. Same goes for this movie.
So then let a pissed off Arab smack him in the face... or shout "La illaha illa Allah!" while blowing up his house with a suicide bomb or whatever. Just don't tell him he can't say it.

[emily g]

Jabo, thank you for your reply. I agree with most of what you say.
The question is, is it good to let people harm other people by giving them this right? I don't think so.
I would say that if someone is actually harming other people, they have gone beyond their rights and the law does not support that. But I do not include "hurting someone's feelings" or "being mean" in my definition of "harm."

As long as someone is not actually harming someone else or taking away another's rights, I think they should have the right to say what they want even if it makes others upset.

The person who made the movie may be talking about removing the rights of others but he hasn't actually done so or made a threat to any individual person as far as I can tell. If he actually does something to infringe other people's rights or threatens an individual, then he has crossed a line and should be punished according to the law.

[sve]

Freedom of speech ( freedom to talk without censorship) is not absolute. It has limitations. "There are exceptions to the general protection of speech, however, including the Miller test for obscenity, child pornography laws, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. Other limitations on free speech often balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as property rights for authors and inventors (copyright), interests in fair political campaigns (Campaign finance laws), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons (restrictions on Hate speech or fighting words), or the use of untruths to harm others (slander)".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States

Freedom of speech has indirect limitations as well like for example an awareness of being sued for anything you said or by being shot by an extremist for criticizing his religion for example. And in my opinion a human life has a bigger priority than the right to talk freely.

I read an interesting argument that while limiting freedom of speech we put ourself on slippery slope which leads us to tyranny... But the opposite is true as well: limitation of censorship can brining anarchy and random unwanted turn of event as result (yes, the old argument, Hitler came to powers by democratic, legal ways).
I would say value of freedom of speech is not absolute. There are some higher, more precious values. One of the reason why we have moderators on every public or private forum.

[D.Labruyere]

D.Labruyere,

I think you have articulated your position clearly. Thank you. But it seems to me you still have only reached the beginning of the difficulties, not the end. Hitler was a human being after all. Pol Pot was a human being. Charles Manson is a human being. And frankly, their lives were worth less than the free speech they sought to restrict. In other words, all human beings aren't equal. Just offhand, I would say the more a human being attempts to restrict free expression by force, the less human that human being has become. And therefore the less humanely that person should be treated. "Let the punishment fit the crime" is how it is often articulated in U.S. law. So to say, "we are all human" is to be in denial of inhumanity and how inhumanity subjugates. All to say, there is a big difference between social judgment and actual physical subjugation. I think it is immoral to withhold judgment if it leads to the allowance of subjugation.


I'm quite certain I haven't reached the end of the problems. Wouldn't that be a thing if we were able to solve worlds problems during an internet debate? ;)

You put up an interesting argument with people like Hitler, and here is my view on it:

It is as you said immoral to withhold judgment on such a person. However, I don't think that our judgment on a person like Hitler should be that he was inhuman. I certainly agree that a person should be held responcible for his actions and words, and that in Hitlers case his deeds were inhuman, however I don't see it fit to not treat him equal like anybody else. I am not saying that because he is also a human, our judgment on his actions should be lower. We shouldn't convict someone for robbing when he did murder. That wouldn't be equal either and certainly not respectfull to those who did robbery and are convicted just as hard as somebody who did murder.

And yes, maybe it would be far more satisfying to do to him what he did to other people. An eye for a eye, and a teeth for a teeth. But wouldn't we lower ourself to his level then and by that also betray our own values? I hope that we in our society are able to stand above that.

Peter: that is not what I am saying.

[Peter Coene]

I'm rejoining the discussion after reading through some info about the maker of the movie, Geert Wilders. To most people here, my points of view will seem to be kinda biased and it might look as if I'm against freedom of speech myself, simply because I'm living in a country that cuts those rights to a certain, historical extent.

Living in Germany is like living with a big taboo hanging over everyone's head. That is, the taboo of National Socialism, also known as Nazism, or nowadays, Neo-Nazism. Your right of free speech is heavily cut in those areas. You're not allowed to spread hatred against ethnic groups (see Volksverhetzung (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksverhetzung)), deny the Holocaust publicly and you're not allowed to wear swastikas, just to name a few restraints. Violation of these restraints can be punished with imprisonment for up to 5 years or more. This is something I've heard a lot of people complain about, most of them from America. "Why do you tolerate having your right to speak freely cut?", "It's your most important right!", etc…

The answer is, as hard as it is to admit it, that freedom of speech can in some cases be a weapon of mass destruction that is more powerful than anything else in the world. Never forget that by the right to speak freely about any group of people you want, the NSDAP, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party) Hitlers party, won the elections. They came in a time of crisis, they had highly charismatic leading characters and they had an answer to the most important question at that time: Who was responsible for the bad conditions? Due to these facts, they were seen as underdogs by the people and made themselves and those who later voted for them the apparent victims of a Zionist agenda.

So after the Holocaust and the following world war, a series of restraints were made to the freedom of speech, always keeping at the back of one's mind that a thing like that shall never happen again. At the moment however, there's a party called NPD, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany) the factually direct successor to the NSDAP, that is doing the exact same thing as it's source party did in the 1920s. They are trying very hard and horrifyingly, they succeed more and more every year. Their target audience is the same as well. They address themselves to low-paid or unemployed people in the current crisis concerning low education standards, high unemployment rates and a general unhappiness with the political decisions. Their main ideology however is almost identical to that of the NSDAP. NPD leaders have been known for denial of the Holocaust, calling it an American, Zionist or Communist complot. There have been attempts to ban the party, which ultimately failed due to idiocy of politicians (read Wikipedia). They currently have delegates in different parliaments and are winning more at an enourmous rate, mostly in areas where unemployment is very high, that is East Germany/former GDR.

I'm referring to this not so much due to a possible connection to the Fitna ban. Even though Geert Wilders shares some major points of view with the aforementioned parties, just targeted at Islam, not Judaism, I think he is basically just liking to bash people and I think his movie is neither politically or socially relevant, apart from pointing to his assholeness. I want to point to a serious issue with people defending their rights over the fact that they first need to think about their duties – which is an alarmingly high amount of people, contributing to this and other threads regarding " their rights". In all cases, the countries we are luckily able to live in today have established those rights to make sure everyone can live in them with dignity. Surely, this includes the right of free speech. But as soon as it comes to the aforementioned "Volksverhetzung", which is a German loan word for obvious reasons, cutting those rights is as important as the right itself. Think about how we all, to a certain extent, are not the usual Joe walking the streets. We're better informed than the big part of our perspective fellow citizens, have a higher level of education and generally have a more critical reception of things crossing our way. A lot of us have even read a book from start to finish at some point of our lives. People like Wilders and other political/religious/economic aggressors however don't target us, but those who are less well-fed with critical reception. Getting them to side with you is not as difficult as it seems and it is more dangerous than most want to admit.

Jabo, coming from a nation that was on the opposite side of that war I find your argument to be well thought, however I cannot agree with it. Perhapse this is just from growing up in the US which gaurds our first amendment as one of the most important laws of our land. However, when learning about the Haulocaust the images that struck me were the vast bookburnings, the idea that the NSDAP would silence other groups (Jews, communists, other oppositional viewpoints). To us here in America silencing those that committed the atrocity of silencing others makes one no better than those who they silence, with the exception that it adds hypocracy to the list of sins.

As for the spread of your NPD party, if anything it seems to me that they are thriving on the very rules that you are espousing to keep them quiet. The NSDAP, as you pointed out, thrived on the idea that they were the underdog, that they (and the German people with them) were being oppressed. By silencing those who would still espouse such views today, by throwing them in jail for wearing a symbol that was turned into an abomination, you feed their fire, you give them something to point to and say "See! We ARE being oppressed!"

You fulfill their major arguing point, and others see them in that state of oppression for their beleifs and flock to their cause. Give them back their freedom of speech and you may have given a snake its fangs, but you have removed its venom.

[kev ferrara]

Its funny that you mentioned this quote

"all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

Isnt this the reason why the threat was made?

Duq, thank you. This was the issue I was eventually aiming at. The "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." argument.

I think the question can be made stark:

Is Fitna comprised of ad hoc propaganda that is an incitement to hatred of a minority group that is wholly innocent and deserving of protection from Fascists who perpetrate lies about their religion? Therefore, threatening anybody who shows the film is a moral act rather than an evil one?

Or is there more to the story?

EDIT: It seems liveleak.com may be restoring the film to its site in an edited version in defiance of the threats they have received. (The edit has to do with a cartoon that was used without the cartoonist's permission. This was not the "serious threat" that caused the film to be removed from the site in the first place.)

[Jabo]

I would say that if someone is actually harming other people, they have gone beyond their rights and the law does not support that. But I do not include "hurting someone's feelings" or "being mean" in my definition of "harm."

If he actually does something to infringe other people's rights or threatens an individual, then he has crossed a line and should be punished according to the law.
Now we're getting somewhere. Yes, I do agree with that. What has to be solved is the question of how far being mean to someone can influence the opinion of others about the victim. Even in this thread's life, insults have been made that incite others to insult as well. When this mark has been reached, being mean has become libel. The question is where to draw the line, I think.
The person who made the movie may be talking about removing the rights of others but he hasn't actually done so or made a threat to any individual person as far as I can tell.

The reason why I don't like discussing freedom of speech in connection Fitna is that it's not as clear as it should be in order to discuss it. The world is in fear every day, afraid of what Islamic people could do to them. And I think this situation requires very sensitive media. Of course I wouldn't have taken Wilders right to speak out his thoughts, but as I said before, I can see why people react violently. And then again, the "threat that works" that was mentioned was the only thing left to the staff of LiveLeak. What else could you do? This whole issue isn't as universal as it should be in order to discuss such an universal topic. It's basically between LiveLeak and the the person who threatened them. Why did the person thread, and why did the other person retreat? There's a third party missing in order to fill the equation.

However, when learning about the Haulocaust the images that struck me were the vast bookburnings, the idea that the NSDAP would silence other groups (Jews, communists, other oppositional viewpoints). To us here in America silencing those that committed the atrocity of silencing others makes one no better than those who they silence, with the exception that it adds hypocracy to the list of sins.

To me, the difference here is that it has happened already and what has happened exactly has been excluded in the case law. From the millions that have been killed by the nazis, a conclusion can be made that their speeches haven't lead to anything good. Forbidding their ideals seems logical to me.

As for the spread of your NPD party, if anything it seems to me that they are thriving on the very rules that you are espousing to keep them quiet. The NSDAP, as you pointed out, thrived on the idea that they were the underdog, that they (and the German people with them) were being oppressed. By silencing those who would still espouse such views today, by throwing them in jail for wearing a symbol that was turned into an abomination, you feed their fire, you give them something to point to and say "See! We ARE being oppressed!"

You fulfill their major arguing point, and others see them in that state of oppression for their beleifs and flock to their cause. Give them back their freedom of speech and you may have given a snake its fangs, but you have removed its venom.

That depends, I think. Until today, the party hasn't used that tactic and it wouldn't work at the moment with the balance established and working. In some years though, it might become harder to "resist". A very important aspect is to become more international. It's all fine in the big cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne or Munich, but most of Germany is country side, where internationality is still something that most people either smirk about or tell you it's dumb or worthless and to stick to your own people instead. There's a general aversion to new things and a huge amount of narrow-minded people. With that out of the way, there would be room for fresh thoughts. And it's a thing of generations. In a few decades, the people ruling will be those who are either totally unpolitical or mid-to-far-left. I don't know what that will lead to.

[kev ferrara]

What has to be solved is the question of how far being mean to someone can influence the opinion of others about the victim.

I think the use of the word "mean" is misleading. The question is what is the crossover point between unnecessary criticism and necessary criticism. If necessary criticism gets branded as politically "mean" then grave problems may arise. A central question becomes "when does one's need to be polite and withhold judgment become counter-productive or dangerous?"

And even disregarding that, unnecessary criticism should never be met with violence unless it incites unnecessary violence. But there are times where violence is necessary in order to keep a society stable. Nobody likes to admit this. But western law and liberty culture cannot survive unless it protects its citizens.

There is furthermore the question of integration regarding Fitna and Islam. My grandparents came to america and no dispensation was made for them. They had to learn english and they very quickly became americanized. They never lost their traditions, but they didn't stand out in a crowd either. It has become politically correct to pander to immigrants to the detriment of their ability to integrate. It is the lack of integration that seems to cause the disconnect that leads to radicalized communities of immigrants. Thus multiculturalist pandering harms both the immigrant and the larger society. Thus we have political movements to counteract the multiculturalist pandering. Does anyone dispute that this might be a necessary step to a cohesive society?


The world is in fear every day, afraid of what Islamic people could do to them. And I think this situation requires very sensitive media.

The media is already overly sensitive. Most media consumers actually don't know the half of what is going on. Media is biased towards that which is broadcastable and will not broadcast just about anything that CAIR can bring a lawsuit about. Thus we have populations that are judging the actions of politicians based on wildly incomplete information. So, frankly, sensitive media is part of the problem. Of course, people who judge all muslims by the actions of the bad ones are also problems, but the actual violence against muslims in western countries has been minute compared to, say, the riots in France which had many unspeakable aspects to it that were not widely reported in the "sensitive" media. Sensitivity is sometimes a lie. And lies can be dangerous.


It's basically between LiveLeak and the the person who threatened them. Why did the person thread, and why did the other person retreat? There's a third party missing in order to fill the equation.

Why are you assuming there was a "retreat". Maybe liveleak just decided to stand up for themselves. Then again, maybe all the interest made it financially viable for them to take a risk.

Regardless of all that, this is certainly *not* just between Live Leak and the person who threatened them. What if one day you wanted to speak out against something you thought essential to speak out about? And you were threatened? What then?

