quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:


Why do you think honour killings still happen when it is illegal here?
Why do you think many girls are forced into marriage by having it performed in their home lands instead of here?
Why do you think so many Muslims are radicalised into fighting for their cause?
Why do you think they are so vociferous and go on a rampage because of a satirical cartoon?
You don't see other religions doing that, only the Muslims showing their true colours.

See, for me, that all focuses on the extreme and newsworthy of what's happening, rather than the core. In each of those four cases, the answer would be 'But most Muslims don't'. They tut, feel pissed off to a smaller or greater extent, but then get on with their lives; lives which are in most ways like those of their non-Muslim compatriots. So the question is, what are Muslims' 'true colours'? Is it what Muslims on the fringes think and do, or is it the majority?

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:


Why do you think honour killings still happen when it is illegal here?
Why do you think many girls are forced into marriage by having it performed in their home lands instead of here?
Why do you think so many Muslims are radicalised into fighting for their cause?
Why do you think they are so vociferous and go on a rampage because of a satirical cartoon?
You don't see other religions doing that, only the Muslims showing their true colours.

See, for me, that all focuses on the extreme and newsworthy of what's happening, rather than the core. In each of those four cases, the answer would be 'But most Muslims don't'. They tut, feel pissed off to a smaller or greater extent, but then get on with their lives; lives which are in most ways like those of their non-Muslim compatriots. So the question is, what are Muslims' 'true colours'? Is it what Muslims on the fringes think and do, or is it the majority?

quote:


As I explained, you are seeing them through rational western eyes and see only what they want you to see.
And like most westerners, you swallowed it.
Everyone likes to think it's just another religion and we should welcome them with open arms like all other religions.
And that is what they rely on - our gullibility.

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyDemura

I'm still going with that arguing some other ancient religion is somehow better than Islam isn't going to work...

Let's get into the 21st century and equally ridicule all of these Old World religions equally...How anyone now can believe the uninformed people of many centuries ago had anything to say of value is astonishing to me...

quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyDemura

I'm still going with that arguing some other ancient religion is somehow better than Islam isn't going to work...

Let's get into the 21st century and equally ridicule all of these Old World religions equally...How anyone now can believe the uninformed people of many centuries ago had anything to say of value is astonishing to me...

You're right. The ancient Egyptians knew nothing about mummification (most of which we still use, today) or mathematics, or astrology or building/engineering.

Of course, the Roman Empire knew nothing about these things, either and, let's face it: plumbing wasn't a big deal.

The Greeks ... Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ...

Yeah, these ancient people knew nothing. You should know so much "nothing".

Michael

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyDemura

I'm still going with that arguing some other ancient religion is somehow better than Islam isn't going to work...

Let's get into the 21st century and equally ridicule all of these Old World religions equally...How anyone now can believe the uninformed people of many centuries ago had anything to say of value is astonishing to me...

You're right. The ancient Egyptians knew nothing about mummification (most of which we still use, today) or mathematics, or astrology or building/engineering.

Of course, the Roman Empire knew nothing about these things, either and, let's face it: plumbing wasn't a big deal.

The Greeks ... Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ...

Yeah, these ancient people knew nothing. You should know so much "nothing".

Michael

another difference between liberals and conservatives...and the very height of ignorance and arrogance to boot.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:


As I explained, you are seeing them through rational western eyes and see only what they want you to see.
And like most westerners, you swallowed it.
Everyone likes to think it's just another religion and we should welcome them with open arms like all other religions.
And that is what they rely on - our gullibility.

I don't need to do any reasoning nor strain myself with psychology, FD. The facts don't support the view that more than a tiny proportion of Muslims will do 'honour killings' here. Likewise with all the other heinous things that hit the papers. These things trump your and my anecdotal evidence.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
The vast majority of Muslims here want to have prosperous and agreeable lives - and the only way to do that is to knuckle down under the law ... as well as the economic, social and political cultures that we have here.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
What some might want in their ideal world isn't very material, is it? All but a very few people will sacrifice the ideal for the merely comfortable.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
As for the question of it being 'just another religion' ... to me, that's not very relevant. *Whatever* religion we're talking about, it *cannot* be the sole influence on anybody's make-up (outside of some entirely closed religious community, perhaps). How would that even be possible?

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Any Muslim living in the UK is going to be subject to countless other influences as he or she grows up and forms his/her moral/political outlook. Mohammed and the Koran are going to have to fight for their place in the hearts of Ali and Fatima with the views of Clarkson, Corbyn, Katie Hopkins, May, Attenborough ... the morals of any newspaper agony aunt, or of the Jeremy Kyle show, or of East Enders, or any film on the cinema ... the list is endless.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
Religious determinism just makes *no sense* to me - not in the context of a contemporary, first world society, like that of the UK or the USA. No religion has its purported adherents by the tits or the testicles in the first world, as it might have done two thousand years ago in the Middle East. It doesn't, and can't, work that way any more.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer

quote:


As I explained, you are seeing them through rational western eyes and see only what they want you to see.
And like most westerners, you swallowed it.
Everyone likes to think it's just another religion and we should welcome them with open arms like all other religions.
And that is what they rely on - our gullibility.

