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alp227

(31,961 posts)
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 01:47 AM Jun 2014

Latest in GOP Minority Outreach: Heritage Foundation forum panelists insult Muslim attendee

Stay classy, right wingers. As the WaPo's Dana Milbank reports:

What began as a session purportedly about “unanswered questions” surrounding the September 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya deteriorated into the ugly taunting of a woman in the room who wore an Islamic head covering.

...Saba Ahmed, an American University law student, stood in the back of the room and asked a question in a soft voice. “We portray Islam and all Muslims as bad, but there’s 1.8 billion followers of Islam,” she told them. “We have 8 million-plus Muslim Americans in this country and I don’t see them represented here.”

Panelist Brigitte Gabriel of a group called ACT! for America pounced. She said “180 million to 300 million” Muslims are “dedicated to the destruction of Western civilization.” She told Ahmed that the “peaceful majority were irrelevant” in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and she drew a Hitler comparison: “Most Germans were peaceful, yet the Nazis drove the agenda and as a result, 60 million died.”

“Are you an American?” Gabriel demanded of Ahmed, after accusing her of taking “the limelight” and before informing her that her “political correctness” belongs “in the garbage.”

“Where are the others speaking out?” Ahmed was asked. This drew an extended standing ovation from the nearly 150 people in the room, complete with cheers.

The panel’s moderator, conservative radio host Chris Plante, grinned and joined in the assault. “Can you tell me who the head of the Muslim peace movement is?” he demanded of Ahmed.


LOL "180 million to 300 million"...Gabriel is just making crap up. And nice real-life Godwin's Law in demonstration.

Gabriel and Plante responded to Ahmed's point by asking the most illogical, loaded, unanswerable questions on purpose in order to make the illusion of winning the argument. "Where are the others speaking out?" and "Can you tell me who the head of the Muslim peace movement is?" relieve these assholes of the burden of proof about their opinions of Muslims.
15 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
2. It's not as if the Democrats are terribly welcoming, either
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:21 AM
Jun 2014

I've seen people here insisting violence is needed to "keep those people in line," and other posters comparing Muslim women to "Chickens for KFC"

The difference between Republicans and Democrats, with regards to Muslims, is that we think we're better than Muslims, while Republicans think Muslims are worse than them.

alp227

(31,961 posts)
3. Whoever posted the former must be a disrupting Freeper,
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:23 AM
Jun 2014

whoever posted the latter must be a radical anti theist.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
4. Well, they're certainly not really scotsmen!
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 02:38 AM
Jun 2014

Actually, the former is a person you've spoken with before. I can't find the latter for reference, but just do a DU search for the word "hijab" and you'll see an outpouring of everything from "creepy" to "Fuck dude, you're in public!"

No, DU's a shitty place to be if you're a Muslim.

Response to Scootaloo (Reply #4)

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
6. No, I don't
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:06 AM
Jun 2014

It's clothing. If someone wants to wear it, then let them wear it. If they don't want to wear it and someone is forcing them to, that person is the problem, not the garment.

Anti-Hijab hysteria is just an effort to drive Muslims out of the public eye, while pretending to have a righteous cause for doing so. If it were based on actual concern for the welfare of people the focus would be on whatever jackasses are coercing other people, instead of on a piece of clothing.

alp227

(31,961 posts)
7. D'OH! I confused the hijab and burqa
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:08 AM
Jun 2014

I'm much more opposed to the burqa. The hijab isn't a big deal to me.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
8. "Hijab" is an encompassing term
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:32 AM
Jun 2014

It includes everything from a scarf to hold the hair, to the full beekeeper ensemble. In the west - which is where the panic is - the most common variety is just he headscarf, or among recent immigrants or older or more traditional Muslim women, the chador (sort of like a nun's wimple, covers the head and shoulders but leaves the face open). This is because most of the Muslims in western nations don't come from places that have the full robe-and-cowl thing going on. But even so, it's used by proponents of bans as a scar tactic that basically amounts to "MUSLIM = TALIBAN!"

But you know what, if there were a bunch of Muslim women walking around in full burqa, I'd still have the same position - it's their choice. if it's NOT their choice and someone's making them, then the problem is the person doing the coercion.

I don't tell Russian orthodox women to let their hair out and i don't scold Mormon women to wear daisy dukes. I don't expect Jewish men to toss away their kippa or trim their peyot and far be it from me to demand Christians get rid of their cross necklaces. Never heard of a sari ban, and the idea of making a sikh throw away his kirpan is clearly problematic. So why would I tell Muslims to divest their taquiya or hijab?

 

Lee-Lee

(6,324 posts)
10. Except Islam in itself is a male dominated patriarchal religion
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:31 PM
Jun 2014

So yeah, when it mandates the hijab only for females it does so from a position of male power using it to continue to subjugate women.

Period

Because some women willingly accept that subjugation doesn't make it any better.