Free speech must be protected by a unified front of willful human beings, because if it is not, at any one moment any of us can be threatened into silence. If you don't have someone's back, no one will have yours when the time comes.

Think about it.

[kev ferrara]

I'm quite certain I haven't reached the end of the problems. Wouldn't that be a thing if we were able to solve worlds problems during an internet debate? ;)

You put up an interesting argument with people like Hitler, and here is my view on it:

It is as you said immoral to withhold judgment on such a person. However, I don't think that our judgment on a person like Hitler should be that he was inhuman. I certainly agree that a person should be held responcible for his actions and words, and that in Hitlers case his deeds were inhuman, however I don't see it fit to not treat him equal like anybody else. I am not saying that because he is also a human, our judgment on his actions should be lower. We shouldn't convict someone for robbing when he did murder. That wouldn't be equal either and certainly not respectfull to those who did robbery and are convicted just as hard as somebody who did murder.

And yes, maybe it would be far more satisfying to do to him what he did to other people. An eye for a eye, and a teeth for a teeth. But wouldn't we lower ourself to his level then and by that also betray our own values? I hope that we in our society are able to stand above that.

So Hitler wouldn't have deserved the death penalty?

How in the world would taking the life of a man responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people "lower us to his level?" That's absurd. If a common criminal can be shot dead by a police officer during a robbery attempt, surely you can imagine the righteousness of killing Hitler. You are morally equating innocence with guilt if you treat both the same. The least we could have done as moral human beings was kill Hitler. If we actually wanted to make the punishment fit the crime we should have kept him alive indefinitely and tortured him without mercy. And even that punishment would not have met the crimes he perpetrated.

It would be quite literally impossible to do anything to Hitler that would "lower us to his level." I think that is a clear moral point.

[Blue]

righteousness of killing

Pardon me kev if i rip this out of context. I do so because it is used in a thousand different contexts from a war lusting president, to the suicidal radial islamist. Everyone likes to toss this around to give divine spin on whatever unholy thing they are planning.


There is nothing righteous about murder.

[D.Labruyere]

That was not what I was saying. I said that we SHOULDN'T treat the actions of someone who robbed a store the same as someone who did murder. And I absolutely didn't say anything about how severe the level of the conviction should be. I said that we should treat him the same as anybody else and put the same punishment on him as we would do on everybody else who commited such crimes. But we should punish him for his crimes, and nothing else.

Because, and maybe this is idioticaly idealistic of me, I think that despite all the inhuman things he has done, Hitler in the end remains human. Nothing less then that and certainly nothing more. And saying that he is less human then another human, will only proof that he was right, and there are indeed humans on the planet that are less then other humans. Something I will refuse to say. All humans are equal (not the same, because that is something entirely different), and all humans should be treated the same way.

And on the death penalty... well we don't have a death penalty here and criminals can't be (atleast, police officers aren't allowed to just do that) shot dead by a police officer during a robbery in holland, and I really don't feel like starting a discussion on that.

[enrigo]

Did Geert Wilders have a lot of supporters though? I imagine someone doing this is going to get a lot of booing and sort of public humiliation.

[D.Labruyere]

Geert Wilders is the "head" of the party named 'partij van de vrijheid' (party of freedom) and is sitting in our "tweede kamer" which is well, simply a very important section as not the most important within our government. So yes, he has a lot of supporters.

[kev ferrara]

Pardon me kev if i rip this out of context. I do so because it is used in a thousand different contexts from a war lusting president, to the suicidal radial islamist. Everyone likes to toss this around to give divine spin on whatever unholy thing they are planning.


There is nothing righteous about murder.

Blue, context is the essential factor in determining the morality of any action. So pardon me if I don't excuse you for ripping my thoughts out of context. In my opinion acontextuality is the hallmark of weak postmodern thought. It reduces complexity to an absurd degree... but to what end? Just to make pacifism seem moral? To consider pacifism moral, one would have to consider moral allowing Hitler to remain in power. Since nobody would consider leaving Hitler in power as moral, then pacifism must not be moral.

The rest of the emotionalist content of your post is not worth responding to.

[kev ferrara]

Because, and maybe this is idioticaly idealistic of me, I think that despite all the inhuman things he has done, Hitler in the end remains human. Nothing less then that and certainly nothing more. And saying that he is less human then another human, will only proof that he was right, and there are indeed humans on the planet that are less then other humans. Something I will refuse to say. All humans are equal (not the same, because that is something entirely different), and all humans should be treated the same way.

I never said anybody *was* less than human. But that they should be treated as less than human when they act less than human. For instance, locked up in a cage.... jailed. Which is to say, all human certainly should not be treated the same way, unless you plan on letting all the prisoners out of jail, which would be an immoral act.

And on the death penalty... well we don't have a death penalty here and criminals can't be (atleast, police officers aren't allowed to just do that) shot dead by a police officer during a robbery in holland, and I really don't feel like starting a discussion on that.

So you would have allowed Hitler to live? Yes or no? Why won't you answer this question?

[D.Labruyere]

Yes I would kev. Murder solves nothing.

[James Kei]

Kev, are you saying that one can't be rehabilitated? That one can't free himself from the grasp of his own demons? That life is not worth saving? That we shouldn't even try?

The "eye for an eye" principle is why conflict lasts so long. People have been fighting for centuries because of this principle. How do you break the circle?

[aesir]

I dont see how it can ever be justified to kill someone who isn't imminently threatening anyone else's life. Killing for a punishment or revenge can't really be justified as "moral" although it's certainly understandable.

Even though I'm not a christian, I'd consider Jesus' and ghandi's morals as pretty close to perfect, and I kinda doubt they'd execute people.

[Peter Coene]

I dont see how it can ever be justified to kill someone who isn't imminently threatening anyone else's life. Killing for a punishment or revenge can't really be justified as "moral" although it's certainly understandable.

Even though I'm not a christian, I'd consider Jesus' and ghandi's morals as pretty close to perfect, and I kinda doubt they'd execute people.

As far as I can tell justice is not about morals, it is about checks and ballances within a system to keep said system self sustaining. Punishments such as jail time or fines are meant to correct people whose behavior deviates in a way that is counterproductive to the system.

Occasionally there are those who display such shows of behavior so destructive that correcting their actions is deemed to be beyond the ability of the justice system, and so they are removed from society. Either by placing them in prison for a perion of time that they are not expected to live long enough to see freedom, or else they are given the death penalty.

With the death penalty it all comes down to numbers. There is not enough room to keep all the brutal rapists and premeditated murderers in prison, and not enough money in the budget to feed them for the rest of their lives, and in most cases it would not be justice to put them back out on the street. So the death penalty becomes a neccesary tool, as is the rest of the justice system.

However, I have to say that "justice" is not always the best course of action... neither is tyrannical cruelty nor kindness and mercy. A point between two extremes, which varries from one case to the next, is how I look at issues, however I understand that a justice system cannot rely on Aristotle's golden mean, and so I feel it is not my place to fight it so long as justice is done.

[Hyskoa]

Kev, are you saying that one can't be rehabilitated? That one can't free himself from the grasp of his own demons? That life is not worth saving? That we shouldn't even try?

The "eye for an eye" principle is why conflict lasts so long. People have been fighting for centuries because of this principle. How do you break the circle?

A perfect, global dictatorship.
What else?

[aesir]

As far as I can tell justice is not about morals, it is about checks and ballances within a system to keep said system self sustaining. Punishments such as jail time or fines are meant to correct people whose behavior deviates in a way that is counterproductive to the system.

Occasionally there are those who display such shows of behavior so destructive that correcting their actions is deemed to be beyond the ability of the justice system, and so they are removed from society. Either by placing them in prison for a perion of time that they are not expected to live long enough to see freedom, or else they are given the death penalty.

With the death penalty it all comes down to numbers. There is not enough room to keep all the brutal rapists and premeditated murderers in prison, and not enough money in the budget to feed them for the rest of their lives, and in most cases it would not be justice to put them back out on the street. So the death penalty becomes a neccesary tool, as is the rest of the justice system.

However, I have to say that "justice" is not always the best course of action... neither is tyrannical cruelty nor kindness and mercy. A point between two extremes, which varries from one case to the next, is how I look at issues, however I understand that a justice system cannot rely on Aristotle's golden mean, and so I feel it is not my place to fight it so long as justice is done.


Justice is about making things right, and we tell what's right by our moral values, so yes, justice is based entirely on morality.

As far as your death penalty is numbers point, I believe that it costs more to put someone to death than it does to keep them in prison for life due to the appeal system. I also think you shouldnt argue that something is right because it saves money...

I dislike the death penalty because what it amounts to, is a bunch of strangers, killing another stranger for someone else. It's a really ugly idea. The idea of killing someone isn't abhorrent to me, but the idea of an execution is extremely distasteful.

However, it's hard to call it immoral. When someone takes another person's life, I believe they give up their own basic human rights in a sense, so while executing horrible people might not be entirely immoral, I can also definitely say that it is not the most moral action to take.

[kev ferrara]

Kev, are you saying that one can't be rehabilitated? That one can't free himself from the grasp of his own demons? That life is not worth saving? That we shouldn't even try?

The "eye for an eye" principle is why conflict lasts so long. People have been fighting for centuries because of this principle. How do you break the circle?

Of course I believe in rehabilitation.

But there is a nadir of behavior beyond which a human being sets himself outside the boundaries of humanity. In the case of Hitler, he literally became an icon of genocide. His very existence was a clarion call to murder. To end his life would be an important step toward the end of his murderous ideology... the ending of hope for NAZIsm.

So you guys would keep Hitler alive. Would you have killed to get to him? Would you have fought World War II to stop him? I honestly can't tell from the quickie quotes like "murder /war is never the answer".

But beyond such outsize cases as Hitler, there is the question of deterrence, which is highly unfashionable, but which I have seen to be quite effective. Having known quite a few "interesting characters", I know that fear of the law and the consequences of breaking it kept many walking the straight and narrow. I have no doubt that many murders have been prevented for the same reason. If the killing of a killer could prevent the killing of another innocent person, why wouldn't that be moral?

I don't think "it saves us money" is a moral answer to the question. However there is a moral component to essentially forcing a staff person to feed Hitler his daily meals, or cook them for him, do his laundry, bring him books. Yes Mr. Hitler, here's your typewriter and some paper.

I think a good argument can be made that locking away inmates is a form of gross torture that none of us would want to endure. Quite a few inmates attempt to take their own lives to escape a lifetime of confinement. I think it would be quite moral to confine a Hitler and then leave about his cell various instruments by which he can take his own life. This would remove the moral question of "are the executers falling to the level of the murderer".

And lastly, there is simply the case for punishment, (separate from the issue of deterrence or preventing the killer from killing again by keeping him locked away). The "eye for an eye" scenario.... for vengeance alone. I think it can be argued that great atrocities create a moral vacuum which strains the bonds of the societal fabric of a law and liberty culture. That is, if you buy a guitar, you should pay for it. That is a moral transaction. If a man saves a child from being run over by a car, the man should be thanked and offered a drink, his hand shook, his heroism complimented. That is a moral transaction. I think human beings expect moral equivalence between action, result and reward. Societies are founded on Moral Clarity and are tested by Moral Confusion. Great atrocity causes moral confusion. Why was this act done? Are we all capable of this inhumanity? How can justice be served? How can such acts be prevented? If we punish the murderer, does that make us torturers? Or murderers? A gravely immoral act is a great challenge to a society. And it might be the case that for some unspeakable acts this moral confusion can only be remedied by capital punishment. I would not, however, insist on this argument. I much prefer that a Hitler be given every opportunity to take his own life in captivity.

kev

[Dave Kendall]

I listened to an interview on the BBC world service last night. Very well balanced and far from biased. Shifa al-Qudsi was a Palestinian woman who was in the process of becoming a suicide bomber. She was caught before she went through with it but had time in Prison to reassess her values. She is now working as a peace activist. I think this is a valid addition to the discussion.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23468999/

the link to the interview which I couldn't get working. Hope you have better luck as it's a great listen. I found shifting the blue progress button a little got it playing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/outlook/2008/01/080108_trailpage08_outlook.shtml

I have no time for fundamentalist views be they Christian, Jew or Muslim they have the same hymn sheet, and drink from the same polluted well. As far as the film's concerned I defend it's right to be shown but I wouldn't choose to champion it's view. It's somewhat lacking in any balance. I listen a great deal to the UK's magazine station Radio4 which gives a platform for moderate and not so moderate views and insights from all sides. That's the true freedom of speech.

[kev ferrara]

The "eye for an eye" principle is why conflict lasts so long. People have been fighting for centuries because of this principle. How do you break the circle?

I do not think "an eye for an eye" is the reason conflict lasts so long. (If a man commits a murder, is tried and convicted for it and he is executed for his crime by the state, the cycle of violence ends right there.) It is differing perspectives and how they are controlled for political purposes that keeps bitterness going generation after generation. This is the essence of politics. A grievance is amplified through an ideological prism so a particular group can attain power over a population. Ideology requires an outside oppressor and for its adherents to consider themselves oppressed. The politicians take control of the society and control the information citizens are allowed access to in order to keep the population in a state of neverending bitterness about the perceived grievance. This is how the Middle East has been kept in a state of ruin for hundreds of years. And this is a free speech issue.

People who seek to control speech are the enemy of peace. Because people only seek to control speech because they seek to control thought. It is only through more speech that bad speech and corrupt thought gets corrected. Totalitarian dictators always control the media in their country so they can pour propaganda into the minds of their subjects without interference. End the cycle of information control and you end warfare.

What I am saying is that education is the way out. And part of education is the ability to question freely one's most cherished beliefs. Because they can be wrong. Or worse, dangerous.