I don't need to do any reasoning nor strain myself with psychology, FD. The facts don't support the view that more than a tiny proportion of Muslims will do 'honour killings' here. Likewise with all the other heinous things that hit the papers. These things trump your and my anecdotal evidence. The vast majority of Muslims here want to have prosperous and agreeable lives - and the only way to do that is to knuckle down under the law ... as well as the economic, social and political cultures that we have here. What some might want in their ideal world isn't very material, is it? All but a very few people will sacrifice the ideal for the merely comfortable.

As for the question of it being 'just another religion' ... to me, that's not very relevant. *Whatever* religion we're talking about, it *cannot* be the sole influence on anybody's make-up (outside of some entirely closed religious community, perhaps). How would that even be possible? Any Muslim living in the UK is going to be subject to countless other influences as he or she grows up and forms his/her moral/political outlook. Mohammed and the Koran are going to have to fight for their place in the hearts of Ali and Fatima with the views of Clarkson, Corbyn, Katie Hopkins, May, Attenborough ... the morals of any newspaper agony aunt, or of the Jeremy Kyle show, or of East Enders, or any film on the cinema ... the list is endless.

Religious determinism just makes *no sense* to me - not in the context of a contemporary, first world society, like that of the UK or the USA. No religion has its purported adherents by the tits or the testicles in the first world, as it might have done two thousand years ago in the Middle East. It doesn't, and can't, work that way any more.

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
As for the average British or US Muslim ... surely, all he or she should do - and would naturally do - is distance himself or herself from all that stuff? Me, in that position, I'd say, 'What the hell have they got to do with me? I'm British/American - I have *no idea* what makes those loonies tick!'

quote:

ORIGINAL: ThatDizzyChick

Oh grow the fuck up

quote:

ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
See, for me, that all focuses on the extreme and newsworthy of what's happening, rather than the core. In each of those four cases, the answer would be 'But most Muslims don't'.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lucylastic

The difference is that Dizzy is way younger than you, but way fucking smarter already.
she cannot help her age, any more than you can.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Wayward5oul

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

quote:

ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr

quote:

ORIGINAL: LadyDemura

I'm still going with that arguing some other ancient religion is somehow better than Islam isn't going to work...

Let's get into the 21st century and equally ridicule all of these Old World religions equally...How anyone now can believe the uninformed people of many centuries ago had anything to say of value is astonishing to me...

You're right. The ancient Egyptians knew nothing about mummification (most of which we still use, today) or mathematics, or astrology or building/engineering.

Of course, the Roman Empire knew nothing about these things, either and, let's face it: plumbing wasn't a big deal.

The Greeks ... Socrates, Plato, Aristotle ...

Yeah, these ancient people knew nothing. You should know so much "nothing".

Michael

another difference between liberals and conservatives...and the very height of ignorance and arrogance to boot.

This has little to do with religion, or liberals vs conservatives.

quote:

Two thousand years ago, there may not have been liberals as we think of them today, but some of the dumb ideas that underpin the whole ideology were floating around. Fortunately, in Greece some of the greatest minds in human history were there to set people straight. There are an awful lot of liberals who could benefit from reading these more than 2,000 year-old words of wisdom.

1) "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." -- Plutarch

2) "When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." -- Epictetus

3) "The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal." -- Aristotle

4) "Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns." -- Plato

5) "Toil is no source of shame; idleness is shame." -- Hesiod

6) "Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Plato

7) "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." -- Aesop

8) "The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so." -- Plato

9) "When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income." -- Plato

10) "Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class." -- Plato

11) "Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous." -- Plato

12) "This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector." -- Plato

13) "Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music." -- Diogenes

14) "We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time." -- Aristotle

15) "We regard wealth as something to be properly used, rather than as something to boast about. As for poverty, no one need be ashamed to admit it: the real shame is in not taking practical measures to escape from it." -- Pericles

16) "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms." -- Aristotle

17) "Only the dead have seen the end of war." -- Plato

18) "The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort." -- Plato

19) "Society is well governed when its people obey the magistrates, and the magistrates obey the law." -- Solon

20) "A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true." -- Socrates

quote:

We need to face the possibility that the left-liberal citizens of the West really do hate our civilization and really do desire that it come to an end. True, they may not be completely consistent (and certainly not consciously explicit) about this, since they still want their material comforts and familiar way of life to continue, for the time being. Nevertheless, civilizational surrender and suicide is the true end toward which Western liberals are moving.