When a religion mandates a head covering for both sexes, I will change my mind.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
12. And there we go, "Muslim women don't know what's good for themselves"
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 08:28 PM
Jun 2014

Thank you for illustrating one of my points.

 

Lee-Lee

(6,324 posts)
13. And you for making mine
Wed Jun 18, 2014, 06:29 AM
Jun 2014

Even if there is a situation where for a woman adopting such a repressive religion and it's mandates of unequal treatment for women is to the advantage of an individual women in an individual circumstance- her doing so still harms all women by helping to perpetuate and extend the life of such regimes.

There are some women who make money and build a comfortable life preaching anti-feminist ideas and too- that works for them and their individual circumstance. That doesn't mean everybody else should sit back and accept it or condone it because it works for them as individuals.

You might be able to argue where adopting such ideals works for individual women in specific circumstances. You will never be able to argue that women under the repressive mandates of Islam (or any other religion that treats them similarly) are better of or that these religions advance women's rights or that women across the world are in a better place because these religions exist or because of how they treat women.

And the big picture is what matters. If someone can present to me an argument that in the big picture women in this world are better off because Islam exists and that by adopting it they because stronger and move us all down the path to equality, I might change my mind. But nobody has yet.

 

Scootaloo

(25,699 posts)
14. You're making a totally different argument now
Wed Jun 18, 2014, 01:16 PM
Jun 2014

I agree that the lot of all people evreywhere would be much better if religion simply fucked off, and everyone became an atheist. So much in the world would be improved - maybe people wouldn't get any smarter, but there would be less encouragement to be stupid. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Zoroastrianism, Rastafarianism, Vodoun, Asatru, Wicca, Taoism, Shinto, and all the others that I've very certainly missed are one and all more baggage than they're worth on the human species and things would be much better of they went *poof*

But since that's not going to happen anytime soon, it's really a rather moot argument. it's also a distraction from the one we're actually having, that being whether Muslim women can be trusted to dress themselves.

You don't think they can be.

You are arguing that women - a certain class of women - are too stupid to make any decisions for themselves. One and all. Around the world, they're all just dumb bitches, according to you. 1.1 billion Muslim women around the world, and because you're a American with a christian background, you are just inherently better than all of them, and they should bow down before your demands, and obey your strictures as to how they should dress.

It amazes me how people keep pretending to be against patriarchal control against Muslim women, but then want to institute patriarchal control against Muslim women.

Even more amazing, the belief that your fashion sense is any less controlled by the male gaze than theirs is. Yet somehow you can be trusted to dress yourself without someone else stepping in an telling you how to do it. I presume because you don't regard yourself as a dumb unthinking animal the way you do Muslim women.

I'm certain you know who Malala Yousafazi is, correct? The Pakistani girl who was shot in the head and left for dead by extremists because she sought an education? Who survived and is now a very vocal and admired activist for women's rights and education? She's a Muslim, and she wears hijab. if you want to tell me she's a mindless animal who can't be trusted to decide whether or not to wear cloth on her head without your prior approval, then I'm just going to have to dismiss your opinion.

Me? I don't exploit women to excuse bigotry the way you do. I believe a woman, Muslim or not, has a fucking right to wear whatever the fuck she might want to wear, regardless of why she wants to wear it. She does not need her husband's approval, she doesn't need her priest's approval, she doesn't need Marie le Pen's approval, and she doesn't need your approval.

 

Lee-Lee

(6,324 posts)
15. I've never once made any of the claims you accuse me of
Wed Jun 18, 2014, 01:47 PM
Jun 2014

I've not accused anyone of being stupid or a mindless animal. I don't know if you are inventing arguments from me so you can respond to them or just projecting here, but I have never said that.

No, most women in Muslim dominated societies simply don't have a choice, and even far more have been raised in such a heavily dominant patriarchal society that they have been conditioned by that society to accept it, and often virtually brainqashed into it. When your entire upbringing, education and culture experience in life leads you to think there is only one acceptable behavior, in this case all directed and mandated by men, that is all you know.

There is a huge, huge difference between being "stupid" or a "mindless animal" and having been subjected from the moment of your birth to a societal system that insists and demands that you are a second class citizen who is only allowed to behave or dress as the ruling class - males- allow.

You make the point of Malala- yes, she was raised in a society and culture that demands she wear it. You act as if it is a choice, but it is not for her. She is brave, without a doubt, but that doesn't change what the hijab, when worn by religious mandate, represents.

I've been to Afghanistan and seen first hand just how women live and are treated there- don't try and lecture me about how Muslim women around the world choose how they dress, much less anything else. Yeah, they have a choice alright- do as the men in their society say religion demands or face torture or death. Not a real choice...

frylock

(34,825 posts)
9. of course, if you told these shitbags to fuck off and die, they would bemoan the lack ..
Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:04 PM
Jun 2014

of political correctness.

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