[James Kei]

But there is a nadir of behavior beyond which a human being sets himself outside the boundaries of humanity. In the case of Hitler, he literally became an icon of genocide. His very existence was a clarion call to murder. To end his life would be an important step toward the end of his murderous ideology... the ending of hope for NAZIsm.

kev


I think a more powerful method would be to lock him up long enough untill he admits that his ideology was wrong. By killing him, his ideals will move forward because he himself does not admit guilt. The consequence of his ideals then falls on the executioner. If he had a change of heart, his followers would do the same.
He may never have admitted guilt, but it would have been worth the effort, and he would have died anyway.

[James Kei]

I do not think "an eye for an eye" is the reason conflict lasts so long. (If a man commits a murder, is tried and convicted for it and he is executed for his crime by the state, the cycle of violence ends right there.)

This is only the case if you happen to live in a society in which conviction is an option. If not, it's a free-for-all. This also excludes gang violence, where it is broken up into teams. "kill one of my team members, and I'll kill one of yours".
Then, no mater how many people you put in jail, the cycle continues. Unless of course, a change of heart takes place.
Maybe education will change this. I wish education was an option for everybody, But unfortunately, it's not.

[D.Labruyere]

But there is a nadir of behavior beyond which a human being sets himself outside the boundaries of humanity. In the case of Hitler, he literally became an icon of genocide. His very existence was a clarion call to murder. To end his life would be an important step toward the end of his murderous ideology... the ending of hope for NAZIsm.




I think a more powerful method would be to lock him up long enough untill he admits that his ideology was wrong. By killing him, his ideals will move forward because he himself does not admit guilt. The consequence of his ideals then falls on the executioner. If he had a change of heart, his followers would do the same.


Both are "what if" history's. As fun as that can be it doesn't help us forward. We can't tell what the best solution would have been if we had managed to capture him before he shot himself and there is no point in arguing who's solution would have solved the problem better in this case. Maybe killing him would have meant the ending of hope for NAZIsm, and maybe Hitler would have a change of heart in prison and with that his followers.

I'm not saying this because I agree or dissagree with one of the points or want to end the morality discussion or anything , but just to point out that when going this way in a discussion, you are going to have to base your arguments on a lot off geuss work.

[kev ferrara]

This is only the case if you happen to live in a society in which conviction is an option. If not, it's a free-for-all. This also excludes gang violence, where it is broken up into teams. "kill one of my team members, and I'll kill one of yours".
Then, no mater how many people you put in jail, the cycle continues. Unless of course, a change of heart takes place.
Maybe education will change this. I wish education was an option for everybody, But unfortunately, it's not.

Now who's giving up on people? Education is the essence of rehabilitation, because education is the essence of civility. There's an old quote that every generation is a new set of barbarians that have to be civilized before they grow powerful enough destroy society. I think that's pretty true.

Now all that remains is for people to have enough confidence in civility (our particular brand of western style civility that includes rights for women and minorities and the freedom to criticize religion, politics, business, or anything else) to promote it without guilt. And defend it if necessary with force. And this is often the sticking point. It is always the most difficult moral question: When is the use of force moral?

As far as locking up Hitler until he recants... firstly, if you look at anybody who has left an ideology, he is always considered an apostate who has sold out his principles. Ideologies are cults. So either he was coerced into recanting, or he has betrayed the movement and he has to be shunned. True believers are rarely shaken by the defection of apostates. Of course if a charismatic leader becomes an apostate, this could shake the very foundations of a "cult of personality". And I suppose NAZIsm was a cult of personality to a certain degree, so that might help.

On the other hand, I really don't think that by killing him, his ideology gains adherents. That's not how fascism works. Fascism recruits on the basis of strength and intimidation. Unfortunately, to a fascist, like Bin Laden for instance, to suspend punishment is considered weakness. Bin Laden recruited for years based on the U.S. "weakness" in leaving Somalia and Iraq without overthrowing the dictators in those countries. One often hears the phrase, "if you kill one terrorist, ten more take his place", but that doesn't seem to be borne out by the facts. Most new ideological recruits tend to come from other islamofascist groups. All these groups are coming out of essentially the same few roots that lead back to Wahhabism and The Muslim Brotherhood and the armed refutation of enlightenment modernity. Also, leaders are much harder to come by than followers. So killing a leader is not immediately remediable by simply recruiting new jihadists.

On the other hand, if a leader is weak enough to cave under pressure and recant, that is a demonstration of weakness too. But then again, this can be spun as "they are torturing our beloved leader" and this again becomes bad publicity for our side.

This leads me back to the idea that giving a murderer every opportunity to kill himself while in captivity is the most moral and humane choice for a society.

[kev ferrara]

I'm not saying this because I agree or dissagree with one of the points or want to end the morality discussion or anything , but just to point out that when going this way in a discussion, you are going to have to base your arguments on a lot off geuss work.

That's life. That is why moral judgments are so difficult and those who are put in power are so excoriated for any moral choice they make by their political opponents. True moral choices (as distinct from easily solvable ones) don't lend themselves to perfect "closure". One of the tasks of life is to become comfortable with gray areas. Trying to perfectly solve problems that can't be perfectly solved leads to what's called "analysis paralysis". Which is why Fitzgerald said "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise."

[D.Labruyere]

Yes you are correct kev.

But, history itself is already complex enough. And especially when you come to a subject like this, and go into the "what if" history you have to consider so many variables that it is almost impossible to give a good answer or build a good argument. There are still thousands of gray areas in the ww2 history itself, simply because of the complexity of the subject matter, the fact that we weren't there and there are still million's of files who have gone unread and even more files who have been read but can interpretated in so many different ways.

I in no means want to discourage this discussion, but I think it is easier to do the discussion without diving into the 'what if' history.

[kev ferrara]

We'll just agree to disagree on that point D.Labruyere. I think I've made some quite strong arguments using history and historical figures as examples. If that process is itself invalid, you should be able to disprove my arguments rather easily. These are not "counter-factuals" I am presenting, they are syllogisms for thought.

I think history is the only instruction we have, as incomplete as it is. To forgo the lessons of history for some imaginary pure discourse is folly, it seems to me.

This is not to say we should not talk about the Treaty of Versailles as paving the way for fascism in Germany, for instance. Or that we should not talk about Germany's war-making leading to France getting enraged enough to demand punitive sanctions against Germany at the end of the First World War.

But how does all that suddenly translate into a genocide against people who had nothing to do with the treaty? This is what makes Nazi antisemitism so pernicious and evil. This is what makes Hitler and Nazi ideology such instructive examples. However, the problems caused by France seeking vengeance through the Paris Peace Accords are no less instructive.

In fact, it is the "what ifs" that were learned from the First World War and how that led to the rise of Nazi Germany that led to the United States assisting in the rebuilding of Japan and Germany after World War II, rather than demanding reparations from them. This point, I think, completely annihilates your objection to the use "what ifs" in historical analysis.

[Marko Djurdjevic]

.....

[Micaiah Nelson]

Your not serious! Come on I just logged in.

[Slash]

Haha, i vote from now on every debate should be carried with drawings alone. :P

[Elwell]

Haha, i vote from now on every debate should be carried with drawings alone. :P
They tried that in Denmark, didn't work out so good...

[Slash]

Thats because denmark didn't have marko djurdjevic.

[Goog]

Marko, Instead of drawing a funny picture, why not post facts as to how Islam is making the world a better place in order to show Kev that he is wrong? If you do not believe you can convince him otherwise, than stay out of it. You will still have the security of knowing that your train of thought is superior to his and anyone else who disagrees with you. Your overall methods are disgusting, and detrimental to not only Kev, but to yourself. You have done nothing to further the discussion in the thread. So Congrats, you have done more harm than good (Although I must say your drawing skills are ftw, and the picture, for what it was worth, was enjoyable.)

For example Marko, you could have posted this video

p2Clk5lNUdQ

although if you had read all Kev's posts you will find that he agrees with this man.

On a side note...

I agree with D. Labruyere on the point of using the method of "learning from history". It is not, like (s)he mentioned, a black and white subject. There are so many gray areas (like hidden motives of political leaders) that we might not have even considered. In other words, taking lessons from history should always be taken with "a grain of salt."

[James Kei]

Hahahahahaha!!!! Fucking awesome, Marko!

[eskanto]

the mean drawings are really not cool. c'mon.

[Slash]

Marko, Instead of drawing a funny picture, why not post facts as to how Islam is making the world a better place in order to show Kev that he is wrong?


I think you're missing something fundamental. Kev isn't wrong, not from kev's point of view. Just like Muslims aren't wrong, from a muslim's point of view. And Marko isn't wrong either, from Marko's point of view. There is no right or wrong, and there's no "making the world a better place." Its always "making the world a better place according to some, on someone else's expense."

We're all staring out at the world through our very narrow cultural windows.

[Atlantis]

Ironically, Kev Ferrara is probably not going to murder Marko Djurdjevic over that tasteless and stupid cartoon.

Funny, huh?

People making fun of Kev for using 'complicated words' always reminds me of that scene from Idiocracy: "He could understand them, but when he tried to speak, he sounded pompous and faggy."

[Goog]

I think you're missing something fundamental. Kev isn't wrong, not from kev's point of view. Just like Muslims aren't wrong, from a muslim's point of view. And Marko isn't wrong either, from Marko's point of view. There is no right or wrong, and there's no "making the world a better place." Its always "making the world a better place according to some, on someone else's expense."

We're all staring out at the world through our very narrow cultural windows.

No I understood the underlying idea, I just think there are better ways to convey this idea than to demean someone through a picture that implies horrible fallacies in another person's character. Maybe his method was intended to have a certain "shock value". Still, I say there are better ways. Just as I believe it was not "right" for the Denmark cartoonist to do what he did...

I do not believe that all things are relative. (don't get me wrong, many are, but not all).

[Flake]

Ironically, Kev Ferrara is probably not going to murder Marko Djurdjevic over that tasteless and stupid cartoon.


If he did though, would that be "freedom of speech"?

All viewpoints are after all, equal.

Or something.

[Atlantis]

If he did though, would that be "freedom of speech"?



No, it would be criminal and a much more disgusting indictment of his character than any cartoon could possibly be. We might even, say, make movies explaining the ideology he embraced that led him to act as he did.

I mean, hypothetically, of course.

The point is, I don't think Mr. Djurdjevic is being as ironic as it he might be intending to.

All viewpoints are after all, equal.


On an unrelated note, that's bullshit. Viewpoints are only equal when the correct one is either impossible to know or subjective, which is pretty rare. Critical Thinking 101...

[Flake]

On an unrelated note, that's bullshit.

Yah, check your sarcasm gland..:wink:

Edit: we need a "Brits taking the piss" smilie..

[Atlantis]

Sorry, my sarcasm gland burned out like 3 pages back. =(

[James Kei]

What would be really ironic, is if this thread were deleted.:mod:

[Justin.]

I personally and sincerely believe that Marko was making a clever and witty attempt to prove what one might refer to as being a point. Instead of labouring over the cackling of his keyboard for hours, devising the perfect dialog which might finally put to an end this undying conversation, a post in this thread that every person who seeks to stay concurrent with this particular thread would more-than-probably read, wasting yet another oh so precious half-an-hour or so of their evening, he decided that creation would be a much wiser response, so he seated himself in front of his drawing utensil of choice and a thin, white piece of paper (which was originally invented by the egyptians who enslaved the jews that one time, called papyrus- that is to say the paper was called papyrus, not the jewish slavery), and created this image to say all that may or may not have been said had he typed it all out.

See?
:lounge:

[Dirty C]

BEST REPLY EVER hahahaha

Dude whatever anyone thinks about anything, hats off to Marko for the sheer effort and cutting execution :)

[Goog]

I personally and sincerely believe that Marko was making a clever and witty attempt to prove what one might refer to as being a point. Instead of labouring over the cackling of his keyboard for hours, devising the perfect dialog which might finally put to an end this undying conversation, a post in this thread that every person who seeks to stay concurrent with this particular thread would more-than-probably read, wasting yet another oh so precious half-an-hour or so of their evening, he decided that creation would be a much wiser response, so he seated himself in front of his drawing utensil of choice and a thin, white piece of paper (which was originally invented by the egyptians who enslaved the jews that one time, called papyrus- that is to say the paper was called papyrus, not the jewish slavery), and created this image to say all that may or may not have been said had he typed it all out.

See?
:lounge:

Yes, let us glorify the act of calling someone out as potent means of rebuttal.

[Justin.]

You appear to misconstrue. To put it in laymens terms, what I took away from marko's reply is this

less loungie

more drawie

[kev ferrara]

Al Gore told me to make this...

[Dan Bird]

You appear to misconstrue. To put it in laymens terms, what I took away from marko's reply is this

less loungie

more drawie

I think debate is always a good thing, it improves your knowledge, Reasoning, and improves your Communication skills.

this thread is turning into a school playground. :nohope:

[enrigo]

For example Marko, you could have posted this video


I would have thought he was talking about Christianity, the same ol' intelligent design stuff. So, I'm still confused about "why Islam" (for that dude anyway, because he probably heard intelligent design from Christians before that).

[Slash]

Hahaha, thats how it should have been done from page one!

[Dave Kendall]

I just want to know if two shagging dogs provide a more stable platform for photoshop and painter, and if so where do you plug your wacom into.

[Justin.]

I think debate is always a good thing, it improves your knowledge, Reasoning, and improves your Communication skills.

this thread is turning into a school playground. :nohope:

I agree, but in moderation. Personally, debating on the internet is pointless to me because I'm not going to convince anyone of anything or vice versa. On the internet all you are doing is repeatedly yelling the same opinions at each other really really loudly, over and over and over.

[Micaiah Nelson]

You tickle my soul Kev Ferrara.
You tickle my soul.