That chilling thought came to me as I was reading over the last paragraph of my critique of Mark Steyn’s New Criterion article, in which he stated as a conclusive fact that much of the West is going to disappear and be taken over by Islam in our life times:

quote:

Steyn’s] notion that the dying-out and retreating Europeans would be in a position to preserve their culture and somehow bestow it on the triumphant Musulman is too ridiculous for words. However, perhaps Steyn is inchoately glimpsing, not the assimilation of the Muslims into a somehow still intact European culture, but an image from deeper in the past and outside our own civilization, namely that the surviving whites of Europe, having converted to Islam, will offer the use of their skills and knowledge to the Muslim rulers, just as Christian and Jewish converts serving under the Abbasid Caliphate provided it with many of its cultural and scientific works. In any case, it is an embrace of doom to which this “conservative” pied piper is leading his readers.

As I read this, I suddenly realized that my whimsical image of Western Christians and Jews serving some future Caliph of Europe is a prospect that would be highly pleasant and attractive to many Westerners. I realized that these spiritually emptied-out elites are not just anti-Western, as has been said a million times, and do not just seek to harm and weaken the West before its enemies, as has been said a million times, but that they literally do not want our civilization to continue, it’s too guilty, too powerful, and its guilt and its power are too much of a burden for them. How do you go on upholding something that you don’t believe in anyway? It is similar to what I have called the hilarious dilemma of liberal patriotism...By the same token, Western liberals can no longer stand pretending to care about and to be responsible for a civilization that they no longer believe in. They resent the charge; they’re weary of the task. If the opportunity were offered to them, they would much prefer to be the retainers and attendants of a Muslim Caliph of Europe, no longer having to carry the unwanted and disliked burden of Western-ness and white-ness, but serving in a subordinate though still useful and honorable role in a new Islamic Golden Age. They would be happier and more fulfilled that way.

Is this the true motive of the dhimmi-like mindset that is now rife in the West? Is this the true consummation of the Western intelligentsia’s five-centuries-long romance with Islam?

If it is, then the European awakening and turnabout that I have hoped would result from the horror of losing much of our civilization to the Muslims may not occur. Instead, as Europeans see their civilization being defeated and destroyed by the triumphant Musulman, they will accept what has happened, and convert...

quote:

ORIGINAL: bounty44

speaking to some other parts of the thread:

"Western liberals’ ultimate embrace of Islam"

quote:

We need to face the possibility that the left-liberal citizens of the West really do hate our civilization and really do desire that it come to an end. True, they may not be completely consistent (and certainly not consciously explicit) about this, since they still want their material comforts and familiar way of life to continue, for the time being. Nevertheless, civilizational surrender and suicide is the true end toward which Western liberals are moving.

That chilling thought came to me as I was reading over the last paragraph of my critique of Mark Steyn’s New Criterion article, in which he stated as a conclusive fact that much of the West is going to disappear and be taken over by Islam in our life times:

quote:

Steyn’s] notion that the dying-out and retreating Europeans would be in a position to preserve their culture and somehow bestow it on the triumphant Musulman is too ridiculous for words. However, perhaps Steyn is inchoately glimpsing, not the assimilation of the Muslims into a somehow still intact European culture, but an image from deeper in the past and outside our own civilization, namely that the surviving whites of Europe, having converted to Islam, will offer the use of their skills and knowledge to the Muslim rulers, just as Christian and Jewish converts serving under the Abbasid Caliphate provided it with many of its cultural and scientific works. In any case, it is an embrace of doom to which this “conservative” pied piper is leading his readers.

As I read this, I suddenly realized that my whimsical image of Western Christians and Jews serving some future Caliph of Europe is a prospect that would be highly pleasant and attractive to many Westerners. I realized that these spiritually emptied-out elites are not just anti-Western, as has been said a million times, and do not just seek to harm and weaken the West before its enemies, as has been said a million times, but that they literally do not want our civilization to continue, it’s too guilty, too powerful, and its guilt and its power are too much of a burden for them. How do you go on upholding something that you don’t believe in anyway? It is similar to what I have called the hilarious dilemma of liberal patriotism...By the same token, Western liberals can no longer stand pretending to care about and to be responsible for a civilization that they no longer believe in. They resent the charge; they’re weary of the task. If the opportunity were offered to them, they would much prefer to be the retainers and attendants of a Muslim Caliph of Europe, no longer having to carry the unwanted and disliked burden of Western-ness and white-ness, but serving in a subordinate though still useful and honorable role in a new Islamic Golden Age. They would be happier and more fulfilled that way.

Is this the true motive of the dhimmi-like mindset that is now rife in the West? Is this the true consummation of the Western intelligentsia’s five-centuries-long romance with Islam?

If it is, then the European awakening and turnabout that I have hoped would result from the horror of losing much of our civilization to the Muslims may not occur. Instead, as Europeans see their civilization being defeated and destroyed by the triumphant Musulman, they will accept what has happened, and convert...

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/004846.html