The recent conflict between Muslim and Christian ideologies in America

It must be difficult being an intelligent man and president of the USA. You work for ages to try and improve diplomatic relations, and then some tit comes along and does something like this and you may as well not have bothered.

Still, when all's said and done, the koran is just a book, and not worth human lives.

 

Exactly. Can't make an omelette without... some idiot in Florida.

Unless you really believe that such books are the word of your God. Then it ceases to be just a book.

Maybe I shouldn't have watched The Book of Eli before responding to this.

 

heh heh fair enough. Still, you have to laugh. Who on earth could possibly think that a public bookburning made them look good? Not exactly the right kind of symbolism...

 

Oh I couldn't agree more! I think this is an awful, terrible, badly conceived, idiotic, vapid idea.

I know plenty of true believers in a Christian God that would never do something like this. So I'm at a loss.

 

well, that's something I've recognised more recently- most christians are perfectly OK people, as are (in all probability) most muslims. It's a cliché, I know, but it's an attention-seeking minority that cause the problems. I just wish we could wall them up in a little place, maybe somewhere in the desert where they can fight each other and we can all munch popcorn.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11258739

"Some demonstrators burned a US flag and chanted: "Death to Christians."

Religion of peace, huh?

 

It's not the martial art that wins or loses a fight, it's the martial artist.

It's not the religion that is peaceful or violent, it's the practitioner.

 

Isn't it the practitioner that makes the martial art/religion?

 

Not exactly. A martial art or a religion is a set of abstract ideas (theories, methodologies, and rules). But it's the practitioner who puts it to use, for good or evil, effectively or ineffectively.

Muay Thai is not groundfighting, even if many Muay Thai practitioners also know groundfighting. Thus, the art is more than just the sum of its practitioners.

The abstract concepts that make up "Islam" that are independent of individual practitioners are:

(1) Monotheism.
(2) Muhammad is the final prophet of God, but the Abrahamic prophets are also prophets of God.
(3) Eating pork = bad.
etc.

But it's individual practitioners, not the religion's abstract ideas, who decide that they should kill random Afghans because some guy in Florida is a total tool.

 

There should be no law forbidding criticism of any religion or ideology in any form whatsoever, but there should a valid reason why one would insult another's belief other than "I will because I can" excuse.

Why is hate speech still protected in the U.S. under free speech?

It undermines the whole concept. Numerous countries already have laws in place that limit hate speech.

Hate speech:

Should ignorance and baseless hatred be protected? If some tool wants to spend his life insulting religions that don't concur with his own, or a race that he doesn't think seems equal, or someone disabled, etc. I think we should at least try to curb it a bit.

If someone comes to me saying: "The Qur'an is a text full of contradictions, it preaches violence, etc." It would open a way to understanding one another's belief by having meaningful discussion because the criticism was put respectfully. This goes for anything.

If someone comes to me saying (an actual comment left on Youtube when I commented once on an Islamic themed clip): "Ignorant, effing Muslims, why do I have to teach you about your effing religion. Mohammad is so and so and all of you are backward, effing people." I wouldn't want to discuss anything with them.

All because I said Islam is a religion of peace...lololol

 

What do you call a guy who doesn't burn a flag in the name of hate, lives a normal life pays his taxes, doesn't bother anyone but demands no one burn his favourite book?

why drag the entire religion into it buddy? just cos idiot's burned a US flag and shouted psycho slogans doesn't mean the entire religion is violent does it? as far as I know there's no burn a us flag day in Islam.

also with this kind of logic I can take the example of pastor Jones and say "wow, christianity is supposed to be the religion of peace, tolerance and forgiveness eh? what b/s, they're all savages" or take the example of the few US soldiers in the Afghanistan who shot at civilians and say all of them are cold blooded murderers.

or take hitler's example and call all german's Nazi's and so on and so forth.

99.99% of muslims haven't burn't the american flag, taken part in terrorist activites or done anything else unpleasant. the same way 99.99% of christians have more sense than the good pastor and his congregation.

I myself have a lot of Muslim and Christian friends, and while I think their respective religious text books are just colorful story books they're still nice friendly guys not fanatics, if you tell them their religion is ********, they'l laugh, buy you a beer and have a long friendly discussion with you, not shoot you bomb you or threaten to burn your copy of "The God Delusion".

you simply have to stop taking the few fanatics on either side as representatives of the entire group. seriously. it causes nothing but trouble. There's no difference between some random American guy in a sensitive area who's going to get lynched because of the good pastor's little bonfire and some random guy with a beard who got assaulted by a bunch of teens in the US and is now in a coma because some sicko's attacked the twin towers. Sure it's tempting to hate them all but does that really solve anything?

 

I don't know...

9/11. There have been worse crisis in humanity, with deaths that number in the hundred of thousands, yet this tragic is one one those that pains me every time I think about it.

The ultimate question is why? Why...?

I don't understand hatred of that magnitude, or was it ignorance of the highest level?

Van Zandt, I'm not singling you out, but judging a whole group of people based on the action of a few is only adding to the problem. We as people who have the opportunity to intermix with my different individuals should be the ones pointing out our humanity, that we're all trying to live in this harsh world, that no matter what our ethnicity, religion, or gender, we're all the same. Doesn't being human meaning anything nowadays?

Religion of peace?

That is my belief because as a Shia Muslim, as I have yet to see anything in Islam that would incite violence. Yes, there are Sheiks just like the one in Indonesia who said that burning the Qur'an will spark a war that would rally all Muslims (to a negligible thousand or so attendees). Instead of focusing on the other millions of Muslims who marched peaceful showing there approval of the Pastor's reconsideration of burning the Qur'an. We focus on just this one individual making it seem that that's what most Muslims want.

Islam is a religion of peace. Let's focus on the hundred of millions of Muslims who follow that.

 

QFT

 

Call him what you like. I was referring to the folks who are saying it's offensive to burn the Koran but continue to march through the streets burning foreign flags. Just sayin'.

 

I'd call him wrong. :bang:

He can't DEMAND that someone's right to political speech be limited in any way. If he can demand that what is to keep me from demanding that he not be allowed to read his favorite book. Freedom tends to be messy.

 

Most religious people think that God is more sacred than any national identity. Whether you agree or not, there's a rational distinction to be made between burning a holy book and burning a flag.

Also, burning flags doesn't have the implied historical threat behind it that burning the holy books of a distrusted religious minority does. Flag-burning makes me think of hippies in the 1960s. Book-burning makes me think of Nazis gearing up for the Final Solution. There's a very, very different connotation to the two acts.

But overall, I think it should be emphasized here that no one is asking for a legal bar on burning holy books. Warrior was asking people, from a moral/ethical/good taste perspective to not burn Qur'ans; he wasn't asking for the government to arrest people who do. Free speech is only implicated when someone tries to ban a certain type of speech or symbolic speech; it's not implicated when people criticize that speech or symbolic speech.

Someone once said "freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism." That couldn't be more true when someone burns holy books and people (figuratively, not literally) tear them a new one for doing so.

 

Mitlov, if there is someone who thinks before he speaks, it's you.