[D.Labruyere]

Hahaha, thats how it should have been done from page one!

agrees, we've been doing it all wrong again :(

haha, marko and kev, both great pics! :)

[BuckWeisel]

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8397/lololpv9.jpg

[James Kei]

Hahaha, thats how it should have been done from page one!

Quoting for truth.

[Slash]

I don't have anything clever to say, i just wanted to participate. And since i only know what marko looks like, here goes:

[Micaiah Nelson]

In all fairness heres some ref.

Please don't forget the superman curl.

kev

[Slash]

Is that you or kev?

[Micaiah Nelson]

Kev of course.

[D.Labruyere]

to join the fun

338523

[arttorney]

(Sigh):nohope:

I didn't read most of the last three pages. Emily impressed me when she pointed out that the original decision had been made by a private entity. I am not in the relevant country, but as far as I can tell nobody has told the film maker he can't show the film on his own dime in his own facility. Do we really have the right in the name of free speech to insist that a private media company show specified content? Don't they have the right to exercise silence if they decide to do so? (I just think if they were going to be silent in this instance they probably should have started out that way.)

The "Incitement to Immediate Violence" exception to free speech in the U.S. stemmed from a case of a KKK guy making a speech in front of a bunch of guys with guns and he basically said they should lock and load and go out hunting the groups the KKK hate. "Fighting words," on the other hand, kicks in if the guys with the guns are not on the same side as you (as in the current case). In these doctrines the (U.S.) government is basically saying "We have enough trouble with all the robbing, raping, and killing out there. The social value of these violence inciting forms of speech is outweighed by our need to maintain order." In the current case, apparently, the perceived social value of the speech is exactly what is making everybody crazy. I support both the right of the film maker to say it (if he dares) and the right of a private media company to air, or not air, whatever programming they damn well please. I do not support the right of anybody to inflict physical injury on somebody else over speech. Free speech is not a black and white area and so this argument can't be won or lost.

[light]

jesus christ this thread is a special kind of shit

[light]

only two decent posts in this thread and both ruined by being stupid as hell

[arttorney]

There's an "Edit" button down at the lower right of your posts. It will help you avoid double posting.

I also support your right to double post if you dare.:yayca: (It being a private forum, though, I suppose there is somebody empowered to stop you from doing it.)

[James Kei]

That's Kev???!!!!


I totally imagined someone who looked much like Charles Bukowski.

[Goog]

*sigh*

[Ilaekae]

Give up, Goog...

I won't even post in this thread...

[Pandora's Eyes]

so, there is something interesting to consider. let me predicate this post with the obvious given my username: i am muslim.

terror and hate are wrong. there's not much else to be said about that. there is nothing in the abrahamic religions to excuse acts of cold-blooded violence against others.

but there is something tricky to islam.

one may look at it like this: god tried to give his message to the jews. fromt he very beginning they didn't act accordingly. (moses [peace be upon him] breaking the ten commandments because the rest of the hebrews had begun worshipping the golden calf while he was atop the mountain?)

then god sent jesus (peace be upon him) to correct the mistakes. jesus (peace be upon him) taught against usery and interest and charging worshipers to enter the temple and even went so far as to say a church is two or more people discussing god, not necessarily a physical temple/building/place of worship. we all know what the romans/jewish high priests did to that poor soul.

then came muslims. and if one is to believe the word of the qu'ran, it is said to be god's final communication to man before judgement day. and while the qu'ran is full of compassion and love, i detect a clipped tone of voice, an inherent cynicism that suggests god knows this too shall fail. man will still fall astray.

and so there are clear instructions. while jesus (peace be upon him) taught turn the other cheek and those who live by the sword die by it, etc. and jews were taught thou shall not kill. pretty broad, but there it is. muslims were taught not to kill in cold blood, but if you're attacked you defend yourself.

so, that is how this gets tricky.

accused witches in salem died willingly because they would not deny christ. muslims were taught to never die willingly. that if one is oppressed and attacked one should die fighting.

it echoes the message in the torah and the bible that the world will grow increasingly darker and more violent as it approaches the end times and that god's people on earth will suffer under secular rule.

the problem lies in man's interpretation of god's word. the majority of muslims know violence is wrong and one is not to engage in war unless engaged upon. but in cases such as palestine and lebanon, the people there feel they have been engaged upon. so they believe it is their god-given comandment to defend themselves and their families.

i don't know wtf al-qaeda is thinking. methinks they are on crack.

the point is, if one is to believe the message of the qu'ran, it is peaceful in all aspects save one. and that is persecution of god's people. i always thought of it like this: if everyone believe's jesus (peace be upon him) was god's only begotten son, or a prophet of god or at the very least a holy and just man, god was pissed after he was brutally persecuted and then his followers were equally persecuted. so god allowed for provisions to violence.

it is forbidden to engage in war of one's own volition. but if someone knocks on your door with a rifle you may feel free to defend your god-given life and family by any means necessary. addendum: so long as innocent by-standers are not harmed in the process (thus negating the actions of suicide-bombers. again, crack.)

for any who do not realize the majority of muslims are a proud but peaceful people, i'll end this with a quote from the prophet mohammad (peace be upon him): "the ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr.".

peace folks. thanks for the soap box.

[Goog]

The only beef I have with Islam:
"Lying is wrong, except in three things: the lie of a man to his wife to make her content with him; a lie to an enemy, for war is deception; or a lie to settle trouble between people" (Ahmad, 6.459. H).

Don't get me wrong, I highly respect the religion, when understood correctly.

[kev ferrara]

Kauser.ali... Welcome.

Are you going to be around to discuss any of these matters with us? Because I'm sure there are a lot of questions you could answer for us about aspects of Islam.

Thanks,
kev

[kev ferrara]

if you had read all Kev's posts you will find that he agrees with this man.

Goog, thank you for attempting to defend me. Very nice of you.:hatsoff:

However, I believe in self-organizing systems, not "intelligent design". So, just on that point, I disagree with the fellow in the video you posted. (Although since natural selection is a sort of physical form of critical intelligence, a semantic argument could be made that a design process is happening as existence progresses.) Here's the science that Ummafilm says doesn't exist: These are the online pre-prints of professional papers in the field: http://arxiv.org/archive/nlin

I haven't seen the entire video, but I could go down the list of what I've seen so far. His point about the fly, in particular, needs addressing. He says all the scientists in the world could not make a fly and then give it life. Just recently, brand new enzymes, not seen in nature, have been created in a lab. Craig Venter is apparently very close to inventing an actual "new" organism in his lab.

He also says the Koran is a "perfect book" and gives part of his rationale as the fact that millions memorize it. He may well believe it is a perfect book, but that fact that people memorize it is no rationale for its perfection. He also says that the Koran contains "science knowledge" as a defense of its perfection. I don't understand that argument. All to say, I do not agree with that very nice man in the video. In fact I seriously question his claim that he is "coming from a science background."

And I'll leave many of his other assertions aside. Just to say, they are "highly debatable". /m\ \w/

kev

[Peter Coene]

Justice is about making things right, and we tell what's right by our moral values, so yes, justice is based entirely on morality.
Morals, right/wrong, are too subjective. The very fact that we try to make justice about morals is what causes these arguments about the morality of the death penalty etc etc in the first place. If instead we see "justice" (aka "the law") as a system to provide for some efficiency the more it makes sense.

Otherwise you have to question the "morality" of stopping at red and going on green. If you are on an empty street where you know you could run a red light without anyone getting hurt does it make it somehow "unjust" for the police officer to give you a ticket?


I think a more powerful method would be to lock him up long enough untill he admits that his ideology was wrong. By killing him, his ideals will move forward because he himself does not admit guilt. The consequence of his ideals then falls on the executioner. If he had a change of heart, his followers would do the same.
He may never have admitted guilt, but it would have been worth the effort, and he would have died anyway.
Lock him up on death row with enough time to watch what he does.

If he turns around and truly feels guilt for his actions he will claim that he deserves the death penalty, in which case his death will come with dignity and his followers will be disheartened by their leader's faultering in his own philosophy.

If he does not change keep him on death row long enough to see a happy functioning world without his regime in power, to see the world repulsed by the very mention of his name. Simultaniously show the people the man who used to be their leader stripped of his pride. (like was done with Saddam Hussein when he was found hiding in a hole.) Let them see him without leadership, without dignity, and thus those who followed by being caught up in the movement will realise that he was nothing worth following and drop him from their thoughts. When this has been completed then execute him so that his ending will be swift.

[Goog]

Goog, thank you for attempting to defend me. Very nice of you.:hatsoff:

However, I believe in self-organizing systems, not "intelligent design". So, just on that point, I disagree with the fellow in the video you posted. (Although since natural selection is a sort of physical form of critical intelligence, a semantic argument could be made that a design process is happening as existence progresses.) Here's the science that Ummafilm says doesn't exist: These are the online pre-prints of professional papers in the field: http://arxiv.org/archive/nlin

I haven't seen the entire video, but I could go down the list of what I've seen so far. His point about the fly, in particular, needs addressing. He says all the scientists in the world could not make a fly and then give it life. Just recently, brand new enzymes, not seen in nature, have been created in a lab. Craig Venter is apparently very close to inventing an actual "new" organism in his lab.

He also says the Koran is a "perfect book" and gives part of his rationale as the fact that millions memorize it. He may well believe it is a perfect book, but that fact that people memorize it is no rationale for its perfection. He also says that the Koran contains "science knowledge" as a defense of its perfection. I don't understand that argument. All to say, I do not agree with that very nice man in the video. In fact I seriously question his claim that he is "coming from a science background."

And I'll leave many of his other assertions aside. Just to say, they are "highly debatable". /m\ \w/

kev

Oh, sorry, sorry. I should have been more specific. I meant you agree with him on the point of how the religion is being followed. He implies that most muslims believe their religion calls for peace, and strives to make the point that Islam does not defy reasoning. However, there are those few who have become "confused" (to say the least) as to what their religion teaches them. Your earlier posts imply that you agree with this. (the whole bit about having several muslim friends that are nice guys, yadda, yadda, yadda. I meant no more than the fact that you do not view Islam to be totally irrational, and thus do not have a bias against the religion itself.

Edit: as for the "science knowledge" defense, muslims claim that Mohammed knew things about the way the universe works that he could not have possibly known without communication with the divine. However....

Lh7_eUk0RIU

[kev ferrara]

S'alright. No harm.

On your points though, I don't know "most muslims" so honestly I have no idea what they really think. I do however believe that "Islam is Religion of Peace" is true for the Muslims I know and have met socially, and the many others around the world that live in peace that I have heard about. The figure is usually put at 90 percent. I don't think there is a person in the world who would stake their reputation on the veracity of that number. It could be far more or far less. Nobody knows.

The problem with judging any religion at all is, all religious texts contain general rules of behavior, narratives that demonstrate situational ethics, mysteries, and contradictions. That is, all religious texts are interpretable and probably require interpretation. And as we all know, interpretations are subjective and can differ from person to person. The question then arises: Could there actually be a true version of a subjectively interpretable religion? The answer to that must be no. There are only variants. And there can be as many variants as there are followers of the overarching religion.

EDIT: That video you just posted is absurd. It is very easy to take a vague and interpretable passage and say what it means after more specific information comes to light five hundred years later. That's how Nostradamus was turned into big business. And the Bible Code. I'm holding my head as I write this knowing full well this kind of spurious reasoning will be effective long after I'm dead. Just as assuredly as it was effective long before I was born. Gullibility is as much a part of the world as oxygen. *sigh*

[Atlantis]

That is, all religious texts are interpretable and probably require interpretation. ... And there can be as many variants as there are followers of the overarching religion.



Then the religion is meaningless, isn't it? If everything in the text is totally open to interpretation and there are as many interpretations as there are followers of the religion, then the teachings of that religion have no point.

I think your statement is demonstrably false. I've heard Christian ministers and others refer to this mindset as idolatry; because you feel threatened by all the nasty passages in your holy book, you ignore them or "interpret" them to mean things they obviously were not intended to. You create a new god that you feel more comfortable with rather than accept the god presented to you in all His (and it's always a he) genocidal, bigoted glory. You worship the idol you create, but it's not Allah or Yahweh or Jesus or whoever. It's something new.

For instance, how do you interpret this?

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.

Q 9:5

Or this?

Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.

Q 9:73

Or this?

Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient.

Q 4:34

Or this?

"that the Prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e., till his death)." (from the Sahih Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 64)



You have to take the bad with the good. There is simply no honest way to interpret these passages to mean anything but what they say, and that's my point. The Fundamentalists, Christian, Muslim, or whatever, as hateful as they are, are not "crazy." They are following their religion as it is set down irrefutably in their holy book. The Fundamentalists are right on a fundamental level, hence their name.

"A god outgrown quickly becomes a life-destroying demon." -Joseph Campbell

I do however believe that "Islam is Religion of Peace" is true for the Muslims I know and have met socially, and the many others around the world that live in peace that I have heard about.

Most people are people of peace; their religion is generally irrelevant. We're hard-wired to want to help each other. 'Morality is the herd instinct in the individual', as Nietzsche put it.

People do good because it feels good to do it. To make a good person do evil, however, you need religion.

If the precepts in the holy books are taken literally, as they were doubtless intended to be by their (human) authors and have been for thousands of years, none of the three Abrahamic religions are religions of peace.

[D.Labruyere]

I wouldn't say multiple interpretations make a religion meaningless. In fact, I would go as far as to say, that open interpretation is very important for the survival of a religion.

[Atlantis]

I wouldn't say multiple interpretations make a religion meaningless. In fact, I would go as far as to say, that open interpretation is very important for the survival of a religion.

Well, the Koran begs to differ:

It is not for true believers men or women to take their choice in the affairs if God and His apostle decree otherwise. He that disobeys God and His apostle strays far indeed.

