"The existence of Muslims is offensive to radical Jews", see the problem?


"Why the Muslims should be held collectively guilty for the actions of other Muslims, but Jews not for the actions of other Jews is.... reasons."

See the problem now?

It isn't that Jews are better than Muslims. It is that it is ridiculous to think you can calm a group of radicals by eliminating things that are offensive to them (like depictions of Muhammad), because the things that drive them to murder include the mere existence of entire ethnoreligious groups like Jews and Yazidi

They are vicious and find the mere existence of other religions on "their" land like Christians, Jews or Yazidi offensive. As evidenced by their actions in Iraq, Syria and Europe.

Do I really need to repeatedly use the word extremist, radical or ISIS for you to understand a basic sentence imbued in the context of a larger conversation?

Then the only problem is in your head, Fred.

And, who is this "we" shit?

I guess you missed the memo.

Is a bit like arguing with a radio.

That's why they are being killed, see the three Muslims who were murdered right here in the US, they are all alike? I wonder if those three young students cared about cartoons enough to kill someone for it? What do you think? They are dead so we can't ask them, sadly. I wonder if it made them sad that anyone would want to ridicule their beliefs though? Or hurt? But who cares, hurting people is 'free speech' and it's cool.

Muslim extremists operate under the ideological cover of the literal word of the Quran.

As long as everyday muslims don't question the literal word of the Quran,

extremists get a free pass.

Some (very brave) muslims contest that the Quran must not be questioned:

Irshad Manji, Maajid Nawaz, (Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a way)

These guys are heroes, and, sadly, require police protection.

All Americans are responsible for torture.

All women are responsible for women serial killers.

All men are responsible for rape.

All White People are racists.

All Italians are Fascists.

All Germans are Nazis.

Iow, if a member of any group of people commits a criminal act, ALL of that group is guilty.

Mmm, there is a word for that kind of logic.

Where did I claim Muslims are responsible for the actions of radical Muslims? Literally, where. I ridiculed the idea of collective guilt in the OP, but you don't let what I actually said get in the way of attacking what you want me to have said.

in this case Jews - someone else has to hijack it to add the "but" (I've heard the term the but brigade) that Muslims suffer too and, of course, an opportunity to bash Israel outside the I/P forum.

This is what some say and believe:

From http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026175415

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute, an Egyptian cleric, Muhammad Hussein Yaqub, speaking in January 2009 on Al Rahma, a popular religious TV station in Egypt, made the contours of the new hate impeccably clear: “If the Jews left Palestine to us, would we start loving them? Of course not. We will never love them…They are enemies not because they occupied Palestine. They would have been enemies even if they did not occupy a thing…You must believe that we will fight, defeat and annihilate them until not a single Jew remains on the face of the Earth…You will not survive as long as a single one of us remains.”

Everyone is a minority except the Jews; we run/own everything.

It really comes down to a form of 'soft' anti-Semitism and that is to discuss everything but anti-Semitism, and if one must discuss it, then it is imperative to find some way to blame Jews for the anti-Semitism.

I would say that they are offensive to a great many people and for no logical reason. I don't know of any Jews who are committing murder in the name of their religion or forcing people by threatening their lives to convert to Judaism.

Hate begets hate.

and the murderous actions of some radical Muslim factions. I don't have a problem with anyone pointing out that the actions of groups like IS are evil.

However, what we hear about is more Moslem initiated murders around the world.

Aside from the vitriol at the israeli settlers I don't really hear about Jews cutting off people's heads or blowing up schools or marketplaces. Do you?

parents, if they are alive or have a home.

Truncated sentences also help with arguments I find.

have been killed over the past few years in that region. One third of them children. Can children even BE considered enemies of ANYONE?

That wasn't the claim.

The claim was that there are no cases of Jews bombing school.

Israel was founded as the Jewish State, and identifys itself as such.

That's kinda the point of the OP. The schools bombed were by Israelis, who happened to be Jews, not Jews bombing schools.

ETA: At least you aren't alone in your mistake, unsurprisingly.

There are Jews who believe that only the Messiah could establish a Jewish state and they believe he hasn't come yet so how can they be responsible for Israel's actions?

I have never understood hatred toward Jewish people.

About how some folks claim we must be sensitive to Right Wing Christians who get creeped out by gay weddings and stuff. Saying "We have to give Christians the right to discriminate against gays" is like saying we should be sensitive to Right Wing Muslims who are so scared of Jewish people that they want to kill them all.

that it's the cartoonists' fault that they got murdered.

They are murdered for it.