Q 33:36

The Koran says itself that it is a "clear book" (5:15) "easy to understand” (44:58 , 54:22 , 54:32, 54:40) "explained in detail" (6:114), "conveyed clearly", (5:16, 10:15) and with “no doubt” in it (2:1).

[D.Labruyere]

I haven't read the Koran, so I can't judge that, and I certainly won't do that on a few words who can just as well been taken out of context.

However, I say that an open interpretation is important for the survival of a religion because else you have to put it in a 'time frame'. Which means, that when society changes, and with that the values etc. changes so that people can't connect with there religion anymore and it simply dissapears. I'm going to well write a very poor fictional example and try to explain:

Suppose there is a society where they have a religion who says: "Thou shall not go faster then a horse". Sounds pretty clearl doesn't it? You are not allowed to go faster then a horse. And since in that society people happen to be great believers, they do not go faster then a horse. However!

BOOM, 1825, the train has arrived and people can say hello to the industrial revolution.

Now a problem arrives for our believers, our believers refuse to go with the train since the train is faster then a horse and with that can't keep up with the industrial revolution, making the country poorer and poorer. This goes well for a while, but people get a bit bored of not being able to have anything but dry bread and start to riot. Now, at this point, a religion has two options, or it dissapears, or it adapts themself, thus making it open to interpretation. If a religion wants to survive (and most do) they will say: OOOO, But they didn't meant you aren't allowed to go faster then a horse! But they meant that you aren't allowed to WALK faster then a horse, since that would be inhuman! However since there actually didn't excist trains when our believe started there is no reason why they should have written the word walk between it.

And so the religion adapts to the society and our believers are able to keep believing and go with the train at the same time :)

And that is why it is very important for a religion to be open to interpretation.

[Atlantis]

I don't understand your point. Or maybe I do, but I think it's utterly stupid. I'll just say this: any religion that makes ridiculous, life-destroying demands of its adherents needs to be abolished.

If your religion says you can't travel faster than a horse on pain of hellfire, it needs to be abandoned, not reinterpreted, because it's obviously harmful (not to mention obviously not the word of an omniscient being). Same if your religion says you need to hate homosexuals, stone adulterers, mutilate children, eradicate unbelievers, etcetera.

See the Joseph Campbell quote in my above post.

Please note, however, that I did not say religions don't need to adapt; obviously, if they didn't, all non-secular societies would be as backwards as Afghanistan, as actual sciences and true knowledge displace and render obsolete the superstitions of the past. My point was that, if religions change their dogmas or allow for them to be "reinterpreted" when it's convenient to do so, the dogmas are meaningless and, again, obviously not imparted by an omniscient being.

As to the thing about context, just what sort of context should I put those quotes in? What sort of context makes the instruction to kill unbelievers ok? What sort of context makes the statement that men are superior to women true? In what context is Mohammad's rape of a 9-year-old child alright? Don't give me that context bullshit; it's intellectual dishonesty.

PY8fjFKAC5k

[D.Labruyere]

Oh I'm not saying that a religion should be abandoned or whatever. I am just saying that if a religion wants to survive (no matter which religion) it has to be able to be open to interpretation. And you can pretty much say that all the religion's who have been around untill this day and find there origing in the middle east (christianity, bhuddism, Islam, Hinduism, Jewism, and I'm probably missing a few) have been open to interpretation throughout the time. And that is to say, they have been open to interpretation for the last 13000 years.

edit; On a sidenote, could you please explain to me what the difference is of you saying that the islamic world should dissapear and them saying that all non believers should dissapear.

[BuckWeisel]

Same if your religion says you need to hate homosexuals, stone adulterers, mutilate children, eradicate unbelievers, etcetera.


You have to take into account the times in which the old testament was written though. Saying you cant go around being homosexual because its a sin is a lot easier than saying you cant be homosexual because you must procreate to not only ensure the survival of the species but also create more members of said religion. Also these "laws" were borrowed from Pagan religions and old traditions that go back before the writing of the first books. Its no different than a bible being written today had "You must respect your wife, for she is equal to you" in it. The whole male dominance was accepted and a part of everyday life back then, so it plays an apparent role in the religious texts of the time.

So no, the religions do not need to be eliminated, such is talk of tyrants and the hateful intolerance that the fundamentalists of these religions show you. They need to be updated. However you cant just pop in to a group of deeply religious people and upgrade their beliefs like you do with a text book. People have to make the choice for themselves, you cant force people to be open minded, or intelligent, or any other admirable quality. The natural rights apply to everyone, no matter what they believe. That even applies to people who thinks I should die because I am a "fag enabler" (Thanks Westboro Baptist Church). Your rights end where it infringes upon other's rights however. So I don't care if religious extremest want me dead, they have every right to, as long as they don't act on it.

[Atlantis]

Buck Weisel (kidding :)), I would argue that religion cannot be updated. The Abrahamic religions (which I'm referring to unless otherwise noted), are based on the premise that they derive from the unalterable word of the supreme deity of the universe. You take that from them (by revising their claims) and they are nothing. When you try to update them, they dissolve, because they are fundamentally incompatible with the modern scientific paradigm. (hope I'm not using too many complicated words, ha). This is why atheism is exploding today.

More, when you try to update a religion, it appears to me that you also create reactionary groups of fundamentalists that are pissed off that you're straying from the word of the one true god. Take the incredibly bloody conflicts between the Protestants and the Catholics that have been going on for the last few centuries, for example, and there are many lesser examples today.

Your rights end where it infringes upon other's rights however.

Right. But, when someone's religion requires that they inflict their belief on others or burn in a furnace forever, then their religion is incompatible with the basic human right that you are talking about. What are human rights weighed against an eternity in paradise (or hell)? Their religion cannot be coexisted with and it cannot be compromised with; it can only be combated, rhetorically if possible or legally or even militarily if not.


You have to take into account the times in which the old testament was written though.

Tell that to the homosexuals getting hanged in Iran today.

In other words, no I don't. The origins of the superstition are irrelevant; all that matters is that they are bogus and harmful to humanity. I don't care if someone believes homosexuals deserve to die because god said so or because some semitic tribe 3,000 years ago had a low growth rate; it's horrendous in either case. Maybe in a purely academic sense the origins of the nonsense could be interesting to examine, but when they have such terrible real-world implications, who gives a shit?

[BuckWeisel]

BuckWeisel (kidding :)), I would argue that religion cannot be updated. The Abrahamic religions (which I'm referring to unless otherwise noted), are based on the premise that they derive from the unalterable word of the supreme deity of the universe.


Yes, but any religious person thats ever had a western civ class knows who wrote the Bible, Torah, and Koran and can see why they say the things they do. They know its no the literal world of a god. More than likely, that person is not a religious extremist because of that. You educate the people, you take away the ignorance. Everybody does not have the same religious views. They may all pray beside each other every day, they may all sit in church with one another on Sunday, but they do not have the same exact beliefs. There is room for change, there is room for enlightenment. There is hope.

I know theres always going to be hard headed people who absolutely refuse to face reality, but we cant keep fighting wars with them every decade. Their time on earth will expire though and thats one less we have to worry about. All we can really do is provide the education and information and hope that people will make the right choice.

[D.Labruyere]

Atlantis, you just proofed that your text is open to interpretation as well since I had another interpretation of it then what you apparently meant. If we have to believe, that what you are saying is true, that when a text is open to many interpretations it is meaningless that would also mean the words of you have no point and it is better that we dismiss them.

[Atlantis]

I admire your optimism, Buckweisel. Wish I could sit in on one of your Western Civ classes, too. :( My profs have all made a special point on the first day to mention that nothing they say should be construed as an attack on any religion's credibility. Not kidding.

Atlantis, you just proofed that your text is open to interpretation as well since I had another interpretation of it then what you apparently meant. If we have to believe, that what you are saying is true, that when a text is open to many interpretations it is meaningless that would also mean the words of you have no point and it is better that we dismiss them.

Actually, you're misunderstanding me even now.

One more time: If a book claims to be the word of the supreme creator of the universe (something my post did not do), and if we accept that premise, it stands to reason that anyone "reinterpreting" that book is reinterpreting the word of the god. And, god's word, by definition, cannot be reinterpreted; it can only be misunderstood. Because he's always right. Because he's fucking god. This is especially true in the case of the Koran, which claims that is clear, easy to understand, and hence not in need of reinterpretation.

Thus, if you "reinterpret" god saying that women are inferior to men or that you need to kill infidels and pretend that those statements were meant to mean anything but what they clearly do, you might as well throw out your holy book because you're just making up a new religion anyway.

There is a difference between reinterpretation and misunderstanding. Misunderstanding me (or god) doesn't make either of us wrong. When you say that god's word is open to interpretation, though, you are showing that you don't believe he's really omniscient, which is god's whole claim to fame. Or you might also be saying He's too dumb to get his point across (something I might be guilty of).

Islamic Fundamentalists claim moral authority on account of their actions being backed by god. If the Koran is the word of god, then they are right. That's all my point was. It's one of the big problems with the Koran and the Bible; they contradict themselves to the extent that you can use them to support just about any position, leaving everyone in the discussion thinking that they are right and able to cite chapter and verse to prove it.

I get the impression that you're not a true believer, so I think we're just arguing technicalities now.

[D.Labruyere]

One more time: If a book claims to be the word of the supreme being of the universe (something my post did not do), it stands to reason that anyone "reinterpreting" that book is reinterpreting the word of the god. And, god's word, by definition, cannot be reinterpreted. Because he's always right. Because he's fucking god. This is especially true in the case of the Koran, which claims that is clear, easy to understand, and hence not in need of reinterpretation.

ah, but that is actually a quite interesting theological question.

You see, when going to read a book like the bible or the koran, it is important to realise that even though the words may be inspired by god, they are written down by a human.

Now, a lot of theologists say, that because it is written down by humans in the end it is open to interpretation. It wouldn't be a dismissal of god's word but rather a dismissal of the human's reasoning and interpretation of god's word. This is because a human always percepts the world through his own eyes. So to say, we are all bounded to an individual reality. A reality that comes forth out of experience. (as a sidenote, what has been a very (and still is) a popular argument for god's excistens has been: nothing is in the mind that isn't in the sences. Which you can turn in, since people experience a god, that means a god must excist)

Now I am not wanting to say, that this justifies to start killing for your believe or whatever, but just to point out that it doesn't necesseraly have to mean that when the interpretation of a religion changes that the religion in itself should be dismissed or be false.

Well, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas of Aquinas have written quite some interesting things about this subject, and are way better at explaining it then I am, so I can only suggest you read yourself in about there philosophies :)

(either to use it for yourself, or so that you know 'zu enemy' and can use it against them :D )

edit: didn't saw your edit heh. To be honest I don't know if a god excists or not and I'm even more sceptic about the bible or the koran or any other book being the "True word of god". However my mother is a pastor (or whas it simply priest in english? ) and my brother plus a few friends of me study theology which has kept me interested in the subject matter.

[Atlantis]

ah, but that is actually a quite interesting theological question.

I'm sure you're better read on theology than I am, but it's been my impression that the writings of the theologians are generally far removed from that actual beliefs held by the masses. The convoluted reasoning processes that the theologians of whom I am familiar engage in to explain the unexplainable nonsense of their religion (god is a trinity but we're a monotheistic faith, etc) are generally *not* taught at temple. In other words, it's the demagogues that have influence, not the philosophers.


Now, a lot of theologists say, that because it is written down by humans in the end it is open to interpretation. It wouldn't be a dismissal of god's word but rather a dismissal of the human's reasoning and interpretation of god's word.

Yes, and that brings us back to my original point; once you call into question the status of the text as holy revelation, once you add any human element into it at all, whether that be your interpretation of it or the transcribers, everything falls apart. You have no unalterable truth any more; you have a bunch of self-contradicting hogwash that you can cherry-pick from to suit whatever you want to believe. You don't like the part about genocide? A human fucked up there. You like the part about living forever? God wrote that.

Now I am not wanting to say, that this justifies to start killing for your believe or whatever, but just to point out that it doesn't necesseraly have to mean that when the interpretation of a religion changes that the religion in itself should be dismissed or be false.

I emphatically disagree. If the word of god changes with the times it isn't the word of god. It's something of obviously human origin, and at best, it's something you find comfort in even though you know deep down it's bullshit, or else it's something that gives you an excuse to commit atrocities.

If god really wrote this stuff, you'd think he would have done it earlier in mankind's history and spread the word to more than just a few illiterate goat-herders in the Middle East. Seriously, god.

(as a sidenote, what has been a very (and still is) a popular argument for god's excistens has been: nothing is in the mind that isn't in the sences. Which you can turn in, since people experience a god, that means a god must excist)

People experience dreams, too, but dreams pretty clearly aren't real. Here's a thought, though: people of every religion give accounts of feeling a 'closeness to the divine' (as they describe it); you can find references to it everywhere. Yet most religions claim to be the One True Faith. How does that work?

More likely this feeling is a pleasurable chemical release to encourage behavior that is beneficial to us and our community. I see no reason to start imagining supernatural causes. Creating mystical explanations to things one doesn't understand is the definition of superstition.

[kev ferrara]

Free speech is not a black and white area and so this argument can't be won or lost.

Bad speech needs to be corrected with more speech, not threats of violence. That sounds pretty black and white to me. If the bad speech is truly bad speech, it will lose in a normal secular marketplace of ideas.

If, however, there is significant political force in the country that believes in the bad speech, or the insulation of bad speech from criticism using the threat of violence, or that the criticism of any speech is itself bad speech, then trouble arises. Thus the marketplace of ideas must remain secular and non-ideological. Dogmatists and Emotionalists of all stripes need to be shouted down to make way for pure critical dialog.

Atlantis, I agree with you on the whole, but I would say that religion is not necessarily the fundamentalists view of it. That is, religion is how it is practiced, not what its holy book says it is. However, those passages you cite certainly seem like 'bad speech" to me, and should be freely criticized.

[Darasen]

I simply fond it Ironic that a group of people get pissed off about a video that says they are violent so they so they threaten violence.

[Vhan Juju]

Internet! the last stronghold of free speach, LONG LIVE THE BLOGS!

[Dan Bird]

Amen to that, Vhan.

[Pandora's Eyes]

first, as a muslim, i've got to say this is badass. i love how everyone here is passionate about discussing their feelings regarding the religion versus the actions of extremists who claim their horrific acts are justified by the religion.

there are actually two religions within islam. ...and now i'm going to be lynched. let me explain.

there is the qu'ran. i've read above questions regarding the "perfection" of the qu'ran and its inherent scientific merit. well, the qu'ran isn't very perfect and clear in any other language save arabic.

that's the problem. interpreting the qu'ran leaves open the door to the interpreter spinning his/her own views on the message. arabic is a very exact language and english simply isn't. we have multiple meanings for the same words given context. arabic does not have that in the language.

god refers to himself in the bible numerous times as "we." as in, we created man in our image, etc. most interpret this to refer to the holy trinity. as in god the father, god the son and god the holy spirit. in the qu'ran there is the same word, "we." but in arabic there is an exact word reserved for magistrates and royalty or other people of authority. that word, "we," is not plural as in more than one person, but instead a word used by those of power to refer to themselves as more than just the individual given they represent so much more than just themselves.

i'll point to kings and queens referring to themselves as "we." as in, "we are not amused." they are not more than one person. but they are themselves, queen elizabeth, and they are also the will and power of the state, "england herself."

so, in the qu'ran, when god is addressing the whole of humanity, the reference is "we" not meaning more than one god but god the creator, the will of the universe and heavenly bodies, etc.

far as the science inherent within the qu'ran. when referencing god, there is a passage where god is referred to as "creator of the worlds and of the moons."

in english, adding an "s" to the end of most nouns creates its plural. in arabic, there is a seperate word entirely denoting its plural form. thus, before 700 a.d., in the qu'ran was written that god created many worlds and many moons in the universe rather than just our own world and moon.

the prophet muhammad (peace be upon him) himself was illiterate and never allowed himself to be taught to read and write arabic because he never wanted anyone to claim he had invented the thoughts contained within the qu'ran. arabic as a language is quite musical. there is a poetic structure to the way sentences are formed. the qu'ran has a poetic structure to its verses when disected, can be translated to numeric form much like kaballah followers have found numeric patterns within the jewish talmud.

muhammad (peace be upon him) also instructed his followers during his life to compile a dictionary for the arabic of their time. that way long after his time the qu'ran could be understood by people even if the meanings of words changed. that dictionary still exists along with the very first qu'ran that was compiled. so we can look back not only to the original qu'ran written out by the prophet's followers, we can look to the dictionary of what words meant during their time to make sure we understand the meanings properly. thankfully, arabic has not changed since 700 a.d. it is still essentially the same language in terms of meanings, though different dialects and slang have evolved.

also, the word "qu'ran" in arabic means "recital." the qu'ran was recited by the prophet muhammad (peace be upon him) over the course of 23 years. he would pray, fall into a trance, and speak a verse. multiple followers would immediately write down word for word of what he recited. that way there were multiple copies to compare and make certain the correct words written and meanings unaltered. that is how over the course of 23 years the very first book of the qu'ran was compiled. that book was written on leather skin paper. and it still stands and is still legible to this day.

that is what people are talking about when they refer to the science of the qu'ran. there is more but this is a long enough post.

there is something called the hadith. it's another book. and this is where a lot fo the confusion comes from. the hadith is a book of quotations and sayings by the prophet muhammad (peace be upon him) which he encouraged his followers to document and keep record of during his life. however, the hadith was written in a different manner than the compilation of the qu'ran.

islamic scholars, some long after the prophet's death, essentially interviewed many people on what hey recall the prophet had said regarding an issue and thus wrote down the general consensus. i'm not saying the hadith is devoid of merit. but a lot of islamic culture and orthodox fundamental islamic laws have derived not from the qu'ran but from the hadith.

for instance, prayer. the qu'ran instructs all muslims to pray. but does not explain how to pray. the hadith outlines the method of praying that muslims follow.

and there is the two religions within islam. the majority accept the hadith and its teachings. the fundamentalists follow the hadith's teachings to extreme lengths. unfortunately, i feel the hadith has many things within it that are open to interpretation. it is not as clear as the qu'ran. and then there are moderate muslims who are more skeptical of the hadith and prefer to rely solely on the qu'ran.

i fall into the latter. and i am certainly a black sheep because of it.

but that's my explaination for a lot of the confusion regarding what is and isn't islamic law.

this movie, fitna, takes a lot of things out of context. there's a part of the qu'ran it quotes which states that the people will be made to burn until their skin peels off and then their skin will form anew so that it may burn off again. this isn't referencing life on earth but the same eternal Hell mentioned in the Bible.

there's another quote from the qu'ran in fitna that states muslims should fear and hate any non-muslims and not associate with them because they are the enemy of all muslims. the word "muslim" in arabic means monotheist, believer in one god. that's all of the three abrahamic religions, judaism, christianity and islam! we are all "muslims" in that all three religions believe in one god!

that verse from the qu'ran was regarding the end times when all non-believers in god on earth will make a hell on earth for any who do believe in god and follow his path. so "non-muslims" then would be pagans and devil worshipers, essentially evil-doers on earth. they are the enemy of all muslims, all who believe in one god, and should not be associated with.

there's a lot in the qu'ran about what is to come. it is a lot like the Book of Revelations from the Bible.

i'm okay with this movie. i don't mind someone expressing their opinion. but this movie is obviously misinformed. and any quote from the qu'ran or any other book may be easily misunderstood if taken out of context.

just look at this recent situation with reverend wright, barack obama's reverend, saying "god damn america." when the media finally released the entire clip from that sermon reverend wright actually spoke about the romans and the english and america, any government that placed itself above god in that society. and thus, god damn any government that places itself above god by controlling its people in a way that no authority on earth has the right to do except god. he was talking about our government's mistreatment of native americans and its participation in slavery of african-americans.

so anything can be taken out of context. we just have to be discerning and willing to take the time to research and question and learn before forming our own thoughts on the matter.

[kev ferrara]

You rock Kauser.ali! :hatsoff:

Could you talk about the origins and usage of such terms as Dhimmitude, Dar al Islam, and Dar al Harb?

And do you think that there is a political aspect to Islam that makes it difficult for a believer to first be, say, an American first, rather than a Muslim first?

And, do you really worry for your safety when you dissent from the teachings of the Hadith?

Thanks,
kev

[Atlantis]

Interesting and informative post, Kauser.Ali. I'm sure you're a cool guy and all, but I have to take issue with several statements you made:


there's another quote from the qu'ran in fitna that states muslims should fear and hate any non-muslims and not associate with them because they are the enemy of all muslims. the word "muslim" in arabic means monotheist, believer in one god. that's all of the three abrahamic religions, judaism, christianity and islam! we are all "muslims" in that all three religions believe in one god!

We're not all Christians, Jews, or Muslims you know. You've also got Hindus and Buddhists and a fast-growing number of atheists, among countless other philosophies. You don't appear to deny or reinterpret the instruction of the Koran to "fear and hate" such people, so I don't see the alleged misunderstanding in Fitna on this point.

so "non-muslims" then would be pagans and devil worshipers, essentially evil-doers on earth. they are the enemy of all muslims, all who believe in one god, and should not be associated with.

How do you define pagan or devil worshiper? I've known plenty of good people who call themselves pagans; I don't think they'd call themselves anyone's enemy. They certainly don't deserve dogmatic hate. Would you also include atheists such as myself among these "evil-doers on earth"?

It's great that you include Jews and Christians in your list of people that Muslims are allowed to not hate, but what about everyone else?



this movie, fitna, takes a lot of things out of context. there's a part of the qu'ran it quotes which states that the people will be made to burn until their skin peels off and then their skin will form anew so that it may burn off again. this isn't referencing life on earth but the same eternal Hell mentioned in the Bible.

That's debatable; several biblical scholars of whom I am familiar argue that the references to Hell in the bible are mistranslations or later additions; Hel was the Norse Goddess of the Dead, ruler of Helheim (land of the dead) and Gehenna, from which other mistranslations derive, was a garbage dump in the Valley of Hinnom outside of Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, just because such a despicable myth is replicated in other books doesn't make it any less vile. How can any loving god prescribe eternal torture for his creations? How could any good person worship such a god?


i'm okay with this movie. i don't mind someone expressing their opinion. but this movie is obviously misinformed. and any quote from the qu'ran or any other book may be easily misunderstood if taken out of context.


If this movie is misinformed, a large number of Muslims are also. Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, for one. I get the impression that you believe this, but if that's the case, I don't think it's fair to say that the movie is misinformed; more accurate to say that it describes the mindset and belief-system of misinformed, hateful people. Which, from my understanding, was its original intent.

[Goog]

Kauser, two quick questions...

What part of the bible to muslims believe to be "divine", and is it the Hadith only that teaches violence in retaliation to a crime, or is that in Qu'ran as well. Please don't view this as an attack, I'm just curious.

[enrigo]

Nevertheless, just because such a despicable myth is replicated in other books doesn't make it any less vile. How can any loving god prescribe eternal torture for his creations? How could any good person worship such a god?


Hell is indeed something so vile, but it probably is the best belief in terms of keeping people in moral code. Even in religions that the concept of hell contradicts everything else, people just seems to don't care (or maybe too scared to think about it).

[Atlantis]

Hell is indeed something so vile, but it probably is the best belief in terms of keeping people in moral code.

Nonsense. Human beings do not derive their morality from threats of eternal punishment or promise of rewards; that's utterly ridiculous. We're hard-coded to want to help each other. Only sociopaths and psychopaths, people with testable malfunctions in their biochemical makeup, are any different.

Human solidarity is the fundamental basis for all morality; all absolute right and wrong (and there are such things where humanity is concerned) come from this tribal instinct.

The only thing hell is good for is keeping the ignorant masses under the heel of the priest-caste, and it's been the same in practically every society since religion was invented. "Obey us here on earth, or burn for eternity in the hereafter." So much for 'my kingdom is not of this world!' It's a control mechanism, and there is nothing even remotely redeemable about it.

And the deadliest sins are always the most innate aspects of human nature that couldn't be avoided anyway. All that is beautiful and amazing about being human is made dirty and shameful, and the believer is left feeling continually guilty for being who they are.

To teach this filth to impressionable children, to ruin their lives with this cancerous superstition, is despicable evil. It's child abuse of about the sickest sort.

[enrigo]

Nonsense. Human beings do not derive their morality from threats of eternal punishment or promise of rewards...

That's an interesting view on this whole idea. Although I agree that preaching hell to people is not entirely a good thing to do, but at least sometimes it is the easy and effective way to get people to consider their action.

Take Buddhism as an example of a religion that the concept of hell pretty much contradicts everything else, but it is there. I used to think that it is the nonsense "human factor" that manage to sneak in, and it's a shame.
Incidentally one day I had to visit this particular "temple" with my family. It covers an area bigger than university campuses and have an underground parking lot while other temples can't even get enough money to pay for electricity bills. The beliefs there was sort of a twisting of Buddhism to emphasize mainly on the reward, punishment and afterlife. Just that change result in it being the biggest temple in the country making loads of money with crazy number of followers. I talked to my relative whose into it, and I find that he's greed ridden in the afterlife benefits and stuff like that. Which is far from what Buddhism was meant to be.

I loathe the experience, but then I get this defeatist thought that maybe at least that temple is getting people to be on moral code. It attract so much people that otherwise might not even consider morality in the first place.
Even though keeping moral code is just the first most basic step in Buddhism, like breathing technique is to singing. But that might be as far as some people will get into and convincing them to do just that first step is already hard enough as it is.
My experience was pretty specific, but I guess it is universal to most religions.

This world is filled with so much greed and selfishness, while they both might not be the true human being's nature, they certainly are there. The more elegant ways to make people consider controlling their selfishness might not be effective enough in some cases.

[Sidharth Chaturvedi]

The fun thing about issues like this is the discomfort that most people show when I start going off about the dangers of fundamentalist Islam...

And the scary part is that the whole civilized world is buckling to it now, even back home in India (where the extremists constantly bemoan a nonexistent conspiracy to oppress Muslims). The denial, willful or actual ignorance, or just plain apathy is going to lead us to some very... ah, interesting times.

I can understand being scared, and its much easier to tell someone to stand up than to actually do it in the face of threats to your life, but this kind of suppression of freedom of speech is going to eat away at a way of life that people have had to fight very long and hard to achieve.

Kauser.ali, agreed with all, you do rock. Really interesting post.