Response of some, ban depictions of Muhammad.

Conclusion: They brought it on themselves.

One of them, a Christian I believe, murdered three innocent Muslim students this week. There was a mass killing also this past week, by another murderous criminal. We no longer see wall to wall coverage of these murders, we are getting used to it I suppose.

Would you say that Muslims might wonder why Christians want to kill them?

How about our wars in the ME? Christians, invading their countries and killing hundreds of thousand of them. What should we call that?

He was not a Christian.

Anyhow, question: Is it possible to criticize certain aspects of the Islamic religion without criticizing every Muslim? Or is there a special requirement to remain completely silent lest anything one says can and will be used to accuse them of Islamophobia?

have a problem with the existence of secular Western societies where women are people and not property and being gay/lesbian is seen as normal human variation and not an abomination. Unsurprisingly these are things they have in common with many Christian fundamentalists.

I don't often quote Goldwater, but he was right when he said

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."

You can't compromise with extremists acting in the name of god.

Extremists who get it in their head that their God is somehow telling them to murder the rest of us because we are different than them need to be fought and fought hard. There are many peaceful religious people who don't do those types of things and don't believe in harming people who are different than them. It's the extremists that are the problem. They seem to think they were born with a license to do whatever they want, including killing, in the name of their religion/god. It's awful.

fear and hope the radicals don't get offended are fascist, bigoted, shitty suggestions.

Whether it is the historical use of collective punishment of the Jews by Christians and Muslims. The collective punishment of Palestinians through the bulldozing of houses of people who committed no crime, or the collective punishment of Muslims because extremists groups are using medieval murder methods on people. I should also mention, American Indians, Blacks, and anyone else that some group got a hate-on for.

In my opinion the only cure is education, but that is damned slow and only works on future generations.

Extremists need to be stopped from doing all of the things they are doing based on their own hatreds and hangups and prejudice. I, for one, like the fact that Jews exist. I have known nice non-Jews too, who didn't hate people, and that includes Muslims.

It is not one group or the other that I have a problem with. It is the extremists and their violence that I have a problem with. The extremists are the ones perpetrating all of this violence, regardless of religion or lack thereof. It's the extremists and their violence that are the real problem and the rest of us should not tolerate the violence. The damn extremists are trying to ruin what could be a nice peaceful life for the vast majority of us. There is no valid excuse for the violence and murder and other horrors, no matter what excuses they try to use.

Everyone is convinced it is simply "radical Muslims" or "skinheads/neo-Nazi" types who are "offended' by the very existence of Jews; there are others, and not all of them on the right side of the political spectrum. You can see the contempt in articles and comments to those articles when the topic is anti-Semitism, Jewish history, or the Holocaust. While not every hater is shooting up synagogues, Jewish centers and schools, or shouting "kike" at passing Jews, it is very obvious Jews are one minority which inspires a certain degree of contempt, even in places where Jews don't exist, much less countries where they are minorities, which is all, except one, which is also hated beyond responsible standards.

Oh, well, you can't draw a cartoon of Muhammad because it pisses people off so much they might be forced to get violent, etc.

Basically it's saying that anyone who is offended by anything has a free pass to censor reality to suit their particular worldview*, although the quarter-wits who promulgate such arguments rarely seem think them all the way through.

Like, gay people on tv make some fundamentalists really, really mad... if they make a fundamentalist so mad they 'need' to blow up a tv station, well, obviously it's the station's fault and they 'asked for it' and we should just get the gay people off the tv, right?

No one would make that argument here with a straight face, one should hope.

But when they say that religious extremists should have free reign to prevent any speech that might offend their belief system, it's the same argument.


* that sound you hear is the authoritarian brain going... "sounds WONDERFUL! ...what's the problem?"

But probably not as much fun as you've had in this thread feigning inability to understand the difference between bigotry, and bigotry against bigots.

Good post, good analogy.

the actions of other Muslims' is that:

Both are wrong- Jews should not be given collective responsibility for whatever Israel or any other Jewish group does. And Muslims should not be given collective responsibility for whatever some radical Muslim terror group does- especially as most victims of radical Muslim terror groups are themselves Muslims.

'We must be sensitive to the needs of this minority and ban all depictions and existence of Jewish people.'

Seriously - who, at least outside the likes of Stormfront on the one hand and Al Quaeda on the other, has been proposing such a thing? Yes, there are more anti-Semites everywhere than there should be; but few have actually been proposing that Jews should never be 'depicted'.

"You mean you want us to eat the poor Irish people? What is wrong with you?"