[Pandora's Eyes]

thx for the kind words kev. dhimmitude comes from the arabic word dhimmi which means protection or a state of being protected. it's a trade off
happening in a lot of countries where militant islamic regimes have gained power. essentially, it's like mafia protection. you submit to islamic militant rule and follow their laws and they leave you alone. you are protected. the taliban in afghanistan are an example.

it is truly a fear tactic. but every military government does this. the soviet union, an atheist state, ruled their people with this sort of tactic. obey us and we'll leave you in peace. people succumb to their cowardice and comply with the new rules. trouble is they never leave you alone, only bully you some more. so it's a desperate condition.

it honestly defies a basic law of islam which bans slavery. actually, from the very beginning the abrahamic religions banned slavery. i mean moses: "let my people go." that was the very premise behind the abrahamic faiths that all
mankind was created equal.

sadly all cultures suffer from corruption and a patriarchal governance so women are never treated equal and eventual neither are all men. animal
farm ought to be a requirement in kindergarten. "all animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others." we are such silly simians.

dar al islam and dar al harb are the same thing. dar al islam means house of islam. dar al harb means house of war. neither of these are in the qu'ran. and to my knowledge, they are not in the hadith either. they are a philosophy created by some nut job.

basically it's a political agenda. if a country is predominantly muslim and muslims are free to practice their religion within that country, plus the borders of that country are shared with other countries also predominantly muslim and safe havens for muslims to practice their religion, this is called dar al islam. "the house of islam." basically, you're in muslim territory and safe from invasion.

if you are not in a majority muslim nation. or your borders are not shared with countries which are majority muslim. then you are in dar al harb. "the house of war." and this guy who created this philosophy said it is mandated upon every muslim then to be in a constant state of struggle, jihad, to create a dar al islam. meaning, fight until you overthrow the current government and
make it majority muslim.

this is all B.S.! these people are all tyrants and all they really care about is being in power. it's like in lord of the rings man. all men desire power. these bastards are just using islam as means of manipulating an economically
destitute people into blind servitude to further their own agendas. they want political power. and even though dar al islam and dar al harb do NOT
appear in the qu'ran, they claim it is mandated that all muslims partake in this belief.

the problem is that islam has its traditions rooted in the arabic language. it is a hard language to learn. non-arab muslims often do not learn arabic. they learn to read the language and pronounce the words that they might recite the prayers and read the qu'ran in arabic, but they never learn the vocabulary. so they don't gain any knowledge from reading the qu'ran.

i'm going to say that again. this is fact. the majority of non-arab muslims never learn arabic vocabulary! they are taught to read the arabic alphabet which is phonetic just like japanese, the symbols denote sounds. and thus they are able to pronounce words and read aloud the qu'ran in arabic. but they are not taught the vocabulary of the arabic language. so they never learn what they are reading.

thus, they are easily duped into following religious leaders who are really political leaders in disguise. education is where it all starts man. people have
got to smarten up.

i think every religion would assert its dominance over any government or nationality. religion is supposed to be the ways of a higher existence. nations and governments are all created by man. so our loyalties should always be to our faiths first and our communities second. i mean, isn't this what reverend wright was saying in that infamous speach? the romans put themselves above god? the english did the same? and so did america? i mean, every government has done this so it's nothing new.

but if we're truly faithful, if we truly belief we were created by eternal god and will return to an eternal life once this one ends, why are we squabbling over our respective mounds of dirt? texas vs oklahoma. new york vs boston. it's all retarded if we truly believe in religion. this is a punishment. there will be no nations in heaven. there will be no genders or races or ages in heaven. we will all speak the same language and be equals.

when asked where we come from don't say your state or country. we all come from the same eternal source and this mound of dirt is just that. who cares where i was born? from my very first breath i began the lifelong process of dying. and once it's finally over i'll go back to where i belong.

far as my safety goes, yeah, i worry about it sometimes. people are crazy. the human animal is a dangerous one. and any self-righteous lunatic out there might kill any one of us for differing from their beliefs. but i'm leaving all of that up to god. i live my life and worry about my actions. if someone tries to harm me, i will defend myself as god mandated i should, but if it is god's will i die, so be it. if god wills i live, amen. i'm not going to pretend to be in
control of this crazy spinning ball of mud. i just breath the air man. and it's all temporary anyway. so why stress about it?

[Pandora's Eyes]

good post atlantis. you bring up some arguments that all muslims growing up in the west struggle with.

there are indeed many religions/philosophies in the world. the question is which do we believe? do we deny any of them? if we believe in one may we believe in another? or are they all wrong?

the abrahamic faiths stand apart from all others in that they are believed to be derived of divine inspiration and are monotheist. hinduism is a polytheistic religion and always has been. buddhism is less a divine religion and more a
manmade philosophy.

i'm not saying either are bad or evil. in fact, it is believed jesus (peace be upon him) travelled to tibet and learned from buddhist monks the ways and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha. this could be the cause of his
pacifist teachings throughout his ministry.

i think when the qu'ran says "muslim" the reference is to those followers of the divine inspiration given to abraham. and that would be modern day jews, christians and muslims.

and so, to answer your question, everyone else, hindhu, buddhist, wiccan, taoist, scientologist, atheist, agnostic, satanist, etc. would be consider non-muslim. non-monotheist, non-believers of the divine message delivered to
abraham.

does the qu'ran instruct us to fear and hate all of those people that lump into the above list of religions/philosophies? yes. do i? no. and that is something of a quagmire with any religion.

the very nature of religion is to be black and white. to offer answers where people find only confusion. and so there are hard lines drawn in the sand. we have to choose as believers of any religion or philosophy what we believe in.

i think fundamental muslims are taking the fear and hate of non-muslims to extremes. i believe the qu'ran was indicating a time to come when non-muslims won't be liberal people with a different view on life but instead hedonistic creators of evil on earth. and that is the time to hate and fear any who do not believe in one god.

i'm not much for hate or fear. i have friends who are atheist and scoff at my devotion to islam. i don't think it's my place to judge or preach. so i let it be. like john lennon said, i guess.

i think fitna states through the power of suggestion via the images portrayed beside the quotations from the qu'ran that muslims are taught to fear and hate jews and christians and it is our belief we should kill jews and christians. and that is what i'm saying is wrong about the movie. because that isn't the case.

i'm not saying there aren't muslims who don't fear and hate jews, christians, hindus, homosexuals, hell...martians! just that islam does not teach fear and hatred of jews and christians.

far as anyone not jew and christian. that's tricky, isn't it? i think all three abrahamic religions have an element of mistrust of any other faith/belief. i know jesus (peace be upon him) instructed his apostles to go and make
disciples of all nations, to spread his ministry. essentially, to convert non-believers.

far as numbers go, there are some two plus billion christians in the world and just under two billion muslims in the world. in a world of over six billion, roughly half believe in the abrahamic faiths and half do not.

i hear you on the pagans who aren't enemies comment. i don't consider pagans or atheists enemies. but i think islam instructs that those beliefs are enemies to muslims spiritually because their beliefs will bring about doubt and
weaken one's spiritual strength.

way i see it, if your religious views can be weakened by the beliefs of others then your spiritual strength wasn't too strong to begin with. so i don't care who is atheist or wiccan or not. but i do think the religion teaches caution
and avoidance against those people, yes.

we have a divide here. half the world is monotheistic and the other half is everything else. who do ya trust?

i think it's the same divide that was in heaven. god and the devil. the devil's job is to lead astray as many people as possible. you're not going to follow the devil knowingly. you're going to follow something that you believe to be good.

could things such as voodoo worship and hinduism be manipulations of the devil leading people away from god's message by offering an alternate? who knows? maybe not. maybe it's possible.

if it is possible, should we fear and hate those beliefs and believers? i don't know. i think we are all taught to fear and hate the devil. but i have a hard time fearing and hating another human being. but i do think islam instructs fear and hate against possible influence of the devil as means of keeping muslims spiritually strong.

fear and hate have such negative connotations as words. but they describe basic human emotions which are god-given and which could serve a purpose.

if i fear the fires of hell i will strive to be a good person to avoid such torture.
if i hate the influence of drugs and alcohol and rampant hedonistic sex and greed of money i will find the strength needed to not fall pray to those things. afterall, anger and hate can be used as strength. certainly soldiers in war use anger and hate as means to strengthen their hearts.

i personally think hell is a metaphor. a spiritual burning that never ends. afterall, when we die our bodies remain on earth. how can my flesh burn if it is buried in the ground? my spirit and soul, however, can burn with desire,
lust, longing and remorse. and that may well be a worse kind of burning.

i understand your comments about how anyone could worship a god who would suffer his creations to the tortures of hell. the thing is, he doesn't. he gave us free will. when it says in the bible god created man in his likeness, i take it to mean that like him, we have free will. and yes, i believe animals have free will too, and thus souls, and thus are able to dwell in heaven with
us high and mighty humans. i know most religous people don't believe this but *shrug*

earliest story of the jewish torah: genesis. god created man and woman and the garden of eden and said do not eat of this one tree in the center of the garden. we did. thus we were banished from god's grace and knew evil and knew shame and guilt and all those negative emotions which burden our lives on earth.

but that was our choice. our free will decision. he gave us a bit of what he has, power. and we abused it and are now paying for it. does that make him cruel? i don't think so. i look at the honor god bestowed upon man. he gave us what he has. choice. we can choose to follow his message or we can choose not to.

i think fitna suggests the qu'ran teaches hate and violence against any non-islamic people. i think people like the ayatollah are perfect examples of how corrupt people can manipulate something good and make it horrible.

but the movie isn't very good at making a distinction between bad people who are muslims and good people who are muslims. i think fitna attacks all muslims. because for all the images of violence and gore, there is not a single image of muslims living peacefully with jews and christians. there is no mention that when the prophet muhammad (peace be upon him) was spreading islam's message and marched an army to jerusalem, a battle never occurred as all the prophet wanted was for jerusalem to be a city where jews, christians and muslims could worship freely and in safety. a true holy city. and everyone in jerusalem thought heck, that doesn't sound so bad. why not? but that's another tale.

[Pandora's Eyes]

Kauser, two quick questions...

What part of the bible to muslims believe to be "divine", and is it the Hadith only that teaches violence in retaliation to a crime, or is that in Qu'ran as well. Please don't view this as an attack, I'm just curious.

whatup goog!

traditionally muslims accept the old testament. the new testament is viewed as opinions by the apostles and while they may be worthy of study are not regarded as divine. although, i will say revelations in particular has interesting similarities to end times foreshadowing in the qu'ran. so i say study it all and be skeptic of it all.

muslims believe through the numerous revisions of the torah and the bible many important details have been misinterpreted. one glaring example is the bible's declaration that eventually the meak shall inherit the earth. a study of hebrew etymology reveals the hebrew word which was translated to the english "meak" is closer in meaning to "modest" or "humble."

the translation should have read the humble will inherit the earth, not the meak. things like that pose a concern. but again, i say read it all. can't hurt to know more than not know enough.

violence in retaliation to crime is tricky. essentially, islam teaches an eye for an eye. i know many people view this to be barbaric. but if you read my first post in this thread i mention how islam has a great worry over the persecution of god's people. islam teaches if someone harms you, you harm them.

ever listen to christian hardcore music like as i lay dying or zao? there's the story of the garden of eden and adam standing at eve's side while she ate the apple. a lot of people in this christian youth movement believe adam was meant to protect eve from the sin and he failed. in a moment of weakness, he stood and watched it happen. and so christian hardcore music attempts, through aggressive music, to instill strength in the hearts of christian youth men to be god's warriors, to have the strength to defend those we are in charge of protecting as men. and that would be our wive's, sisters, mothers, the women in our lives. but i think it could also be our brothers, neighbors and friends.

islam believes the same. but it's very blunt about it. someone punches you in the face unwarrented, you punch them back. the problem is mankind is now using this message as means of inflicting vicious totalitarian rule over others. if someone steals, they chop off his hands. that is going far beyond what the original message was.

afterall, any one of us, given enough hunger and desperation, would steal food. i don't believe in punishing people in that black and white manner.

but if someone comes to me on the street and kicks me in the back because i'm short, or have dark hair, or am asian, or i'm black, or i'm white, or i'm a jew, whatever... an unwarranted attack. islam teaches against cowardice or pacifism from defending one's self. take it how you will. there are certainly plenty of pacifist muslims who would never defend themselves.

[Peter Coene]

One more time: If a book claims to be the word of the supreme creator of the universe (something my post did not do), and if we accept that premise, it stands to reason that anyone "reinterpreting" that book is reinterpreting the word of the god. And, god's word, by definition, cannot be reinterpreted; it can only be misunderstood. Because he's always right. Because he's fucking god. This is especially true in the case of the Koran, which claims that is clear, easy to understand, and hence not in need of reinterpretation.

Not true, even when the book is the word of God you will find that usually He was not the one to put quill to paper.

It is very likely that the books of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John were not written by the one's whose names they are attributed to, but instead those who followed them and listened to the accounts and stories they told. Writers were supposedly "divinely inspired" to write God's words. This could mean anything from God dictating as they write, to them knowing that what they are writing is the story as they understand it through a reliable source. (This is also why you hear about gospels that the Church decided not to include in the Bible. Those were the ones deemed not to have divine inspiration.)

Troughout the years the writings were translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, to an ancient form of Latin, to a Medieval form of Latin, to every language that Bibles are printed in today. If you have ever taken a forreign laguage you know that a direct, word for word, translation is impossible. For example, Greek had multiple words for what we in English call "love" each with a slight (or major) difference in its meaning. To say that nothing was lost or added as the scriptures were passed allong is nothing short of naive.

Also, people who don't beleive seem to have some notion that when God speaks it is in a definate interpretable language, that its like a Monty Python movie with a hand sticking out of the sky and a big deep voice with one unsubtle message and thats it. However, if that were the case there would only be only one religion, which obviously is not the way things are.

Islamic Fundamentalists claim moral authority on account of their actions being backed by god. If the Koran is the word of god, then they are right. That's all my point was.
If the Quran is the word of God, then the teachings of Jesus are also the word of God by the fact that according to Islam Jesus was a great prophet. As such it is just as wrong for them to attack American cities and bomb British busses as it was for Peter to cut off another man's ear in defence of Jesus.

It's one of the big problems with the Koran and the Bible; they contradict themselves to the extent that you can use them to support just about any position, leaving everyone in the discussion thinking that they are right and able to cite chapter and verse to prove it.
The problem is not contradiction, the problem is misunderstanding, or refusing to understand because it gives an excuse to shun the religion at face value. For example, if the Bible says "thou shalt no kill" then it says "the punnishment for killing is to stone the killer to death" then you can kind of guess that the whole "thou shalt not kill" doesn't count when it comes to the death penalty. If it says in the next chapter "Now go into the lands of all these other folks and make war upon them" then you know that killing in war is probably ok too. Its not a contradiction, ist just that the translation came out funny in a way that "murder" would probably be a more applicable term, but the word "kill" was a closer translation to the words in the orriginal Hebrew.

I can't speak for the Quran, as I have not read enough of it and supposedly it is supposed to be read in Arabic to be understood, but I think that the same idea probably applies.

I get the impression that you're not a true believer, so I think we're just arguing technicalities now.
A person does not have to believe in the specifics of a faith to believe in its spirit.

[Blue]

I can't believe this thread is still around.

[Peter Coene]

I can't believe this thread is still around.
its morphed a bit from free speech to theological discussion, I find it rather interesting.

[Atlantis]

Hi, Kauser.Ali and Peter Coene.

Kauser.Ali, I agree with a lot of what you say.


does the qu'ran instruct us to fear and hate all of those people that lump into the above list of religions/philosophies? yes. do i? no. and that is something of a quagmire with any religion. the very nature of religion is to be black and white.

I didn't expect that you did hate and fear non-monotheists; the main point I was aiming to make was a reiteration of your statement that 'there are two religions within Islam;' one that is moderate and one that is fundamentalist; this is the case in all the Abrahamic religions and probably most of the others, too. As you say, though, religion is black and white by nature, so both versions can't be true at the same time; it's one or the other. A quagmire, as you say.

But the fact that the Fundamentalist faction can, in every case, cite its proof from supposedly divine revelation is, in my view, an indictment on the whole religion.

I should probably note, if it wasn't already obvious, that I was raised in a fairly fundamentalist family, so I'm not approaching this as an outsider.


i believe the qu'ran was indicating a time to come when non-muslims won't be liberal people with a different view on life but instead hedonistic creators of evil on earth. and that is the time to hate and fear any who do not believe in one god.

That's possible. As you know, though, monotheists have no real room to accuse non-monotheists of evil; the one god has had more blood spilled in his name than about any other figure or cause in history. In just the Old Testament, as you are aware, Yahweh instructs the Israelites to slaughter 7 different tribes in Canaan, men, women, children, and even animals. On at least several occasions, such as with the Midianites and in Jabesh-gilead , Yahweh allows them to keep some virgin girls to rape, though, so I guess it's not total genocide.

Of course, these tribes were supposedly sinful in some way (though one has to wonder what this cruel war-god considered such a horrible sin).


i think fitna states through the power of suggestion via the images portrayed beside the quotations from the qu'ran that muslims are taught to fear and hate jews and christians and it is our belief we should kill jews and christians. and that is what i'm saying is wrong about the movie. because that isn't the case.
i'm not saying there aren't muslims who don't fear and hate jews, christians, hindus, homosexuals, hell...martians! just that islam does not teach fear and hatred of jews and christians.


Yes, I'm sure you're right. As you say, though, half the world at least is neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim, and Islam does teach hatred and fear of that half, even if intelligent and moderate Muslims like yourself don't follow that teaching.

It might be a good idea for me to point out that I have no special disdain for Islam beyond what I have for either of the other two monotheisms.


i hear you on the pagans who aren't enemies comment. i don't consider pagans or atheists enemies. but i think islam instructs that those beliefs are enemies to muslims spiritually because their beliefs will bring about doubt and
weaken one's spiritual strength.

Definitely.

"O ye who believe! Ask not questions about things which if made plain to you, may cause you trouble... Some people before you did ask such questions, and on that account lost their faith." (Quran. 5:101-102)

Personally, as a former theist, I am extremely glad I asked those 'troubling questions'.


way i see it, if your religious views can be weakened by the beliefs of others then your spiritual strength wasn't too strong to begin with.


I would agree with your premise, but I'm not sure I'd call 'spiritual strength,' as you put it, a good thing. Isn't spiritual strength, or faith, just belief without reason? I would never want to be accused of having faith; it's antithetical to the purpose of the mind.


we have a divide here. half the world is monotheistic and the other half is everything else. who do ya trust?

"If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." -Anatole France


i think it's the same divide that was in heaven. god and the devil. the devil's job is to lead astray as many people as possible. you're not going to follow the devil knowingly. you're going to follow something that you believe to be good.

could things such as voodoo worship and hinduism be manipulations of the devil leading people away from god's message by offering an alternate? who knows? maybe not. maybe it's possible.

I suppose it's possible. I could even be unwittingly doing the work of Satan even now, attacking faith and holding up rationality and secular humanism in its place.

To that charge, I would say this: The teachings of Epicurus, Hume, Paine, and other humanists have never been validly used as an excuse for tyranny, oppression, or murder and never will be. The teachings of Allah, Yahweh, and Jesus on the other hand have been validly used for all these horrors and more, over and over again, ever since their invention. No good has ever come out of the Abrahamic faiths (or any religion) that could not have come without them, but those faiths have been used for indescribable evil that no rational, otherwise decent person would ever think to commit.

Plus, to blame all dissent and uncomfortable questions on 'the devil' strikes me as childish and silly.


fear and hate have such negative connotations as words. but they describe basic human emotions which are god-given and which could serve a purpose.

I generally agree.



i personally think hell is a metaphor. a spiritual burning that never ends. afterall, when we die our bodies remain on earth. how can my flesh burn if it is buried in the ground?

Well, in Christianity at least, god resurrects your body and then throws it in the lake of fire.

We might today think of hell as a metaphor or something figurative, but that's not how the concept has historically been used. It's been used to terrorize illiterate, uneducated, and squalidly poor people into submitting to the fantastically rich, tyrannical priest-caste.


earliest story of the jewish torah: genesis. god created man and woman and the garden of eden and said do not eat of this one tree in the center of the garden. we did. thus we were banished from god's grace and knew evil and knew shame and guilt and all those negative emotions which burden our lives on earth.

but that was our choice. our free will decision. he gave us a bit of what he has, power. and we abused it and are now paying for it. does that make him cruel? i don't think so.

If you accept the story, god made us curious and inquisitive by nature and then put the tree right where we could get to it. Why would he do that? Why would a just god create humanity in such a way that our nature is to sin and then be damned for it? It's a ridiculous concept and a ridiculous story.


i look at the honor god bestowed upon man. he gave us what he has. choice. we can choose to follow his message or we can choose not to.

If only he had done us the honor of making us perfect like he did the angels...

Free will isn't much of an honor when you're damned for doing anything but what god tells you.


but the movie isn't very good at making a distinction between bad people who are muslims and good people who are muslims.

We can agree on that. I certainly don't think it's a perfect movie; it's obviously made by a reactionary author who is frightened by what he rightly perceives as a threat: militant Islam. The fact though, that it was removed from some sites due to threats of violence says all that needs to be said about its validity, in my view, but I'm also sure that the violent fanatics don't speak for all Muslims.

Peter Coene:

Not true, even when the book is the word of God you will find that usually He was not the one to put quill to paper.

If you read through the previous page of this thread you'll see I respond to this point several times. As long as you're giving me lessons in linguistics and history, though, I'll return the favor. There isn't a single shred of historical evidence for either the existence of Jesus (or Moses) as the Bible describes them. Of the 40-something historians that were operating in the region at the supposed time of Jesus, not one of them makes mention of him by name or by deed. The story of his life is an amalgamation of those of previous mythic, allegorical, and astrological figures.

I recommend the work of Egyptologist G. Massey on this subject, but here's a great primer on the subject: http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

"Whether considered as the God made human, or as man made divine, this character never existed as a person."

-Gerald Massey, Egyptologist and historical scholar (Gerald Massey's Lectures: Gnostic and Historic Christianity, 1900)

Point is that it's all baloney.


The problem is not contradiction, the problem is misunderstanding, or refusing to understand because it gives an excuse to shun the religion at face value.

Ha, what a ridiculous thing to say. No, the problem is not misunderstanding; the problem is understanding too well. If the contradiction involved in the 6th Commandment is your best example, you need to read your Bible more. But, just on that commandment, how about the instruction to stone to death rape victims (Deuteronomy 22:23-24)? To kill homosexuals? (Leviticus 20:13) To kill nonbelievers (2 Chronicles 15:12-13)? To kill women who have sex before marriage (Deuteronomy 22:20-21)? To slaughter an entire village if one person worships another god (Deuteronomy 13:13-19)? And that barely scratches the surface!

How do you square that with "Thou shalt not murder?"


A person does not have to believe in the specifics of a faith to believe in its spirit.

Sounds like a platitude to me. The problem is that most people, having little understanding of the specifics of their faith, do not understand what it's spirit really even is. They rely on others to tell them. Most Christians believe that Christianity is about peace and love, for example, when Jesus states in the Bible that this ain't the case. If you don't believe the specifics, why follow the religion?

[DanielC]

interesting enough for me to go back drawing.....

[BuckWeisel]

NOTE: COMING IN HERE TO POST "LOL GO DRAW LIKE ME, FOR I AM A SUPER ARTIST WHO SPENDS EVERY SECOND OF THEIR DAY DRAWING AND IF YOU'RE NOT DRAWING YOU MUST BE AN IDIOT" IS NOT DRAWING. SO GO DRAW AND LET US HAVE OUR THEOSOCIOPOLITICAL DISCUSSIONS. I DON'T GO INTO THE SKETCHBOOK SECTION AND TELL PEOPLE TO GO DISCUSS POLITICS.

caps for emphasis and to get your attention, not for anger.

[DanielC]

haha i hope that's not pointed to me...
okidoki, back to watching my movie.

[D.Labruyere]

We might today think of hell as a metaphor or something figurative, but that's not how the concept has historically been used. It's been used to terrorize illiterate, uneducated, and squalidly poor people into submitting to the fantastically rich, tyrannical priest-caste.


Actually, the feudal society was far more efficient then how you illustrate it right now. There are a lot of people who only have one image of the middle ages, and that is one of a dark age, with people dying because of the black death, the church making the poor even more poor, crusades, wars, knights (who happen to have there origin in the roman empire and not the middle ages) and all that sort of stuff..
It's an image that mostly comes from movies, games and bad history books, who happen to be well, totally wrong. We easily underestimate the genius system that was behind the middle ages and how it worked, and how it made us possible to 'advance' into newer ages.

[Vhan Juju]

and the believer is left feeling continually guilty for being who they are.


Sorry guys, I gotta say one thing to this. I don't feel that way at all...

-thats it :)

Btw, thank you for shareing kauser.ali! :)

[bhanu]

haha i hope that's not pointed to me...
okidoki, back to watching my movie
It is... bro...haha...

[Nrx]

When i saw this on the news today the title of this thread immediately popped into my head, although i cant help but think im going to be flamed for rezzing the thread, but still this is atrocious and im interested in seeing what your opinions are on it.

(goverment uses anti terrorism laws to spy on a family, because there suspected of living outside of their schools local area
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7341179.stm

the goverment have also arrested people for wearing anti blair and bush tshirts under the new terrorism laws.

"John Catt, an 80-year-old peace campaigner, was stopped by police officers as a terrorist suspect in Brighton in September - for wearing a T-shirt with anti-Blair and Bush slogans.

Mr Catt, who served in the RAF during the Second World War, was stopped, searched by police and made to sign a form confirming he had been interviewed under the 2000 Terrorism Act.

The official record of the encounter confirms that the "purpose" of the search was "terrorism" and the "grounds for intervention" were "carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info" (sic).

Mr Catt was offered a caution by police, but refused and plans to plead not guilty at a trial due to start in January. He had travelled into Brighton from his home in Withdean, on the outskirts of the city.

"I said I was going to voice my opposition to the Iraq War. He [the policeman] said: 'We're going to give you a copy of this form.'

"People should have the right to protest non-violently. The anti-terrorism laws should not be used to stop people doing that." " (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/blairs-britain-2005--where-peaceful-protest-can-be-costly-518851.html)

Weres this going to end?

ps, please don't flame me :(

[kev ferrara]

No flaming, just discussion...

Populist news sources only provide the most sensational aspects of a story. They almost never provide enough information for a reader/viewer to make anything but a wholly emotional judgment about a story. And that is their function. To make one emotional. Of course, there are times when it is important for a population to get emotional about a story, but the media doesn't make that distinction because they have to fill airtime all day long. They can't be too picky.

A lunatic family lives in an underground drainage basin stalking school grounds. Cameras were successfully used to catch them in the act.

Doesn't sound too bad to me. Oh wait, I forgot to use the word "spying"... as in your government is out to get you, like some East German secret police during the cold war... stay in your chairs and watch television news... we journalists are heroes who are on your side protecting you from the impending fascist take-over.

A peace activist was searched by police and asked to sign a piece of paper. Was he doing anything that made the police interested in him in a particular way? We aren't told. All we are told is that he's 80 and fought in World War II and he likes puppies and apple pie. Only enough info is provided to make us emotional. Typical populist news hackery... Authority bad, police abuse, fascist state, no one is safe, free speech intimidation, etc. And only the news media are on your side, so stay tuned to me, your hero.

It would be great if we could all sue the news media for supplying half truths and mis-educating people on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, decade-long, century-long basis. But I don't think filing 50 million back-logged lawsuits would help the justice system any.

Plus people like hate and fear and ridicule and anti-authoritarianism and political rancor, it's entertaining. Certainly more fun than reading The Wilson Quarterly or Foreign Affairs.

[Vhan Juju]

Populist news sources only provide the most sensational aspects of a story. They almost never provide enough information for a reader/viewer to make anything but a wholly emotional judgment about a story. And that is their function. To make one emotional. Of course, there are times when it is important for a population to get emotional about a story, but the media doesn't make that distinction because they have to fill airtime all day long. They can't be too picky.



You have no idea how much I hate the "NEWS"...